Swashling Bucks

A game broke out spontaneously at my house this weekend.  Sophie decided to run a game using the Pathfinder Beginner Box, making up an adventure on the fly.  Nora and one of their friends from down the street played, and I joined in.

The girl, whom we'll call 'L', played one of the pre-generated characters from the box set.  The sheet described the character as a swashbuckler.  L asked what the word meant and I told her.  Her subsequent play would suggest that she interpreted this in the most violent way possible.  Meanwhile, I played a cleric who was determined to convert anyone and everyone to the worship of Serenrae.  This is the same character who insisted on donating loot to "the orphans" a few months back.  Nora played a "fashion fighter," which she described as someone who fights and kills people who aren't fashionable. The pieces were set:  I would play the lone voice of reason between two murderous adventurers.

It didn't take us long to figure out what we were supposed to do.  A terrorist human named Josh was kidnapping children from around town, and we were the only ones equipped to deal with him.  L went around town with her rapier drawn, trying to intimidate people into telling her where Josh was hiding, referring to him as "the human kidnapper."  She wasn't getting anywhere fast with this approach.  For her part, Nora was wheeling and dealing, borrowing gold against future looting profits at exorbitant interest rates just so she could buy fashionable dresses, tiaras, armor, and accessories.  Her matching pink chain mail and shield will surely set her apart from her peers.

It was up to me to figure out where Josh and his gang were hiding.  One guy seemed to be lying to L, so I followed him to a tavern to keep an eye on him.  I'm still not sure if he was really hiding anything, but some bribes to the barkeeper got me all kinds of information.  The human kidnapper was rumored to be hiding out either in the old mines at the edge of town, or under the long-dormant volcano, Mt. Toughmore.  And a guy by the name of Biggle living across the street knew where the hidden door into the volcano could be found.  I met Biggle and convinced him to show us the way for 10 gp.  We agreed to meet at his doorstep at first light the following morning.

When it was Nora's turn, I was treated to this gem of a conversation:

Nora:  "How much is the shield?"
Sophie:  "Twenty dollars."
Nora (not at all joking):  "Oh good!  Now I won't have to spend the rest of my gold!"
Sophie:  "Sorry, I mean gold, not dollars.  Twenty gold pieces."
Nora (crestfallen): "Oh..."

Then I went outside to do some yard work while the kids continued to play out the shopping portion of the game.  At one point I was talking to my new neighbor when Sophie ran out to ask me a question.  "Dad, L wants to pick a person's pocket.  How do we do it?"

"She rolls a d20 and adds her Sleight of Hand bonus against the target's Perception," I replied.

"I don't see Sleight of Hand."

"Just use Stealth then."

"Ok!"  And she ran off.

My neighbor looked at me.  "Dungeons & Dragons?"

"Yep."

"System?"

"Pathfinder."  He nodded.  Turns out he used to play, but I digress.

Eventually the girls were ready to join Biggle and me and head to Mt. Toughmore to apprehend Josh the human kidnapper.  We arrived at the hidden door and couldn't get it open.  Through a hole in the door we could see there was someone on the other side.  I asked if we could come in, you know, just to talk a little bit about Serenrae.  "It will only take a few minutes of your time," I assured him, "but it could change your whole life for the better."  He didn't let us in, but eventually we figured out the trick with the door and got in anyway.

The first room's lone inhabitant was a goblin.  Instead of killing him, I hired him.  L explained to the goblin that she was a "buckswashler."

"You swashle bucks?" I asked.

"That's right!" she declared.  Who was I to judge?

After that it was stab all the things.  Boggarts, giant spiders, you name it.  Kids were really into it, although Nora tried to get out of having to do the actual fighting at first.  "Here, give me the torch, and I'll give you my sword so you can attack."

"I already have a sword."

"That's ok, I can still hold the torch for you."

"That's fine," I said, "but we won't be sharing the treasure with people who don't share the risks."  That fixed that problem. 

Good times.

Troll GM is Troll

In a previous post I mentioned Sophie's poker face.  It's really more like a Mona Lisa smile, especially in the eyes.  She has heavy lids, and nice lips with only the faintest hint of a smile.  When she gives me this look, I feel like she's appraising me.  It's the same look she had on her face when she entered the world, and it's as disconcerting now as it was then.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.  This post contains information about the Black Fang adventure that comes with the Pathfinder Beginner Box.

When she was running the "Black Fang" adventure, one of the treasures the party found before I arrived to play was a little wooden toy dragon with ruby eyes.  The rubies were worth something like 50 gold pieces a pop.  A nice little find.  Then the characters went on to die several times.  When they did, Sophie let them come back to life in the dungeon, with a caveat:  she placed them randomly in the dungeon.  She also instituted a teleportation trap.  Her reasoning, we learned later, was that the characters had already cleared the rooms, so she was trying to make the old rooms interesting.  She also wasn't letting the players see the whole map that comes printed on the battle mat that comes in the box.  This made sense, given the teleportation trap, and resulted in that wonderful feeling of being lost.  All of this was her invention, by the way.  Nothing new, of course, but cool that she came up with it on her own.

What the players didn't know was that Sophie had run out of treasures to hand out.

