Family DnD - Highlights

Highlights of a dnd game we played on Christmas day at my family holiday:

- That we played at all! My older brother and I had our plane tickets purchased by our dad a few weeks prior, mostly spontaneously. My younger brother had joked about us playing ‘family dnd’ when we were all home. I had assumed my older brother wouldn’t have enough time to play since he was there much less time, but one of the first things he asked when we picked him up from the airport was ‘so, family dnd?’

We played Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier with OSE: AF. 

- I played an Elf named ‘Marry-no-Man’ (thanks Dolmenwood for that baller name), my older brother played a druid, and my dad played a paladin. Once food was prepared (lasagna I think, it was a Kirkland Christmas this year), we rolled up a Fighter with pretty decent stats for my step-mom. 

Man, elves in B/X are wild. 4000 xp for the first level, and they get to cast in armor and wield any weapons? My character was a blast to play.

- There was a revolving door of hirelings who just kept dying. A group of triplets (Sammy, Samuel, and Sam (F)) I think all ate it due to the poisoning that the crystals in the dungeons can cause. 

- I liked the module, we played it *very fast*, and I’m sure it would have felt different spread over a few more sessions. We didn’t finish because I eventually got a migraine near the end of the night, but I really liked what I played. I enjoyed how much of the dungeon was about interacting with itself, rather than just generic solutions. Like this hallway seem dangerous because of all the crystals, but you can find armor that makes someone immune to the crystal poison and etc. 

- It was a pain in the ass to map accurately though. My brother recommended I do it as a flow chart and that was a much better plan.

- God playing with my step-mom was so fun. The highlight of the whole day for me, for sure. She’s played some video games (will play like diablo with my dad sometimes) and was really distracted but just killed it when she was fully present. She asked the best questions, like ‘what part of this is something you wrote and which parts are you making up?’ and all these other cutting questions. She was not happy with my dad asked to borrow her magic sword. She did a cheer when I burned a bunch of zombies in a pit ‘Give me an F! Give me an I! Give me and R E! What does that spell?’

- My younger brother did an admirable job dm-ing. He was trying to get us through the whole dungeon (I assume at least), so we played some parts pretty fast/loose. Barely any combat, which was neat, it was mostly exploring.

- One thing he did that made me reflect on my own dm-ing experiences was tell us some info that we probably would have gleaned after we killed ourselves doing a dangerous thing. I don’t remember the specific examples, but it’s a tough dungeon to run quickly, given how important it is to communicate some little details, like what exactly is made of the dangerous crystal and what isn’t.

I just…I had a really good holiday. No family was in town besides us, which was a really nice change of pace. Playing dnd was a small part of why my whole holiday was so special, but it was lovely to spend a cold midwestern Christmas inside and just play games with my family.

Sometimes I get caught up in the between-sessions bullshit when dm-ing. Making lists and writing setting info and doing all this unnecessary work, when really just having a reason to play make-believe with your family and friends is the real reason to do any of this. I forget that a lot of the time.