[Mortal Coil] Of Wolves, Dragons, and 11 year olds.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Last weekend at Osh Con we played several games of Mortal Coil and this game was the one I found most interesting. We had three players, myself, Len, and Derrick plus Tim as the GM. Tim, Len, and myself are all 35+ years of age, and Derek is 11 years old. Derek had never played a roleplaying game before.

To develop the theme document I started asking Derek questions, about what kind of movies he liked, and gradually narrowed things down. We leaned heavily on his input, which was really quite interesting, as it was hard for him to talk about things without moving into narrative. We were patient in bringing him back so we didn't stomp on his input because he wasn't giving it "right."

We ended up starting as children who got lost in the woods after school and entered a realm of magic where we would discover we had magical powers. We all had the powers to shapechange into something else, a rule was established that our magic was stronger in animal form, and Virginia was our villain a bully two grades higher than ours. Virginia could turn into a wolf. Yes, Virginia wolf. Derek created her, so we get no clever credit, as it was accidental. Our characters were all friends, and the same age.

Amanda was played by Len, and could turn into a silver dragon which changed to a Gold dragon after he actually won a raffle, the prize being a book about dragons, during the game. Amanda's passions were; Fear of Virginia, Love of being a Dragon, and a duty to get everyone home.

I played Billy. Billy could turn into a Raven. His passions were; Love of Virginia, Fear of Wolves, Duty to get home, and I think a love of the magic.

Derek played Alex. Alex could turn into a Wolf. His passions were; Hate of Virginia, Love of Wolves, and I don't remember the others.

Virginia's passions were along the lines of making minions and controlling the magical woods.

We started off wandering into the woods behind school, after classes were over. We got lost in the woods and we heard a noise of an animal. Billy threw a rock and tried to scare whatever it was off. I lost the challenge, and we saw it was a wolf. I turned into a Raven and flew into the trees, Derek's character turned into a wolf and talked to it and it left us. Billy refused to come down until Alex turned back to a human, which he did.

We later encountered some goblins who were beating on drums. Tim introduced them by making a rule that goblins lived in the woods and they liked to beat on drums in the night. We made their price that goblins were not very smart. We had an encounter that moved from talking to physical confrontation and Amanda turned into a Dragon and used some Dragon magic to drive them off by breathing fire. Len made the rule that dragons can breath fire, and Tim added that they needed to eat something combustible to start the process.

We decided to stay there as they had an area for a fire, and we went to sleep. In the middle of the night we were awoke by Vampire squirrels. Tim had earlier made several rules about Vampires as in the time setting up the theme document Derek talked about Vampires quite a lot. One of them is anything could be infected with Vampirism, and the price we had made is that Vampirism is curable under a rare condition. Alex and Billy ran from the squirrels and Amanda woke up and used more Dragon magic to drive the squirrels off, this time a windstorm generated by her wings.

Later that night we were confronted by Virgina and her elite boar riders, and we could tell that the boars they rode were people that Virginia changed. The boar riders attacked us, and this time we all fought them off trying not to hurt the boars. We won and then confronted Virginia. I believe my goal was to make her feel guilty, Derek's was to knock her to the ground and belittle her, and I think that was similar to Lens goal. They won, and as she was pinned down I tried to make her fell guilty and Derek roleplayed making fun of her. We decided to wrap it here as we were about 6 hours in, and even so Derek didn't want to quit. He was engaged the whole time. Score one for the team.

I had some problems understanding some facets during the game and in my finishing up reading the book after the game. I spend a token to activate a facultie in a challenge and can spend up to my maximum (referred to as M hereafter) minus one with out spending a token for the whole game. Why do I ever want to bid less than M - 1? It seems that bidding defensively allows me to add more tokens to my best stack, so why not just make the best bid in the first place? Also I've looked several times and there are rules to weigh how far narration can go after a challenge, but I didn't see anything that stated who narrates after a challenge. Is it the Winner, the G.M., the loser? Did I just miss that rule?

This game made me really see how foreign our process of creating games is. I'm curious about whether other folks have had issues with children having a hard time discussing setting and other concepts we use without having them delve into narrative.  What techniques have people come upon to help kids separate narrative from things like setting, scene framing, color, etc?

[Storn]

This game made me really see how foreign our process of creating games is. I'm curious about whether other folks have had issues with children having a hard time discussing setting and other concepts we use without having them delve into narrative.  What techniques have people come upon to help kids separate narrative from things like setting, scene framing, color, etc?

There have been some other threads here at the Forge specifically talking about kids and settings and rules etc.  Ron had a very interesting one on D&D.  I know that there was a good one using The Prince's Kingdom kicking around.  My Forge Fu is weak.  And I'm not quite sure how to track those down for you.

But I would also like to point you in the direction of the Bear's Grove podcast.  Sam Chupp has done a lot of gaming for kids and is a real advocate for it.  He talks about those experiences on his podcasts.  THAT link I do have (as I have the site bookmarked). 

http://bearsgrove.com/