Back when lockdowns were all the rage and schools were closed for business, my son and I decided to pick up Dungeons and Dragons and give role-playing a whirl. Now, I wasn’t entirely new to the game. I had played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons during the Fourth Edition days with some schoolmates, but my son was greener than grass.
I took on the role of Dungeon Master since that just made sense. My son, well, he wanted to be a beardless Dwarf rogue/chef with aqua blue skin and bright gold armor, called Krumpet. He was accompanied, for a bit, by his friend who played as a Half-Dragon with literally no personality – or so we thought – and we started to roll some dice.
I regret everything. Please, someone, send help.
5 Burn Them All
Let me set the scene. I had crafted this elaborate storyline where a misunderstood vampire was stealing children from a local village. The party set out to his castle to find the kids, stake the vampire and save the day. The catch? Well, I had cunningly made it so the vampire was stealing sick children as a way to prolong their lives, as he himself lost his daughter to a plague hundreds of years prior.
There was going to be this big, emotional gut punch that was meant to have the kids pondering morality, and whether this creature was capable of being good. What a fool I was. They walk through the main gates, see the kids, see the vampire, and I start this epic monologue. After about five words, the Half-Dragon looked me dead in the eye, and said with absolute authority:
“I breathe fire on the children. I burn them all. I don’t have time for this.”
I get him to roll for it. Nat 20. The children all die, the vampire looks on in horror, and my short story was ruined. I never thought I’d see the day when a child looked upon a group of children and opted to burn them all, but here we are I guess.
4 It Was Him
Following on from the tragedy at the vampire’s castle, the party returned to town. The townsfolk were obviously a bit concerned when they returned without the kids they were supposed to fetch. This is where the party falls apart, and things go from bad to worse.
Without skipping a beat, my son, the Dwarf, blurted out that his mate had set all the children on fire. This went down like a lead balloon, and his friend was arrested on the spot, and locked in a cage.
There was a trial, evidence was presented, and the Half-Dragon was sentenced to death. Of course, I would never allow a character to die so ungracefully, so I gave my son the option to rescue him from prison and flee the town. He opted to go to sleep, buy a juice from the bar, and let justice take its course. Merciless doesn’t even cut it.
Apparently, my son was really hung up on the whole vampire thing, and he wasn’t going to let it go. I couldn’t think of a way to get around this, so we rolled a new character and went on another adventure.
3 I Eat The Troll (And EVERYTHING Else)
My son, bless his heart, likes to jump before he thinks. Since his Dwarf has dreams of becoming a master chef, he tends to look for rare ingredients to make meals with, often experimenting with monster meat. This goes catastrophically wrong time and time again, but there was this one time that stands out.
The party had just killed a Troll, and they went about looting his hoard. The chef decides he wants a piece of that sweet, sweet Troll meat, and gets to butchering. They settle down for the night and whip up some Troll soup.
Now, Trolls have an incredible ability that lets them regenerate from basically any wound. Heck, they can grow entire limbs back. One could even say, a limb could grow into another Troll. This is exactly what happened. The Troll meat that was swishing around in the Dwarf's gut started to grow.
Many sessions go by, a surgeon is employed to remove the Troll, and for the first time in recorded history, a Dwarf successfully gives birth to a troll. He called him Joey, and he helps the party to this day.
Moral of the story? I’m not even sure. Perhaps that my son has a desire to eat things and call things Joey? Pretty disturbing if you ask me.
2 Kill The Farmer, Ride His Chicken
I need to establish some context here, but even then, I don’t think it will clear my son of his charges. The party was exploring a cave and found what they thought was a dead body near a chicken. They investigate and start prodding the body, and notice it’s still alive. The farmer jumps up in shock and starts shouting.
Utilizing the infinite power of a child's ability to comprehend danger, the party kills the farmer in a panic. They are then left with a rather confused chicken mourning the death of its master. In this situation, a player might consider leaving the chicken alone or taking the chicken to a farm, or maybe, eating it. All of those things are logical leaps.
My son decided to ride the chicken like a horse. A fully armored dwarf. Riding a chicken. The chicken dies, because of course it does. My son stares off into the distance and begins to contemplate his life choices before forgetting all about it and moving on. Classy.
On the plus side, I got to have some fun. The farmer and his chicken now haunt the party. They just hear the distant clucking of a spectral fowl, and occasionally, see a ghastly figure atop a chicken off in the distance.
1 I Put Him In A Pocket Dimension And Forget He Exists
This one is short and sweet, but really highlights the lengths my kid will go to remove people from his life. So, we have this sentient storage system that follows the party around. It’s literally a walking chest. Yes, I stole The Luggage from Discworld. Within the chest is a series of pocket dimensions, allowing the party to store an infinite amount of loot and making the game a bit easier to grasp.
Well, my son got annoyed and started throwing NPCs, animals, major quest players, and his friend, into the chest. Just picked them up and lobbed them into a never-ending purgatory-like pocket dimension and let them fall for all eternity. He doesn’t even remember who he’s put in there. There are wanted posters everywhere for missing villagers, soldiers, and monarchs. He needs to be stopped.
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