A Cool Surprise

I have a 16 year old niece who hangs out at our house.  (O.k.  She's my favorite niece.  Don't tell my other nieces.)  She's a few years older than my oldest son but likes to play video games with them and comes to my wife for motherly advice and conversation.  My wife told me other day that my niece had started hanging out at a game store near her place.  (Not knowing about it, I checked it out.  Unfortunately for me it is geared toward Magic and other collectible card games.)  Well, when I came home this evening from work, she's here.  She comes up to me and says, "Uncle!  Can we play D&D?"

Stunned silence and then I reply, "Of course we can!"

So I pull out the Basic D&D rules, borrow a 1st level character from my son and away we go.  I make up a scenario on the spot.  A creature has taken a little girl from a village and dragged her into the woods.  The villagers asked our hero to get the girl back.  She tracked the creature through the forest to a burial mound that had been broken into.  The chamber in the mound smelled horrible but she cautiously went in.  The room was a shambles with broken furniture scattered all over the place, trash strewn about and, apparently, one corner being used as a toilet.  She found the little girl whimpering in a pile of rags.  She grabs the girl and heads for the entrance.  She notices a door in the wall near the rags while she is heading out.  Then, a figure looms in the doorway, growls and attacks.  Our hero sets the girl down and meets the creature with bared blade.  It's an orc!  (She loves the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings so I had to throw one in.)  They battled back and forth and after taking a wound she finally put the brute down.

After returning the child to her parents she went back to the mound to examine the door.  She managed to pick the lock and enter the room beyond.  (The character's a thief.)  In contrast with the first room this one was untouched.  Dust coated the floor.  The tapestries, though rotten, still hung from the walls.  In the middle of the floor was a stone throne with a skeleton sitting on it, sword grasped in its desiccated fingers, gold band encircling its skull.  Of course, as soon a she touched the sword (cautiously, with her sword) the skeleton came to life.  Our hero reacted quickly, swinging her sword savagely and beheading the skeleton with one blow.  Thus, she collected a long sword and a gold head band.  She then heads back to the village to a heroes welcome and needed recovery time.

The whole session took about 45 minutes and she said she had great fun.  I'm a happy man at the moment.

This story also illustrates one of the reasons I love Basic.  I can make up adventures on the spot and have the session be successful.  There is only one other game I can do this with and that is BoL.