Tuesday, May 19, 2009

OD&D Solo Game with my wife - small games

One of the challenges for my solo game with my wife is time. Now that might seem funny, considering that I meet approximately every two weeks with my Dark Ages group, but it's true. My wife and I also have a houseful of kids and grandkids, a dog, volunteer organizations that we do work with and the struggle to also have those wonderful moments alone called "OMG Adult Night No Kids Go Away Wee!"

You would think that we could game in the evenings, but nine times out of ten, we're exhausted and more wanting to go to bed at 10pm than stay up and play D&D. I know, shocking, but very true. So we're trying something a bit different. Normally, I do not end adventures in the middle of a scene, or in the middle of a dungeon delve, but we're going to do exactly that. We'll play maybe an hour when we can, in the weekday evenings, and see how it goes. Last night, we held our first "mini session" and we had a blast!

Ever since my wife was confronted by an interesting tactical situation, she's been chewing on it. You see, there's a 20 foot long bridge over a deep deadly chasm. It's a one-person-wide bridge, with 4 skeletons with spears on the other side. The other side is a 10x10 area with a door. The skeletons have shown that they'll go into a spear/shield wall if someone stands on the bridge. 4 to 1 odds and my wife doesn't like it.

With the hiring of Brother Atu, the steel flower cleric, she has an option to turn the skeletons, but not guaranteed, so she's trying to come up with new ways to defeat them. Her plan? Create the equivalent of a human-powered catapult. She has a leather worker creating a slingshot type of harness out of leather, which can hold a boulder about the size of a head. She and another strong hireling will each hold the straps on either side of the "cup" and attempt to toss/snap the harness like a combo between a slingshot and a sling to rain stony doom on the skeletons.

I can't even tell you how many multiples of awesome that plan is. Wil it work? Who knows? Right now, based on the gold she's spent on what is essentially a one time weapon, I give it good odds that it'll work. I figure a boulder flung 20 ft hitting a walking set of bones is worth 2d6 damage, which should be a one shot kill on a 1d8 skeleton. I can't wait to see the dice rolls on this sucker though. She's spent some serious time thinking about this and that just tickles me in the happy place.

She is also quite the carouser! She's in what is essentially a quiet farm trade hub. She rolls on in, takes care of a ghoul problem and then celebrates with the equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner for her 7 companions (hirelings, henchmen and NPC) and buys beer for 30 odd people who happened to be in the Inn at the time. I only wish I had remembered Rient's Carousing tables were in Fight On #4, because this situation called for some possible building burning or gambling debts. The town is not soon going to forget when Aeli, Heroine of Valetown, held a victory party. Hopefully it's not too soon, like what happened in Dragonslayer when they thought Vermithrax was dead...



Anyway, we'll probably squeeze in another hour tonight to see how far she gets with the rock throwing and the preparations for clearing the bridge. I wonder what's on the other side... hmmm...

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to make a guess that what ever is on the other side will require weapons to be drawn and ready *nod* then the loot.

The Princess Wife

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

@theprincesswife - Wait, I have to give you loot? Aw damn... knew I forgot something in my dungeon!

Christopher B said...

"You would think that we could game in the evenings, but nine times out of ten, we're exhausted and more wanting to go to bed at 10pm than stay up and play D&D."

Gee, doesn't that sound familiar...

"...and that just tickles me in the happy place."

Hmmm... methinks you and I have entirely different ideas about what this statement means. At least, I certainly hope we do. :P

You "forgot" to provide loot for survivors of your pointy ivory gauntlet? So, you're one of those DM's, huh? Remind me to stay far away from your games.

Oh, wait - I am far away from your games. :P

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

@Chris - well, I can't tell her that there's enough loot to take her to 6th level behind the skeletons - we'd end up playing to 3am as competitive as she is... ;)

Oh wait...

And if you're coming to GenCon, you have no excuse to avoid a trip to the Tomb of Hultep Koa...

Christopher B said...

:P

"...coming to GenCon..."

Don't know whether to laugh or cry at that comment. I've never been to GenCon. Tried to get there a couple of years ago - had the badges bought, the events signed up for, and the hotel room reserved, but thing$ fell through. *sigh*

Oh well. Maybe someday my finances will finally be stable enough to actually pull it off. (Won't be this year, though.)

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

@Chris - sorry, didn't want to make you cry. I've not been to a GenCon in about 10 years, so I'm a little nervous, plus being press is going to be a bit different.

Player of Kee said...

Wait! The Princess Wife is almost 6th level? Have you guys been playing this solo game since 2007? O.o

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

We started with microlite74, which was very fast for character advancement - she's reached third level. When we converted to Swords & Wizardry, I just did straight conversion and left her at 3rd level, which she's been at for awhile.

I'm teasing her with the possibility that she'll find enough loot to take her to sixth. I think she knows me better than that. :P

Player of Kee said...

*snerk* You could tell that I was teasing YOU, couldn'tcha? Hope that you guys get in a good game tonight. That always makes life a little sunnier!

Natalie said...

Sounds fun. I've been thinking I should do something similar with my games with boytoy. Between homework and all our other social responsibilities, (including my other two campaigns) it's hard finding time to play. Some of that might be alleviated by giving the game its own regular timeslot, but shorter sessions would help, too. (And are pretty simple to manage in game with two people who are around each other a lot anyway.)

taichara said...

Oh, how I know the pain of no time to game properly.

Schedules here have gotten so bizarre we're lucky if we can scrape up an hour -- usually because there's upteen other things we also need to get to, some of which are also game-related!

Your game sounds like great fun, though :3

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

@Kee - Heh. ;)

@Oddyssey - it means relaxing my "never stop the game in the dungeon" approach, but for a solo game, that's not a problem since other players won't have to be present.

@taichara - thanks! I hear you about the "need to do"... minis to paint, dungeons to create, etc... I need to win the Lottery!