The Shadow in the Sun / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina (15), Hendrik (13) and Joaquín (11) wrote a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest.

You suddenly wake up in a huge, pretentious hall filled with diamonds and furniture that was all colored in bright yellowy gold. A being, which you can't recognize because it's shining so bright, sitting on a throne starts talking:

“You have been chosen to save the sun from the shadow trying to take us over! The shadow beings have been waiting a long time to defeat the light beings, which make the sunshine, so the sun is forever dark. They are in the center of the sun, waiting until tonight, so they can eliminate us, leading to the sun never rising again. Will you help us?”

You agree to help them.

The sun ruler explains to you what awaits you in the dungeon:

The first step is to go to the weapon dealer to get weapons for the mission. The difficulty is that the dealer is very sketchy, and because you don’t come from the sun, he’ll try to scam you to get more money or give you weapons that don’t work. If you try to defend yourself, he might end up killing you, so what you need to do is be as careful as possible. From him, you'll need to buy Darkvision and the weapons or enchantments of your choice but be careful; shadow beings are immune to weapons using fire. The most effective weapons are metal, wood, or light-related weapons.

The second step is finding the secret passageway inside the weapon shop to the inside of the sun. There, you’ll find a room (1) full of traps designed to kill you. You’ll need to find the traps and then find a way to get around them. The traps are not only on the floor tiles but on the walls too. The traps include the floor disappearing, the walls crumbling, or highly venomous lizards being thrown at you. All the traps could instantly kill you, but luckily the room isn’t that big.

Once you’ve escaped, the next room (2) awaits you. There, you’ll have to fight your first group of three shadow beings, which will protect the next rooms at all costs, even at the cost of death. The downside for you is that the room is incredibly dark, so you’ll need to have Darkvision to even have a chance of making it out. The shadow beings have very powerful weapons, which can each kill you with three hits. Their problem is that the sun beings have gifted you very powerful shields, so not every attack reaches you, but you’ll still need to be careful and kill them as fast as you can.

In the next room (3), there’s venomous fog, which can kill you fast, but the door to the next room is closed, so you have to find a key for the door. The difficulty is that the room is filled with a lot of things, ranging from antique teacups to fluffy pillows, making it hard to find the right key. The time until the rise of the shadow beings to the surface of the planet is getting shorter every minute, and once they’ve gotten to the surface, nothing can stop them.

In the penultimate room (4), a huge shadow beast is waiting to kill you. It could devour you instantly, but it has one weakness: it is deadly allergic to bread and salt. You can buy bread in the weapon shop, but salt can only be found in the fourth room, so you should not only look for a key but also salt to defeat the monster.

The last room (5) is filled with shadow beings, which you’ll have to kill as fast as possible because there’s only half an hour remaining until their rise. With the right weapons, it’s easier to kill them, so choose wisely.

If all goes well, the sun shall rise; if not, we're doomed, because with the sun, all of our solar system goes down.

Are you up for the challenge?

Honor Among Thieves

I watched "Honor Among Thieves", the D&D movie, with my family. Then I asked my daughter what she thought about it.

"Although the plot of the movie was predictable, the movie was entertaining. There were various funny jokes and I found the characters to be quite well written. All of the characters had thought out back stories which the audience got to see through their storytelling. The stories also influenced and explained the choices they made. Overall I would recommend the movie."

Space Marine Lina

I found an old drawing book I did with my daughter when she was about four.

I think this is a space marine.

Squirrel Planet / Entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2022

Once upon a time a group of friends came across a black squirrel. Since they had nothing else to do, they decided to follow it. After 20 minutes the squirrel disappeared. The group witnessed it going into a tree and because they were curious, they tried entering the tree, which surprisingly worked.

When they opened their eyes, they found themselves on a weird planet, ruled by squirrels. They were soon noticed and brought to the king of the planet. He explained to them that they had to go into a dungeon to either stay on the planet as squirrels or go back to earth with no memory of the planet, if they managed to get out. Otherwise they would all die.

Space Chicken Fighter (1) In this room the group encounters a space chicken fighter whose special weapon is his dangerous lightsaber which can easily be deadly.

