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A couple of weeks ago, the son of one of my regular players had his 12th birthday. A few weeks before that, his mom (my player) asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday, and his answer was, "I want Mr. Woegman to run a D&D game for me."
Now, how could I say no to that? We made the arrangements to have him, my son, and three other kids (one boy, two girls) to come over for a 12 hour marathon game...using Pathfinder, of course! I ran "Crown of the Kobold King", starting the characters off at second level, figuring the kids would like to play characters with a little more oomph than first level, and that the story of adventurous kids needing rescuing would be something they could relate to. The morning before the game, the birthday boy's mom and I took him to the gaming store, and he picked out his first dice (two sets) and I bought him the Pathfinder Core book.
There was some cheating during the game(I've never seen so many "crit" rolls in my life), but I addressed it when it was becoming too blatent and they got the message; I said look, if you just want to always succeed, I can just tell you a story where you all win and we can be done. Or, we can play, have fun, sometimes fail or sometimes win, but enjoy it all the same. We got about halfway through the module when it was time to call it a night, but I promised we would find a time this coming month to finish the module off.
Apparently, it was a big success. His mom said that he is still talking about the game two weeks later. The parents of the girls who played (they're gamers too) said that the girls had a blast, and can't wait till the game continues. And last night, the mother of the other boy that was there called me, telling me that she's never seen her son so passionate about anything, that after much begging, she bought him the Beginner's Box and that he has been reading every night, because he wants to learn how to run a game. He also begged her to ask me to run a game for his birthday in a few months!
On top of that, my son, whose birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, said that he wants me to run a game on his birthday too, and wants his own copy of the core book so he can read it when he's at home with his mom (my ex). :)
Monsters, I tell ya! Gaming monsters!
Hey, just because you haven't written out their stat blocks doesn't mean they don't have 'em!
Well done Sir. Well done!
Great post, woeg! And thanks for bringing new gamers into the fold. :D
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I wish I had something sufficient to say to express the delight I feel when I read posts like this.
Gaming is an amazing hobby that can supplement and compliment so many things. It also generally pulls away from some of the more destructive pursuits that are out there and builds strong social bonds.
Playing with kids and bringing in new players is wonderful, grats to you both, and keep up the good work!
I wish I could express the same delight I had at my son being happy to do the math to add up die rolls and bonuses. Usually getting him to do math is a slog but he took a certain glee in it when he was trying to kill goblins.
Awesome!
We're all kinda waiting for the son of our group's house-host to get old enough to jump in the game. Shouldn't be much longer now! :)
Math is awesome for puzzle traps as well! :)
I'm not as surprised about my son wanting to game...I started running very basic games for him when he was seven. However, this is the first time he has taken the initiative to really read the material, to learn, and that makes me feel so proud. I've always been a big reader, but his mom is not at all, and so he doesn't get a lot of reading encouragement at home. Swells my chest with pride!
Their game will continue on the weekend of the 17th - my son's birthday party weekend! It should be a blast!
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Gaming should be a pretty effective way of teaching low level math. D20 is a bit simple, but good for arithmetic. It might be interesting to design a game system to use as many math concepts as possible. Integer arithmetic is pretty much automatic. If you go to real number Cartesian positioning you get trig. Using multiple randomization schemes for different mechanics can get you a decent swath of statistics. Algebra can crop up in a sufficiently complicated magic system. You might even make stuff ugly enough that differential calculus is beneficial for optimizing damage/mana ratios but I can't see a way to make it required...I wish I could express the same delight I had at my son being happy to do the math to add up die rolls and bonuses. Usually getting him to do math is a slog but he took a certain glee in it when he was trying to kill goblins.I wish I had something sufficient to say to express the delight I feel when I read posts like this.
Gaming is an amazing hobby that can supplement and compliment so many things. It also generally pulls away from some of the more destructive pursuits that are out there and builds strong social bonds.
Playing with kids and bringing in new players is wonderful, grats to you both, and keep up the good work!
That game is called Traveller. You get to use basic algebra when you travel within a solar system (sub-light essentially).