Sad, soggy and saturated

Oh the misery. Just a day after extolling the virtues of Battle Systems' new 3D cardboard dungeon set-up, disaster struck. On a rare hot and humid afternoon in Dublin I left the attic window open to let in some air. Of course the heat did not last long and within an hour or two, thunder was ripping through the sky and rain pelting down like machine gun fire on the roof.

And through the window.

Sad thing is, I had forgotten about the open window.

The real tragedy is, the newly-built 3D dungeon was directly beneath it.

It wasn't until the following morning that the carnage was discovered when we tried to leave the house and the alarm system informed us of an open window.

Uh-oh.

It is testament to the Battle Systems product that the whole thing had not completely dissolved by that stage. Walls were bent, bridges somewhat buckled, but remarkably:

1) The dungeon was still intact in terms of its overall shape

2) Most of the components, while soggy, were still in one piece

This was snapped VERY quickly before the whole thing was rapidly dismantled... you can see the bridge is about to break under the strain there! What a shame....

A very quick teardown operation and this is the type of scene I was left with... not what I was hoping for after I'd spent hours putting my pride-and-joy together!

A major drying operation followed which involved dismantling the whole damn thing, placing the card between piles of heavy books, and turning the radiators to max.

In fairness, out of all of the pieces, this is the only one that was absolutely destroyed, a doorway whose interior had buckled under the weight of two soggy stories above it and then the archway torn:

Not the work of a cave troll. But a mere bit of Irish rain.

I think that is a good indicator of the quality of the product! There was no peeling or warping, once I dried everything slowly and carefully.

It was pelted with rain for more than 12 hours and still the majority is salvageable!

In contrast, I had a couple of Wizards of the Coast DnD tiles nearby which also got  soaking. These have warped and peeled in a shocking fashion. I am going to have to jam them between heavy books for some time and glue the paper pieces back to the card, which is looking very tatty now. They are just about salvageable, with a lot of drying and glueing, but will never be the same again.

So the moral of the story is: Never open a window if you're in Ireland.

You're asking for something precious to be rained on.

Best Game Ever...

 SO it was the Best Game Ever according to my son (Speaking of which you should probably head here at some point and check out the song of the same name if you haven't already) 

We spent a good two hours last Saturday afternoon building, stocking and playing with a dungeon - not bad for a three year old! Now, a brutal work schedule combined with internet problems at home have delayed the match report... until now:

How It Works

Clearly we aren't using 3.5e rules here. But we have our own system that the young fella understands and retains some consistency over the weeks and months. He seems to love it and spends the weekdays asking when it will be Saturday so we can play Dungeons and Dragons again!

We start off by Building the Dungeon. For the most part we have used the tiles that come in Wizards of the Coast board games such as Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Temple of Elemental Evil etc. The ones that came in the Dungeon Command miniatures game are ideal (and you get a few miniatures too!) This is because with all these games, the tiles have jigsaw-cut edges which makes it easy and fun for young hands to put together, and they keep their shape well during play.

Dungeon Command tiles - and they're double sided so you have a choice of exploring a forest or a dungeon!

Other types of Dungeon Tiles are fine, and flip-mats produced by the likes of Paizo are good and durable, although they only portray one location so they're somewhat limited in terms of imaginative play. The poster maps made by the likes of Wizards of the Coast are not ideal because they're quite expensive for what they give you, they rip too easily, are susceptible to water damage if something is spilled, and generally don't hold up well to abuse from a toddler (although they're fine for an adult game, the same problems sometimes apply!)

On this occasion I was keen to try out the new Battle Systems terrain that had arrived in a treasure chest-sized package a week earlier, this was a 3D terrain kickstarter I backed last autumn. It's fantastic stuff, although a bit fiddly to put together for a three-year-old and not too durable. But it looked fantastic:

This is what I made with just half of the contents of the box I received

Next step was to Stock The Dungeon. My house being what it is, inhabited by a gaming geek and a couple of kids, there are usually plenty of monster toys or miniatures lying around. Again for durability and safety, you cannot beat the larger pre-painted plastic miniatures as compared to smaller 'medium sized' creatures in resin or metal. Dragons, giants, ogres, trolls are all ideal because they're nice and chunky and have that 'wow' factor ("They're very scary..." as my son might say) when plonked down on the table. 