Roboteeth Pony (2) In this room the friends encounter a pony whose roboteeth can do a lot of damage, but the pony can only use them every third round.

Turkey-Platypus (3) A turkey-platypus with dangerously long nails awaits the group in this room. One scratch robs you of half your health points, but the turkey-platypus cannot scratch that easily, because his nails are really slim.

Mutant Space Squirrel (4) This three headed space squirrel is the end boss. It has the ability to teleportate itself, read and control minds and control hair. It’s weakness is that it can’t breath without its helmet.

If you finish the dungeon every character who died will be resurrected and you have the choice between going back to earth without memories of this planet or live on the squirrel planet as a squirrel.

[Note] This is a dungeon written by Lina (14), Hendrik (12) and Joaquín (10) for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2022. After reading it, I told them that I thought it was too linear, not giving the players too many options. That it felt more like a film, not like a game.

I suggested a room, room 0, with a large machine looking like a retro arcade, that would show low resolution pictures of the four monsters and had four buttons and could teleport the adventure party to the four rooms. And maybe there could be some spray cans lying around.

My daughter got angry and screamed that they had put a lot of work into this and didn’t want to change anything. I repeated that the jury might find the dungeon too linear. She replied that she didn’t even care about the prizes. Well, I said, but maybe you want to play it with your D&D group and make the dungeon more interesting. Ok, then add a room, if you must, she said.

The Goblin Thief / One Page Dungeon Contest

This is my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2021.

It's a simple adventure I wrote for my kids during the winter lockdown when we played a lot of RPGs using an old German ruleset called Das Schwarze Auge. (In my blog post Playing Das Schwarze Auge after 37 years I wrote about how we played the adventure.)

My daughter drew the goblin. She says he looks like me, but more evil ...

You walk through a street at night which is deserted apart from a creature the size of a child, which crosses your path, bumps into you, steals the most valuable thing you have, runs away and disappears in a cellar beneath a worn down building.

1 Stairs go down to a room, 5 m × 2 m. There is an old sofa opposite the entrance and a chest full of fancy clothes and moths in one corner of the room. An unlocked door leads to room 2. A glass cabinet hides the way to a corridor (3).

2 A room, 3 m × 3 m. Three drunk pirates, equipped with sables and knives, sleep on a bed frame or lie on the floor. One of them sings: "Wir lagen vor Madagaskar und hatten die Pest an Bord." (Really no need waking these up.) There are other things in the room, in various states of decomposition: a chair, a turned over table, a barrel, partly filled with cheap rum, a viola bastarda, missing some strings, a bucket full of crabs. The miserable scene is lit by a small lantern, standing on the floor.

3 A small corridor, 1 m wide and 7 m long. There are two doors on the left side, which are unlocked, and one door on the right side, which is locked.

4 A room, 6 m × 3 m, that is used for storing wood. Planks, full of wormholes and covered with spiderwebs, are piled up to the ceiling. There is so much wood in the room you can hardly enter it, and that’s not all: a knight’s armour, a bastard sword (two useful items, but difficult to handle or even carry for flimsy adventurers), human bones, fish bones and rags are scattered on the floor. Beneath the rubble lives a family of large rats.

5 A room, 3 m × 3 m, with two small beds inside. A beautiful lamp stands on a chest beside one of the beds. There are a couple of animal bones inside the chest, potsherds, pieces of floor tiles and a little rusty iron stick.

6 The door to this room is locked. There are two small beds inside. The goblin thief is hiding beneath one of the beds. When discovered he will try to defend himself with a kitchen knife or negotiate.

Around this time, two goblins carrying a spear and a bow return home from the street.

Playing Das Schwarze Auge after 37 Years

For some time I have been locking for a set of RPG rules to play with my children and simple enough, so they could play it by themselves.

I prepared a GURPS adventure for them during our last vacation in Greece, but got lost in the complexity of the rule system. I still have a notebook filled with monster stats and stains of Greek coffee. Who else would sit next to a swimming pool writing down advantages, disadvantages, skills and attributes for a troll and a slime monster? Nevertheless GURPS is still my favourite system and I hope to play the adventure one day.

