Scourge of the Howling Horde - Session 1
This past Saturday, following up on the resounding success of her first gaming session, Brianna and I joined Chad, Lizzi, and Chad's nephews for another one. While the first session was the one-off adventure included in the D&D Basic Game
, complete with pre-made characters, this time we were going to all roll up new characters. I was extremely excited about Brianna's first character, and she was just as excited. We had spent the intervening weeks discussing what she wanted, and she had come up with an elven wizard named Angel.
Once we were assembled, we spent the first large chunk of time doing character creation. Lizzi and I had both come with our characters ready (I actually had three created so I could pick the one that fit the party best. Chad suggested I go with the rogue Ral Dashar, while Lizzi play a cleric.) so we could each sit down with one of the kids to help them. After a while, Brianna's character Angel Moonwhisper was fully fleshed-out complete with a feline familiar named Princess. She's the younger sister of Lizzi's Star Moonwhisper, and older sister of Chris's Ron Moonwhisper. Meanwhile Chad and James had finished rolling up Kil Stonecutter the fighter. We were ready.
for us. We were on the road, having received a request from help from the hamlet of Barrow's Edge. On the way to the town, we came upon a merchant's wagon, attacked by goblins and overturned. We made short work of the goblins, including Star making a single-shot kill with her bow, courtesy of Brianna's freakishly impressive dice-rolling skills (three critical hit rolls in a row is a kill shot). Small wonder we all love to let Brianna roll for us.
While the rest of the party offered assistance to the halfling merchant and her two still-breathing guards, I was true to my rogue nature and searched the dead under the pretense of checking for signs of life. I got caught, but Sten the merchant let it slide.
We accompanied Sten toward town, but along the way were attacked by a mangy wolf and goblin druid. Chris showed excellent role-playing initiative by having Ron try to talk to the goblin in Druidic. It didn't work too well, as the gobin was already enraged, but we were all impressed at the attempt to resolve the situation without combat. Then we killed the wolf (including Kil making a spectacular hit with his sword as the wolf was tripping him) and beat the goblin into submission. We tried to interrogate the goblin at knife-point, but he wasn't having any of it, telling us only that someone or something called Noak was going to kill us all. There was some argument as to what to do with the goblin, the good-aligned Star saying we had to leave him alived and trussed up. Ral decided to wait until she was out of sight, then go ahead and kill him for safety. Gotta love chaotic neutral.
Then it was onward to Barrow's Edge. Sten gave each of us 100gp of credit in her shop as a reward for helping her, and introduced us to the gruff dwarf who had made the original call for assistance. He told us the goblins had been ravaging the town. A month ago, a group of men (including Sten's husband) had gone forth to find them and try to resolve the issue, and never returned. The offer is 500gp apiece to eliminate the goblins however we could. We naturally took them up on the offer (it is why we were travelling to town, after all) and settled in to the inn for the night.
I had a blast with the session. Ral Dashar is an old character of mine (originally a second edition fighter/thief) who I resurrected as a 3.5 edition rogue. He was always a lot of fun to play, though I've toned down his chaotic neutral insanity quite a bit. Brianna is turning out to be a shrewd player already. She made excellent choices in her skills, particularly in the knowledge areas, that were quite useful to the party. I could have suggested we just take the basic starting package of skills, but she and I decided to go through them all with her assigning the number of ranks. It turned out extremely well. And, with Lizzi's help, she was able to choose the best spells to cast during combat to help put the goblins and wolf down. Chad also had spell cards, which were invaluable for keeping track of spells known versus spells actually available to the character. I know they helped Brianna out, giving her, in essence, a physical spellbook to manipulate. In fact, I think I need a set for my cleric in the [faqcat:Soen Soen campaign].
I asked Brianna that night what her favorite part of the gaming had been. After thinking a while, she told me she couldn't pick any single thing. Then she offered to tell me what the worst part was. "When we were done and had to leave." My daughter is a natural gamer. We can't wait for next time, hopefully the weekend after next.
