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::Ogre sized marshmallow *battlenaut wearing armor sheets of reinforced graham cracker plating looks up at the moon a second before vomiting a torrent of scalding hot chocolate onto a platoon of screaming soldiers. "Wan't S'more?!" he chides in a voice so deep and rumbling it challenges the thunder of battle itself.
Mercenaries from the Plane of Sugar are used by both sides. Usually to hunt down desserters.
My work is done here.
Mounts cannon and fires self out of thread.
KA-BLAAM!!!
Mercenaries from the Plane of Sugar are used by both sides. Usually to hunt down desserters.
I see you've joined the dark side with that wicked pun, Xuttah.
I killed a thread with a pun.Mercenaries from the Plane of Sugar are used by both sides. Usually to hunt down desserters.I see you've joined the dark side with that wicked pun, Xuttah.
Puns are mightier weapons than most give them credit for. It is rumored that a Virginia Dare pun is what obliterated the Roanoke Colony overnight.
Capt Aubrey was a punner, and it brought him nothing but luck and prizes. And women trouble, but hey...
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There's a reason I practiced necromancy on this thread.
Those of you who have read my posts in it know about my stories of playing RPGs with my daughter, which started when she was 3 years old. Among other things...
My daughter is now 7 1/2. She recently asked to play D&D for real, so I dug out my old Basic Set. She saw almost half of the rooms in Palace of the Silver Princess before she got bored.
Since I wrote that, my daughter (who's now 8) asked to have the game revived, and she explored 70% of that dungeon, and we got several PC level-ups, before she got bored of it again. But that's not what I came here to write.
In all this time, I never wrote about my YOUNGER child, my son. Even after he turned 4, he lacked cognitive skills that my daughter had had at 3. (Yeah, I know it's unreasonable to compare two different children this way, but I don't have a lot of experience with children, so my older child is the only frame of reference I have.) When he talked, he generally babbled nonsense, drifting incoherently from one phrase to a disjoint one. I was starting to grow concerned that he would never be able to...
...play RPGs. (What, you think I care about his academic performance?!? RPGs are the really crucial things! But seriously...)
Around December, I was pleased to discover that he was finally starting to learn to reason. In the months since then, he's been getting better and better (although he still babbles incoherently a lot.)
And I notice that he's very bright in some ways. His memory of what people tell him is surprisingly good. His vocabulary is phenomenal for his age.
Still, his primitive reasoning skills made me think that he wasn't ready for RPGs yet. Our one half-hearted attempt at Candyland: The RPG (see my posts above) convinced me of that. Sure, I could read to him about Aleena and Bargle, (I'm referring to the introductory adventure from the old D&D Basic Set) and he would roll dice whenever prompted to do so, but he couldn't REALLY play, could he?
Two days ago, he asked to play D&D. I thought "All right, we'll play until the whim strikes him to stop, and he'll lose interest. That will take 5 minutes." He created a fighter character, and asked me to create a magic user to "DMPC." I was amazed that we got that far, but once we get the adventure started, he'll quit, right?
On the second night, when we started an adventure (really just a simple cave complex that I improvised,) he started to amaze me. This kid remembers rules and terminology. He catches on quickly. He still babbles nonsense sometimes, but with a little coaching, can start focusing again. He explored caves, fought monsters, and collected treasure, and OMG THE KID ACTUALLY SEEMED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT HE WAS DOING!!!
Okay, but NOW he'll lose interest, right?
Tonight, he asked to continue playing. It was the third consecutive night, and I started to think it wasn't just a passing whim. So we went on, and I started to regret not preparing the adventure beforehand, because this kid was zipping right along. THE KID IS FRIGGIN' FOUR YEARS OLD, FOR PETE'S SAKE! Tonight, he had his first "peaceful," "talky" encounter, and his first "truce" encounter. He also suffered his first defeat. A living statue knocked both his character and mine unconscious. The pair woke up in a cage to find themselves captives of... Bargle the Magic-User. I had trouble deciding where to go from there, so I said "Oh, look at the time! Time to go to bed!"
Now that I had time to think about it, I know just how to continue the adventure. I just need to write up Bargle's stats...
I ramble on. I wonder if anyone is still reading after all that. But I just HAD to get that out of my system.
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A great tale Aaron. I’m glad that you and your kids are enjoying the game together!
