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November 27, 2005
Captain Princess and Edzilla
So last night my daughter finally got enamored enough of the funny dice to tell me that she wanted to play a game "like you do when you go to gaming nights." Somehow she settled on Castles & Crusades because it had "knights and wizards and dragons and kings and queens and princesses . . . " - and if you have or have had a five-year-old daughter, you know it was that last word that did it.
"So first you have to decide what kind of hero you'd like to be," I explained.
"A princess!"
No surprise there. Heck, there was a thread on RPG.net last month by a guy who had the same thing happen when his wife decided she wanted to learn how to play D&D.
"Okay," I said, "do you want to be a fighting princess or a magic princess?"
"A magic princess!"
This wasn't so hard! She wanted to roll her dice, I knew, so I went ahead and had her roll attributes in order, 4d6keep3, rather than complicate things with a lot of choices or moving around. We also determined that the princess was "an elf princess" and seven years old. Go figure, without cheating on the rolls, we got Str 7, Int 15, Wis 8 - this last, we decided, meant that she was "a little silly."
We looked at the list of 0 and 1st-level spells and I helped her pick based largely on names. (Make people fall asleep? Oh yeah. "Charm Person?" For sure!) There are six rows for each level of spell on the default character sheet so I just filled them all out - it's called Drift, people!
"And what do you want to name your Princess," I asked her?
"CAPTAIN Princess!"
By this point, we're almost done with what I figure she can absorb - I ask her if, since she's a magic princess, she'd like a staff "to thwack people with" and get a quick, enthusiastic assent - and my nine-year-old son is demanding that he wants to make a character too. Your turn, I told him, do you want to be a fighting hero or a magic hero?
"My hero is named 'Edzilla'."
Oh. And what does Edzilla do?
"He's a giant, and he knocks buildings over with his head, and he has only one normal arm."
"I see," I said. "And what does he have for his other arm?"
"A wrecking ball!"
Looking at the character sheet, I write Giant, and Fighter, and just give him a 20 Str right off the bat. He says Edzilla is "stupid" so I suggest a 7 Int. He thinks a "1" would be fine, but we stick with 7. Trying to settle on height, we open the Monsters & Treasure book and find giant heights ranging from 12-20 feet or so. He thinks Edzilla is definitely taller than a normal house, since that's how Edzilla looks in his Ed, Edd and Eddy videogame.
"But don't you think he'd have a hard time if he needs to get into someplace small?" I ask, not so much thinking dungeon, since what self-respecting magic princess would be caught dead in one of those? but thinking, a friendly Giant guarding an Elf princess on a quest can totally work, still, this is the part of getting everybody on the same page.
"Then he just turns back into Ed," he tells me.
Well there is a pretty unsolved issue! My children want to play two different games. My son doesn't so much want to adapt a superhero idea to a fantasy world as just play a superhero idea, and my daughter doesn't want to adapt a fantasy idea to a superhero world as much as she wants to play a fantasy idea. I could help my son build Edzilla in the Marvel Universe RPG in no time flat, and all the math and game concepts would be on a level he'd have no time grokking.
At the same time my daughter wants to roll her dice! MURPG is resource rather than dice-based, and besides, when I suggested that Sarah, an Ed sister, could turn into Captain Princess she objected that Sarah was "too little." So we have clashes at the technical agenda level AND at the level of setting and color. (My son was as resistant to adopting the Edzilla concept to full fantasy play as my daughter was to adapting Captain Princess to superherodom, despite liking superhero cartoons just fine.)
The dilemma goes, so far, unsolved. The simple thing is to suggest we play two different games in turn - a superhero game and a fantasy game. As a parenting thing, it would be interesting to see if we could get that much cooperation going on making everyone happy. The ideal systems would be MURPG and Prince Valiant (for simplicity's sake) but that dice-love of my daughters, which she definitely did not get from Dad, tells against one or both of them. (PV officially uses coins, though I could let her roll dice and just count evens as heads. That might be the way to go.)
Anyway, that's your first episode of RPGs: The Next Generation. At Terpcon last month, I met a UM Student who was herself a second-generation gamer, having been brought up in the faith by her parents. I've held off pushing my kids into playing, waiting for them to come to me. Now here they are, and oy! it's just like the rest of parenting in some ways. Go figure.
