Natural Consequences Should Have More Bite

We played this weekend after another long break.  It was a tough session for me.  The first hour was lost to unfinished business associated with leveling up, during which those kids who were already finished whined incessantly that we weren't doing anything.  When we did finally get started, we stalled right out of the gate.  The kids were in rare form, fighting with each other for 45 minutes about whether to go left or right at the very first intersection.  Voices were raised, feelings were hurt, and one player in particular - one of my own kids - just didn't want to drop it.  I should have sent her away, but it kept feeling like we were right on the cusp of having the whole thing resolved.  Alas, we were not.

I tried resolving it in-game a couple of different ways.  First, I offered to let the main dissenter go her own way.  After all, that's what she kept saying:  "I go to the right." But when only one person offered to accompany her, she wouldn't actually go.  I kept asking, "So you went to the right...tell me about how you're proceeding."  And she kept responding, "We all need to go to the right!"  Loudly.  But the other kids wanted to go to the left, and she never committed to the action of striking out on her own.  Mainly because she didn't want her character to get eaten.  Safety in numbers has been firmly established as a wise aphorism in our campaign.

Then I tried letting the bickering itself yield natural consequences.  The characters were walking on a narrow path that was zig-zagging down the face of a cliff in a vast, dark, subterranean space.  One of the characters had morphed into a bird and cast a Light spell on herself so that she could be a glowing bird.  So there they were, out in the open, accompanied by a bobbing, living beacon, standing out like sore thumbs, and yelling at each other.  Easy pickings, right?  I reasoned that one of the dungeon's big baddies, a hungry and foul-tempered wyvern, would hear this commotion and zero in on it for lunch.  So that's what happened.

The kids promptly kicked its butt.

The wyvern flew in and attacked the elf, missing her with his tail stinger.  The rest of the crew rallied and struck back, bringing it down to just 3 hit points remaining by the time its turn rolled back around.  It had been hovering there so that when its turn came around again it would be able to use its full attack (sting and bite and wings, all at once).  Rookie mistake, and one I've made and learned from in the past.  Not sure what I was thinking.  I should have taken advantage of its Flyby Attack.  Talk about underestimating the kids, right?

So the wyvern flew off with Elerisa's arrow lodged in its eyeball, but at least it lives to fight another day.  And the kids didn't learn a damn thing.

Kids Role Play the Darnedest Things

My buddy Adam recommended this topic.  These are the top 10 things I've seen my kids do in RPGs that I've never seen my adult friends do:

10.  Purchase spare trousers, with an eye toward having a variety of colors in one's wardrobe.

9.  Jump into water.  My friends know that it is always bad in my games to wind up "in the drink," as we call it, whereas my kids are still learning this the hard way.  As of today, they still joyfully leap into turbulent, subterranean rivers.

8.  Float downstream in an umbrella. Heck, even purchasing an umbrella is something you don't usually see.

7.  Loudly proclaim their royal heritage within earshot of armed thugs.

6.  Defecate outdoors.  With adult games, elimination is always assumed and never discussed.  My kids, on the other hand, very deliberately relieved themselves in the bushes before entering the Tomb of Horrors, and discussed the logistics of keeping lookout before doing so.

5.  Quietly remain hidden to allow a band of goblins to pass by unmolested.  No opportunity for a fight is passed up by my friends.

4.  Spend half their wealth having a dress altered from size Elf to size Halfling.

3.  Attempt to converse with a gelatinous cube. 

2.  Google the elven language to learn a variety of phrases for the express purpose of insulting the dwarves in the party.

...and the top thing my kids do that my grown-up friends do not:

1.  LARP.

Getting the Most Educational Bang for Your RPG Buck

Yesterday my oldest daughter ran a game with some friends of hers at our homeschool co-op. By all accounts the game itself went well. The session started out bumpy because of the sheer volume of kids, the fact that most of them had never played an RPG before, and it was only her second time GMing (first time without me helping her out). At the beginning some of the kids, discouraged by the complexity of the character sheets, gave up and walked away. That left her with a manageable group of four which later grew to five. Once the game began, it went smoothly.

I am impressed with her planning. She decided in advance that the best way to introduce the game was by jumping straight to the action. She didn’t want the session to get bogged down by character creation or equipment acquisition, both of which are time consuming exercises. Therefore she had to prepare pre-generated characters, or “pre-gens,” complete with everything the characters would need to start adventuring. Doing this requires a fairly deep understanding of the rules, or absent that, knowledge about what to look for and where to find it in the rules. She has an incomplete knowledge of the rules, and until the other night, she hadn't spent any time delving into the books.