Technorati Tags: Scourge of the Howling Horde
, complete with pre-made characters, this time we were going to all roll up new characters. I was extremely excited about Brianna's first character, and she was just as excited. We had spent the intervening weeks discussing what she wanted, and she had come up with an elven wizard named Angel.
Once we were assembled, we spent the first large chunk of time doing character creation. Lizzi and I had both come with our characters ready (I actually had three created so I could pick the one that fit the party best. Chad suggested I go with the rogue Ral Dashar, while Lizzi play a cleric.) so we could each sit down with one of the kids to help them. After a while, Brianna's character Angel Moonwhisper was fully fleshed-out complete with a feline familiar named Princess. She's the younger sister of Lizzi's Star Moonwhisper, and older sister of Chris's Ron Moonwhisper. Meanwhile Chad and James had finished rolling up Kil Stonecutter the fighter. We were ready.
for us. We were on the road, having received a request from help from the hamlet of Barrow's Edge. On the way to the town, we came upon a merchant's wagon, attacked by goblins and overturned. We made short work of the goblins, including Star making a single-shot kill with her bow, courtesy of Brianna's freakishly impressive dice-rolling skills (three critical hit rolls in a row is a kill shot). Small wonder we all love to let Brianna roll for us.
While the rest of the party offered assistance to the halfling merchant and her two still-breathing guards, I was true to my rogue nature and searched the dead under the pretense of checking for signs of life. I got caught, but Sten the merchant let it slide.
We accompanied Sten toward town, but along the way were attacked by a mangy wolf and goblin druid. Chris showed excellent role-playing initiative by having Ron try to talk to the goblin in Druidic. It didn't work too well, as the gobin was already enraged, but we were all impressed at the attempt to resolve the situation without combat. Then we killed the wolf (including Kil making a spectacular hit with his sword as the wolf was tripping him) and beat the goblin into submission. We tried to interrogate the goblin at knife-point, but he wasn't having any of it, telling us only that someone or something called Noak was going to kill us all. There was some argument as to what to do with the goblin, the good-aligned Star saying we had to leave him alived and trussed up. Ral decided to wait until she was out of sight, then go ahead and kill him for safety. Gotta love chaotic neutral.
Then it was onward to Barrow's Edge. Sten gave each of us 100gp of credit in her shop as a reward for helping her, and introduced us to the gruff dwarf who had made the original call for assistance. He told us the goblins had been ravaging the town. A month ago, a group of men (including Sten's husband) had gone forth to find them and try to resolve the issue, and never returned. The offer is 500gp apiece to eliminate the goblins however we could. We naturally took them up on the offer (it is why we were travelling to town, after all) and settled in to the inn for the night.
I had a blast with the session. Ral Dashar is an old character of mine (originally a second edition fighter/thief) who I resurrected as a 3.5 edition rogue. He was always a lot of fun to play, though I've toned down his chaotic neutral insanity quite a bit. Brianna is turning out to be a shrewd player already. She made excellent choices in her skills, particularly in the knowledge areas, that were quite useful to the party. I could have suggested we just take the basic starting package of skills, but she and I decided to go through them all with her assigning the number of ranks. It turned out extremely well. And, with Lizzi's help, she was able to choose the best spells to cast during combat to help put the goblins and wolf down. Chad also had spell cards, which were invaluable for keeping track of spells known versus spells actually available to the character. I know they helped Brianna out, giving her, in essence, a physical spellbook to manipulate. In fact, I think I need a set for my cleric in the [faqcat:Soen Soen campaign].
I asked Brianna that night what her favorite part of the gaming had been. After thinking a while, she told me she couldn't pick any single thing. Then she offered to tell me what the worst part was. "When we were done and had to leave." My daughter is a natural gamer. We can't wait for next time, hopefully the weekend after next.Technorati Tags: Scourge of the Howling Horde
