We had to wear our Diva tees. Olivia, as Diva in training, ended up making her own, but it turned out fabulously. Plaid duct tape, who knew?

We gather round and divided into teams. Angel and I paired up. Sarah with Olivia , Michelle (with her ward, Carol) and Tad. Three teams, one objective and an hour to fulfill the mission. Dum-dum-DUM! We got the lists. Lovingly scroll-ized by Taj.

It was a great list. It included hits from our time in Cauldron as well as recent entries from our time in the Black. Legos, flour, Orak’s bathhouse soap, dragons, plot points and rubber duckies….. All that was missing was the Mayor of Cauldron himself!

Sarah pauses for a moment of silence at the site of the burning of the Wee Jas temple.

Because you never know when there’ll be skulks around, I got my bag of flour ready to throw.

Carol successfully bluffs the Home Depot lady by asking for Alpha-Centuri printer paper. W00t!

In an homage to pun-master Tad, Michelle calls lightning.

We had to find a dragon and give candy to a stranger. We combined these on the assumption that this dragon was a stranger to Angel. She looks suitably worried at the prospect.

We had on the list, “D-VA” and since none of us had the actual ship handy, Sarah and Olivia had the most clever idea.

Taj did a wonderful job of listing items we could find in easy distance of Guardian Games. One of these was Jefferson!

Taj set up base camp at Guardian and let the photos roll in!

One of the items was a Lego weapon being used. Angel quickly assembled a Lego hammer and threatened me with it. Scary.

Olivia with her dragon — sweet Hamouk, who saved my bacon more than once.

Handsome Tad with his dragon.

We had to get “5 minis painted all alike.”
Brilliant Angel thought of the lotto pencils at Sheridan Fruit Company.

Sarah gets full marks for composition. She has two unique props –(from left)  a giant mole of science, the death gaze frog and a Lego (her own) using a Lego weapon (not that Imago is any great shakes with a pistol. She’s a doctor not a marksman!).

At game’s end, Taj began the tally process.

We decided to hang out and wait the results…..  It was close. So close that Taj & Jim called in an impartial third judge….. The results:

Me & Angel = 3rd place (sigh)
Sarah and Olivia = 2nd place
Tad, Michelle and Carol = 1st place and all the bragging rights you can eat.

So, what sort of Legos are out there for girl gamers like us? The easy answer is All the Legos! All the Legos are “suitable” for girls. Cue the maniacal laughter.

I realized I’d been looking at the whole Lego thing the wrong way round. The possibilities of Legos in game are endless. I hope we’ll have a chance to test this theory. We’re planning on trying out the Firefly RPG next. And I was thinking How are we gonna handle the minis? I mean with playing Shackled City, it was easy to get minis for the game. With a futuristic, Wild West, space opera, um, where are you going to get minis?

Duh: Legos! A quick look on Google shows me that even I could come up with some sweet props for a Firefly game. So, I guess we can put away the Castle Legos for a while as we explore the universe of Serenity.

Legos Star Wars sets would be the obvious Legos to use for some of the props. Oh, and of course, Indiana Jones! Lucky for this cheapskate there are tons of used cheap Legos out there. It is fun to contemplate a new world to explore. A new gaming engine to learn and new stories to tell. I can’t wait to build my mini!

So here I am contemplating another night as guest DM. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone yet — I really enjoyed the one time I did it — but I’m not sure I’m very good. For my adventure set in Cauldron (at the tavern called Mary’s) I used a battlemap from our mini’s game. I think for my next try behind the screen, I’ll invest in some dungeon tiles.

I was delighted to find a great post about using tiles from a fellow RPG blogger — Sly Flourish. He’s playing 4e, but the ideas are the same.

We use a wet erase mat now, but I am not so good with stuff like that — I can’t draw; my proportions are all wrong….  dungeon tiles were made for people like me. And at $10 for a set of 30 tiles, I can just about convince my accountant (Debbie) that it’s a good investment!

I have a ice dragon mini.

I needed a fire dragon mini and at least one shot of a player miniature that I didn’t have on hand.

I have Photoshop and a small amount of knowledge. Here are the results…..

This is before.

The ice dragon with my new Indira the dwarf (TM) mini.

I have a nice shot of Myntilly’s back so I cropped it and popped it into the picture. Then I painted over the white skin with a reddish tint. I couldn’t get it a darker red, but I think it works well.

Ice dragon to fire dragon….. Ta da!

This is not to say I won’t kill a character.

(Ilea turned to stone by a beholder. Sadi bitten in half by a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Alek’s head crushed by a fire giant. Sadi blown to bits by an evil sorcerer. Indira blown to bits by a beholder’s eye stalk.)

Or that every character shouldn’t be worried about dying. (Cinder dragged underwater by a sea monster.  Myntilly grappled by two chokers.  Ian grappled by a tarry demon. Acgar singled out by a black dragon. Indira and Brus embroiled in a column of flame.)

.

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But death in Dungeon and Dragons is so…done.  It lacks creativity.  Not only this, it is not even a difficult obstacle to overcome.  All you need is a night’s rest and 10,000gp worth of diamonds.  Bah.

So much more interesting to put the party to sleep and have them wake up in a dark cavern tied up, naked, and bereft of gear.  Or to teleport them 500 miles away to a barren desert.  Or capture one of the characters and take her to places unknown.  Or capture two characters and take them to two different places.

Buzz said it best in his post about the beholder.  Sure, the beholder could just eat the bear, or use its finger of death eyestalk and that would be it.  But no, the beholder is truly evil.  Instead charm the bear and make everyone work hard.  Put the strongest, beefiest hitter to sleep.  Distract, hinder, confuse, and otherwise wield chaos on the players to suit the beholder’s own evil whims.

In fact, now that I mention it, is anyone wondering why the beholder didn’t play for keeps?  I mean really, with 9 eyestalks (one is missing), it has 9 attacks each round.  That’s enough for each character to get hit each round.  Sure the save DC of 18 is reasonably low.  But roll low on them and the character is incapacitated or dead.  Come to think of it, that beholder didn’t really use all of his attacks each round.

So what is that beholder up to?