Disorganized Chaos

Okay, last night we played D&D. Oh, and Spencer actually remembered to call me and tell me this ;-D. The plan was to start around 20:00 so that we wouldn't be up so late this time. I've come to the conclusion that for every small child involved, a minimum of twenty minutes needs to be added to the plan. Also, Avis (with a long A) didn't get off work until 8:45, but he had given permission for us to start the game without him. Well, that didn't happen. Between April and Neil watching Phantom of the Opera, Spencer and...agh...now I can't think of her name. I'll call her Claire (the apartment belonged to her and Avis). Anyway, she and Spencer were making fajitas. I watched them put in a variety of ingredients that are poisonous to me and was grateful I'd eaten earlier.

I don't think we started playing until 21:30 or 22:00. By that time, the children had been put to bed. I'm not complaining about the time, as I had plenty of opportunity to catch up with Kim and Spence. But every so often I just laughed to myself, watching the chaos around me. We had three married couples, two with toddlers, and one with an infant. Micah and I were the only singletons. Scott from last time didn't make it (no clue why; no one even mentioned him). Between "David, no! Give that back to Nissa!" "Nissa! Stay back next to mommy!" and conversations along the lines of "Honey? Where did you put X?"
"I haven't seen X."
"Yes you did. It was at Y."
"You told me to get stuff from Z!"
...It was a wonder we managed to play at all...

So, the game. We were attacked by giant snakes that we could hear but not see. I used animal empathy to find out (1) they were feeling threatened and territorial, (2) there were two of them. Then I was essentially useless, as all my attacks missed. Still, I claimed one set of fangs at the end as trophies. Spencer/Dirkenkil opened the next door, activating an arrow trap that narrowly missed him, and discovering maybe 8 drow. Despite me shooting Avis in the arm, we took all the drow out. Dirkenkil opened the next door. There were two bugbears. I managed to hit one of these in the neck. Claire got the same one in the neck. So it was dead. I think Dirkenkil got the other one. Then Dirkenkill opened another door and found a hydra. I wasn't much help here... "I use animal empathy" and roll a natural 1 = everything goes wrong. "Oh, the poor thing is lonely and wants a friend!" Luckily Claire is also a druid, and her animal empathy roll was 18. "No... this thing hates everything alive and is very hungry." Nothing I did after that had much effect, but we eventually took the hydra down, at which point Neil (the DM), called it quits. He was pale, sweating, and looking rather ill. From the sounds of it, he felt worse.