My son turns four in a few weeks, he’s really interested in ‘dungeons and dragons’ (well, its mostly Pathfinder these days actually), and loves looking at my Paizo books, but I figured it would be at least a few more years until he ‘s really ready to play. Like your son, he has a fantastic vocabulary (at least I think so) and a good memory, but he tends to have a short attention span, and his reading, reasoning and problem solving skills are still developing. But maybe he will be ready sooner than I think!
I’m pretty sure there are 3.5 stats for Bargle in one of the latter Dungeon magazines, perhaps even the ultimate issue?
I’m pretty sure there are 3.5 stats for Bargle in one of the latter Dungeon magazines, perhaps even the ultimate issue?
Right on spot!Dungeon 150 has the adventure "Kill Bargle!", written by Jason Bulmahn.
Stefan
Thanks for the support, Mothman and Stebehil.
Alas, aside from the fact that Dungeon 150 is so rare and expensive, and aside from my feeling that I need stats right away, in case they come into play in the game tonight, so I can't wait for a magazine to come in the mail, there's also the matter that I'm running this adventure for my son in BECMI. For all my raving about how smart he is, there's no way I would consider playing 3.X with him at that age.
But nevermind. I just wrote BECMI stats for Bargle today. I made him tough enough that even if it does come to combat, he'll get away and become a recurring villain, in the extremely unlikely event that this becomes a long campaign.
Whoa! What just happened to this thread? It suddenly got moved to the "website feedback" subforum, and got renamed. Was this deliberate?
Whoa! What just happened to this thread? It suddenly got moved to the "website feedback" subforum, and got renamed. Was this deliberate?
We hooked it up to be the discussion thread for the Blog post that inspired it.
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Hey Aaron Bitman, my son doesn't ever get to see me game but he is completely facinated whenever I play Computer Wargames and is always asking me when I will "play your game". He has already learned to identify different units and thier basic function (archers shoot from far away, horses charge, infantry make the line etc.).
So when you introduced him to the game did you talk about the rules at all first or just explain as you went along? I don't have lots of minis (hardly any actually) how important was the table top (I'm guessing very)?
I guess I'm asking for advice on how to get started, I was not planning on gaming with him at all until he showed interest but now he has got to the point that the considers "helping me fight wars on the computer" to be father son time.
Well, my four-year-old son is STILL playing. Of course, I sometimes have to give him some extra help. For instance, I might say "Before you leave the room, do you want to do something? Like search the room for traps and treasures?"
But for the most part, he seems to be learning quickly. He seems to remember names better than I do, and I'm the one choosing those names!
When I play D&D one-on-one - which I have done many, many times - I would have two PCs controlled by the player, and two controlled by the DM. If I had known my son would stick with this game, I would have set it up that way from the start. As it was, we had two PCs get captured by the villain, Bargle. So we created two more PCs and had them rescue the first two, attacking Bargle and chasing him off. Last night, we had the foursome go on the adventure "The Fountain of Health" from Dungeon magazine issue 39.
Sometimes, that boy surprises me. He refuses to talk to most of the girls in his class, seeming to express a distaste for them. So it came as no surprise when he made both of his PCs male. But when I made one of my PCs a woman, my son actually said that one of HIS PCs was a little bit in love with her! He later expressed a wish that he had made one of HIS PCs female, and seemed disappointed when I suggested that he stick with the characters as he had created them. Maybe I should allow him to throw in a FIFTH PC...?
And once again, I have to babble about my (now 5-year-old) son's progress in D&D. (And for those of you who don't want to bother reading my old posts, here's a quick recap:)
Eight months ago, when he was 4, my son started playing Basic D&D. Among other things in his first few days, he saw one PC get cursed, and had to pay an NPC cleric 1000 GP to remove the curse.
Later, he finished the "Fountain of Health" adventure (from "Dungeon" magazine, issue 39,) and extracted some healing water from the slowly-running fountain.
Today, after several months hiatus, he started playing again. The party battled some orcs and won from them a dagger +1, which my magic-user "DMPC" wanted, and took. My son said "Wait! What if it's bad? It would cost 1000 GP to get rid of the curse!"
I goggled. He remembered that little detail after over EIGHT MONTHS?!? *I* didn't remember it until he mentioned it!
When we discussed healing up after a battle, he tentatively suggested drinking healing water to speed it up. I said to him "Wait. Do you really want to use up your healing potions?"
He replied "We could go back to the Fountain of Health to get more." He remembered that too!
