[Pentagon Game] How Anyone Can Love Roleplaying

[Eric J.]

Hello, I'd like to share a personal triumph with you guys.

I'm visiting my old town for the summer on break from college.  I've been working on a RPG for a year called Age of Alchemy that lets the player create custom items to help them and make their own spontaneous reactions to aid them in doing stuff.  Kind of a scientist's crunchy wet dream.

But I don't want to talk about that game.  One of my prospective players couldn't make it back and after a decent two games of it my two remaining players lost interest with roleplaying in general (for various not-RPG reasons).

I want to tell you about a game that I've been playing with my little brother (Ryan) and sister (Renee) and their friend (Shane).  I think I've talked about them before.  As you may know, I have a little brother (who just turned 12) who's absolutely obsessed with roleplaying games.  I consider it a healthy way to express creativity in a social environment and I like to play with him, giving him a rare chance to express his creativity.

He has a few friends who also enjoy roleplaying games but it's very difficult for them to get anything functional for a few reasons.  His best friend named Shane (13) lives close by though (he's my best friend's little brother actually) and he's also in the game.  Though not nearly as enthusiastic as my little brother, and a little introverted, he genuinely seems to like the game although he isn't that expressive about it.  He's expressive when things aren't going along and he perceives a lot of conflict.  This implies to me that he likes the game, especially since he's always there on short notice when we play.

Ryan's twin sister Renee is a little bit of a different story.  I've played a number of campaigns with them and she oftentimes seems very very disengaged.  Sometimes she can't recall what's going on and when I try to talk to her about it she seems oblivious.  It's been very confusing for me because of all the signs that she gives.  I've had many players who wouldn't roleplay except for the social role that roleplaying plays and she kind of fits the bill but in some ways doesn't.  Her attitude really frustrated me because it almost seemed to ruin the game itself.  Always spending time to keep her in the loop when she was spacing off really hurts the game for everyone else, especially for Ryan for which roleplaying with me is a really big deal.  It seemed like I'd tried everything, tried spending time with her to help her to understand how roleplaying worked, tried disciplining her for not caring how the game went, tried reassuring her that she didn't need to play the game to spend time with me.  I never got much feedback, just a kind of acceptance for what I had told her.  This is very odd behavior for her who is usually very outspoken and confertable with talking with me.  Most of this story is about her.

Okay, this is already longer than I'd hoped, and it'll become longer still but just hang with me please.  One of the continual problems that I've had to face is using D&D.  I know that I should know better, having played all kinds of other games and such but for some reason I've just kept with it.  Ryan collects D&D books fervently and it seemed that by just focusing on the concepts (like making individual characters and using stats to represent them) and sliding on the details I could make it work.

Wrong.

After playing a game that had had variable success I decided to try and make the most simplistic system that I could.  I call it the pentagon game.  There are no ability scores.  There are no abilities.  There are just skills.  Each skill starts at 1D.  I wrote down a page of obvious skills and told them that they could have 1 skill at 4D, two at 3D and three at 2D.  When you want to do something, you roll your dice.  If you get a 5 or a 6 you get a success which usually means that you succeed.  If you're competing with someone else or there are degrees involved, getting more successes can be better.

Ryan had a very good idea for a trickster thief immodestly.  Shane took a long time to come up with a kind of wandering archer who's looking for dragon shrines.  But Renee had a very difficult time coming up with a character.  It's hard for me to look at someone who enjoys writing having such a hard time with the idea of making a character.  I must have spent the better part of an hour talking with her about personality, how to choose a goal, basically what the whole point of roleplaying is.  Something like, "When you watch a movie, like Pirates of the Carribean, don't you ever want to BE a character like that?  That's why we roleplay.  It's the chance to make up the coolest person you can be and then be that person."  She ended up being a person with a lot of social skills with a pet dog.

I talked with them about what they wanted from the game and we (I) decided to set the game in a fantasy Eastern Europe (all of our games are fantasy games.  You can tackle that point if you want). We started out the first session using one of Ryan's ideas, one he was particularly excited about.  He was being executed for trying to take the crown jewels.  Renee's character and Shane's character saved him in a pretty clever scene (we decided to save him out of game.  We'd come up with reasons later.)  But even though I found the first two sessions entertaining and clever and SO much easier than D&D, Renee seemed very unengaged.  She wouldn't have a problem with leaving in the middle of the game either to take care of something important.

After session 2, I was almost ready to uninvited her from the game but she would keep calling me up asking when we were going to play next so I figured I'd give it another go.  And so I did.

On the third session things become totally different.  I talked with them about what they wanted in the game and we decided to have some political intrigue with the nobles and royalty and stuff (my vampires aside).  And we did.  Where Renee usually get annoyed when people interupted her, I told her to just keep talking and interrupt them.  When she had a good idea I'd tell Ryan and Shane to shut up and listen (Being a revered older brother I can tell them to shut up without any problem whatsoever.  They can tell that I'm just trying to be fair.)  This seemed to work.

The characters had been hired to do three tasks, break into a guarded vault and count the gold inside, steal the queen's diary, and to break a prisoner from prison.  This involved quite a bit of scheming which although very complex and overwhelming at times, these players seemed to enjoy tremendously.  We spent maybe an hour discussing strategies, some in character and some out about how to get into the vault.  Renee started taking charge and decided to go talk to the bank and get some information.

This was a great turnaround from earlier.  She was facing challenges and coming up with clever plans.  In the middle of the game I decided to throw tough issues at them.  I exposed Renee to a very sexist environment (I mean, it's the middle ages as I always jokingly call our fantasy settings) and she responded by using this to her clever advantage.  "If I'm so stupid, then obviously I can't be any threat to you."  He character used the lie skill to its full advantage sometimes to the point of genius.  In the middle of the game she claimed that she was married to Shane's character (who happily ran with it).  When an NPC inquired as to where her wedding ring was she replied, "I had to sell it to pay for our children!"

At the end of the session I decided to push things further.  The characters got ready to attend a ball for nobles (so that they could get the passcodes from the vault and figure out how to get the Queen's diary).  Ryan's character had to ask a girl on a date and they had to purchase clothing for the occasion.

Each of my players was thoroughly engaged and seemingly enjoyed the game quite a bit.  I had to tear myself away from it because it was getting late.

So what have I learned?  Be patient.  This session had no combat whatsoever and I think that this allowed Renee better access to what this whole roleplaying this is about.  By using a very simple system and treating kids like people, we all had a wonderful time.  In fact I told this story to my my-age friends and they're pretty jealous.

Thank you for your time.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

Dude! Awesome.

One word: Donjon. I'd love to hear it if you try it out on that group.

But other than that, seems like you really managed to find and hit the hell out of those kids' Gamist streak, which is nifty. :)

Cheers,
J.