Dungeons and Digressions Frugal Homemade Game Table

My father-in-law passed away this week and I'm not much in the mood for posting.  I will return to my Garhelm stuff when the mood strikes me.

In the mean time, Ze Bulette at Dungeons and Digressions has posted a nice, cheap homemade game table.  Check it out: link

I’m a Lucky Man

I spent part of last week in Chicago visiting family (my wife was throwing her sister a baby shower) and had a bad case of cabin fever. After snooping around a bit on the ‘net, I found the locations of some game stores. Kind of hard to believe, but in a city as large as Chicago, there are only three game stores (none of which are downtown, by the way). The following three stores all have great online reviews:

• Games Plus
• Black Sun Games
• Chicagoland Games Dice Dojo

(I’m not including the local Games Workshop stores, which only sell Games Workshop stuff. I’m not a Warhammer player, so those shops are of no use to me, but I’m rather impressed that GW has its own brand-specific stores).

Games Plus seemed like the best bet for finding older system RPG stuff. Unfortunately, all of
the stores were across town and my wife and I had planned to head out that night, just the two of us. So what did we do for our hot date? We drove 40 miles or so to Games Plus. Yes, my wife, dressed to kill, went with me to the game store for our date night.

I was in gamer heaven and my wife waited patiently as I spent God-knows-how-long browsing the aisles. Actually, she spent a good bit of time looking for games for our girls.

I’m a lucky man.

[By the way, I highly recommend Games Plus. I scored some great stuff: Slavelords of Cydonia by Badaxe Games ($5, used, but damned if I can tell), Raise the Dead and Dead Man’s Chest by Necromancer Games ($7, new, and $5 for a slightly dinged copy), and a starter deck of Dinosaur King cards for Chaos.]

Fantasy Forest Books – Welcoming Kids to the Dungeon One Choice at a Time

In my box of adventure, I found four Fantasy Forest books:

#1 The Ring, the Sword, and the Unicorn by Jim “Gamma World” Ward

#2 Ruins of Rangar by Michael Carr

#5 Dungeon of Darkness by John Kendall

#6 Star Rangers and the Spy and the Spy by Jean Blashfield and Beverly Charette

So far, my wife and I have read #1 and #2 to Chaos, with #1 being her clear favorite. It’s pretty hard to beat a unicorn for little girl appeal. Although Ruins of Rangar has a pegasus on the cover, it more or less has a cameo appearance and Chaos wasn't too impressed.  I’m guessing the cover of Dungeons of Darkness is a bit too creepy for her and Star Rangers might be too sci-fi (she has never shown much interest in spaceships and such).


There has been much hullabaloo about WotC's new D&D for kids venture, Monster Slayers.  They have a free adventure, Heroes of Hesoid,  here: link and a Monster Slayers story book here: link.   Troll Lord Games is onto this as well with their Harvesters RPG (as well as the eternally delayed Castles & Crusades Basic).

I think this is great. Like the cigarette industry, we need to hook 'em while they're young!  Seriously, though, it is great to see people realizing there is a market for kid-friendly RPGs.  When I started this blog, I thought I was in a minority, but I've realized there are tons of gaming parents out there.  A lot of them, myself included, want a way to share our hobby with our kids.

I think WotC, and any other gaming company, would do well to revisit Choose Your Own Adventure-style books.  They really are a great gateway to the fun of role playing.  My daughter can't get enough of them.  What is really cool is that these books use the monsters and the artistic styles from the game.  The dragon art in The Ring, the Sword... is done in the same style as the 1st edition Monster Manual and stirges attack the the heroes in the Ruins of Rangar.  (I'll put up some pictures of the art in a bit.)

I keep thinking of this quote:
Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G. K. Chesterton

My daughter is kind of a scaredy cat, much like I was at that age (hell, I would literally run out of the room when David Banner hulked out on the old "Incredible Hulk" TV show).  But these books have the kid as the hero (or at least as a brave side-kick).  In The Ring..., the kid is riding a unicorn and battling orcs and dragons.  In Ruins..., the kid is wielding a dagger and kicking skeletons to bits (notice how the hero is smart enough to not even attempt a piercing weapon. ha!).  This sort of crystallizes an un-hearlded benefit of gaming for kids.  Sure, there are monsters in it.  But the players' goal is to slay those monsters, overcome traps, and save the day.  More importantly, they have the means and powers to do so.

To this day, my wife is amazed that I, as a kid, didn't have nightmares about all those pictures in the Monster Manual.  Like I said, I was a chicken-shit.  So why didn't I?  Because the monsters were there to be slain.  That goblin only had 1 hit die and I knew my 3rd level fighter could bash its brains in with his morningstar.

These Fantasy Forest books are great way to show kids the fun of gaming.  The kid gets to be the hero and, really, who doesn't want that?

Cloudy with a Chance of Orcus – Whiteboard Uses for RPG Gaming

In my post about the showdown in the Upper Temple of Orcus, Omote noticed a strange “map/poster” sitting on an easel in one of the pictures:

That is a piece of extra shower board/tile board/Melamine. Before I started using my massive battle map, I used two pieces of “whiteboard” purchased on the cheap from Craig’s List. The lady selling them didn’t know they weren’t real whiteboards (neither did I). Anyhow, they were cheap and these extra pieces are damn handy. Oh, the easel is my wife’s, but I long ago commandeered it for my own twisted purposes.