Comments
That's utterly cute, and cool. Of course, technical and creative agenda clash are a little more to be expected at that age.
It's just terrible to see the same thing with 30 year old grown adults =P
Posted by: Chris at Nov 27, 2005 1:03:40 PM
Well handled.
I tried introducing my nephew (5 years old) to Heroclix. He insisted on bringing in a magnetic toy he happened to have with him, as a character.
Posted by: Jon H at Nov 27, 2005 3:52:35 PM
Come to think of it, Cartoon Network ought to have their own line of Heroclix. Powerpuff Girls would do well, though perhaps the pieces would have to be built more sturdily.
Posted by: Jon H at Nov 27, 2005 3:55:32 PM
I think Daniel is very ready for a simplified D&D-like game. his current pirate fixation would translate well enough: fighting bad guys or monsters, searching for treasure. however, i'm sure he could handle superheros as well...(though that's not so much his thing.)
dude, we should organize a kid's game night...
Posted by: mrfred at Nov 27, 2005 5:19:37 PM
Daniel should play Monkey, Pirate, Ninja, Robot: the Roleplaying Game. It's an Atomic Sock Monkey Press game.
Posted by: Bill at Nov 27, 2005 6:11:07 PM
Jon, that's very cool about the extra figure. Dang thing having no base must've been a problem, though. We also have some clix - the latest DC starter set - and used it a couple times but that's all.
Mike, simplified is the key, yeah. I was basically simplifyin C&C on the fly, but even so it might be too much, largely cause I don't know it very well still. Alternatives are Prince Valiant and Tunnels and Trolls. Prince Valiant doesn't have official player-character magic rules, nor demihuman kindreds for that matter, so we'd have to do considerable magic elf princess stuff on the fly. Tunnels & Trolls is pretty easy, but I get the feeling what really attracts my daughter to Castle's and Crusades is the cover art, which is very cheerful, really.
If you can get over here for a weekend afternoon game sometime we might want to arrange it. I'm also wondering if Mark B's (you haven't met him but he plays with us) kids are ready to start gaming yet.
Bill, I'm seriously thinking about T&J for the superhero part of my kids' gaming. It's got the dice. And Toby has decided that Double D's superhero identity is basically sitting inside a giant robot. This makes perfect sense, since Edd's the smart one, but you remember how wonky MURPG's powered armor rules are. We did make Edzilla tonight, though, and the Eddy character, who's unofficial superhero name is Quartermaster, since he rides on a giant quarter (that can go up to space) and fires quarters out of one hand that can totally zap you.
The kids have agreed that we'll play a "magic game" for Ellie and then a hero game for my son. That's some progress. I don't know if Toby will still be a giant in the magic game, alas. I figured that the C&C adventure will be about a pseudodragon who steals The Magic Key from the Elf King, and he sends his daughter to get it back (with the friendly giant as escort if there's still a friendly giant). The pseudodragon wants to use the magic key to become a real dragon. There will be goblins and blink dogs and probably a band of trolls. The superhero game I'll think about later.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 27, 2005 8:51:57 PM
Jim, I think the problem was, um, lack of communication.
When you started with your daughter, you had a functioning social contract. She wanted to roll funny shaped dice and play a magical elf princess. Your son, without regard to the social contract already established, tried to change the rules of the social contract and would not bow to what had already been established. You don't want to frustrate, anger or annoy either of your children, you want to give them BOTH a good RP experience, but you're obviously stalled that you can't do that.
This is what I think you should do. Tell your kids that you're going to run solo games with them so they can "get a feel" for role-playing with lots of special attention. Then you run C&C with your daughter as a magical elf princess. And then you run something else with your son so he can be Edzilla.
Then, if they want to play together, you talk to them together and create a social contract between the three of you that you've all agreed on.
My pennies for Charon.
Posted by: Chris Bradley at Nov 27, 2005 10:22:17 PM
Call me dumb, or confused, but why can't a magic princess have an enchanted shapeshifting consort? For example, couldn't your son make an "Ed" character for the normal-sized version and then the three of you could come up with certain conditions for when he can switch?
