Happy Halloween! Now is the time for costumes, scares, and candy.
I am now a grown adult, and thus no longer trick-or-treat. However, because I am a grown adult I can now simply buy as much candy as I want. There are also very few people who can tell me not to do this.
This has ended up being much more of a problem than I thought it would be when I was 12.
Anyway, I’ve come up with a novel idea for limiting candy intake which I call “tabletop trick-or-treating.” Essentially it uses D&D to replace the door-to-door candy gathering I once did as a child (and wouldn’t be able to do now even if I was still a child because of a literal plague).
It seems pretty simple, so… here we go!
Firstly, try to remember around how many houses you would normally visit while trick-or-treating as a child. Failing that, make up a number and just make-believe that it has any actual statistical value.
Next, roughly estimate how generous your childhood neighbors were using the following table. Assume here that none of them were generous enough to give out full-size candy bars because A) they weren’t, and B) you are physically incapable of eating that amount of raw sugar at this age.
| Generosity |
Die Size |
| Stingy |
Rather than use a set die size, roll the largest die closest to your total number of houses visited and add a modifier to make up the rest; IE for a 42-house gauntlet, roll 2d20 + 2. |
| PTA “Trunk-or-Treat” |
1d6 per “house” but at least half the result must be granola bars or fruit |
| Fairly Generous |
1d4 – 1 per house (minimum one) |
| Very Kind |
1d4 per house |
| Enthusiastic |
1d4 + 1 per house |
| “Hey Kiddo, Let’s Put Some of These Away, Alright?” |
2d4 per house |
| Dentist Neighborhood |
2d6 per house but you have to tape a dentist’s business card to each candy |
Finally, roll as directed on the table. Buy your Halloween candy (and a six-foot long pole to hang the candy bowl off of) and pick out a number of pieces equal to the rolled number. Eat them and then don’t get any more. Just don’t.
Once Halloween is over, take the candy out back and burn it to appease the trick-or-treat gods and to prevent you from eating more so it “won’t go to waste.”
And there you have it! The brand new, never-before-seen Dungeons and Dragons solution to over-consumption of candy during the Halloween season. I’ll be trying it myself this year even though I know I’ll abandon it as soon as I run out of candy. But if you try it and have more self-control than me (imagine a really impulsive third grader), let me know how it goes!
