Quality Time Painting Minis

Last weekend was a cold wet weekend here in Tucson (relatively speaking to those of you in the mid-west and the east) and probably the last nasty day until maybe next December or January. Lucky us, here in the southwest.

So my wife and I spent the afternoon painting minis. Yes, you read that right, my wife. She's been playing in our campaign for over 10 sessions now. Her character is a 3rd level hermaphrodite dwarf warrior with a uni-brow named Maudlin. She pretty much knocked the concept of old school character creation out of the park with that one. Remember, this is her first RPG - ever.

Over the holidays I picked up all my players minis of their characters from Reaper Miniatures (or in some cases dead characters) in the hopes that we may use minis more in play (yet to happen). Christy received a female dwarf warrior.

Shhhh, she'll kick my ass if she finds out I outed her with these pictures. See we're all a little geeky inside, aren't we?

She did a fantastic job painting her mini, don't you think?

While Christy worked on Maudlin, I painted a Half-orc warrior I picked up for Zach (a future character if his halfling Skwanky gets killed). He asked me to paint it for him so that's what I did.

Good times with the best of company! What a way to spend a rainy weekend with the wife, no?

Rolling Dice With The Wife

As I mentioned in my previous post, my wife Christy joined us for her first "real" table RPG session. You may recall that we had played a couple of solo sessions over a year ago and that left her a bit unsure of how the game actually worked. I guided her as much as possible but a solo session with an inexperienced player isn't really a good intro to the game.

So our last session she joined us at the table. Again, she was a bit unsure on this whole role-playing thing but over all I felt she had a more positive experience than negative. Right after the session she actually drew a portrait of her hermaphrodite dwarven fighter Maudlin (with a CHA of 5!). Whether she continues playing or not, how awesome was that?

So last night she joined us once again. In fact she got to the table early and read through her character sheet and the Home Brew house-rules before the others arrived, asking questions here and there.

This session was a better slice of your classic game session as there were some interactions with the city-folk of Caladan as well as a good creepy dungeon crawl with monsters to be slain and treasure to be had (recap to be posted shortly). The other players helped fill Christy in on some of the back stories and past encounters that had relevance to the sessions events as they popped up. There were good examples of how the players interacted together to solve problems and accomplish tasks. Overall a perfect session to really get a feel for the game with the usual laughs and table talk, of course. Cudos to my players for making her feel welcome and answering some of her questions and guiding her play a bit and congrats to Christy for giving it another go!

Afterwards she said she enjoyed the session and said that she pictured some of the events, especially with the hoard of crypt crawlers, just like scenes in a movie. Was she jumping around screaming 'Oh my god that was freaking' awesome! When do we play next?". No (I mean, come on, lets be realistic). But I think she got a good picture of what the game is about. Christy is still trying to get the hang of fitting in with game play and running Maudlin.I say only more sessions will help with that!

Here's hoping that Maudlin's adventures continue.