On this occasion we were playing in my attic so we grabbed a couple of the beholders from the DnD miniatures box set that were sitting on a shelf there. Also a few other monsters that were lying around an old pyramid / ziggurat thing I had built from dungeon tiles for an "adult" game.

This is the base of the pyramid which I had used to play the finale of Dungeon Crawl Classics' awesome Sailors on the Starless Sea module. Now it features Zuma the pup from Paw Patrol being attacked by a giant lobster while a couple of chaos cultists look on in the background.

Monsters placed, it's time to Select the Loot! It's good to have something your kid thinks is worth fighting for.... in my case, this inevitably means sweet treats. The first time we played this game, eager to please, I made the mistake of handing out far too many candies. Now I try to mix it up by putting a few sweets but also stuff like raisins, berries or rice crackers in the dungeon. Each snack is guarded by  fierce monster!

Ask your child to Pick their Heroes. They can raid the toy box for this. At first I tried to impose some sort of faux medieval standards on the game, but then I figured... hey, if I want to pretend I am a tiny gnome running around a steampunk dungeon, then I am allowed to do that (not that I REALLY want to do that...) or if I want to be a half-orc cutting his way through a forest made of ice, then I can do that. So what's to stop my son bringing robots, super heroes or even, er, small dogs into the dungeon?

While Mike the Knight has featured as the hero at times, most occasions my son chooses Paw Patrol to lead the charge into the unknown.

Meet the party! Yes, these guys. Really.

Worlds collide as Everest the husky pup meets a Lovecraftian horror at the top of the stairs

Then it's time to Break Out the Dice! I felt it really important to have some kind of rules set, however loose, to differentiate this from any normal game of 'make believe'. Also, it is good to get children used to rolling dice, counting the numbers, working out who got the highest, and even talking about the different shapes and sides of the weird dice we use for roleplaying games. My own father at 68 still cannot really figure out the difference between a D12 and a D20! I think in my own experience, learning about the shapes of various sided dice at an early age helped my smash through certain math classes as a teenager without thinking twice. 

But we don't want to get bogged down in rules when we Fight the Monsters. We just let the heroes run around and "fight" whoever they want. We generally roll one dice for each hero in combat. My son likes to match the colour of the dice with the colour of the pup's uniform! 

Then we roll for the monster and see who got the highest. The trick to avoid disappointment, frustration and inevitable tears is to give the heroes a dice like a D20 and the monsters a D6 or D8. This means there is a CHANCE that the heroes can lose, but generally speaking they win! 

If the heroes lose then they miss a turn, or fall over or something trivial like that. My son often demands an immediate rematch anyway! If the hero rolls higher than the monster then they get to beat them up (which is why it's good to have large, durable miniatures... sometimes there is a bit of enthusiastic smashing at this stage!)

Then the monsters have to be taken off to Monster Hospital (complete with ambulance siren noises) where they can have a nice lie down until they feel better ... they'll be back in the dungeon next week.

Of course, there's literally Sweet Loot to be collected (and no doubt gobbled down in seconds)

The cool thing is that as you get used to playing, your child will add their own narrative. For example, in our game Marshall the fire pup was used to battle a fiery ooze "because he can use his water spray to shoot his fire".  The orange pup, Zuma, has a scuba pack so wherever there is water in the dungeon, my son will pretend he's using that to explore the depths.

I'll put a few pictures below to show how the game progressed.

Here's Marshall taking on the ooze. Water cannon at the ready. The prize is a couple of blueberries.

