Category: Games

I have to do a bunch of real work today, so I’m just going to point to a fantastic column at GeekDad that every GeekMom and GeekDad should read: Teaching Kids to Roleplay is Only Natural.

Children are born to role play.

It is one of the key ways in which children learn. Ok, so it isn’t all dice, paper and miniatures, but children have been creating their own RPGs forever. They don’t even use dice.

All the early childhood development professionals know this only too well. Children mimic and recreate the worlds – pre-school teachers set up pretend shops, pirate ships or moonscapes encouraging the creation of both real and make-believe worlds. In these worlds children adopt characters and create personalities in which they can test out behaviors and interactions. (sound familiar)

We know roleplaying is fun, educational and entertaining. So, how can we further foster this roleplaying in our children so it thrives beyond preschool?

One of the greatest challenges I had when I was trying to pass my love of RPGs along to my kids was finding a way to make the experience accessible and relevant to them. It was much harder than I thought it would be, because I approached the whole thing as a guy who had been doing it for almost 25 years. (Sweet Jeebus. Twenty-Five years. Allow me to fall down while that sinks in.) If I’d had something like this column to guide me, I may have been able to add two more pencil-and-paper gamers to the world, and wouldn’t end this post with a lament.

Sigh.

"Do you play D&D?"

I gasped. According to our ultra-religious school, D&D was Satanic. I looked up for teachers, but none were close to us. A hundred feet away on the playground, another game of dodgeball was underway. I involuntarily flinched when I heard the hollow pang! of the ball as it skipped off the ground.

"You’re going to get in trouble if you get caught with that," I said.

"No, I won’t," he said. "If I just keep it turned upside down, they’ll never see it. So do you play or not?"

"I have the red box set," I said, "and a bunch of characters, but I don’t have anyone to play with."

"That’s Basic," he said. "This is Advanced."

From Happiest Days .

My friends who own Fleet Street Games are sponsoring a charity poker tournament this weekend in Santa Monica.

It’s called All-In for Scleroderma.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Why in the world would I go all-in for scleroderma? Doesn’t scleroderma suck?”

Yes, yes it does, but “All In To Help Raise Money in the Fight Against Scleroderma” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, Champ.

It’s this Saturday, September 20 from 5pm to 10pm. You can buy-in for as little as $50. I’m playing in the tournament, and I’ll even have a copy of Happiest Days of Our Lives as a bust out prize (the player who knocks me out wins the book. How’s that for a $20 overlay!?)

All the details, including location and stuff, can be found here.

My friends Ed and Mel gave me The Last Night on Earth when I was at PAX. I had to ship home everything I got there (only two boxes, because I was restrained this year) and it arrived yesterday.

Nolan and I played it after dinner last night, and we both enjoyed it a lot. I think he’d have had more fun if he hadn’t been plagued by disastrous rolls (a statistically improbable run of 1s and 2s) but we both liked it enough to play it again tonight.

However, there were several times during the game that I could feel his frustration so much, it threatened to make the game not fun for both of us. I helped him get through it with an appropriate balance of humor and empathy, but if he’d been just a few years younger, it would have been a disaster for us both and he’d never want to play it again.

So this morning, I thought of a way to help GeekDads and GeekMoms who encounter this with their own kids. It’s a variation on something my friends and I call Rule 17a.

Rule 17a is a house rule we invoke when we’re learning a new game. It basically states that, at any time, a player can say, “You know, I just realized that I did this stupid thing that I wouldn’t have done if I had a little more experience in the game. I’d like a do-over.” If the majority of the players agree (and we always do) then we just back up a little bit, and play on. It reduces the risk of doing something bone-headed that you can’t ever recover from, and it keeps the game fun.

As a parent, particularly when my kids were small, I was always looking for teachable moments, where I could take an experience they’d just had and use it to apply some kind of life lesson about basic values, like being honest or kind, doing the right thing when it wasn’t the easy thing, and being a good sport. Gaming presents tons of opportunities for parents to teach their kids about all of these things, as well some other important values: life isn’t fair, and when things don’t go the way you want them to, it’s not the end of the world. Never sacrifice the journey for the destination. Always do your best. It’s just a game.

But when your child has just rolled his third or fourth critical failure, and is wondering why he’s even playing the game instead of . . . well, instead of doing anything else, all that goes out the window. We want our kids to have fun when they play games, after all, and we all know that nothing ruins a game experience faster than totally horrible dice rolls, especially for kids.

Enter Rule 17b:

Depending on your kid, the game, and some X factor that I leave to you as a parent, you could give your child up to three “roll again” markers, like poker chips or glass beads or whatever, that she can use at any time to re-roll a particularly bad dice roll. They can use it whenever they want to, but once the marker it used, it’s gone for the rest of the game, so your child will have to choose very carefully about when she’s going to use it. This would be especially great with a couple of smaller kids, because the parent isn’t put in the position of awarding do overs and giving the appearance of favoritism (raise your hand if you’ve ever had to untangle that Gordian Knot.)

I wouldn’t suggest this with more traditional board games of the Monopoly variety, but I think it would work well in games like Settlers of Catan, Descent, or Talisman. It gives children a little bit more control than they’d otherwise have, so they’re not at the mercy of the dice as much as they would be without it. They have a little bit of a safety net, even when they get unlucky.

You’d still get those teachable moments about enjoying the journey and being a good sport, and when the markers run out, they’ll still see that life isn’t always fair, but by invoking Rule 17b, your child’s (and your) gaming experience is less susceptible to the fickle whims of chance. Your son or daughter is empowered at a time when they’d feel helpless and frustrated. Everyone has more fun, which is the whole point of gaming in the first place, and you may just add a gamer to the world.

Purists will say that this unbalances games. I’m not entirely sure I agree with that, because if you’re playing with small kids the older kids and adults have inherently unbalanced the game (unless they take it easy on the kids, which I never do, because once the figure out that you’re doing that, it’s a huge insult to them. Kids want to win, but they want to win on their own, especially when they’re playing with a parent.)

I want to hear from my fellow Geek and Gamer parents: what do you think of this idea?

Updated to add: Several people have suggested that all the players, including parents, get Mulligan Markers (or whatever you want to call them) so that everyone is on equal footing. Parents, of course, don’t have to use them, but at least they’re there. I think this is a super idea, and I wish I’d thought of it.

From left to right: Me, Gabe, Kurtz, Tycho.

This was pretty much as fantastic as I thought it would be, and I’m very proud of myself for never blowing a save versus "OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE I GET TO DO THIS" the whole time we played.

Check this out: we had so much fun, Jerry says that if they do more D&D podcasts, I’ll get to join them, as the intern who opens all the doors and doesn’t get any gold.

Awesome.

(Note: This picture is © All rights reserved because Kiko took it.)