The High Adventures of the Youths of Yesteryear

This is kind of a different kind of post. I just want to hearken back to the gaming adventures I had so long ago … when I was really young. I think I got into D & D in like fourth grade. I think it started because in that year we had a new student join our class at our relatively small Catholic grade school. We became friends and we sat together on the bus fairly frequently. And whenever we sat together he would tell me about the D & D adventures he went on. He had an older brother. They had D & D modules… and everything. And I loved all his adventure stories.

But, of course, fourth grade is what nine years old or somewhere around there? One’s grasp of “reality” and the way things should work isn’t always quite so accurate. For example, let us just consider …

Stonebiting Arrows

These actually make an appearance in 2^nd edition, somewhere, I think. These are the arrows that can be fired at stone and penetrate deep enough and are strong enough to support weight. Maybe they were a real thing, but not the way me and my friends used them when we first started playing. First off, there were no “special” stonebiting arrows. As far as we were concerned, all arrows were stonebiting arrows. If I recall, the “real” stonebiting arrows had a special kind of metal tip specifically designed to penetrate deeply into stone. But we overlooked that detail. We could use a normal bow with normal arrows, tie a rope onto the end of the arrow, and shoot the arrow right into a stone wall or ceiling or what-have-you. And then, we would set about …

Swinging Over Lava

Yes, there would be a pool of lava or a river of lava passing through the center of a room in some ancient dungeon somewhere. Never mind the ridiculous levels of heat that would be there, we could tackle any obstacle. How? We tie a regular old rope to an arrow and shoot it into the ceiling right above the pool/river of lava. Then we’d just swing across – Pythagoras and his silly theorem be d***ed.

The Wings of the Purple Dragon

In one of my many exploits into the ridiculous as a DM, I pitted a powerful, yet hapless, player character against a Purple Dragon. I think it was 1^st edition days, and I was playing a D & D variant system of my own devising (obviously incomplete nearly by definition) and I had been recently reading in a Dragon Magazine about how to make dragons more formidable or something like that. I seem to recall that the article suggested something like adding additional attacks. At the time, dragons were limited to a claw/claw/bit routine or a breath weapon. The article suggested adding a wing buffet and tail slash.

My problem, at the time, was that I don’t think I understood what the term “buffet” meant. What was I, like ten, maybe? I don’t know. All I knew was that it involved the dragon flapping its wings. Anyway, a friend of mine was playing a powerful character and ran up against a Purple Dragon. I think was inspired by the D & D cartoon episode where Tiamat made a wind with her wings that blew Venger through a magic portal or something. Anyway, being the reality-challenged DM that I was, the Purple Dragon flapped its wings from like a 100 feet away and did some ridiculous amount of damage to the character. Like 50 or 60 hit points or something stupid like that. Hey, I was like 10. That’s my excuse.

The Bow Turned Club

And here’s one more. Remember my friend and his D & D stories? I remember him telling me one about an adventure he was on where he was on this wild island type of thing. The party was being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. With only an unstrung bow at his side, he was forced to use the bow as club. As luck would have it, the bow broke from the blow.

So, in my not-so-creative fashion, I DMed a character (the same player as the Purple Dragon fiasco, although perhaps not the same character) and ran him through the exact same scenario. The player was on a wilderness island, he was being attacked by wild dogs, and I think he was about to attack one of them with his sword or something – and I, as the DM, said “No, attack it with your bow.” He gave me a puzzled look, but then did as I suggested. And the bow broke. Lord, I have had some silly and ridiculous DMing exploits in my day.

Conclusion

Well, that’s just a glimpse of the silliness that D & D can lead to in the hands of a reality-challenged DM like myself. It was great fun. And, as one of my friends to this day says, it was all in the spirit of “high adventure.” So, it’s all good.