Back from Vacation

Vacation wasn't the relaxing getaway we had last year -with the baby along it was more like a week of 24/7 baby-care bookended by two ten hour drives. Still, that was to be expected - after all, he's only 11 months old.

It goes without saying that I didn't get in nearly as much reading as I had planned, but what I did manage to squeeze in, I enjoyed. 

Of course, I now find myself, 3 issues into an Elfquest story line from 1987 and I'm going to have to try to find the next issues in the series just to satisfy my curiosity (they were $1 each, and I picked them up for something to read on the beach. I'm hopeful that I can score the rest for the same). 

Dig that late 80s goodness!

Gaming-wise (you know, the whole purpose of this blog), it was a mixed bag. 

All my planning and hex populating for a hex crawl sandbox was a bust. We gave it two sessions but neither Lady Shadowmoss or I enjoyed it much. Although I did enjoy the act of creating the hex map and populating it with rumors and encounters.

It was the first time I've ever run a hex crawl with no plot other than what the players would uncover and when confronted with multiple hooks she didn't feel any was more compelling than another. When one site turned out to be purely informational about the game world, she felt she had wasted her time and so pursued another hook, but didn't see how to pursue it beyond the initial information gathering. 

I called the game at that point. We reviewed and discussed and I took notes about her preferred style of play. Although she does not at all like the fact that D&D b/x as written equates gold with experience, I think she's still willing to give it a chance if I tweak how I award experience. This is something I'm willing to do, perhaps borrowing from Tunnels and Trolls, but  I'm not convinced b/x / Labyrinth Lord is really the game for her. She wants to be high-level quickly and I don't see that happening unless I severely reduce the experience required.

Notes in hand, I tweaked my setup for our Angry Flowers adventure. This was a more traditional "quest" based adventure - no crawling involved - and it was a total blast for both of us. I'll post a review of Angry Flowers soon.

Add to that about 10 hands of Magic: The Gathering (of which I think I lost 9, usually crushing defeats at that) and it was a pretty good effort as far as gaming went.

One of my favorite cards from my deck.