When I joined, we defeated some goblins and found their treasure chest.  Unfortunately for Sophie, the players had already cleared this room once before and taken the treasure, so she had to come up with something new on the fly.  One of the items she put in there was another toy dragon, this time with Saphire eyes.  The girls quickly pointed out that they already had one kind of like it.  "Cool," I said, thinking that since there were two such toys that it must be a clue or puzzle of some sort.  "Maybe there are more."

"Maybe together they form a weapon," suggested Livie, playing a wizard.

I looked over at Sophie, and she was wearing that old, familiar expression on her face.  No help there, but I felt we were on the right track.

A little later on we stumbled on the lair of Black Fang himself, a black dragon.  We weren't ready to take on a dragon.  He didn't see us, so we carefully withdrew.  Our plan was to clear out everything else in the dungeon and, hopefully, level up before the big showdown.

We did find another treasure later on, and what do you know?  It had a toy dragon in it.  Sophie's expression remained unchanged.  At this point our own personal maps connected all the rooms together, and the only room left was the dragon's lair.  We did level up and, most importantly in our minds, we had the entire set of toy dragons.  Off we went to face the menace.

It did not go well.  We were already faring poorly in the combat when Livie said, "What about the toys?"

"Of course!  The toys!"

Her wizard then proceeded to waste several rounds using Mage Hand to summon the toys from my possession to hers, then try to assemble the toys in some way, and even point them at the dragon and yell commands to try to activate the figures.

No luck.  They were just toys.  The dragon killed us.

...but Sophie was getting tired of us dying all the time and bailed us out (just an opinion:  this initial adventure should really have at least four characters in play, not just the three that we tried it with).   And so we "defeated" the dragon.

Afterwards I asked Sophie about the toys, and that's when I learned that she had simply made up the second toy and then intentionally added the third toy with the sole purpose of messing with us.  She had heard our musings about their purpose and decided it would be fun to feed into them to give them credence.   She even entertained the possibility of stealing our idea and making the toys special in some way, but figured it would be more fun to have them do nothing at all.

In other words, she trolled us.  Hard.  And her expression hadn't changed one tiny bit the whole time.

I am so proud.

---

Note:  I tried to photograph her expression this morning to share on this post.  Although I captured the expression, her hair was all mangled and the lighting wasn't doing her any favors.  I figure if I'm going to post pictures of my kids on the web, I at least owe it to them to let them look their best.  Thus, no pic.

For the Orphans

Story time, from when I joined the Pathfinder game my daughter Sophie was running.

It seems that their characters had already died a few times in the dungeon that comes with the Pathfinder Beginner Box, so they were eager for me to play a cleric who could heal them if they got into hot water again.  So I grabbed the pre-generated cleric character, changed her sex to male, named him "Kyras," and jumped right in.  I immediately made it known that I was a servant of Serenrae, goddess of light and healing, and encouraged their characters to join me in asking for my goddess' blessings for our adventuring party.  They quickly wearied of Kyras's in-your-face evangelism.  Kyras eventually took the hint, and they got on with the adventure.

The best part was after we killed the goblin king and one of his minions.  I said, "I check the goblin king's corpse to see what he had."

Livie said, "Yeah!  Let's steal their stuff!"

"Excuse me?" I responded, admonishing her.  "Shouldn't it go to the orphans?"

Sophie squinted in confusion and silently mouthed the question, Orphans?  She hadn't mentioned any orphans.  Nora was equally perplexed and loudly demanded to know what orphans I was referring to.  But Livie, always a quick study, knew what I was up to and just smacked her forehead with her palm and groaned.

Since Nora was still confused, I elaborated.  "The goblins stole these things from the villagers they killed.  They really belong to the village.  The temple of Serenrae believes the money should be spent to feed and house the village orphans."

Livie's character did not agree.  After all, she was the one putting her life on the line to rid the village of these monstrous threats.  She lobbied for a three-way split.  When the cleric refused to budge, she played her ace.   "Ok," she countered.  "What if I just walk out of here and leave you two here alone, and the villagers all get killed because you can't kill the dragon?  How will your orphans do then, hmm?"

"You have a good point," I admitted, and we agreed to an even split, although Nora's character announced she would be helping the orphans too.  

"I couldn't help but notice you're wearing the ring of protection you found," added Livie slyly, pointing out my hypocrisy.  

"I need to survive," I retorted.  "For the orphans, of course."

Return of the Blog

Hey, I'm back!  It's been too long.

Gymnastics has proven to be an RPG killer in our home, but it looks like we're starting to ramp up again.  This summer should be especially good, since we'll have big chunks of time on the weekends that we don't have now.

In the past few months, I gave my 11-year-old daughter Sophie Paizo's Pathfinder Beginner Box.  I can't say enough nice things about this set.    Since this product has been out for awhile, and since there is no shortage of information on the Internet about its contents, I'm not going to give it a full review here.  Instead, let it suffice to say that Sophie was able to take the box and run a game very easily.  That's saying something for a game as complicated as Pathfinder/ D&D 3.5.

The best part was that I didn't have to help.  The kids wanted to play, but I had plans to be elsewhere.  They were bummed, so on my way out the door I said, "Why not open up your Beginner Box and have at it?"  They got all excited and started their prep.

Four hours later I returned home and they were still playing, with no signs of slowing down.  I joined in by taking on one of the pre-generated characters that come in the box, the cleric (because "Daddy, we need healing!"), and before long we were facing down Black Fang.

Sophie's going to be a great GM.  She is devious and has a great poker face, critical for successful trolling.  More on that next time.