Monday Memories: Stitch

I am a divorcee who is happily remarried, and I have a daughter from my first marriage. She is my baby girl, and my pride and joy. When her mom and I first separated, my daughter was very young. Custody amounted to me having visitation every other weekend, and for the full Summer, as well as alternating holidays. Pretty standard, as most divorced dads probably now.

Anyways, when she was about 8 or 9, I was very much active with my gaming group. At the time we were working our way through AEG’s The World’s Largest Dungeon. We started off playing at my house, but eventually moved to other locations. Long story. We played every Saturday, including the weekends I had my daughter. At first, she was content to watch TV, or do whatever entertained her.

At this point I should probably give a bit of background on our party. When we first entered, we had a human fighter, a gnome wizard, some kind of psionicist, and two dwarves. My character was a dwarf barbarian named Brak. During our second session, I was unable to play, so I had the other dwarf player run Brak for me. Somehow, during the course of the session, Brak opened a door that had a fireball trap (we were barely 2nd level at this point, I think), leaving a smoking ruin. Incidentally, the other dwarf was also killed on accident by the fighter during the same session.

During that week, I had to come up with a new character, and one that could be from within the Dungeon. At the time, I was all about this website a guy had where he was making orc-only classes for 3E. So, with the DM’s permission, I created Gortek, an Orc Warrior. We worked out how he joined the party, and went from there. I have to say, I was enjoying Gortek more than I had been Brak, so I wasn’t too butthurt for long.

So, back to where I was going with my daughter. After about month and half of playing, she became interested in playing as well. She had dabbled in D&D before, and was an avid CCG player (we played a lot of Raw Deal and Warlord). So, the DM and I came up with a character for her, and built in a reason why she wasn’t always present.

I imagine Stitch looked something like this.

Stitch was a goblin rogue who had gotten lost in the Dungeon and was surviving by hiding and scavenging (incidentally, my daughter never even considered making her character a girl). When he met our party, he latched on to Gortek, seeing something familiar in the orc. Gortek immediately liked the little guy, mainly because he picked on the gnome, who was a right little bastard (and now a necromancer). So Stitch became Gortek’s little companion, who often wandered off for days at a time, and then suddenly show up again (thus a reason for him not being present on weekends when my daughter was with her mom, or wasn’t interested in playing with us). All in all, it worked out great, and Stitch soon became our mascot.

My daughter is 18 now. She’s all grown up, and (sadly) isn’t all that interested in D&D or RPGs. But she still remembers those games, and we sit and joke about them to this day. I can smile with pride at this, because it was a bonding that her mom never understood, and would never truly appreciate. My kid is an avid reader, and loves fantastical stories. Even though she has moved on to supernatural romance (she’s an avid Twi-hard), I can appreciate that her love of reading came from me and my own example.