RPG Gaming

My First Adventure

By Will Grzanich

First off, I should tell you a bit about the players:

Dave: The DM. As "munchkinny" as any of us.

Terry: The boor in whose basement we played. Terry was the source of all manners of entertainment, from blowing cigarette smoke into a bottle of soda, drinking it, remarking that it tasted like tar, and continuing to drink, to expectorating onto a paper plate and passing it around the table, urging his equally boorish friends to do likewise (and this is after all of them had been smoking, mind you). Player of Pennywise the evil dwarven thief (with a Dexterity score of 8), who once "prayed to his dark master Satan for a map of the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar." Why Dave actually gave it to him, I'll never figure out.

Wilton: Player of Greystar the druid. At 3rd level he somehow had 52 hp. That's right, 52. God only knows how he thought he got all those extra hit points; our current theory is that Dave told him he got thirty-some experience points and the poor fool misheard.

Peter: Wilton's brother, and player of Darrian, another druid.

Kevin: Our group's dumb jock, player of Sonic the mage. Yes, Sonic. Was entirely convinced that the word "scimitar" was pronounced "sckimter."

Hmm...let's see, now. The first time I played was actually in our local library--we moved to Terry's basement once we realized that the librarians weren't going to stop telling us to shut up any time soon. I sat down at the table, character sheet in hand. I played a Lawful Good cleric named Resurrectus. (Yes, I know.) Initially, I remembered he had a suit of splint mail and a medium shield, giving him an AC of 3. I was quite proud of that; everyone was very impressed. He also had a broadsword. After Dave pointed out to me that this was just not to be, Resurrectus had a mace. Due to a rather grave misinterpretation of the rules--one of many, let me assure you--we decided that, while my character couldn't use edged weapons, he could, somehow, use magical edged weapons; so, when my character got his first wishes--I think it was that first adventure, in fact--he wished for a magical sword and some magical armor. Dave told me that my new AC was -3 and handed me a twelve-sided die and said, "Roll this for damage now." Needless to say, nobody had bothered to read the DMG or the PH.

We hadn't a clue how to deal with magic. We looked at the Intelligence table and noted the presence of the column marked "Maximum number of spells per level." We decided this applied to both priests and wizards, and so my character would choose x spells per level and could cast those freely. Same with Sonic. Memorization? Bah. We just cast 'em whenever we wanted.

The first time we played, we didn't use attack rolls; we just sort of forgot in the beginning, and decided to forget about them for that session. When we came upon the horde of kobolds, things looked rather bleak; fortunately, Dave forgot to have them attack us, so we pretty much wailed on 'em.

Another grave misinterpretation of the rules: you know the column on the weapon chart marked "Size?" Well, since no one had read through the PH at all thoroughly, we were under the impression that that referred not to the size of the defender, but to the size of the weapon itself. This resulted in people carrying around "Small" daggers, "Medium" morning stars, and "Large" two-handed swords. It also allowed for such absurdities as "Large" daggers and "Small" two-handed swords, but the damage would be reduced, so who the hell would choose those?

Ahh, those were the days. I slipped quite comfortably from Munchkin Phase into the Rules Lawyer Phase--I was the one to actually read the PH and set things straight.