Always remember to look up

The latest D&D session with my wife lasted only about 30 minutes. But what a fun little session that covered a lot of ground! Again, "Team Wewe" (as she calls her party of four PCs) was unharmed in the session, due to a combination of good decisions and lucky dice.

They conversed with a pair of Giant Mink. Dodged flesh-eating Green Slime falling from the ceiling. Bypassed a Giant Tiger Beetle.

The last encounter of the session was in a library room. As the team searched books and scrolls, a camouflaged Giant Crab Spider descended from the ceiling and surprised them. Determined to finish searching the room for magical texts, Team Wewe engaged in combat for the first time. Asked what her team said to taunt the spider, she exclaimed: "Cheeeeese!"

It must have worked, because hot rolling gave her an easy victory. Veva and Maira landed blows in both combat rounds to dispatch the spider. The men, Eldon and Grizz, were embarrassed by their ineffectiveness. The search of the library turned up a magic scroll, which will need to be identified back in town.

Maira dodges the dripping Green Slime...gloop glup

The ladies apply beatdown on the Giant Crab Spider

Will Team Wewe return to town to re-memorize spells, identify the scroll, and risk encountering wandering monsters on the way? Or will they, still at full health, explore deeper into the palace dungeons?

Chillin' with Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill

The last few weeks I've debated on which version of the Basic D&D rules (or retro-clones) to use for the game with my wife. The half dozen or so versions are 99% compatible and a module written for one version is effortlessly adapted to another. It makes little difference which I choose, but a choice must be made, if for no other reason than the consistency and familiarity of using the same rulebook for each play session.

Last night my wife surprised me again with another impromptu request to play a game. I'll write a session report another day (she wants me to take pix of the Legos again), but the notable thing was that I simply grabbed the nearest Basic D&D rulebook and, by the end of the session, the "which version?" debate was resolved.


That version is commonly called"Holmes" Basic, after its editor, Dr. J. Eric Holmes. It's the first Basic version of D&D produced, circa 1977, weighs in at a whopping 48 pages and takes PCs from level 1 to 3. Perhaps the biggest difference between it and later versions of Basic D&D is that its bonuses and penalties from ability scores generally max out at +1 and -1. Furthermore, Strength and Wisdom have no mechanical effect on play, other than as Prime Requisites for Fighters and Clerics, respectively.

I am intrigued by the idea of ability scores having minimal direct mechanical impact. I'll give it a shot, but, on the other hand, would prefer that each ability score have at least SOME explicit relevance. Time for some house rules.

Ability Score Bonuses and Penalties (house rules in bold)

Strength: 13+ gives +1 bonus to melee hit roll, 8- gives -1 penalty to melee hit roll

Wisdom: 13+ gives +1 on all saving throws, 8- gives -1 penalty

Intelligence: +1 language for each point over 10

Constitution: hit point bonus or penalty each level

Dexterity: 13+ gives +1 bonus to ranged hit roll, 8- gives -1 penalty to ranged hit roll

Charisma: 13+ gives +1 reaction bonus, 13+ gives 5% xp bonus

The xp bonus for high Charisma is an idea I first saw in Swords & Wizardry. I like it because it reinforces the Fame and Fortune model of advancement. A couple other house rules for this campaign:

Human Magic-users and Clerics have "open casting". This means they don't need to memorize spells, but can cast anything in their spellbook, as limited by the character's level. I like this rule to help low level spellcasters have more options and be more involved. Some of the utility-ish spells seem to never see action, but could be very helpful in a pinch.

No Thief class. All the other classes are free (and encouraged) to attempt thief-like actions, so eliminating the Thief class isn't a great loss. If a player wants definitive sneakiness...choose the Hobbit class. When properly enticed, the little folk are known to take on titles such as "First-class Burglar", "Burglar-Expert", "The Chosen and Selected Burglar", "Thief in the Shadows", "Expert Treasure-Hunter", and even "Mr. Lucky Number".

The start of another adventure...

Last month I wrote about preparing to play D&D with my wife for the first time. Around that time we learned the great news that she is pregnant with our first child. We did it!

Anyways, for the past 6 weeks or so, she's been very tired in the evenings and usually goes to bed shortly after supper. Therefore, the D&D game has been delayed...until tonight. I almost fell off my throne when she asked to play D&D. I swear to God, it was her idea.

We played the short pre-programmed intro to the Palace of the Silver Princess adventure. Veva, Maira, Eldon, and Aarl passed through the gatehouse into the palace dungeon. She learned about secret doors, traps, listening at doors, turning undead, surprise, etc. She did well to avoid combat too. Maira fed the crazed monkey to pacify it and Aarl successfully turned the chain-rattlin' ghost. She's eager for the next session in hopes of finding the treasures of bath oils and luxurious towels.