My daughter started to play D&D with her friends at school, the 5th edition, but their GM disappeared and she can’t be bothered to read the basic rules (180 pages).

So I remembered Das Schwarze Auge, the first German role playing game, published in 1984. It is also the first RPG I ever played. DSA1 is similar to Tunnels & Trolls and basic D&D (the red box).

The rules and some adventures have been re-released recently, both as printed versions and PDFs available through DriveThroughRPG.

The game is well written and has a lot of charm. It has the level of complexity I was looking for. It is a great game to play with children and I think my children would also be able to play it on their own.

I was looking for a simple dungeon to do a test run, but finally decided to write one myself as I couldn’t find anything simple enough.

We played our first game on a Sunday morning during the second Covid-19 lockdown while it was snowing outside. It was a beautiful bright day.

Character creation in DSA1 is random. Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín ended up with two adventurers and an elf. Spells have funny names like BALSAMSALBUNDE-Heile, Wunde! and FLIM-FLAM-FUNKEL-Bring Licht ins Dunkel! and elves are magical creatures who know seven spells from the start.

I told the adventure party that they were walking around the streets of Havena, the classic DSA city, when a pickpocket the size of a child stole their money and ran away. They followed him down a cellar.

To my great surprise they attacked three sleeping pirates in room 2, wanted to talk to a rat in room 4 and when they finally found the goblin thief under a bed in room 6, who tried to defend himself with a kitchen knife, they negotiated with him, so that he could keep their money and they could leave the dungeon unharmed.

This was my best role playing session ever. I haven’t had so much fun in a long time.

Mountain Dungeon / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín wrote a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest. It's called Mountain Dungeon and it's probably influenced by our corona lockdown which lasted two months.

Please keep in mind that they are 12, 10 and 8 years old and that English isn't their native language.

Once upon a time there was a family lost in the woods. This family found a haunted mountain and after they entered no one found them. Then some explorers went to the mountain. The explorers are you. Try to get out of the mountain dungeon.

1 If you stand on one of the traps the wall will go away and the arrows will shoot at you.

2 You come in and have to go on the rotating plate where you have to fight with the chicken monster.

3 In this room you have to fight with a big slime monster.

4 You have to try to escape of this room fast because the walls slide together.

5 There are traps with portals where you disappear. There is a giant monster too.

6 There are fireblasters that shoot at you.

7 This room has a pool full of piranhas and you have to cross it on a rope.

8 There are monster plants that would love to eat you.

9 The witch tells you to go into a door, you don't know which is the right one.

Some help needed writing an RPG adventure for 3 kids

I'm on a small island in the Aegean sea. It's a volcano and looks like this cookie. We are here for three weeks because of my wife's work. She is teaching screenwriters how to pitch their scripts.

Between 1 PM and 5 PM it's so hot, you shouldn't go outside. After that I go to a pool with the kids. It's next to a cliff, ten meters above the sea. There's not much there to protect you from falling down, besides a cable and a rusty shower. On the other side: a wall, a fence, some beautiful flowers, red and pink. Behind that: the noisy street and a hotel.

The water is heated by the volcano and leaves thick orange stains on clothes and googles. The music is loud and cheap, but somehow relaxing. While my children are swimming in the pool or floating around in safety buoys, I'm drinking some kind of mocha - έναν ελληνικό γλυκό παρακαλώ - which the waiter prepares with great care, and look at another island which is slowly but entirely being removed with excavators, trucks and ships. This fills me with melancholy because I’m conservative at heart.

I'm sitting next to the pool and read Principia Apocrypha and Gurps Light. (I forgot how complicated role playing games are, if you are out of practice.) I want to write a simple cavern adventure, taking place in ancient Greece, so we have something to do while we hide from the sun.

Maybe you have some ideas?

(For encounters, treasures, traps, etc.)

I will post the adventure later on this blog.

I can also send a bottle of Soumada or a little minotaur from the tourist shop to the first person who figures out which island we are on.

To make it easier for you: Here is a model of the island which I found on a cupboard in the local primary school.

