For whatever reason, I have been feeling somewhat historically minded recently (insofar as I’m able to do that; I’ll admit to limitations on my perspective). As such, for the overtly educational portion of this week’s session, I gave a brief gloss of the origins of the tabletop roleplaying game, as attested by Lawrence Schick, Gary Alan Fine, and Daniel Mackay. I know there are other, more recent sources; I have not had the opportunity to review them yet, or even to get hold of copies thereof, although I do have some concerns about some of which I am aware. Publishers have interests in how their products present them, after all, as I’ve discussed. Still, for a few minutes talking to a few middle-school-age children, what I had handy was enough; I can always tack more onto my scholarly somedays at need.

In terms of gameplay, the party continued on from where it had been at the end of the previous session: not far into the dungeon through which the players’ characters are crawling. Player absences told upon the group as they encountered one of the most formidable opponents D&D presents: a locked door. Try as they might, they could not break down the door that confronted them, and after pretty much every player had failed both of the rolls made available to them to have their characters receive the necessary information to proceed, an allied NPC, once asked for aid, opened the door for them to move forward.

I know that it’s not ideal to have the party be rescued in such a way. Normally, I would not have gone with it. But, again, three of the seven regular players were absent, one of whose characters has skills particularly suited to the task of unbolting the door; it was an unusual situation, and all of the players had made several attempts through different skills and approaches. They gave it the traditional college try, so I threw them a line. Of course, doing so also fed into some of their (incorrect) ideas about the allied NPC…and I’ll admit that I didn’t do a lot to discourage that thinking. It will make the revelation of the truth much more entertaining when, at long last, it happens.

But they’ve got to get through the dungeon before that can happen for them.

If you’d like, I can write some RPG stuff for you–and free of AI slop, to boot!

Or you can send your support along directly!