As I’ve said before, we play Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG (PFRPG or PF). This is an excellent system that I’m really enjoying, but the rule set is daunting to someone so young who has no experience with previous systems or with role-playing games in general. The Core Rulebook is a dense 576 page hardback, and often the answers you're looking for require you to integrate information gathered from multiple sections throughout the book. For example, you may want to know what weapons a cleric should start with. For that, you'll need to look at the rules about starting wealth by class (so you know what the cleric can afford). Then you go to the information about the cleric class, where you learn that clerics can only use simple weapons. What's a simple weapon? For that information, go to the Equipment: Weapons section, and choose from the list of simple weapons. Later, when you're choosing the cleric's spell domain, you may notice that a cleric of the chosen domain can use a short bow. But wait a second...isn't the bow a martial weapon, not a simple one? So which is it: can he use the bow or can't he? To resolve this you need to remember that specific rules override general rules, except where noted otherwise. This specific-overrides-general rule is somewhere in the Getting Started section, and some judgment on the GM's part is required to recognize which rule is the more specific one and which is the more general. And this example isn't even anywhere close to being one of the more difficult rules.

Navigating this complex rules landscape develops a set of skills that you just can't get from other games, at least not in such concentration. I'm talking about research, information integration, interpretation, and prioritization, to name a few. I can't think of any other activity that a child would willingly and proactively engage in to get this kind of intensive experience.

I read the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide (1st edition) when I was twelve years old. Years later I sat in a statistics course in college and the professor started talking about normal distributions, and all I could do was smile. The bell curve was an old friend of mine by then, because my old DM's Guide had long ago introduced me to normal distributions, means, and probabilities, all in the introduction section on page 10. And the beauty is that nobody told me to read the DM's Guide: it's just something I wanted to do, in my own spare time, so I could play the game I loved most.

So you can imagine how excited and proud I was to come home the other night to find my girl, with all the Pathfinder books spread out on the bed around her, preparing to run her upcoming game. She started talking to me excitedly about weapon proficiencies by cleric domain, and I answered some questions she had about spell acquisition. She had also saved a fair amount of time for herself by utilizing a web site that sped up the process of character generation (see the sample character sheet pictured), but when she noticed some stats were low, she dug deeper into the rules to understand what the program was doing.

All this in addition to the prep work she had already done to create the adventure itself, including multiple maps and encounters. What else can I say? The way I see it, all players reap rich educational rewards, but letting your kid be the GM/referee is where you get the most educational bang for your RPG buck.

Danger Zone

The city of Manteau's inner wall separates the haves from the have-nots, and our brave adventurers wanted to be on the inside. To get past the guards at the busy gates they had to have "privilege papers," which were purchased from bureaucrats for a hefty fee. I came up with this concept on the fly, and to be quite honest I was immediately appalled by it when it came out of my mouth. As far as I know there is no precedent for this in any medieval setting, real or imagined, and it just seems kind of hokey to me. Regardless, we're stuck with it now, and Elerisa and Bubda found their papers had been pick-pocketed by the time they reached the gates anyway (the streets are crowded and there is much jostling). So they bribed their way in.

Elerisa, for those more recent readers of this blog, is an elf of royal ancestry, but she is not in direct line to any throne. She is currently way out of her element, though, for not too long ago she was suddenly and quite rudely wrenched from her own era 500 years prior to the events of the game and dumped unceremoniously into an impoverished human village in the present time. She has since learned that the elven people have vanished from the world. She longs to return to "high society" and the comforts of inherited wealth, and rediscover her home in the palace at Nimoriél.

After they got into the city's wealthy uptown districts, the party had to decide what to do next. They had a promise to keep: to take Fibon's skull to his new home at the famous city library and archives. But first, a few details to clean up...literally! They were filthy from all their exploits, so they cleaned up at a bathhouse (and we learned about Roman bathhouses and aqueducts in the process). Then, they didn't want to stand out from the crowd with armor and weapons, so they had to do a little shopping. They learned that prices are steep uptown, but they didn't let that stop them from spending their hard-earned dough. Elerisa in particular was keen to continue shopping, and expressed no interest at all in checking out the "Lost Princess" exhibit at the Manteau Museum of Ancient Elfin Antiquities down the street. After all, who has time to pay attention to fine campaign setting details offered by the GM when there's power shopping to do?

So after a shave, a bath, and a little shopping, they left the first clothing shop and decided it was time to find the library. They got out into the streets, in the middle of a wide avenue, when they heard a massive horn blast from the top of the city keep. The party watched in confusion as the city locals wailed in despair and scrambled for cover. The adventurers followed suit, just as they felt a dark shadow deepen the gloom of the already rainy afternoon. A solitary man froze in the center of the avenue, and the adventurers witnessed a massive black claw reach down and snatch him up. The massive black dragon swooped over them, wings grazing the rooftops, and flew off into the sky with his squirming prey.

Elerisa was appalled at the unfortunate man's fate and heroically drew an arrow, aiming to fell the dragon. With the beast gaining altitude every moment, she had time for just one shot. She let fly her arrow, and its course was true. Sadly it did not penetrate the dragon's thick hide, and the wicked serpent didn't even notice that it had been attacked as it faded into the dreary mist.