Pentomino Dungeon / One Page Dungeon Contest

Last year my daughter participated in a math competition at school, the Kangaroo Contest, and brought home a colorful Pentomino game and a book with math problems for children.

When I asked Lina (10), Hendrik (8) and Joaquín (6) to draw a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest this year, they made a dungeon out of 12 Pentomino shapes instead, which I turned into a map.

Hendrik had the idea that adventurers entering the dungeon should have to solve math problems, but are distracted all the time. (Maybe he came up with this, because he has a little brother who is full of energy and always wants his attention to play with him.)

Joaquín made several drawings of the big monster in room 4 and described it vividly.

The riddles are from the book Lina got at the Kangaroo Contest. I changed them a bit to avoid copyright issues and to adapt them to the stories, the children came up with.

For a year, Joaquín has been carrying little pieces of paper with German words in his school bag to learn the letters ä, ö and ü. Those are the items in room 5.

Now my introduction to our entry is already as long as the entry itself ...

1 In the first room there is a wizard. He is wearing a colourful crown, blue gloves and only has one tooth. He says: 

"This is what we are going to do. If you make it out of my dungeon, I will grant you a wish. Each room has a riddle written on the floor. You need the solution to unlock the doors. The riddles are not too difficult, but don’t be fooled. There are things in the rooms to distract you from thinking. I will stay here and also start sending things after you. The first problem is easy. I am 80 years old. My brother is 20 years younger than me. My sister, the witch, is 20 years older than me. How old are we all together? Good luck."

random monsters, summoned by the wizard in room 1:

1. a funny man with an axe and a shield
2. a very sharp triangle ruler
3. a man made of fire
4. a man who looks at you so sweet, it is hypnotizing
5. a ball with arms and legs that explodes when it gets too loud

2 Five Goblins, three with knives, two with spears.

There is a riddle written on the floor: The goblin king has 5 sons, every son has two sisters. How many children does the goblin king have?

3 A man who says blablabla.

The riddle is: How many numbers, bigger than 10 and smaller than 60, can be built, combining two different digits, using 0, 1, 2, 5 and 7?

4 A naked giant with green skin, wearing a baseball cap, a bow in one hand, an arrow in the other hand. The monster has spiky feet and leaves violet marks on the floor when moving. It can spit poison. Flames come out of his eyes and little creatures crawl out of his hair. It makes a noise like hhhhh …

The riddle is: Which is the biggest?
2+0+1+3 or 2×0×1×3 or 2×0+1×3 or 20+13 or 20×13? 

5 A goose, four hats, nine glasses, sixteen cooks. How many books?

Three Mud Huts

Over the holidays I made three more mud huts.

And my daughter made a house for a goblin sorcerer.

Happy New Year!

Lina (9), Hendrik (7) and Joaquín (5) Wrote Another Dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest

1 You fall through a hole into this room. For example, if you go for a walk in Berlin and don’t respect certain signposts around construction sites or while watering flowers in your garden.

2 Eerie black and white photographs hang on the walls. A man with a hat. Four children. A doll. When it is dark, the pictures look like ghosts. In a corner of the room is a rocking chair.

3 An empty room with trap doors.

4 A window is painted on the wall. You can see a street and a field. If you stand there and look out of the window, it gives you the creeps. Because of the street. And the noises.

5 A monster with two heads. It destroys everything that comes close. Stones are scattered on the floor. The monster throws them at you.

6 A little animal with green fur. It looks harmless, but if you try to feed it, it bites and you might catch the rabies and die a couple of months later.

7 A mirror maze. It’s hard to get out without banging against the glass. If you take the wrong door, you return to room 1.

8 There are goblins and ghosts in this room who destroy furniture with knives and try to summon a giant by piling up the pieces. You have to prevent this.

9 Schleimi is evil. He can turn you into slime. Because he has slime powers.

10 There is a hole in the ceiling. A rope lies on the floor. A book shelf stands next to the wall.

Puschel Wuschel / Monster Man Contest / Gurps Stats

Lina (9), my daughter, wrote and drew a monster for the first Monster Man contest.

Puschel Wuschel

They live in a land made of cloth. Everything is made of cloth: houses, streets, trees, even the cemetery.

