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Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Gaming to Capstone the Holiday Weekend

 We're at the end of a 5-day weekend in Korea, with the Chuseok (Fall Harvest Moon) festival being this past Mon-Wed. It was really 6 days for me, since I don't have any classes on Friday. It was an interesting week, too. I got my second Pfizer vaccine on Friday, which left me feeling exhausted and with a sore shoulder for two days, but luckily nothing more than that. 

So I ran a session of my d6 Star Wars game on Sunday, and finished up the hex-crawl planet survey adventure I'd created and then regretted creating when I ran it. But the players, two of them at least, said they really enjoyed it. Well, it will be back to more situational adventures in the future. The players said they'd prefer some anti-Imperial hi-jinks. 

My younger son was asking me for the past few days to run some D&D, but we just never seemed to have the time. In the previous West Marches game, his character was left about 250xp shy of 5th level. So tonight, I ran another game of the procedural dungeon crawling thing. 

I pulled out a battlemap from the old 2E AD&D Intro box set, with a castle and small cave system. They went to the gates, which were barred by a portcullis. While trying to open it, they were attacked by giant black widows, and my younger boy's henchman got bitten and failed a save. They quickly killed the spiders and asked if they could retreat back to town to save him. Technically black widows' poison takes effect 1 turn later, but I fudged the rules and allowed it. Hey, I made sure the boys played the dice straight, but I didn't need my 7-year-old bawling shortly before bedtime (he'd already scraped up his knee on the playground this afternoon). So I fudged that NON DIE ROLL bit. Sue me. 

[Lots of talk on the blogs I'm reading recently about fudging or not.]

Anyway, armed with an extra potion of antidote (and a potion of growth for my older boy) purchased in town, they returned to the castle. I won't go over all the details, but they managed to negotiate with ghouls! (lucky die rolls on the reaction rolls), battled some elves, and tricked some dwarves into leaving a silver chalice unguarded so they could swipe it and flee back to town. My 7yo wanted to taunt the dwarves as they fled, but my 13yo talked him out of it. 

Bulldog, my 7yo's character, is now a 5th level Lark (like the BX Elf class, but not an elf), and chose Haste/Slow as his first 3rd level spell. While brushing his teeth, we talked about ways he could use it to help the party, and he seems excited by the possibilities. He complained that his older brother was trying to talk to everyone instead of fight, but I explained to him that it's often better that way, especially if you can still get the treasure without the fighting. He seemed to get it, but we'll see if he remembers the next time we play. 

My 13yo was in good form tonight (despite too much teasing of his little brother), trying to think his way through the encounters (all monsters, no traps or specials this time). He rarely does that when we play online. The voice chat we use doesn't hold his interest, especially when chatting with his friends on Discord is just a new browser tab away. 

 I know at least one local player is also fully vaccinated, and another has had at least one shot. I should ask everyone's status and see if they'd like to risk some in-person gaming.

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