OD&D Solo game w/wife - The return of Aeli

After 10 months of trying, @thePrincessWife and I finally sat down at the table and tossed some dice, shoved metal figures around and had fun playing OD&D again. With the step-daughter, 4 year old granddaughter, 2 teenage daughters and a constant revolving door of people coming and going, it's hard to set aside time to get to gaming, but we manged to do it. I had recapped the previous adventures of Aeli and her band of rag-tag misfits (heh) earlier on the campaign wiki, and we picked up much where we left off.

Now I'm not one for the blow-by-blow recaps, but I would like to point out a couple of neat things:

1. I'm noodling around with a house-rule that says a Fighting Man can attack multiple targets at rate of Level - HD attacks. It basically breaks down like this: Fighting Man Level - HD of creature = Number of attacks per round. Any numbers < 1 = 1.

Here's a chart:

HD      <1  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9+
Level          
1       1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
2       2   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
3       3   2   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
4       4   3   2   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
5       5   4   3   2   1   1   1   1   1   1
6       6   5   4   3   2   1   1   1   1   1
7       7   6   5   4   3   2   1   1   1   1
8       8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1   1   1
9       9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1   1
10      10  9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

The math checks out. The problem is that I keep forgetting to give Aeli the extra attacks! I bet if I tell her this rule, she'll make sure to ask me if she can get extra attacks! :) This really will help with the solo game survivability as well.

2. Tying up loose ends. A few adventures ago, Aeli captured some bandits with the "help" of a local neer-do-well by the name of "Nib". Well, he fled her company once the bandits had been caught and she suspected him of attempting to double-cross her. So in this game, she ended up with a bandit encounter and guess who I ruled was leading the bunch? Nib. This wilderness encounter, which the dice told the story, ended up derailing her plans for the day. Thanks to her charge through the line of ill-prepared bandits to grab Nib, as well as the monsters rolling "surrender" after the first death of the opponents, Aeli had to take the bandits back to town for a justly deserved reward... which she can collect once she takes the Writ of Reward to the Keep to cash in.

I am a big/huge proponent of taking the story the dice tell and weaving it into the narrative. Had there been no bandit encounter, Nib would still be out there, but now he's in chains awaiting trial and @thePrincessWife has a nice conclusion to that tale, as well as a bit of cash.

3. The story lives. OK, this is more of a thought after the game and a bit morbid but... do you write out the thoughts in your head as to where the story might go... just in case?

This is probably really damn personal and a bit odd, but if I die, the story dies and @thePrincessWife would never know how it would end. Now I know this is the fear of any writer anywhere, or any artist that creates... but it strikes me that DMs really do show a personal side of their creativity and if they pass on - well, we don't know where things would've went.

There are no notes about Castle Greyhawk that point definitively to how it was supposed to really look, all fleshed out. I don't know how detailed things were for Blackmoor, and I get the feeling that Tekumel/EPT is so well fleshed out that people would be able to see Prof. Barker's notes.

So OK, it made me worry about my lovely wife, so I actually wrote out where things are going IF she continues on her path. It's a constantly evolving story, as she makes decisions and things change, but if God forbid something were to happen to me, I'd want her to know. OK, morbid.. sorry. But the solo game has become such a thing that I feel between her and I that I want her to have this. No matter what.

OK, go hug your SO and kids now. :)