Nothing to See Here...

This winter gymnastics schedule is killing us. We haven't had a chance to play. I expect that trend to continue this weekend, due to the Superbowl.

Spoilers follow!

On the upside, I've got quite the game going with my grown-up friends. It's a custom adventure I made, but it's too dark for the kids. I'll need to clean it up before running them through it. I will run them through it, though. It's too rich and full of plot twists and turns to set aside.

One of the players found a magic dagger last session. At least, he thinks it's magic. That's because someone cast a spell on it to give it a magic aura that the spellcasters in the group can detect. In truth, though, it is not a dagger at all but a baby Mimic (used here in accordance with the OGL). When the player strikes at opponents with it, it does normal dagger damage, plus the mimic's bite damage. I describe the sensation of it tugging and ripping at the target's flesh. Not the kind of thing I would necessarily do with the kids, but you have to admit it's cool in a creepy kind of way.

The beauty of it is that the player has indicated all he needs now to round out his character is a magical rapier or short sword. Meanwhile, the more it eats, the more the mimic will grow. After a few more uses, it won't fit in its sheath anymore. I will describe it as having grown longer and thinner, not unlike a miniature rapier. If I'm lucky, he'll think that the item is magically growing to fit the needs of its owner. This will work out fine for awhile, at least until the mimic grows more massive than either sword type. It will then be a longsword, and eventually even bigger.

At some point it will show itself to be what it really is: a bloodthirsty fiend. Mwahahahahaaaa!

No Need for Speed

The five adventurers were attacked by kobolds almost as soon as they entered the room: four kobold "grunts," and two sergeants riding on dire weasels. The kids rolled initiative to determine the order of combat, and the fight was underway. The battle was pretty much decided in just four rounds and wrapped up in five. This is equivalent to 30 seconds of in-game time.

This sequence took 35 minutes to play.

"This game is slow," said one of the kids, a boy who normally plays video games. He's right, of course: the same sequence would have taken less than a minute to play out in a video game. For a brief moment I thought, that's it, I've lost him. Video games have spoiled him. But that turned out not to be the case. He wasn't complaining, he was just making an observation. This battle took place near the beginning of a marathon six-hour session during which he repeatedly commented about how cool he thought the game was and how much fun he was having.

One of the biggest complaints you hear about D&D is how slow it is, especially compared to video games. This session, and how the kids responded, got me wondering about what's going on, and why the slow pace of D&D (or any other RPG for that matter) doesn't appear to be as much of an impediment to having fun as one might think it would be.

For starters, I think kids like the suspense. They sit on the edge of their seats, waiting for their turns to come around, thinking about what they want to do next, and wondering if they're going to succeed at doing something heroic. When a monster takes aim at their characters, the tension gets even more exquisite: will it hit them? How much damage will it do? Will they survive?

Multiply this effect by the amount of time it took them to roll up their characters and you start to see the power of this suspense (for those of you not familiar with D&D, rolling up a character is a non-trivial exercise and often requires a separate session). It's not like a video game where you just get another life and you're back in the same battle 10 seconds later. There are no resets, and the D&D world is internally consistent: if the characters die and the players roll up new ones to return to the same spot, they'll find the remains of their old characters there - assuming the monsters haven't eaten them! By then, maybe the treasure is gone, and maybe the monsters are on high alert for more intruders.

Video games, like so much else today, give you instant gratification. So something that makes you wait for the payload is really going to stand out by contrast. Like Christmas. Having to wait for it is a big part of what makes that day so much more special for the kids.

Another reason the speed isn't a big deal is that the kids are aware of the slowness of the game, and that knowledge adds weight to the decisions they have to make. For example, I'm sure that part of what went through their minds when they came to the four-way intersection (described in my last entry) was worry about choosing the wrong path and getting stuck wandering around that dungeon for hours on end. If we go this way we'll find what we're looking for, but if we go that way we'll get sidetracked. No wonder they were practically at each others' throats trying to decide! (in a fun way)

So I guess what I'm saying is this: the snail's pace of D&D is not its greatest weakness, but rather its greatest strength. Wizards of The Coast (WoTC), who owns the Dungeons and Dragons brand, has with its 4th edition* attempted to grab the attention of a younger crowd by making their game more similar to video games. Most of their changes have to do with balance between character classes and nothing at all to do with the speed of the game, but a few do. Only time will tell if this was a good business decision for them. I'm not so sure it is, because I don't think WoTC has a clear understanding of what it is exactly that makes the game so fun. Besides, they'll never beat video games at their own, er, game.

The more D&D distances itself from video games, the better off it will be.

*I'm actually running the Pathfinder system, from a company called Paizo Publishing. The Pathfinder RPG is more like D&D 3.5 edition than WoTC's 4th edition is. So from a brand perspective, I'm not playing D&D at all: I'm playing Pathfinder. But Pathfinder is basically built on the d20 system which was the foundation for D&D 3e and 3.5. I still say, "Hey kids, let's play D&D." I'm LOVING Pathfinder, by the way.

You're in a Corridor...

"...and you come to a four-way intersection."

I never would have thought that such a simple statement as this could so enthrall an audience of kids raised in the age of video games. But it did. I was running my three kids through a D&D adventure, and they had invited two of their friends over from next door to play their very first role-playing game (RPG), when they came to the intersection. This simple choice created quite a stir. Said the nine-year-old boy from next door, his eyes wide open and his voice full of excitement and anticipation: "This is the cool stuff! This is it! Which way do we go? We don't know which way to go, and we have to decide!"

A few minutes later, after they had decided to go down the left corridor, I described the passage as sloping downward. "Yeah!" he cried, practically jumping out of his seat. "That's the stuff! That's where we'll find the treasure!"

Now that my kids are hooked, they want to get as many of their friends playing the game as possible. They're asking me if they can play D&D during "Game Day" with their homeschooling group. My wife and I are going to look into it and see what the interest level is. I am assuming we're going to see interest from at least a few of them, because D&D is an activity that offers many learning opportunities.

I've decided to start this blog for anyone who has wondered about using D&D in the context of homeschooling, to share my experiences and ideas with anyone who cares to read them. I have many thoughts on the subject that I'll begin to share in future threads, and I bet I can learn a lot from homeschoolers and others who read this blog and post their comments.

Hope to see you around the next bend in the corridor!