Ok, nothing to do with collecting, really, but I had to share.
My brother and I managed to pull off a minor miracle this Thanksgiving. After dinner, we whipped out my shiny new Castles & Crusades boxed set, a copy of
B1 (
mono), some pencils, and a few lined sheets of paper. To our shock and awe, both my mother and wife expressed interest in trying it out!
They were complete neophytes, and I had zero prep time, but we all ended up having a good time in the end. In about two hours, we wrapped it up, with the party only barely inside the dungeon, but it was well worth it.
I highly recommend this to our American friends to the south, who will be celebrating the holiday in November. For the "rules lawyers" out there, yes, we played pretty darn fast and loose.

Cast:
DM - out of practice for more than a decade, and completely winging it (Me)
Zelia - two-handed sword wielding halfling fighter (Mom)
Gandalfina - elven wizardess with narcolepsy (Wife)
Fafnir - human rogue with a map of some mysterious caverns (Brother)
Zack - large untrained rottweiler pet of Zelia
Highlights:
* Explaining all the weird dice and how to read a d4
* Gandalfina shouting "Die!" and smoking a kobold with her magic missle, then falling promptly asleep
* Zelia scoring a "critical" and revelling in the bloodshed as two kobolds were chopped in half simultaneously
* Zack deciding to race down the hallway and bark loudly (plot device)
* Door slamming shut suddenly, dividing the party, and then explaining how "alignment" works to everyone