This Weekend's D&D Moments

This weekend we finished The Wild Trilogy from DnD Adventure Club. The first challenge involved sneaking around an Owlbear. The kids asked about their options and I noted that in addition to sneaking, they could try and distract it. Sam’s dwarf, Grumpy McGrumbles, has a cooking hobby, so he took hits pots and pans and made a bunch of noise so that the Owlbear would follow him around the camp.

After that there was a mini “dungeon” crawl in the basement beneath a wizard’s tower. The girls finally started to get the hang of investigating chambers rather than blindly setting off traps.

The coolest moment came at the end of book 2. Since part of DnD Adventure Club’s goal is to teach D&D principles to budding DMs, it goes through pains to explain why none of the characters should be able to jump the gap between where the characters stand and a platform surrounded by a pit of spikes. Part of the explanation revolved around the fact that the ledge wasn’t long enough to get a running start. So no character should be able to do a standing jump across the path. By my kids surprised me with a bit of cleverness - “Why can’t we start running out in the hallway that leads into this chamber so that we can do a running jump?” I couldn’t see a reason not to allow it, so they went ahead and jumped. (and succeeded at their roll)

The final book in the trilogy didn’t have too many crazy bits, but the final battle was one of the D&D bits where Lady Luck just hates you. Out of all 3 kids and 2 bosses, only Scarlett really dealt any damage. Everyone else kept rolling too low, including Sam rolling nat 1 and, consequently, getting his battle axe wedged in a faraway tree. Key to winning the battle was a discussion I’d had with Scarlett about strategy and having her arrow-wielding character stay out of range of melee attacks.

Another fun weekend. I think we’re caught up on all our currently owned DnD Adventure Club stories, but there are another 9 issues available.

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