Also, is it possible that the kids themselves might be relatively unconcerned with setting and color consistency? I'd be more worried about whether their characters are compatible in terms of the type of activities they want to do. Help people? Fight bad guys? Destroy cities?
Posted by: Elliot Wilen at Nov 28, 2005 3:00:16 AM
It'll be a while before I start to hit that point, especially because I'm a gamer married to a non-gamer wife. That, and my son is only just days past a month old, anyway.
Still, there were parts of the above that had me laughing out loud, just because I could hear tones of voice to go with them. ("CAPTAIN Princess")
Posted by: Jeff Dougan at Nov 28, 2005 7:49:58 AM
Priceless stuff.
I've been lucky enough to get kids interested in diceless games where there is much 'character sheet' wiggle room. But if they wanted to roll dice, I'd certainly find a place to include them.
Posted by: Arref at Nov 28, 2005 9:12:44 AM
Arref: Funny, I just discovered Pace last night (by the FATE people, ironically) and "Magic Elf Princess" would be easy to do in that game. But it would violate the "roll pretty dice" social contract Chris alludes to.
Chris and Chris: Indeed, my son is like the guy who no matter what the campaign is, has a suit of powered armor. Or is a ninja. Or both. Playing a fantasy campaign? He came from another dimension. Playing a contemporary game? He came from the future. Playing Amber? He came from a high-tech shadow and made his powered armor "real."
Solo gaming to start might be the way to go. Either way, I'm going to precede any game with a formal, simple social contract to get them used to the idea that it's important for the group to agree on important tenets before play.
Elliot: I left out the part of the narration where I tried that trick, more or less. Suffice it to say, my son doesn't so much want to play a giant, even a size-changing giant, who would help an elf-princess so much as he wants to play Ed being a superhero like in his videogame. Now the upside is that he's put some thought into it, including working out what powers the other Eds should have. (Only Edzilla has powers in the gamecube game.) So he's applying constructive thought to the thing HE wants to do. But it may - we are still finalizing the understandings - be incompatible with the thing his sister wants to do.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 28, 2005 12:14:15 PM
I made the mistake of trying to introduce my kids to roleplaying using D&D 3.5. Now, after that experience, I realize I should have just made up a very simple, single die roll, conflict resolution system instead. The kids didn't get anything but confusion from the massive amount of mechanics. Starting at level 1 was frustrating. They wanted to have narrative input and make up story elements, and in my then-old-school approach I squashed that.
Now, I'm thinking it would have been much better not only to have a simple system, but to let them have the input they want. Instead of indoctrinating them with the GM-player divide and rigid "You can't do this" power structures, they could have used their creativity and played out the story they wanted to.
Posted by: xenopulse at Nov 28, 2005 1:34:38 PM
Gorgeous post, Jim. I love stories about little kids RPing.
As a teenager, I occasionally gamed with my little sister and brother, The best was when my brother, 10 years my junior, GMed for me. He might have been six or seven, and I believe we were (nominally) playing either Marvel Super Heroes or Toon. His games were great. Just don't ask me to reconstruct or explain the psychadelic plotlines. One thing I do remember clearly was the time he told me to roll to see if my superhero PC had the power "Break Down Doors". I failed the roll, but as consolation he gave me the power "Look Through Windows". Hee. You want to see fresh thinking in gaming, let your kids GM.
Posted by: Rob at Nov 28, 2005 2:50:53 PM
a while back, I was putting Daniel to bed, and instead of the usual reading of stories, I suggested we 'make up' one, and did a free-form Thomas the Tank Engine RPG (the only game where you WANT the GM to railroad you!), where he played an engine just arriving on the Island of Sodor and played it from there. did it for about 1/2 an hour and he loved it.
Posted by: MrFred at Nov 28, 2005 2:58:22 PM
So has anyone yet written a good RPG specifically for introducing your young kids to role-playing? I'm running into more and more people who could use something like this...
Posted by: tonyd at Nov 28, 2005 4:27:48 PM
Tony,
Have you looked at The Nighttime Animals Save the World?
Remembering how I failed to introduce my kids to roleplaying properly has made me think about designing for kids as well. It should be easy, allow them to succeed, and encourage them to come up with neat stuff.
