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Chatty’s Bedtime Campaign: Nico’s Quest

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I have mails to read and posts I planned to do but this… this I have to share with you.

8h15 PM. Nico, my 6 year old son, is playing in his room waiting for me to come and read him a story.

As I come into his room, he tells me he’d rather play than have a story. Knowing my 6 year old’s sharkness, I gently refused, telling him he’d try to hustle me out of a story anyways.

Then inspiration struck! What I’m about to tell you, I never, ever did. I’d like to thank James Wyatt for that.

I tell Nico to get in bed, we’ll make a “Game Story”. He distrusts me. Dad is trying one of his parenting tricks again. After a bit of father/son negotiations, he tentatively agrees to the project.

Here’s a Play by Play.

Nico’s Quest, Chapter 1: Character Generation:

Chatty: Okay, what’s the name of our character in this story?

Nico: Nicolas… looking unsure and still trying to determine where I was going.

Nice name. What does Nicolas do for a living?

(Mumbling): I don’t know.

Is he a Knight, a Pirate, a Spaceman…?

A Knight.

Okay…

(Nico Warms up and cuts off his father): With a Big Sword, a magical sword. It has this Diamond that you press and it shoots lasers!

Cool power, So you’re, like, a Space Knight?

No! I’m just a Knight, you know?

All right, how about another power?

Hmmmmm (Shrugs)

What if you get attacked by Snowmen?

Oh! I got it, another gem button activates flames on it and melts the snowman.

Awesome, do you have anything else on you?

I have this magical armour!

Does it have powers?

Yes, it can control the weather (like Storm in X-men).

Wow, that’s good, anything else?

(Nico is really into it by that time): I can, I can… roll into a ball of steel and move real fast!

Great! So where do you live? What kind of house do you have?

A Castle.

Of Course, are you living alone?

No, You, mom and Rory (his 5 year old sister) live there too

I do?

Yes. Hey daddy, What powers do you have?

I’m not going to be in this adventure Nico.

Oh come on dad!

Well if you must know, I’m a Wizard-King of great power, so that makes you a Prince-Knight.

Cool!

Maybe later we’ll do adventures together. Are you ready to start the story?

Yeah!

Chapter 2: A Strange Visitor

Okay, one morning, someone knocks at the door of the castle.

Are you going to open the door daddy?

I am. Who do you think is at the door, a good guy or a bad guy?

A monster!

What kind of monster?

(Nico, who’s lying beside me, climbs over me and reaches over to point at his Pokemon Poster on his wall) Let’s find someone real bad looking. (He picks and discards a few)

Nico: This one! (Points Pokemon #62, Polywrath)

Chatty: Scary! Okay, well daddy opens the door and talks to someone and then you hear a loud noise. What do you do?

Nico: I go down… No! I grab my Sword and Armour and I go down.

Chatty: The door stands open, empty. A paper is nailed to the door. It says:

Nico, I kidnapped your daddy because I want to be the king! Bring me the Crown to my secret cave before Sundown and I’ll free your father. My cave is super secret and only Sandshrew knows about it.

(Nico helped me pick the Good Pokemon)

Chatty: Okay Nico time for bed, we’ll continue in 2 days. (My wife and I take turns telling stories to each of our kids).

Nico: Daaaad! Just a few more minutes (For once I wasn’t annoyed, I was grateful!)

Okay, one more adventure. So what do you want to do?  Outside your home you see a small town, a forest beside it and a large mountain with lots of caves.

I want to use my armour’s weather powers to blow all the trees away!

Why do you want to do that?

I want to see if someone in the forest is running away.

Hmmm (I then decided to blow whatever thin plot hook I had and run with it), okay do you uproot the trees?

No I want to keep the stumps there so they can regrow (Regeneration trees? Check.)

Okay, so you use lightning to shear all the tress clean off their stumps and you shape lightning buzzsaws to cut all that wood in neat stacks of wood.

Cool!

Then the Lumberjacks come out of the village and see all the wood and they explode in cheer!

Yay!

Then an old man comes out of the forest, he has a huge white beard and asks you ‘Why did you destroy the home of all the animals and the birds of this forest? Look at all these animals behind me, looking sad”.

(Nico makes a wry/worried face, realizing the consequence of his action) Well, can I ask the lumberjacks to build a huge farm to be a home to all the animals?

That’s a great idea! The lumberjacks get to work and build a luxurious Forest farm. The old man, who is a druid…

What’s that?

It’s an old forest magician.

Okay.

Well the druid plants a few trees in your farms’ gardens and uses magic to grow them so the birds can stay here too.

Yay!

You did it Nico, you repaired your action and made the animals a better house, the lumberjacks cheer you and say that you are a hero! Time for bed!

This was the best story ever, can we continue next time?

Of course!

Chatty’s Conclusion

I could add 100’s of words analyzing that… There were tons of lessons here for me, even after 25 years of DMing.

I’m not going to do it. If you don’t get it, come back and read it later, I don’t think I could explain it.

Should I do weekly updates?