Entering the palace dungeon (Nice crooked helmet, Eldon)

They surprise the crazed monkey (I don't have any Giant Rat legos, so I made it a monkey instead)

Aarl turns the ghost (It passed through the rear wall and may show up later in the dungeon)

Truck Mix Disc: Ron #2

I made my first Ron truck disc when I owned 5 of his 10 albums. Since then, I've acquired his other five albums (plus a couple of his side project albums). They are worthy of their own truck disc. Here's the lineup:

1. Spiritude
2. Brandy Alexander
3. Brighter Still
4. Blue, Red, and Grey
5. Boredom and Loneliness
6. Cold Hearted Wind
7. Diana Sweets
8. Father Christmas
9. From Now On
10. The Grim Trucker
11. Hands of Time
12. Happiness
13. Hard Bargain
14. How on Earth
15. I Don't Like Mondays
16. Not About to Lose
17. One Brown Mouse
18. Poor Helpless Dreams
19. Ship of Fools
20. Snow Angel
21. Wishing Well
22. Dawn Anna

Prelude to smashing monsters and gathering coins (and maybe even rescuing a princess)

We had a little fun last night creating the characters that my wife will play in her first D&D game.

I asked her if we had any note cards to use as character cards. I was expecting plain old index cards, but she dug around in her craft closet and found this fancy stationary. Excellent!

Instead of rolling up stats as usual, we did things a little different. I randomly choose four of the pre-rolled character stat lines listed in the B3 module. These characters were all ready to go with weapons, armor, and spells. All we needed to do was name them. Of course, we randomly generated the names using the Treasury of Archaic Names.

The results:
Veva Cateris - Elf
Representing the Blue Guardian Inn
Her cute freckles beguile extraordinary strength.


Eldon Garner - Fighter
Representing the Huntsman & Keys Roadhouse
His unique laughter has earned him the nickname "Quack".


Maira Striker - Hobbit
Representing the Big Black Brook Lodge
Her friends call her "Plucky" for obvious reasons. Don't let the revealing bodice fool you...there is chain mail underneath!


Aarl Whells - Cleric
Representing the Scribe & Scorpion Club
The bristly "Grizz" one possesses great wisdom.

Each character has a color-matched d20 and a damage die to expedite batch combat rolls in the dice boot-tower.

My wife had so much fun rolling the random names that she didn't want to stop. The dice tower is that exciting, let me tell ya. I explained that there will be more character generation in the future because the game is kinda like Super Mario Bros in that when a character dies, you can make another character to play with.

"Kinda like 1-Ups?"

"Uh...yeah...like that."

Das Boot!

I finished building this "dice boot" last night. Drop the dice down the hole at top...

...and they rattle down into the box at the bottom.

I tried to give it a twisted wizard's tower appearance:

The twisted wizard:

You show me yours, and I'll show you mine

During holiday gatherings, my wife's family plays mahjong for money until late at night, the noisy "shuffling" of the tiles keeping me awake as I lie in bed. It's similar to rummy, but with many special rules and exceptions that I never totally grasped. A few weeks ago, my wife taught me how to play. So now I know the basics, but it will take some practice to learn effective strategies. At some point during her lesson, I suggested that I'll teach her to play Dungeons & Dragons. She didn't reject the idea outright, so I'll assume she's really excited about it.

Designing D&D adventures from scratch for her to play is something I'd like to do eventually, but for her first (and hopefully not last) game I think I'll use a published adventure module. I have a humble collection of them on my bookshelf and hard drive, and they are there to be used. After considering a few, I've chosen B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, published by TSR in 1981. For several reasons:

• The most obvious reason is because parts of the module were clearly designed to appeal to women, at least more so than most modules it seems. This isn't thee major reason I chose this module, but it's worth pointing out. What kind of woman wouldn't want to find a treasure of bath oils and luxurious towels?
• It has a short, programmed beginning to the adventure, somewhat like a choose-your-path story. It's an easy way to teach newcomers some basic dungeon-exploring techniques and introduce game mechanics.
• It's set in a castle. My wife has little to no interest in the fantasy genre, bus she loves castles.
• It has a story. Not a complicated or restricting story, but just enough to give plausibility to the environment and motivation to the characters. I feel my wife would appreciate this more than she would a raw quest of carnage and plunder.
  

I'll be using the green-cover version of B3, not the censored/recalled orange-cover version. Read about, download, or purchase the orange version.

There are some things I like about the orange version, such as the maps, but there are several reasons why I won't be using this version with my wife:

• It has some supremely grotesque scenes that my wife would not appreciate. I'd have great fun presenting the lair of Deranged Travis to other players tho.
  
• It doesn't have the programmed introduction. Instead, it has a map and description of a wilderness campaign setting. It's a nice little setting with a great map, but the programmed introduction has more value to me for how I'll be using the module at this time.
• Way too many secret doors and false doors for my tastes. I believe I counted 20 secret doors and 10 false doors on the two map levels. They give the castle a nice mystery madhouse atmosphere, but I like beginning adventures to be a little more forgiving. The green version mostly just converts all of these into regular doors.
• Its story is more just background and not really integrated with the characters and castle the way it is in the green version

Hopefully, we'll get this game underway some lazy Saturday evening in the near future. Hopefully, she'll enjoy it. If not, no big deal...it's just a game...we all have one.