Earlier this year, I went to the movie theater with my son and we ended up playing a little of D&D with made up rules. You can see the game here, including the now legendary Troll who can’t build a bridge encounter.
When I came back from Gen Con a few days ago, I told my children that a lot of people who made the games daddy played knew about the story games we played over the last year.
Rory: Do they know about Carthain’s powers of multiplying herself?
Nico: And that you shoot fire from your fingers!
Chatty: Yes, and they really know about your adventures Nico, especially the story where you helped a Troll who had to build a bridge.
Nico: Hey! I remember that game, it’s the one in your blue notebook! Can we play again soon so you can start telling stories about us again?
Chatty: I’d like that…
Last weekend, Nico and I set out to go and watch the latest Robert Rodriguez movie: “Shorts”. The Movie theater has quite a few arcade games and Nico likes to play a few of them before or after the movie. So I asked him: “Do you want to go early and play with the arcade games or do we go a bit later and continue our story game in my Notebook?”
Nico: Story game!
So we made it to the cinema, got our popcorn and bucket-sized drinks and sat in the mostly empty theater. I reopened my notebook and recapped the situation.
Chatty: So you’re Super Nico, adventurer extraordinaire. You live in the village drawn here, you purchased all your things in the shop here (review of Inventory) and you entered the Dungeon here.
Nico (pointing the map): That’s where the Troll is. He lets me pass now!
Yes. Here was a fork in the corridor and you used your metal detector to find where there was more treasure and you chose left, where you came to a barred corridor filled with doors on each side and ending with a wall.
Oh, that’s here that I’ve fought a Goblin and I used my crossbow to bounce the door and have it push the keys to me!
Wow, you have a great memory! That’s exactly it. And now you have 2 choices. First, you found that the last door to your right opens up into a corridor that goes deeper in the mountain (drawn by Nico after the last game). Secondly, you discover that the goblins have dug a small tunnel underneath the bed of the room where the goblin who attacked you burst out of. What do you do?
I follow the goblin tunnel.
It’s very tight, you’ll have to crawl. And it’s very dark.
Okay, then I keep my axe and my lantern in each hands and I crawl through the space.
You make it into a large mostly empty cave. The first thing you see is a large Cauldron sitting on a fire and 3 goblins arguing around it. When they see you, the one on your right takes out a shortsword, the one on your left takes out a spear and the last one, across the Cauldron from you, readies a bow. What do you do?
Hmmm. Can I take my magic axe to throw it at the Sword goblin, rebound it off the wall and hit the bow goblin?
Sure, let’s play it Rock-Paper-Scissors (Nico lost), awww, well the goblins capture you! Your stuff is piled nearby but you have your arms and legs attached to a spear and you are lying on the floor. The goblins are slicing vegetables into the cauldron and adding more wood to make the fire hotter.
Hmmm… if only I had a knife hidden on me.
Sorry, your inventory says that you had no knife. However, a spear is actually like a knife attached to a long pole and the blade is just over your head.
Ohhhh… can I slice the ropes on it?
You betcha!
I do it!
Okay, so you silently slice the ropes around your wrists and free them. Your legs are still attached to the spear though.
Okay, so I slowly crawl to my pile of equipment and recover my shield.
Okay, you got it, what now, they haven’t noticed you yet.
I want to throw the spear to hit 2 goblins and I want to throw my shield on another one to cut his head off.
Ohhh, your shield is not quite like Captain America, but close enough that you could stun the goblin. Let’s play for it…
(Breaking narrative) At that point I realized that the yes/no approach to rock/paper/scissors didn’t serve the purpose of the story at all. So taking a page out of Mouse Guard, I decided that a failure would rather make things more interesting instead of leading to downright failure.
Chatty (After Nico lost another contest): You throw your spear and it catches both goblins by their cloaks and sticks them on the wall. However you don’t get the time to throw your shield as you trip because of your bound legs. The other goblin has drawn his sword and charges you!
Nico: I protect myself with my shield and I get my axe out.
The sword gobling tackles you but your shield saves you! The other two goblins are freeing themselves, you gotta act fast!
I cut legs free and I attack sword goblin with my magic Axe! (He wins the contest)
The sword goblin falls dead, the other two are freed!
I throw my axe at one and I charge into the second one with my shield! (Wins contest, twice)
Great, one goblin falls dead with an axe protruding from his forehead and another has had his faced smashed in by a large piece of flat metal.
Yay! I take their stuff!
(He learns fast) Okay so you get 21 pieces of silver from their pockets, a sword, a bow and a spear.
I go back in town, sell everything except the sword (that he kept)!
Okay, well you make 6 pieces of gold all in all, a good first day in the dungeon if you ask me…
And then the movie started.
Nico really likes this type of game, but I see in him a tendency to want more complexities in his games, so I’m thinking of upgrading the game to something like Sword&Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. While he’s old enough to tackle D&D 4e, I want to focus the game on exploration more than fighting, and I don’t want Nico to focus his attention on 4e’s combat crunch quite yet.
Yes, I could play 4e with little or no combat, but I want to explore how he perceives the games I played when I was near his age.
Knowing my son, he’ll ask you if you enjoyed his stories and will want to play another one soon. As usual, I’ll share your comments with him.
“Yay! I take their stuff!
I go back in town, sell everything except the sword”
He’s a natural D&D player 🙂
.-= Dave T. Game´s last blog ..Congratulations to Obsidian Portal and Kobold Quarterly =-.
I love your “say yes” attitude when playing with Nico. I can see it feeding his imagination as he bounces spears and throws shields. He’s going to make a very good player and game master some day. You should be proud! 🙂
.-= Brian N´s last blog ..Core Revision: Injury and Dying Part 2 =-.
