Boiled Head Broth or Gaming with My Wife

This week my wife agreed to roll up a character and go on an adventure, or as she puts it 'its like a little play'. Wife Rule #1, let her pick out her own dice because she will want the pretty ones. Wife Rule #2, another reason to let her pick her own dice is that she can't balme you for her crappy rolls later. Or maybe she can. I heard about her 8 intelligence all game long 'you made my character dumb'. See picture of character sheet.

She wanted to play someone who could heal and fight a little. So I explained the cleric class to her and she chose to go in that direction. We were playing a variation of Swords & Wizardry. I let her choose two first level spells, Cure Light Wounds and Detect Evil. I did a quick explanations of the spells and then we were off to shop for her character. She seemed to enjoy this process. Then I did a quick tutorial of what dice were what.

Before I go any further my wife would like everyone to know I did not provide full disclosure, so I was the reason she died on her first adventure. I was not allowed to use a GM screen because she kept calling it the 'cheater screen'.

"How do I know what you rolled?" asked the wife.

"You don't. Sometimes a GM needs to make rolls in secret." I answered.

"That sounds like cheating. You can say you rolled something when you didn't," the wife accused.

"Yes, that does happen. It's called fudging. GMs do it to enhance the game sometimes. I don't do it though." I tried to explain.

"Sounds like cheating. If you get to see my dice rolls I get to see yours."

So it came down to a game of if you show me yours I'll show you mine. So the GM screen went back on the shelf.

Her first adventure is was built around a boy who had gone missing. This is where I I failed to fully disclose. I had trouble explaining all the options she could do. She kept asking what I would do and I encouraged her to tell me what she wanted to do and we'd figure out if she could do it. During her time tracking the boy she came to a section of the woods where she didn't want to go in. She wanted to go back to the temple and get reinforcements, but I wanted her to handle the situation on her own. Rewind to the shopping phase, she rolled enough money to get a suit of plate mail and a shield, I praised the protection they provided and how hard it would be for her to get hit. Fast forward to the woods again. I had the boy scream to give a sense of urgency so she didn't go back to her temple. She burst through the trees and saw two goblins teasing the boy who was tied up to a tree. A short fight ensued. Goblins rolled two natural 20s killing her character (bet she would have liked me to have fudged those rolls now). She was not happy about that and blamed me for her character's death.

The second adventure had her delivering a potion of healing to an ailing woodsman in the forest. This time she encounter two goblins she snuck up on them and whacked one and killed the second before they got to attack. This is where she asked 'can I cut their heads off?'. Since they were fighting over the woodsman's axe I said sure. She said she wanted to make boiled head broth. She wanted to make healing potions from the broth to help cure people who were damage by the same creatures. Very cool idea. I slipped that one into my develop later file.

She found and healed the woodsman unconscious in front of his cabin while a goblin warrior tore apart the inside. She later learned the woodsman had found a bracelet near a large treestump. After devising a plan and killing the goblin warrior my wife in true gamer fashion, looted him, chopped off his head and kept the bracelet.

I few things I got from this, one that there weren't any (at least that I know of) very short adventures to start someone on to learn the basics of the game. So came up with 8 different starting adventures for a new person to learn on. I'll be posting the PDF later this week. And two, I like that boiled head broth idea. Three, let your wife pick out her own dice.