Mom, my 1st Dungeon master.

[Dizlexus]

Some of you will be entertained by this.


I first played D&D in 1979 at the kitchen table, as a 10 year old boy. Mom was the DM.

Sometime in 1979 my mother (ironically a fundamentalist Christian) came home with the basic D&D rule set. She wanted to create a family night, and she wanted it to be fun. She had a 12 yr old girl, me, a 7 yr old girl (an ineffective age for D&D) and my father, Don.

Mom, being something of an intellectual, cast the basic rule set aside and came home with the 1st edition Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. She devoured those books and had the entire rule set understood in about 2 days. Mom was awesome! The kids waited with the utmost anticipation!

It was time for family night! Mom helped me roll up an elf, thief, with a bow (still my favorite character type). Dad rolled up a human fighter. I can't recall what the sisters played.

Over the course of 3 or 4 sessions, Mom fell out of love with D&D because of Dad. He played like a dick.

During the family adventure Dad could not contain his personal foibles. Dad, playing more to his relationship with his wife, and less within the game, could not stop attempting to manipulate NPCs and the PCs of his children as well as the DM. No one and no thing was autonomous with Dad in the game.

He would invent items which would materialize in the hand of his character -- suddenly his axe wielding character possessed the appropriate blunt weapon for the encounter -- there was never any such weapon in the party inventory. The position of characters and henchmen would suddenly be revised to his advantage -- mid round! He believed his human fighter with an 8 int. to know 13 languages. Dad cheated on his hit points, lied about his saves, would ask to do rolls over and argued with Mom, the DM, about how the game should be played, ceaselessly. Note too, the man would not bother to open the Player's Hand Book beyond the page with the weapon data table.

Mom and Dad never played D&D again. I and one of those sisters have returned to enjoy the game, 34 years later.

Oh, and, they got divorced.

Anyone else play D&D with the family back in the late bronze age (70s and 80s)?

[MonkeyWrench]

That story escalated quite quickly.

I, sadly, was not born in the 70's or 90's and have never played the game or any variation of D&D with my family. They do however make it a point to criticize me each time I do play, well... my Father and Sister do at least. My Step Mother attempts to re-live some type of flashback of when she played the game back in her glory days, while I'm sure she is living it up in her head the information doesn't quite pass her mouth and so we just kind of watch her try to think of something and then retreat back to the kitchen or basement to get something else. My mother knows I play for sure, but we have never spoken of it, she is too busy talking to me about God and things of that nature and I am not sure my Step-father knows, I don't really care since all I ever do with him is drink in the garage when I am visiting my mother, and of course my little sister would probably also criticize me as well, I bribe her however with the Sims on my steam account

There's my escalation story! Your Mom sounds cool though