If you annoy them, attack them or offend them, they become very large and eat you.

If you protect them, they come and live with you. But remember to always treat them well or they will eat you.

They defend themselves without weapons, only with monster powers. 

They glow in the dark, learn very fast and everything they have is soft and cuddly.

Stats for Gurps:

ST: 5 / 15   DX: 12   IQ: 12   HT: 9

HP: 5 / 15   Will: 12   Per: 12   FP: 9

Speed: 5.25   Move: 5

Dodge: 8      DR: 2

SM: -4 / +1

Bite (14): 1d-5 cutting / 1d cutting

Claws (14): 1d-4 crushing / 1d+1 crushing 

Traits: Blunt Claws; Constriction Attack; Eidetic Memory; Growth 5 (Maximum Size Only, Trigger, Unconscious, Uncontrollable); Language Talent; No Fine Manipulators; Sharp Teeth; Stress Atavism (Severe).  

Skills: Brawling-14

Notes: Glows in the dark.

One Page Dungeon Contest Youth Prize

Some months ago, Lina (9), Hendrik (7) and Joaquín (5) wrote Bubble Guble Super Raum, a dungeon for the One Page Dungeon Contest, and won one of the youth prizes.

They received a parcel from Wayne's Books with three books: "Robbers and Robots" and "Mountain of Mirrors", two D&D Endless Quest Books, and "Rebel Planet", a Fighting Fantasy game book.

Thank you!

They also enjoyed a lot playing with the dungeon business cards that were in the parcel, which I believe were drawn by Dyson Logos.

In one of the books we found a strange card which says "tippy top hat's" and "Keith Hack, can I help you".

Bubble Guble Super Raum / One Page Dungeon Contest

Lina (8), Hendrik (6) and Joaquín (4) wrote a dungeon adventure. This is our entry for the ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST 2017. I hope it is useful or playable or whatever …

1 In the middle of the room you see a commode in Louis XIV style. If you open one of the drawers, you find two purses. Inside of them are three coins, two chicken wings and two lives. If you don’t watch out, a troll with a chainsaw and chainsaw teeth will kill you.

2 A dead camel.

3 There are a lot of keys scattered on the floor and beetles crawling around. Room 3 is full of treasures. Some treasures have beetles inside and some beetles have treasures inside.

4 Room 4 is called Bubble Guble Super Raum. Pink bubbles are floating in the air. If they burst, you die. You meet Sofie, the elf. She says: Warzenschwein führt dich heim, nach vorne, dann links und rechts. (Wart-hog takes you home, go straight ahead, turn left, then right.)

There is an invisible secret passage with a trap between room 4 and room 5. If you fall into the trap, you will never get out again.

5 There is a giant wart-hog. It’s called Hulk Schweinekotz. It has attackers on its back. One of them has three eyes and no mouth. Another one has a long neck and feet, a muzzle and two eyes. And a funny nose. I can tell you that. On the floor there is a bowl of muesli. If you eat the muesli, you will become a super hero and you can fly through the whole world in three seconds. You will develop a lot of muscles and you can knock off ten thousand attackers with one finger. And shoot red bolts out of your eyes.

Orc Head for a Hand Puppet

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon in October making hand puppets with the children and took the opportunity to make an orc head.

It looks a bit like my grandfather from my mother's side and still needs to be painted.

Anybody know if Humbrol enamel paint and gloss varnish work well on paper mache?

Happy Halloween!

Karl

The Waltrop Campaign / Day 10 / HotT Battle Report

Day 10 of our Waltrop campaign was fun. Normally our HotT games are decided quickly, but this time the armies were broken up and there was lots of interesting movement on the battlefield.

The Greeks under the command of Fibos invaded hexagon 39 on the campaign map. Krüger played the orcs with this list:

Warband General, 5 Warbands, 1 Hero, 2 Beasts, 2 Shooters

He was the defender and placed the terrain. Since the battle took place in the jungle where the orcs live, he filled the tabletop with tropical forests. I think he used all the area terrain and model palm trees we have.