Skye zooms into the great hall to fight a giant zombie type thing (this cool model is from the old Heroscape game)

A massive power struggle over a white jelly bean on the bridge, as Rubble the bulldog pup faces down a scary Beholder.

By the way, if you love the terrain as much as I do then check out the Battle Systems page. They're planning a modern streetscape terrain kickstarter this autumn, which looks incredible. Afterwards the company says it plans to put the dungeon stuff on general sale.

For updates and more pictures check out the Battle Systems Blog 
Here's one last picture of my own initial efforts at building a dungeon using these cardboard wonders!

As you can see, there's tons of cool features including banners, a massive double doorway, burning torches and a well

 

Game day looms - DMing for my toddler!

Tomorrow is Saturday, which is cool because after a six day week of late evening shifts I get to play Dnd with my son. My son is three years old, an he's been nagging me about this all week. We've been playing now for the best part of a year (he is nearly four).
I never thought I'd see the day when I ACTUALLY HAD TO TURN DOWN my son asking to play Dnd because I had to go to work. I guess it arrived sooner than anticipated.
Now, our sessions don't bear too much resemblance to a high-fantasy, story-driven campaign BUT they do involve plenty of rolling dice, smashing monsters and grabbing loot. All played out against the backdrop of a scary forest or dark dungeon ("sooooo scary" as the young fella might say).
So in that sense, classic Dnd.

I will take some pictures of tomorrow's session so you get an idea of what it all entails. And in the near future I'll write up a dedicated post on what "rules" (so to speak) we used and what other stuff I've picked up from trying to get the young lad interested in the game. But for now I want to briefly chat about the value of getting kids into RPGs from a very young age.

Now, at this juncture it might be apt to turn to the title of this blog. Most of you will probably recognise that 'Awakened Shrub' is the title of one of the more pathetic monsters listed in the 5e Dnd Basic Rules provided by Wizards of the Coast for free download. But it also made me think of awakening the joy and wonder of a first-time RPG player in very young children whose imaginations are as fertile as a 16-year-old on prom night (sorry - maybe that was mixing metaphors a little too far).
But all week we've been grabbing snatches of conversaiton about playing Dnd and I've seen his eyes light up with wonder at miniatures I was painting, or at the pages of the latest monster manual (we were looking at giants this morning and he loved the fact the Storm Giant has birds flapping round his head).
So we're awakening this incredibly powerful force in our children when we introduce them to the world of RPGs - a force that was awakened in me at around the age of seven, although I was forging my own path with very few people to guide the way, living in a small Welsh town with whatever RPG books I could get my hands on.

So my son, in a sense ... he is the Awakened Shrub.
And hey - his hair is kinda shrub-like.

Daddy DMs and the future of RPGing

As more of us who were born in the 70s and 80s grow up (much as we try to resist) and have children, I see more and more emphasis on ideas and products that will bring our own children into the RPG fold.

Susan J Morris wrote a very cool version based on 4e rules called DnD for kids, although it's aimed at SLIGHTLY older kids than my own, it still looks like a fun way to get a gang of maybe 6 to10 year olds enthused. Wizards of the Coast recently resurrected this idea and asked Susan to write a tie-in for the Elemental Evil storyline that they have been running for much of 2015.

Susan has also featured on the Gamer to Gamer podcase as well as the official Dungeons & Dragons podcast here ... in fact, playing Dnd with youngsters has been a recurrent theme on the podcast in recent months meaning Wizards must be getting turned on to the fact that there are thousands of parent-players out there. They featured this recent podcast about designing a Girl Scout badge for learning how to play DnD. All of those are well worth a listen.

Hero Kids fulfils a similar role to Susan's rule set and the two could probably be mashed together if you're looking for more simple adventure ideas, and tokens.

This blog post describes how one dad 'turned his four year old into a Dungeons and Dragons geek'

Geek Dad wrote a bit about simplifying Dnd for children - something I'll be coming back to again and again on this blog. He put together his own version of the rules called DnDish - which is worth a read, if only for inspiration.