Credits: Nicolas Menard (Story), Nintendo (Image)

Comments

  1. What a great thing to do with your kid. 🙂

    My dad and I collaborated on a story every night before bed for years. It’s one of the reasons I became a gamer, and it was one of my favorite things growing up.

  2. That was amazing! I can’t wait to try that when my son is a bit older.
    Oh, and definately keep updating.

  8. Amazing. Incredibly well done. While I don’t have children myself, I shall keep it in mind for my own (eventually) and I could use it with my nephews and neice.

  10. That was so awesome. I started a full campaign with my 7 year old with some modified rules where he is Conan, the half-orc fighter. I know the fun you speak of! Kids can really throw your plot hooks out of whack, and make you love it 😉

    I’ll have to post Robby’s adventure some time.

    Toms last blog post..Alignment Part 3 – Worst of the Worst

  11. @Tom: There’s a whole generation of gamers with kids now that are trying to connect with them and teach them their passion. I really think there’s a lot of room in our Niche for Gaming with Kids Blog posts.

    All this to say: Yes, do it!

    @All: Wow, while I knew this would get comments (I read the Story Game thread about the 7 year old kid playing Keep on the Shadowfell with Legos) I never expected such feedback!

    Thank you all.

  12. That’s just great. Honestly if I ever have the luck to have a son or daughter out there, I hope I get the chance to experience very much the same.
    Worlds tend to look different from a child’s perspective and I would love to know what various RPG worlds would look like.

    For my part, I would love to have you continue on Nico’s Quests.

  21. This is both refreshing and quite entertaining. I’m no stranger to the idea (since I have a friend DM that has a week day solely devoted to gaming with little kids) but I’ve never tried it myself. I’m really happy to see that your little lad is having fun and I hope we can hear more stories in the future…

    I am also blatantly stealing his ideas. A sword that shoots lasers when you push a button and a magical armor that controls weather?! pff, someone is having that at some point in my next game for sure!

    O_o Oh dude, my next game is 4th Ed. D&D… that’s going to be interesting alright.

    PS: Dear lord, you have that “autocarsinsurance” stuff too?! Apparently it’s just a ghost blog that’s linking to a lot of people. Anything that should be done about it? (I’m a newbie blogger in this regard.)

    the_blunderbusss last blog post..Gorilla Jam! ep1: Sailors in the Sea of Fate

  23. I just translated all your comments to my son.

    Nico says:

    I’ll always continue playing stories with my dad. Thank all your friends on the computer for all the nice comments. I really like when Daddy asks me questions and tell me what happens after.

    Now can I play with the computer now?

    Dad? Did you just write that? Coooome on!

    Chatty: Thank you all. That’s more validation that I can handle! =) Now I’ll fire miniclips.com for Nico.

  24. Awesome post!
    This really brought back memories. I’d forgotten that my parents used to ask me to tell them a story before bed and they’d occasionally further the plot or details by asking questions. It’s very much like what you’re doing. I’ll have to remember this when I have kids.

  26. When rehasing the story with the whole family while driving to my brother in-law’s, Nico pointed out that I had forgotten one detail in my re-telling:

    Laurelie, Nico’s little sister, also has a power. She ‘knows’ about things and is available to answer any question Nico has if he gets stuck somewhere in his quest.

    =)

  28. Hi Philippe!

    It’s always nice to see when hardcore crunch-loving players and freeform haters gain insights into playing that broaden their horizons 😉

    Yes-Play was, I gather, a form of play you haven’t used very often before, and the freedom it entails was an epiphany for you.

    Interestingly enough, Yes-Play is a technique coming from the field of improvisational theater, which works almost exclusively with a great deal of handwaving and no crunch at all.

    So, a crunch-lover like you experienced the joy of fluffy play 🙂

  29. Chatty, you rock. So totally love the way you captured his imagination. And yes, there are a whole lot of “lessons” in this. Being a teacher (passion, not profession atm), I think ooh I could use this. As a parent, you’re a great teacher. Rock on and please update!

  31. >We don’t lose that Creativity Bart, we block it, hide it behind fears of
    >looking silly, of failure.

    And Logic.

    Here we see the Master of Crunch going down in flames…

    *bows*

  34. My son is only 18 months old, but I look forward to the time when I can start this sort of thing with him. Its one thing to be read to as a child but another thing to be a part of the story, making it your own.

    Czars last blog post..One more CzArcade mod.

  36. I thought about, when I have kids, telling them the story of my 2nd Edition Paladin (he is the namesake for the ID I’m using). But, this seems even better. I’ve popped over here to CDM a time or two, but after this post, this blog is going into my bookmarks. Cheers, and keep us updated on the adventures of Nico!

  37. @Tom: I’m happy that you did! Good stuff, especially about sparing that Goblin’s life.

    @Avaril (and all other new readers): Welcome to the Blog, I hope you enjoy your stay! Thanks for the praise.

  38. I’ve a 5yo and a 3yo. I had been reading them books at bedtime, and one night I made something up.

    The next night they told me “We don’t want a story from a book, we want a story from your lungs.”

    So now, when they want me to make something up, they ask for “a story from your lungs.”

    A

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