Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A Bad Habit

Yep, another cancelled game.  This time, it was my fault.  One of the twins came down with the flu about 2 days before game day.  Confirmation the day before game day.  Mental ping pong trying to decide to have the game anyway with sick child banished to back bedroom or cancel just in case her germs are everywhere.  Safety overruled gaming desire, and I cancelled at the last minute.  Well, I remembered to cancel the gaming group but I forgot to cancel the kids who were coming to watch us play and learn from us. 

So, instead I ran a quick, off the top of my head, Swords & Wizardry game for a group of 3 teenage boys.  They had read all the Pathfinder rulebook and looked at lots of different versions/editions of D&D and were just wanting to see how it played out.  We had a pretty good time with one of them being smart enough to properly honor the old dusty idol in case the gods were watching.  He was a mage and was rewarded with a Barkskin like permanent change (upping his AC by 3 but dropping his Charisma by 3 as well).  The cleric had a 6 Wisdom and was played very well by the young man who rolled him up.  He was completely clueless about the idol but did recognize it as  "a false god" and kept mumbling that the mage had consorted with demons.

We played about 3.5 hours or so.  The boys really picked up on the "we're here to play a game and have fun" aspect of the rules.  We spent another hour after we stopped gaming to talk about some of the roles of the players and the DM should take at the table.  Dice fall where they may; never punish out of game behavior in game and vice versa; and be cooperative instead of DM vs. Players.  They then met with the others of their group the next day and played for 10 or so hours.  Apparently they all had fun.  And I miss those days when you could get a group together and just play without worrying about a curfew or obligations. 

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