Gygaz Magazine featued this very entertaining post about DMing for your toddler.

And veteran game designer Monte Cook recently kickstarted  No Thank You Evil! 
It promises fun for all the family and a scaled rule set to cope with different age groups' abilities and expectations:

"A six-year-old might play, for example, a Princess. A eight-year-old might play a Super Smart Princess. A ten-year-old creates a Super Smart Princess who Experiments with Science. Each of these stages adds a level of sophistication to how the game is played—but all of these characters can play around the same table in the same game!"

I backed the project and can't wait for the box to drop, plus it's got some cool art:

I don't know what excactly this is from No Thank You Evil! but ... Yes! Please!

Here's some of the stuff I've noticed since I started DMing for my toddler:

Better numeracy - We've been rolling dice, calling the numbers and working out who got the highest. With a 20-sided die that's really improving his math skills.
Improved vocabulary - Well, I learned so many weird words from DnD I can't begin to list them all - from "scion" to "carrion" to "clairvoyance" to "bastard sword".  I think my teachers raised some eyebrows when they all started to crop up in school essays. I still pronounce some of them kinda funny though.
Descriptive skills - I get him to describe the scene, be it a a dungeon room or snow-covered mountain. It's basic stuff but he enjoys weaving the story. Then when monsters get bashed, he comes up with some pretty descriptive sentences!
Quality time - We're hanging out together, away from distractions like TV or even other friends and family. It's just the two of us - or whoever else wants to sit in. But it's time reserved for me and him, which is really important for any parent and child to try and carve out.

But why should I game with those guys anyway?

Good to get that Awkward First Post over and done with, so that I can now move on to the Difficult Second Post. But I might as well just get to the heart of what this blog is supposed to be about - gaming with family and kids. And the joys and perils that come with both.

Let's look at the most basic question of all - why should I game with those guys anyway? I'll list some of the benefits and try to address just a few of the problems that can arise (and have done!)

Family - the boons

 

1) You know them really well. Yes, this can also be a pitfall (see below) but having a thorough knowledge of your players is a fantastic bonus when you're a DM. I am much more comfortable DMing for a group of very close friends or family than a group of strangers. You know their interests, their sense of humour, and where their boundaries lie. I'm fortunate that my family enjoy a bit of banter and aren't too uptight, although I wouldn't necessarily subject them to hardcore Lamentations of the Flame Princess-style shock-fantasy.
You can also tailor games and NPCs to match their interests. You know if your dad read Tolkien five times in his youth, he is going to understand that orcs are bad. But you can also hook in players with references to more contemporary slices of pop culture like Game of Thrones, Adventure Time, or superhero movies.

See? Even the most popular show on TV (or whatever) has got dragons

2) They're available. One of the hardest things about modern gaming is finding the time to get everyone around a table at once. Families do that all the time - or at least they should. You might  live with family members, in which case they're ALWAYS available. Or else you can reserve games for special times when everyone is around, like Christmas or birthdays, and make a real occasion out of it. Instead of breaking out Ludo for the 1,158th time, try an RPG.

3) It's quality time. It's a chance to sweep away distractions, kick back and have a good time. It's a chance to be in the same room and talk (even if it is about make-believe stuff, at least it avoids the perpetual distractions of mobile phones, screens and headphones). Families don't do enough of this kind of stuff - the things that brings people and families closer together.
You don't have to be like a support group and sit in a circle discussing one another's problems. We all know that after a tough week in the office or stressful exams at school, rolling 20s and killing monsters can be just as therapeutic.

Family - the pitfalls

1) You know them really well. Yeah, just as this can be an advantage, it can equally turn against you. Particularly if you have family members that rub each other up the wrong way (and doesn't every family?)
When people know each other so well, have history going back decades and are used to sniping at one another, it can get stressful trying to keep tensions away from the table. But equally it can be beneficial to see two people who normally grate on one another, actually working together towards a common goal and helping one another out. At least most RPGs in co-operative, unlike more competitive games which can threaten inter-familial homicide in my household.