@Dave: Yes, he’s got the base reflex. That’s why I lean toward Microlite74 or Swords & Wizardry… or some other game based on the same playing style, for the next step in Nico’s game. Although I’m willing to do a few more sessions in the Mountain Dungeon by the town.
@Brian: Thanks man, one of my non-parental goals of the whole thing was to grow used to the Say Yes mentality. The unexpected bonus was seeing how cool ideas from a child mind’s can be… how unfettered by logic or imposed correctness. We need more of that…
This is awesome, I love to see the youth learning the 3 D’s, delving, destroying the baddies, and dealing with the treasure.
Wow, this is inspiring stuff, I look forward to gaming with my kids one day (when I have them). I really enjoyed the “Mouse Guard approach” to turning failures into a more interesting story. I think it is a lesson that works no matter the age of ones players.
I eagerly await the next installment of the Notebook Campaign!
I’d upgrade to S&W too, but I can’t lose the feeling in my gut that it would not be of the same caliber as these rock-paper-scissor games.
Cool game, but … “one goblin falls dead with an axe protruding from his forehead” … isn’t that a bit on the brutal side for a kid? Just wait till he comes home from school with a note “Nico has a tendency to solve conflicts with his schoolmates by hitting them in the head with an axe. The schoolboard does not approve of this! Please advise your son that there are situations where severe mutilation is not the proper answer.”
.-= m.a.´s last blog ..8-Bit Legomania =-.
@Chatty: Very cool. It’s seems your son is learning very fast and I couldn’t avoid a smile when I read he wanted to cut of heads with his shield … 😀
@m.a.: Don’t worry, as long as Chatty doesn’t get him a battle axe for next birthday, everything is safe.
.-= Stargazer´s last blog ..Interview with David Bezio =-.
Really awesome stuff Chatty! Keep it up! Make our rolep-playing ranks swell with the young! lol. Seriously, it sounds like Nico has really got a great imagination and your “say yes” attitude has really given him a green light to explore situations and think outside the box!
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Steal my Map!! =-.
@Gordon: It’s really fun to see how the basics concepts of one game occur almost spontaneously regardless of the system used. However, I must note that Nico played some World of Warcraft, which also has the 3Ds.
@Corvys: I think that the failure = complication concept will become a central part of my gaming with my children, trying to see how deep in trouble we can get and still keep things fun. What I’m interested now is how I could make a D&D 4e Skill Challenge based on just that.
@Trabant: All “upgrades” to games leave something behind… and if that something is too important, remaining with the same system is warranted. The advantages of Notebook D&D is that I can play it anywhere I can lay my book and write in it.
But I’m sure I could bring my son to Burger KIng and play a game of S&W or Microlite74 with a Notebook, a sheet of paper, 2 pencils and a set of Polyhedrals. Just like when I played the Dragonlance modules 26 years ago.
@m.a.: You are right, I have a confession to make, I may have taken a bit too much artistic license with that scene. I don’t usually make any reference to blood or how weapons do the damage they do to an opponent when I play with children. If I recall correctly, I said that the axe hit the goblin and both fell on the floor. Writing the story last night, I let the prose get the better if me. Sorry about that.
@Stargazer: NIco is very equipment focussed. He likes to do stuff with tools. That makes me think that would probably love to play an adventure where he finds cool items whose functions he would need to experiment with to learn. On the other hand, my daughter prefers magic spells and powers that come from her.
I think I need to introduce the wand of wonder soon (A wand with 25-100 random effects).
@Wrath: The biggest take home lesson I’m getting from those (and I hope the DMs reading this do too) is that we need to encourage players to become more creative, like they were as kids and we as DM need to learn to say yes more.
Thanks for the kind words, it warms my heart.
Chatty, I can’t even begin to tell you how good that was to read.
I still remember how one of my first player had leanred to play with his Dad as his first player, back in 76. Now he is teaching his kids some OSRIC. I think this is why the doomsayers are wrong about our little hobby.
Like others, I especially like your consious choice to increase difficulty/complication with failures. It encourages the right kind of thinking.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..added Vernidale’s Servant-spell =-.
I just think that both the Doomsayers and the industry have forgotten about the power of sharing family values and hobbies. The Gygax children played with their dad pretty much like I do now with mine and a ton of others are doing it (or look forward to do it).
This is a deep trend, not a fad. Mark my words. 🙂
Oh and hey, thanks for the kudos.
“The unexpected bonus was seeing how cool ideas from a child mind’s can be… how unfettered by logic or imposed correctness. We need more of that…”
I’ve noticed the same thing in new gamers. People who haven’t been playing for years.
I think it’s a deformation of our formal education methods. In order to function in society, we are bound to follow all the rules we are thought. In gaming, this can stifle creativity when “doing what the game allows” and playing with GMs who say ‘No’.
This needs to be re-thought. And several people are already doing it, hence the awesome new games coming up these last few years.
Love it 🙂
BTW: to me, the “making it interesting instead of making it a failure approach” is simply an interpretation of “don’t say ‘no'”. And an awesome one.
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Kellen on Tales of the City Within, Session 3: The Final Chapter =-.
These stories make me wish I had kids of my own 🙂
Good to see he learnt the ‘kill them, take their stuff’ mentality early 🙂
Super inspiring…I’ve run these kinds of simple story games for my 5 year old before, but it’s been a couple of months.
Now, energized by the fun you and Nico had, we’ll be picking our game back up tonight. Yay! Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm!
@Miles: Cool! Let me know how that went!