Posted by: xenopulse at Nov 28, 2005 7:35:55 PM
I'm in a slightly different place with regard to gaming. I'm teaching someone else's children at my school how to game, and all they know are computer games like Diablo and occasionally Neverwinter Nights. So they are familiar with the idea of being a character, running around killing things, and collecting treasure. But they are unfamiliar with the idea of talking their way out of some encounters, or talking to people to learn useful information. They are also unfamiliar with the idea of multiple paths through an encounter -- most of the maps they work with are static, so the idea of NPCs who change over time, or multiple NPCs worth talking to in the same village or town... these are things they have to get used to. The wilderness adventures, where they can literally choose multiple routes down the mountain to their home base, is particularly eye-opening for them.
Posted by: Andrew Watt at Nov 28, 2005 8:56:17 PM
Nighttime Animals rocks. I do hope to play it with my kids some day. It might be more likely to happen with my daughter than with my son - finding out about Santa Claus and learning curse words, even if you're too polite to use them at home - seems to age a child quickly.
xenopulse: Yes, I intend to seriously drift Castles & Crusades in just the directions you suggest. My daughter and I did draw up the first draft of our game contract tonight, in which she established that
* Captain Princess (currently renamed to Princess Daughter, though I think that's provisional too) is the daughter of the Elf King.
* Captain Princess is on the side of Good.
* There will be monsters.
* There will be bad guys.
* It's okay to kill monsters.
* It's okay to kill bad guys.
* It's NOT okay to kill Captain Princess.
* It's okay to kill HELPLESS monsters and bad guys.
Bloody-minded little child.
She remains eager to play, and indeed we drew up the contract tonight because she really wanted to play but, it being a school night, there wasn't time. The contract gave us a chance to do game activity AND, I hope, establish early in her career that play groups should establish ground rules ahead of time. And since I structured it as me asking questions and her giving answers, she should get the idea that SHE, at least, gets a say! (The more difficult concept that the other participants do too will be part of the advanced course . . . )
Meanwhile my son pinged me about building his robot in MURPG. Dang those powered armor rules never did fit the tenor of the rest of the game. I feel another drift coming on . . .
Also bought/DL'd Truth & Justice just in case.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 29, 2005 12:01:27 AM
Re: Your Daughter
Killing helpless monsters and bad guys is ok? Nice.
Re: Your Son
Just drop the power armor rules. Make Edzilla on the standard 40 points and then say "ok, now, what can he do when he's not riding around in Edzilla?" I bet Toby will be willing to point out all of the things he can't do (you might need to coax him a bit, though).
Posted by: Bill at Nov 30, 2005 4:50:38 PM
Obviously. The solution is something like BESM :-D
-Quatoes
Posted by: Quatoes at Dec 2, 2005 11:17:07 AM
Heh. That's it!
I, uh, don't have to explain why it's not, right?
:)
Posted by: Jim Henley at Dec 2, 2005 11:29:09 AM
So, playing a Jedi-style game of "Dogs in the Vineyard" with my 9 year old and 12 year old sisters was Very Illuminating in how DIFFERENT these ways of thinking were to the two, raised on Amber and AD&D 1stEd... (and a smidgen of BESM just to liven things up, y'see.) I'm still processing. They enjoyed it, but not quite as much as the "Two A's."
Posted by: MT Fierce at Dec 8, 2005 5:37:03 PM
There's a lot of developmental stuff that goes on between 9 and 12. I'd be interested in hearing what you saw.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Dec 8, 2005 7:42:41 PM
Jim --
Keep us updated on sessions with your kids, either here or at the Masters' Council... I'm definitely interested in seeing how all of this develops.
Posted by: Jeff Dougan at Dec 9, 2005 9:49:55 AM
Neel - I posted on my blog ( http://www.alkime.org/mtfierce/gaming/ ) about it in brief, but I'll interview 'em both on Monday for more "in their words." Overall, in brief, the youngest (9) had the easiest time with developing traits, the oldest (my husband) the worst, and I think it was because of the expectations he had as to what would be "important," whereas the youngest knew exactly what she wanted as a character.
Posted by: MT Fierce at Dec 23, 2005 3:54:50 PM