I played the Greeks:

Spears General (officer Fibos), 5 Spears, 2 Riders, 4 Shooters

Krüger deployed one part of his army, the hero and the beasts, on his right flank and all his other troops on his left flank, in front of a very large forest.

I deployed all of my army on my left flank. I placed my block of spears opposite to Krüger’s hero and his beasts and I placed 3 shooters opposite to Krüger’s block of warbands.

Krüger moved his warbands into the large forest. It took him several rounds to get near my shooters. Also, he had an element of shooters all the way on his left side. This element wasn’t able to do much during our game.

Early in the game my spears destroyed both of Krüger’s beasts and one of his shooters.

I went with my general for Krüger’s hero, which was kind of risky, and with my riders for his base camp. Krüger avoided fighting my general, though, and my riders weren’t able to destroy the camp.

My daughter had been watching the game and started to play „I put … into my suitcase“ with Krüger. A toothbrush, a doll, a car key, a barbie DVD, a Greek figure, Greek dice, a robot with mustard, a camera.

When the orc warbands got into close combat with my slingers, they destroyed two of them. I had my revenge, killing two warbands with an element of shooters, with the help of two elements of spears as side support. Krüger’s orc warbands killed a third element of shooters, but then my last remaining element of shooters destroyed another one of Krüger’s warbands, with the help of some spears giving side support.

Having destroyed two elements of beasts, one element of shooters and three warbands, I won the game after two hours. Well done, officer Fibos. Now the Greeks occupy hexagon 39.

By the way, I keep getting asked if we use 28 mm, 15 mm or 6 mm miniatures. I assure you these are 28 mm miniatures. The terrain we are using isn’t your usual wargaming terrain though, I guess. It’s more abstract. Let’s call it old school, if you need to put it in some category. Maybe it looks odd to you. The reason why it looks the way it does is that I like glueing coloured paper on objects. I seriously don’t know why. Might be some mental disorder. But as you can see, it’s pretty harmless.

Dungeon for Lina and Hendrik / Level 2

This is my entry for the ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST 2015.

1 You went down a ladder to level 2 of the cellar beneath the royal kitchen. The cook sent you to look for Alex, the kitchen boy. In another room somebody is playing „Soura ke mastoura“ on a bouzouki.

2 This room is filled with amphorae in all sizes. Some carry a sweet strong wine. A strange animal is crawling on the floor. It is yellow, green, blue, pink and red, about 13 inch long and has eight legs. Although it looks a bit like a carrion crawler, it’s harmless. It even smiles at you. If you are easily scared, you need to make a fright check now.

3 The door to this room is locked. Alex, the kitchen boy, practices playing bouzouki, a Greek guitar. He tells you that two large mouse-like creatures locked him in and ran away with the keys. If you find the keys in level 3 of the dungeon and free Alex, he will tell you that the cook is beating him regularly. He will try to persuade you to flee with him in a small boat. He will invent a treasure island to persuade you.

4 The door to this room is locked but not too difficult to open. There are many amphorae scattered on the floor, most of them broken. Three skeletons equipped with swords and shields will attack you. They have been waiting to do so for 100 years.

5 random monsters:

1 A giant olive on legs, wearing sneakers.
2 A couple of bugs that glow in the dark.
3 A group of goblins. They say your grandmother is fat and poor. They can count up to 100 and will ridicule you in every possible way, otherwise they are harmless.
4-6 Nothing.

6 A 3m x 3m room with a hole in the floor. A ladder leads to level 3 of the dungeon. In level 3 you encounter two dire mice with the keys to room 3. You also find a boat.

Maleficent

I have watched "Maleficent" twice with my daughter and wouldn't mind watching it again. It's entertaining, sad and a bit scary, a horror movie for children. I like the basic idea, to tell the story of "Sleeping Beauty" from the perspective of the other side, the side of the witch that curses the newborn princess Aurora. It's "Sleeping Beauty" after 50 years on Freud's couch, who says: the evil witch isn't evil, she has good reasons for behaving the way she does. For a fantasy movie produced by Disney, you get a complex, rich narration. The original movie serves as an undercurrent which the spectator constantly relates to the remake. In this version of the story Maleficent is the queen of winged fairy creatures living in an enchanted forest. She falls in love with a human, is betrayed, hurt, but doesn't turn cold and egoistic like the human beings she gets into conflict with. Angelina Jolie plays her well. (I didn't even know Angelina Jolie could act at all. I guess I have to watch "Tomb Raider" again.)

