3rd adventure Friday 22 July 2011:

"Animal Liberation Front"

- Hippo and Dino are chilling at home (Hippo snores something wicked)

- Suddenly, a monkey (Daddy Monkey a.k.a. Daddy Kong) comes along and chatters at them excitedly

- He doesn't talk, he's a monkey. Looks agitated and sad. Slight failure to communicate

Lesson: More roleplaying, need to keep hammering at that

- Monkey does the Lassie Come Home Act "Come, Come, point, point"

- Railroading: "How many monkeys were there in last adventure?" Hippo says "two" (yay! in English!) "How many are there now?" "One" "Hmm, maybe he wants help to find the other one"

- "Do you want to go with him?" "Yes" (whew)

- Interesting side note: Start walking, kids get out their distance strings unprompted(!)

Lesson: Inside every toddler there is a rules lawyer

- "Nevermind, The monkey is slower than you - just follow him" (walk walk walk, follow follow follow)

- Pick a banana from the tree on the way

- Getting closer to the goal, GM pulls out a pre-built lego house, with fences and a "Zoo" sign on top

- "What does the sign say?" "Zoo"

- Place 2nd monkey (Kiddie Monkey a.k.a. Kiddie Kong) in cage, and 4 Lego men in front. Kiddie Cong is very sad in the cage, Daddy Kong gets very agitated and angry

- "What do you think happened?" blank looks, maybe too complex. "The men are hunters, they captured Kiddie Kong and put him in a Zoo"

- To hurry the plot along (late for dinner), Daddy Kong rushes up and attacks the nearest man.

- "Do you want to help him?" "YES!"

- Long fight - the hunters are small = hard to hit (12 defense). Daddy Kong and Hippo each have one opponent, Dino has two

- Dino is a tank, has 3 attack and 2 damage rolls + luck of the dice, still gets the first opponent down fastest

Note: All hunters handled on a single character sheet, have the same stats (4 move, 4 HP, 12 defense, 1 attack, 1 damage), simply with multiple life point bars at the bottom of the sheet. Works well

- When Dino's 2nd opponent is down to 1 HP, he picks up the phone and calls for backup

Lesson: You may wind up fighting more than you started with

- When Dino's 2nd opponent is at zero, and the backup is not close enough "Do you want to attack the others?" "Yes!" "But you could also trample the fence and let Kiddie Kong out?" "Oh yeah I'll do that" Spontaneously roleplays the destruction of the fence!

Lesson: Remember the mission!

- 2 backup arrive, but now extra monkey in the fight, so still one on one

- When I try to fudge the rolls to hurry the fight along (need to work on more balanced encounters), the 3-year old notices when I am cheating "hey that wasn't a hit" even though he cannot actually add up the the dice

Lesson: Inside every toddler there is a rules lawyer

- When the last hunter is down to one hit and facing 4 scary opponents, he runs away (is a replay of a scene in their book "L'arche de Barbapapa"

- Big victory celebration, monkey hugs, kisses and social grooming all round

- Monkey gives each of them a banana, they eat it and heal back to max HP (only took 1 and 2 hits respectively, as mentioned currently unbalanced, but better than dying on first few quests)

Lesson: Healing potion. I tell them that if Monkeys come with them again, they can give them a banana to heal "like a bandaid or medicine". Am curious if they will remember

Lesson: Surprising levels of concentration on the long battle (~15 rounds with 6 actors), born table-top wargamers

Post Mortem:

- Interesting question at dinner after the game "Daddy why do you play more than one char at the same time?" "You play the heroes, I play the rest of the story - I cannot win, only you can"

- Couldn't resist "taking animals from the wild and putting them in cages is bad", she totally got it, the Disneyesque level of moralizing which you do as a parent is sickening :)

- Nintendo has poisoned my imagination... the 3 friendly NPCs so far are Princess Pearl, Daddy Kong and Kiddie Kong. Oh well, toddlers don't really care about names - waiting for them to say "that guy with the thing who lived in that tower"