The Painful Lessons of Growing Up

I ran another game for my wife and daughter today. We're still doing the ol' B2: Keep on the Borderlands. My brother wasn't there, but they went in with his character anyway (a bit unorthodox, but he wouldn't have minded, I happen to know). They picked Cave D: the Goblin Lair and started working their way through. I used dungeon tiles to illustrate the terrain for them and they soon ran into the goblins adjacent to the ogre's cave. Mistakes were made, hilarity ensued.

The fighter went down on the second round (at exactly zero hit points, I ruled he wasn't dead, but stunned and out of the fight), but not before taking a goblin with him. The little one used her burning hands spell, but a bit too late for best effect. Meanwhile, they didn't even try to stop the goblin running for the back corner of the room, nor did they decide to break things off when he disappeared into the secret door. Instead, they managed to finish wiping out four of the five remaining goblins, the fifth running after his buddy.

My daughter took off in hot pursuit, arriving just in time to see the goblins bribing the ogre next door for help. "I'll attack him!" she announced.

"Are you sure?" I asked, describing again the 10' monster with the giant club.

"Yeah!" she said.

After that, there was nothing for it but to let the die roll where they may. She managed to draw blood through a couple of scratches on its thick hide before he whalloped her with his club. My wife's character, a shaman, high-tailed it out of there with the fighter with sound of a meat hammer slamming against a rack of ribs until the bones cracked ringing in her ears.

My daughter was upset at losing, but listened to me as I explained to her why it was sometimes better to run than fight before heading off to bed. We're going to roll up her new character tomorrow, possibly a sister or cousin of the dead one bent on getting her vengeance.

Live and learn. Or die and learn. It's all the same in ol' D&D.