Or was that really so sad an outcome? For the man, yes. For Elerisa, a pretty glad ending. Had she rolled a 20 the arrow would have found its mark, and the dragon would have indeed noticed the pesky elven archer shooting irritating darts into its belly. This would not do, and poor Elerisa may have found herself doused in its acidic breath. Such an attack would have had a fair chance of slaying her outright, if she'd failed her reflex saving throw. Even making the save she would have suffered grievous wounds and the loss of some of her recently acquired finery.

Too harsh? Perhaps, if indeed that's the way I would have run it. But maybe not. Maybe it's better to have character death be a somewhat common occurrence in the game. In my adult games I am certainly in favor of life constantly hanging in the balance. Death should be omnipresent, so that there is real suspense when threats are encountered. Some folks might argue that the characters should always survive, because they're the heroes of their own epic stories. I don't see it that way. Characters shouldn't be destined for greatness: it should only seem like they were destined for greatness all along after - and only if - they become great. And when characters are prone to dying, it's more difficult for players to become too emotionally attached to their characters. They are able to keep a clean separation between the game and reality, and I think this would help some players enjoy the game even more. My youngest (age 7), for example, finds some of the encounters frightening and runs away. Maybe if she wasn't too concerned for her character's safety she would be bolder. Maybe. Then again, maybe the first time her character dies will teach her to never take chances again!

These are young children I'm refereeing, and truth be told they were emotionally attached to their characters before they even finished rolling them up. I doubt that the deaths of Elerisa and Fiona could be met without tears. By contrast, Norma has been on death's bed a couple of times and her player really couldn't have cared less (she loves playing, but I honestly don't think she cares what character she plays with). So I feel compelled to be at least somewhat careful with them, aiming for a delicate balance between danger and mercy. I won't be fudging the die rolls, but if characters die, it won't be because I put them up against something they didn't have a good chance of beating.

I thought that with my description of the dragon's huge bulk and the ease with which the monster flew off with a full-grown man, the players would have known better than to tangle with it. But these players are new to the game, and their assumption going in - and I don't think I ever said anything to give them this impression - is that their characters are mighty heroes destined for fame and fortune. So if Dad throws a black dragon in the game, that must mean they can take it on, right? After all, they have magic bows, cool spells, acrobatic skills, and more. In the context of their not having deep experience with the game (and older players to guide them), it's not too unreasonable for them to think this way. So it somehow would have seemed wrong for me to punish that assumption.

I do need to correct the assumption though. I've started with setting expectations: death is a real possibility, I won't fudge the rolls, and sometimes you've got to know when to run and know when to hide. I explained about dragons and what weaponized acid in aerosol form might do to a party of adventurers when delivered from above. On my end I'll be more careful about the encounter selections until the players have a firm grasp on their characters' limitations.

The Dragon

I got home on Friday and noticed this picture on the kitchen table. It's drawn by my youngest daughter who just turned seven. I love the fact that the dragon has an Asian feel to it. I think this look is influenced by Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Nickelodeon television series (specifically, the Firebending Masters episode). That the dragon lives in a cave at the top of a mountain bears this out. The braziers halfway up the stairs confused me, though, so I asked her what they were for.

"They're for sacrifices," she said. Now, she may have gotten this from the Avatar episode, but that would be a bit of a leap. Spoiler Alert: In that episode, two characters climb the stairs to make an offering of flame to the firebending masters, and find that the masters are, in fact, dragons. If the offering is not accepted, the dragons will eat the characters. So I figured this is the kind of sacrifice she meant. Not so.

"Did you get this from Avatar?" I asked.

"No."

"Well then, where did you get it from?"

"If they don't sacrifice to the dragon, the dragon will attack the village," she said.

"And where did you learn that?" I pressed.

"I just made it up."

I intend to probe further to find out if this is supposed to be a human sacrifice. I would love to know where she gets this stuff. I can tell you we haven't had any sacrifices at our game table. I suppose it's not outside the realm of possibility that she got it from Aztec history. While I think that sacrifices of various kinds are consistent with the pulp-fantasy literary roots of the game, they're not the kind of happenings I bring to the kids' game. Nephrym's Claw is as close as I've come to that kind of thing, and I won't be doing it again. The kids themselves appear to have forgotten it exists, and I'm not sure my youngest was even in the room when that whole episode went down.

I'm not sure why I suddenly feel the need to defend RPGs now, but for some reason I do. My kids' sense of the macabre pre-dates their role-playing days. I remember my oldest daughter, back when she was five, playing with her Polly Pockets and Fischer-Price toys, and the victors hung the defeated from the gallows. Very shocking, that, and I suspect we have Disney's Tarzan to blame. That daughter is a loving, empathetic child, albeit one with a dark streak when it comes to the dramatic. Many of her short stories involve people being devoured. So I'm not too worried about the influence of D&D on my kids: there's plenty of darker material out there doing the job already. The best I can do it keep our topics fairly mild and talk about those things they do get from popular culture sources.

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!