Today I continued my Labirynth Lord game with my 12yo brother. This time he invited his same-aged neighbor to play. His friend decided to create a cleric. A cleric of hades, who had a scythe as a weapon, and seemed set into killing everything that moved in front of him. Ooookay.

Our first game was short lived, as they murdered half of the people in the boat that was taking them into the city, and the rest of the sailors finally were able to get them arrested and executed (post game thought: this was the perfect excuse to have them banished into the megadungeon instead, exile-style. What a pity)

The second time around, I decided to railroad them a bit more. Had a rough, strong guy challenge them to a fist fight, and the loser had to promise to serve the winner (first henchman – the NPC lost). The kids immediately took a liking for Golias, the challenger, and even offered him a share of the treasure, instead of 1GP a day like other henchmen. Golias oriented them into hiring a full compliment of 4 men-at-arms, and they all headed into the dungeon.

In the dungeon, they found a mad old man who called himself an alchemist, and asked them to find the way to the “fire shrine” for him. They had already found the water shrine by chance, so they had an idea of what they were looking for. The kids loved killing fire beetles and hoarding their glowing antennaes (kids and bugs, not just a japanese thing). They also found the joys of greek fire: huge plant monster? Kill it with fire! stuck wooden door? Burn it down! Air shrine defiled by morlocks? Cleansing by fire! Wanted to search a room whose walls were covered in vines? Burn, baby, burn! Fortunately they were aboveground (level 0), and the area was rocky, but I tried to hint them that burning everything in sight might not be such a good idea underground.

The kids were brutal to all and everything that moved, but I found how to push their buttons when a random encounter rolled a nixie: I described a creature as a small girl with blue skin, and while they started by chasing it to death like any other living being, when they finally caugth her the sobbing of the girl made them release her and give half of their food to her as a manner of apology, not charm spell needed :-)

Another break from the vices of old time gamers involved the henchmen. The first time they saw a crossroads in the dungeon, their first reaction was to send the henchmen one way, and follow another, scooby style, to cover more space while exploring. They considered themselves heroes above the henchmen, and would insist in leading all the time (except that Golias was always asked to kick down the doors).

They were super excited, and high fiving themselves every hundred GP they found. When G the killer was taken prisoner by the morlocks, my brother insisted in having me show how the creatures were holding his arms. When I described a small cave tunnel as the size of the cupboard near us, the neighbor kid decided to enter the cupboard himself to “feel what his character was feeling” – After just two hours, I was completely exhausted.

When I told them that we couldn’t go on anymore because I hadn’t yet prepared the next level of the dungeon, they were surprisingly understanding of that, and after a barrage of suggestions about what I should put in the second level, they headed back to the city to spend their loot.

I had to talk them down from trying to buy a dragon, and we compromised on a tiger cub. Then they bought armor for all the henchmen and a new weapon for Golias, plus a bunch of pick axes for tearing down doors and statues (a few weapons broke that way).

All in all it has been a fantastic, if tiring, experience DMing for them. They get excited about the most outlandish or simplest things that I throw at them. They explore the dungeon, but by following their own cartoon logic (they wanted to drag around the huge statues that composed the shrines, because together they might do something), and not by overengineering everything. They mourned losses like dead henchmen or broken weapons, but bounced right back from them. And they wouldn’t forgive me if I changed the voice of one of the NPCs (But the bard had a high pitched voice last time!)