Various uses:

• Mapping - I stand in front of the whiteboard and draw an overview dungeon map as the party explores. This makes me feel like some strange, Gygaxian weatherman, but it works very well. It makes the mapper’s job easier and gives all the players a sense of where their characters are. It may sound like extra work, but it actually speeds up play because the players don’t need to question me as much about dungeon details.

• Initiative Tracking – I often write the initiative order on the board so that everyone in the group has a clear idea of when their turn is coming up.

  

• Extra Battle Room – I bust out these pieces when the battle spills over the area on the large battle map. It happens more than you’d think in a dungeon the scale of Rappan Athuk [especially if the DM (uhm, me) doesn’t start drawing at a good point on the large map].

• Artwork – My girls love to draw on these surfaces.

Excellent post about the Gamer-Friendly Wife

Over at Beyond the Black Gate, Al (a.k.a. Ravyn) posted this excellent ode to the Gamer-Friendly Wife: link.

I couldn't have said it better myself.  God Bless the D&D Widows of the world.

It’s a girl! Here is your pink d20.

So the days of the expectant father sitting in a smoke-filled lobby are long since gone.  Still, the tradition of handing out a cigar or some other token remains.  There are all kinds of crap for this now: candy cigars, personalized chocolate bars, etc.  Like anything else these days, a once informal gesture has been turned into a marketable “must.” 

Well, what does the proud gamer father give out?  Dice, of course.  Before my oldest daughter, Chaos, was born, I was pondering what to hand out and my wife suggested a die.  Brilliant.

Finding pink dice was a bit tricky and the d20s I handed out for Chaos’s birth were borderline purple.  For Mayhem’s birth, I found some nice pink ones at dicepool.com (and the price was reasonable, too).

My good friend and fellow gamer just welcomed his daughter into this world and, for the first time, I was on the receiving side.  It was a really cool feeling.  Now, I’m not delusional enough to believe that I was the first to do this, but I do think it’s a fun tradition.  My buddy handed out these pink d20s to gamers outside our immediate group and they loved it. 

Hopefully the idea will catch on and one of these days I’ll receive a blue d20 to go with the pink ones.

My Daughters: Chaos & Mayhem

Mayhem (2 years old) plots a PC's demise

I've written a good bit about dungeoneering, but nothing about being a dad. I am the proud father of two girls: my five-year-old, Chaos, and my two-year-old, Mayhem.* I love these little two to death. It's funny. I'd never imagined I'd still be playing D&D as a parent. When I was a kid, I always figured when I finally grew up, I'd hit some point when I would only do grown up things. Suddenly, D&D wouldn't appeal to me, no more video games, and I'd start listening to adult contemporary music. Yet, here I am, 33-years-old, married with kids, and I play D&D almost as regularly as I did in high school, I play video games whenever I can (granted, which isn't much), and I just received the Black Tide "Light from Above" CD for Christmas.

Chaos (nearly 1 year old in the photo) awaits a TPK

Suffice it to say, my girls are used to seeing all sorts of odd books in their dad's office. They love playing with my dice and I've bought them each their own big d20s. The plastic minis from Wizards of the Coast are a bit of a godsend, as I don't have to worry about them playing with lead or ruining a paint-job. I have to admit, I'm pretty protective of my books (and by "pretty protective," I mean "borderline OCD"), but they really haven't gotten into them anyhow.

My daughters were born into a gaming. When Chaos was born, my good friend, Steve, gave her her own copy of the 3rd edition D&D Player's Handbook and I wrote her name in the cover (come to think of it, I should probably give that book back to her... I commandeered it for my own purposes via Fatherly Right). On top of that, a few of my players hand-made a set of giant, soft dice for her. They made the whole set and picked colors to mimic those of an old-school dice set. They have bells inside that jingle when they roll. A lot of time and effort went into those dice and my girls have gotten a good bit of use out of them (they like the big d20 and d12 the most).

Chaos (3 years old in the photo) enjoys her big dice

My daughters look forward to D&D night as much as I do. That's when their "uncles" and "aunts" stop by, loaded with sweets. They feast on cookies, cake, chips, and whatever else my health-conscious friends bring. I love it and so do they. It's a bit taxing on my wife who has to handle bedtime duty solo those nights. Normally, I put young Mayhem to bed while Mrs. Frost handles the elder Chaos (and even then, I'm usually on "clean up" with Chaos, telling her a Hercules story and singing her a song or two after she's had time with Mom). On game night, my wife has to round them up and get them to sleep on her own. No small feat when you have two girls as rambunctious as mine who have main-lined sugar for a half-hour or so.

On a side note, my wife isn't a gamer, but is very understanding and supportive of my hobby. I'm blessed in that way. She gave D&D a try and had some fun, but decided it really wasn't for her. On game nights, she usually hangs out with the other D&D widows and catches up on chick flicks on the DVR.

I'm not sure how much my girls grasp what I actually do down in the basement, but they do know I'm playing some kind of game. They don't seem to care too much, just as long as they get to devour the goodies. Like I said, there is nothing quite like game night.


*Obviously, these aren't their real names, but I don't feel comfortable posting that info.