The special effects are fun. Robert Stromberg, the director of "Maleficent", worked on visual effects for movies like "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Pan's Labyrinth". The cinematography reminded me of old Czech movies in a good way. The only thing that bothered me was the orchestral soundtrack which played non-stop. Why do the Disney studios think this is a good idea? I like the slow, eerie cover version of "Once Upon A Dream" by Lana del Rey though, which plays through the end titles.

Ok. I know. This is a wargaming blog. I stop trying to sound like a film reviewer now. If you play Wood Elves in Warhammer or any other tabletop game, like I do, you might especially enjoy a combat sequence in the first third of the movie. The old human king leads his little army of knights and foot soldiers against Maleficent's tree creatures and is defeated. Here are two lists for Hordes of the Things, representing the armies:

Maleficent's Fairies (Defender): Aerial Hero General (Maleficent), 1 Behemoth (large treeman), 7 Beasts (fairy creatures)

King Henry's army (Attacker): Knight General (King Henry), 3 Knights, 4 Blades, 4 Spears

Anybody know a manufacturer who produces a 28 mm miniature resembling Maleficent?

Playing GURPS with my Kids for the First Time

Ok. This was cool. Saturday morning I played GURPS with Lina (5) and Hendrik (3) for the first time. I had prepared a dungeon for them which you can find here. They played princess Blume and prince Marmelade who went into the cellar beneath the royal kitchen to fetch some giant olives for the cook.

There they encountered two dire mice. One got away with a keychain. The other attacked with a broom. Prince Marmelade got hit on the head, but defended himself super-hero style, shooting electric rays out of his hands. Princess Blume narcotized the mouse with "sleep", a mind control spell. Well done.

Prince Marmelade then opened a locked door to a 3m x 3m room using his lockpicking skill. There they found a little box filled with cookies in the form of islands. (I had baked the props Friday night.)

They went around the dungeon and explored the other rooms with the help of a talking cat, picked up a flute and found a room filled with giant olives on legs wearing sneakers. Prince Marmelade opened the door to that room with a wire. The giant olives got out and escaped, but the prince and princess were able to catch one of them and bring it to the cook who probably made a Greek salad out of it.

The game took about an hour and was lots of fun for all three of us. Level 2 will be about prince Marmelade and princess Blume trying to find the cook's missing keychain and Alex, the kitchen boy. I hope I find time to prepare it soon.

Sea Animals with Two Legs

Apparently last week somebody googled "sea animals with two legs" and found my blog. I suppose he or she was very disappointed which is not my fault. It's really Google's fault, but I don't want to disappoint anybody, so I asked my daughter to draw a sea animal with two legs.

Lina says her drawing depicts a transformer gold fish. Unfortunately it has five legs. Anyway, with all the information I have about this at the moment and my limited knowledge of GURPS, I tried to come up with GURPS stats for the creature.

If you think my description of the transformer gold fish, a sea animal with five legs is inaccurate or can be improved in any way, please let me know.

ST: 20   DX: 10   IQ: 3   HT: 12

HP: 20   Will: 10   Per: 12   FP: 12

Speed: 5.5   Move: 5

Dodge: 8   DR: 1

SM: +2

Punch (13): 2d-2 cr

Habitat: Salt-Water Aquatic, Tropical Forest

Range: Atlantic Ocean, Karubi Islands

Traits: Amphibious; Bad Temper; Discriminatory Smell; Doesn't Breathe (Oxygen Storage); Extra Legs; Horizontal; No Fine Manipulators; Pressure Support 3; Subsonic Hearing; Vibration Sense; Wild Animal.

Skills: Brawling-13.

Well, it is a transformer fish. So it should be able to transform itself into something. With Shapeshifting (Alternate Form). Into a gold fish? Some kind of two-legged garden gnome? I don't know.

Are you happy now, person who googles "sea animals with two legs" and finds my blog?