Tag Archives: RPGs

Awesome Children, Gaming, General

Creative Kids are Creative

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Sooner or later, you’ll notice that I have a fondness for Role-Playing Games, and Dungeons and Dragons in particular.

A while back, my wife and I were chatting about what to do with our children, since we try very hard to make sure that we both get to be a part of any regular gaming group. (This eases tensions, it keeps her from being stuck at home with the kids she’s stuck at home with during the work day, and it keeps me from quitting groups in order to save my marriage. Win all around.)

Participation in any regular gaming groups means taking away significant family time from the kids, who usually end up on “game night” watching movies and playing games by themselves until bed time.

But what iftheywere playing the games?

About a year ago, we tried it out. I spent some time with the kids, helping them create characters and understand the basics of the rules.

Deborah had been given a half-tiger/half-man figure as a present, and she begged me to let her make a tiger-man. The beauty ofD&Dis, if you’re not taking it too seriously, you can do whatever you want. So that was an easy “yes.” Her tiger-man became an archer with the unique name of “Beastly Tiger.” (She has a stuffed bunny named Bunny. This is a trend.)

Jonathan wanted a wizard. But he had seen some pictures of 4th Edition D&D books, so he also wanted “one of those dinosaur guys,” better known as a Dragonborn.

A Dragonborn, from 4th Ed D&D
One of those dinosaur guys

Now if you’re familiar with 4th Edition, you will probably know that Dragonborn don’t make for ideal wizards. They’re more the burly fighter types, solving things with battle axes and brawn instead of balls of lightning and brains. But, again, we’re not taking this serious. And, quite honestly, in my head that gives his character something unique and interesting, a background story that raises questions (and creates opportunities for the DM).
Why did this guy learn to use magic when the rest of his society pursues martial training?
What did he experience growing up–was he an outcast?
Is there something he hopes to achieve through magic that he knows he can’t accomplish by traditional means?

So the answer was, of course, a whole-hearted “Yes.”

Justin was about 6 years old at the time, so he didn’t have much attention span for this sort of thing. He was happy to create a “sneaky guy” and decided to name his character “Clayface” because Justin is an insane fan of LEGO Batman (where Clayface is a villain). Clayface has the power to make himself look like other people… and I can easily picture a stealthy Rogue who is also a master of disguises. So again, a definite “Yes.”

My wife made a character based on a previous campaign, a battle-captain named Bethrynivere who could inspire the others to better performance in a fight. And I threw in a favorite half-orc sorceror whose unique approach to problem-solving often made my kids laugh. So we had our party.

Things only got better once we started playing. After getting the feel for combat with a few bouts in the training arena, they pulled a shift of guard duty and were able to rescue a merchant whose wagon was under attack by goblins. Justin decided his rogue would do some acrobatics as well, jumping into a pit for cover while throwing knives at his target. Jonathan’s wizard cast a couple spells, and then decided he really wanted to run around the pit to crack some goblin on the head with the wizard’s staff (highly unusual behavior for a wizard, but it was still awesome).  Jami had her elf spring up onto the wagon to fight the goblins, sending them flying off the back of the out-of-control vehicle. Seeing that the goblins were beaten but the merchant and Bethrynivere were about to be in a wagon crash, Deborah had Beastly Tiger leap up onto the wagon, grab hold of both of them, and spring off in a backward flip to save them from harm. (Borak, my half-orc, pretty much slept through the whole event.)

I love game night with adults — it’s always interesting to see what creative solutions (or attempted solutions) my friends come up with. But I never knew how full of surprises my kids and their characters could be. I’m sure there will still be some D&D nights where they’re stuck watching a movie or playing upstairs in their rooms. It’s great that there can also be some D&D nights where we hand them their dice, lay out the maps, and ask, “What do you do next?”

Gaming, General

Table-top RPGs: When I "got it"

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I’ve played table-top RPGs here and there most of my life. My brother and a friend got started playing Iron Crown Enterprise’s MERP — Middle Earth Role Playing. They were both huge fans of Tolkien, and my brother got me started on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well. So of course I wanted to play a game set in that world.

This was in the days when it seemed everybody in the evangelical church “knew” thatDungeons and Dragonswas like a gateway drug to all Satan’s deceptions. You start playing that game, and next thing you know, you’ll be flying on a broom throwing fireballs and summoning evil spirits… or so the traditional wisdom said.

So D&D was out of the question. But a game based on Middle-Earth had to be okay, right? Of course it was!

We played MERP for a while, and then we switched to BattleTech, a futuristic game where your characters pilot 40-foot-tall humanoid destruction engines, pounding each other with lasers and missiles across a hexagon battlefield. My brother usually ran the games… I’m sure both systems had some term for what they called that person, but the common term from D&D is “Dungeon Master” or DM.

Years later, I found myself sitting at a table with a few friends from the Chapel who were interested in a casual RPG group. I had picked up the newest rulebooks ofD&D, by now freed from the fear that these books were instant portals to the deepest levels of hell. It turns out, if you read through the books and talk to people who play RPGs, all they’re doing is cooperative social story-telling. The devil’s work, indeed.

I had a grand plan in mind to start off the new group’s adventures, and I was both nervous and excited about what it meant to be a good DM. You have to be able to come up with a fairly interesting setting, then communicate that setting, then adapt to all the ways the players will find tobreak everythingin that setting. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The players fought some bandits that had set up a “toll” on a busy merchant road. They learned where the bandits had set up camp, and decided to pay a visit. This was all pretty mundane, but we had several players who had never tried an RPG before, so it was an easy way to start learning the rules. The team decided to approach the camp, and developed a plan. Some snuck around behind the camp, climbing up a sheer cliff face. Some stayed hidden in the trees on the outskirts of the camp, ready to rain arrows and magic down on the bandits if needed, and the main “voice” of the group strolled right into camp with my wife’s character to negotiate with the bandit leader.

At this point, I’m just having fun, playing the part of the surly bandit that my friend is trying to negotiate with. What might the bandit be thinking? He’s trying to trick me, he’s some heroic type… but he makes a good offer, and the money might be worth it. Plus, me and my crew, we have this fellow and his friend completely outnumbered. So if he tries anything, he’s going to get beat down fast.

Then my friend says to me, out of nowhere, “I attack the fire.”

What?  I probably did a double-take. “You what now?”

“I attack the fire. It’s a pretty big campfire, right?”

“Yeah…”

“I want to attack it,” he continues. “I don’t know how hard it would be to do this, but I want to basically swing my warhammer like a golf club and knock the burning wood and embers into this guy’s face.”

My mind is racing, trying to figure out what happens next, and my friend rolls a die to see how well his character does at this attempt. He does pretty well. I’m excited, because I never would have expected this.

My player asks, “So the fire is pretty well scattered, right?”

“Yeah…” I answer, probably with a cringe for where this is headed.

“So… these are all human bandits, right? And you said it was a pretty dark night when we were coming to the camp. So this is the only real source of light. And none of us are humans… all of us havelow light vision.”

We had a dwarf paladin, a few elves, and a halfling (more or less a Hobbit). According to the rules, all of them could see in dim light as well as you and I can see during the day. My human bandits… not so much.

The glorious battle I had planned turned into an epic slaughter in seconds, starting with the fateful phrase, “I attack the fire.”

That pretty much sold me on being a DM. It’s great to set up a world or a story, to describe a setting or a mission… it’s even better to set all that out and see how the players will break it and make it theirs.

That sneaky devil… clearly his trick worked. (/sarcasm)