My First Adventure (My Wife's Retelling of the Game)

Hi Everyone. I’m Tim’s wife and during our vacation we hit the gaming and comic book store. That’s where Tim got me my Wonder Woman mug – only the best super hero ever. He also got a gaming book about monsters. I write fiction and it’s loaded with zombies, goblins and ghouls. But I’d never heard of a bugbear or a few of the others. So I read through the book of monsters while he looked about.

When we got home that night, we played my first game. Tim taught me about the dice. I wanted orange or pink but all he had was puke green, so we went with those.

Also, I wasn’t thrilled about having such a dumb character but Tim said that being a cleric, I needed more wisdom than intelligence.

He tells me, “yeah your character is dumb but you’re also wise.”

I just looked at Tim and I probably made a face that only a wife can make toward her husband. So he explained further.

“It means you’re not smart enough to build a fire, but you’re wise enough to know not to stick your hand into the fire.”

That didn’t make me feel any better about my character.

The first half of the game went something like this. I roll, Tim rolls, I roll and this goes on and he talks super fast. Kind of like an auctioneer, only he’s shaking dice in his hands and rolling. “Okay you rolled a three, now I gotta roll better than that. Six, I go first.”

He rolls for the goblin’s attack, claps his hands and smiles and loudly says, “Natural 20.”

So I think I won something. Maybe more intelligence only I learn that my character (Diana Prince), has a long way to go before she can get smarter and after that, I learn that when the DM rolls a natural 20 that doesn’t mean I win a prize.

Instead, I died. Which I didn’t appreciate.

So we play again. This time an adventure to save a little kid, which I got to thinking, hey, if the kid is stupid enough to play in goblin territory, maybe we ought to just leave the little bugger there.

Not an option, says the DM.

Then Tim asks me what I want to do. I say, “I don’t want to go in the woods and get killed. I want to go back to the village and get help.”

But DM vetoes my idea and says there is nobody left at the village because they all went shopping for new armor.

Okay, fine. But I still don’t want to go after the boy so I ask Tim what he would do if he were me. He says he wants me to figure it out for myself.

(insert wifely huff)

I roll. Apparently not only is my character dumb, she can’t roll worth a squat.

So we go after the little bugger. Meanwhile his parents were pretty much worthless and so I made them go first. Bam, Dad takes a hit. DM rolls and now Mom is down.

I’m pretty aggravated by now because not only am I terrible fighter, the parents remain lifeless. And I’m all alone in the woods with a goblin and a kid I didn’t want to save in the first place.

Tim rolls and claps even louder than the first time, “oh, natural 20 again.” He smiles across the table and says, “do you know what the odds are of two natural 20s in a row?”

Apparently pretty good because now I’m dead. My only hope at this point is that the goblin eats the child.

We play one more time. This time I’m told I must bring a healing potion to a man who lives in the woods. I’m into natural healing, so this sounds like my kind of adventure. Until I see two small goblins fighting over an axe. Not only am I a terrible fighter, even if I could get a hold of the axe, as a cleric, I’m not allowed to fight with it, so explains the DM.

At this point, I’m not sure what to do. I didn’t want to be dead again so Tim advices me to sneak up behind the goblin that isn’t looking and bop him on the head. The little goblin goes down. But the second one doesn’t go down as easy. I’m slightly injured.

DM asks, “what do you do now?”

I say, “I take the axe -- that I’m not allowed to fight with -- and chop off one of their heads to take with me, along with all their money and anything else they have of value.”

I’ll say one thing about living with a gamer. If I know anything, it’s that you always loot the dead body for gold pieces and other valuables.

I’ve also learned that it’s not important what the loot is, it’s just important that you get it first.

Now I have the decapitated head, the gold pieces and the axe. Time to locate the man I’m supposed to heal.

Only when I get there, he’s already down on the ground, holding a beaded necklace in one hand and the other is covered in blood. Add to it a ton of noise coming from inside his cabin.

So I’m thinking this probably isn’t going to be good but since I’m only an eight intelligence I don’t really know for sure.

I put the head and axe down and do the healing spell, which was pretty cool.

DM asks “what do you do now?”

Well, apparently I’m not that bright either, because I wasted a detect evil spell when I could have just looked in the windows.

However, I did come up with the idea to give the severed head to the healed man and have him stand outside the door with it – teasing the large goblin.

Then wham, I knocked that big-ass goblin on the head with my bat, picked up the axe and chopped his head off.

That’s much better.

So I ask Tim, “can I take these heads and make boiled head broth to use as a potion for healing people who are attacked by goblins?”

He says, “yes, but your character isn’t smart enough to know how to do that so I’ll have to send you to someone who can teach you.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Until the next adventure, this Diana Prince logging off. Thanks for reading :-)