This is NOT what happens in my house when we play competitive board games

2) They're not gamers. Sure, whenever you're introducing a newbie to the world of RPGs, you're conscious that they're not experienced roleplayers. But your family may not be gamers full stop. They may lack the touchstones that so many of us take for granted. Many people interested in Dnd for example may be into video games, board games, collectible card games - or just fantasy novels, or comic books. Your family may lack any interest whatsoever and be more interested in sports and cookery. At least, that was true of mine.

3) They haven't got the time or money. Investing in a real drawn-out RPG campaign eats up several hours a week for months or even years of your life. It's a Hobby with a capital H. It also drains cash, with all the rulebooks not to mention miniatures, flip-maps and thousands of other accessories the industry is trying to sell us. Don't expect your family to do this. Don't anticipate they want to play for four hours - most "normal people" think an hour-long board game is running long. Don't expect them to buy the books. And ... brace yourself ... you're probably going to have to supply the dice. But if you're anything like me, you already have sacks full of those knocking around, right?


In the next post  I'll be look at the - ahem - joys of gaming with kids (and I mean proper kids including preschoolers, not teenagers!) and what you can do to get them interested from a young age.

Starting The Party

 

So I'm taking a deep breath and diving in.

Taking a leap of faith.

Lighting the torch and treading the crumbling steps into Level One, Room One.

My first blog post.

This is a real dungeon BTW. I think.

I wrote this post initially .... then read it, and got a bit confused myself - so decided I should boil it down here. This is going to be a blog about two things:

1) Gaming with your family. Yes, those people you tend to love and hate in people measure. Gaming with them like you might break out the Monopoly or the Ludo. This includes your parents, no matter how old they might be. And your siblings, no matter how much you might annoy one another. I've geen doing it for a couple of years and had plenty of successes and failures I'd like to share.

2) Gaming with your kids. Bringing forth the next generation. I've got a three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter and as the months and years go by I'm lookng forward to bringing them in to the wild, imaginative world of tabletop gaming and RPGs. Hell I've started with the eldest already.

I'm a novice blogger but I've been gaming for almost 30 years, on and off. For a whole decade, it was mostly "off" as work, life, girls, beer and a whole host of other distractions worked their distraction-y magic.

I didn't have time for gaming and I didn't really know anyone else who was in the hobby, certainly not in my new "adult world" of dinner parties and house hunting, and then painting nurseries and sleepless nights with the baby....

But I'm going to share with you the story of how my most solid RPG group was hewn out of - wait for it - my own family. Yeah, I know plenty of gamers these days share sessions with their wife, even their kids, if they're lucky.
But I game with everyone from my three-year-old son to my father who is pushing seventy. More than half the group are women, including my wife as well as two sisters - none of whom ever touched a d20 until a couple of years back.

So no, none of the women in my life look like this

Oh, and none of them would consider themselves "gamers" in the sense that I do - but all enjoy shooting the breeze, solving puzzles, slaying monsters, rescuing their companions from certain death and generally bveing THE ONE WHO SAVES THE DAY.

Does that make our group weird? (I doubt it - most gamers love doing that stuff, which just goes to show the universal appeal games like DnD should really have)
Does that make me weird? (Er, possibly, but moving on...)
Who cares, most gamers are weird.

Most gamers are just anxious to get a game, and as our hobby ages (and is threatened by video games, smartphones and other demands on our time) we need to make sure that it also grows.
Introduce new people. Spend quality time doing what we love.

Too many people bury the hobby in the closet and never bring out the glorious, madcap social affair that is a truly great RPG session to show it off to the family.

It's time to share the thing you love, with the people you love.

Although believe me, it can be kinda annoying when after all your efforts, your sister still sometimes confuses her Hp with her AC and your dad still thinks a d20 is shaped like a diamond....