The brief adventures of the Culinary Avengers

[avram]

Matt, Beth, and I gathered at Erik’s place for some gaming. Matt brought along his copies of the original three-white-booklets set of Dungeons & Dragons, and the Avalon Hill Outdoor Survival game that was recommended for use in running outdoor adventures way back then, and we rolled up characters and played. I played an Elvish fighter/magic-user named Ragweed, Erik rolled up a fighter he named Jim, and Beth never got around to naming her cleric. Matt gave us 90,000 experience each, bringing us up to 8th level or so, and 3d6x10 gold each to buy equipment with. The OD&D rules say that all weapons, regardless of type, do 1d6 damage, so we saved some money by arming ourselves with table cutlery — knives for my magic-user, a spoon for Beth’s cleric, and a fork for Erik’s fighter.

We journeyed across the map, moving a few hexes each day across various terrain types, with Matt rolling for encounters. To save our rations, we stopped over at the icons marked with deer, which we were told represented food. I suspect these were supposed to be places where we could hunt game, but we decided they were a chain venison restaurant called McAntler’s. We avoided the little lake icons, representing castles (no, it doesn’t make much sense to me either), figuring that the risks far outweighed any possible benefits, especially after we killed a green dragon and got enough serious loot that we weren’t hurting for money or equipment anymore.

We quickly discovered that Ragweed’s fireball spell, doing 8d6 damage, was far more useful than any of our weapons, and since the abstracted encounter system we were using guaranteed no more than one encounter per day, we had little reason to conserve spells. We readily annihilated a green dragon, some weretigers, and wereboars, cutting a swath through all opposition till we ran into a 10th level necromancer. He made his save, and had 16 hit points left after my fireball wiped out his henchmen, and the lightning bolt he tossed in return killed both Ragweed and the cleric, leaving Jim to get indoctrinated by the necromancer’s charm spell.

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[webbob.livejournal.com]

L'esprit de l'escalier prompts me to ask if the store was all out of rubber spatulas?