Sunshine making tornados in our kitchen.

What we made the kids do before we opened presents.

Kel’s brother Joel was in town the last week and the two youngest kids wanted to play a game with him last Friday night. When I heard they were going to play this game, I decided to join in (Joel and I can get a little competitive with this game).

We played first to win two games. Joel won the first game, middle kid won the second, and then I won the next two. True to form, the middle kid is one hell of a wildcard. At times she’d openly state that she was going to try to make someone else (me) lose rather than trying to win herself… This backfired hilariously in the last game as she was trying to knock my guys out of the center of the board and instead accidently knocked them right onto the numbers I needed. Youngest also played really well: she is getting much better at the game and there was no pouting that she wasn’t winning.

Always a lot of laughter with this game, we all had a lot of fun.

The girls have been bugging me to play “the rolling” game again, so I figured with my exam over I could cook something up. Well.. It was fun but things could have gone better.

I decided after the last few games that I was going to switch over to using a new system: Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game (BFRPG). This system is a little more streamlined than Labyrinth Lord (LL), though keeps the “old-school” feel. Transferring the characters was a breeze, and I let the oldest’s Halfling become a Halfling Fighter.

We started things off with an exciting combat that the girls seemed to enjoy. Exiting their school teacher’s house (with the evil temple in the basement) they found their classmates being attacked by two giant frogs. After killing the bigger of the two the other jumped away after nearly dying. It was an exciting combat with the girls really getting into what their characters were doing: fun time.

In hindsight, I should have just stopped there as I could see the girls were getting a little tired… excited, but tired. We were playing right after dinner, and had eaten a little late.

The characters explained what they saw in the caves / teacher’s basement to their school’s principle, and the principle asked the students to accompany him in investigating the house. What followed should have been a pretty standard exploration scene: look around the teachers house for clues… Instead I practicaly had to pull their teeth to get them to say their characters were doing *anything*.

They ended up finding the teacher’s study: a large room with a desk in the corner and a giant circle drawn into the floor with five mirrors along the circle’s edge, one of which had a curtain hung over it. The mirrors ended up being portals: one to a busy city market place, one to what appears to be a room in an inn, one to a forest with a tower in the middle of a clearing in the distance, and the last to what appears to be a mine whose walls were covered with several of the same crystals as found in the temple.

Of course the characters decided to uncover the mirror with the curtain over it, and found the portal beyond contained only pitch black… but something was in the darkness… The oldest’s halfling’s curiosity got the better of him and he peered in, only to almost get sucked into the mirror by some unknown force. Middle kid’s fighter was smart enough to knock over the mirror and then cover it up before the halfling got sucked in. 

We ended here. Lesson learned: look for signs the kids are tired before pushing on. Also, BFRPG is definitely easier for the kids to grasp, and was a lot easier to GM (didn’t need to look up THAC0 tables) so I’m sticking with it.

By the way, for anybody reading this that wants to check it out BFRPG is completely free (basicfantasy.org).

School Photos | It’s as Good as Dancing Queen

The girls are going to a halloween party this afternoon: ninja, Abby Bominable, and movie star.

via A Thief, a Fighter, and a Halfling | It’s as Good as Dancing Queen:

J took the girls to the game store for free RPG day and bought them each their own set of dice. Tonight they created their characters. You can probably match the kid with her character on your own, but in case you need help, Sunshine is the thief, Sporty is the fighter, and Smiley is the halfling. They also started an adventure. I was entertained by the nervous giggling I overheard as they were trying to decide who was going to have to go first to investigate the strange sounds, but in the end each girl had the chance to decapitate a giant rat in their school’s basement. Off to a good start, I’d say.

We had a lot of fun. Really looking forward to playing again.

Which finger did you hurt kiddo?

This happened too though :)

Kel posted some pics of the girls to her blog: Study Buddies | It’s as Good as Dancing Queen.