[Prince Valiant] Children as Narrators

[Web_Weaver]

The current thread "Young Children: Actual role-play, Actual Play?" has reminded me of my attempt to encourage my brother to roleplay with his friends, many years ago.

I had bought him what I then considered to be the simplest game for children, "Prince Valiant the Story Telling Game" by Greg Stafford.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game it was designed with a very simple aim. Whenever Greg was asked what he did for a living, they would find it hard to understand what roleplaying was, so Prince Valiant is basically a "one page to explain the rules and lets get started" game, used to demonstrate roleplaying.

As a piece of late 80s gaming history, it is a good example of how storytelling concepts started to influence RPGs. Not least because it was quite successful in its aim (probably because of its narrow design concept).

Anyway back to the "actual play" part of the post, my memory of the session is sketchy as it was over 10 years ago, so this will be a basic recap.

At the time my brother was around 8 and I was 23. I was convinced that an imaginative child would find it easy to actually run a game, but with little experience of RPGs outside of RuneQuest expected a certain formal style of game.

I introduced him to the coin based resolution system with a quick situation from the book (fighting a crocodile/dragon) and then basically said "now you have a go". I created a basic character (all Prince Valiant characters are very simple) and explained that I was a knight visiting another knight's castle and that he shouldn't worry about knowing medieval history as we could play in a fairytale style reality.

So I had set the scene somewhat and let him pick up the thread. Prince Valiant tends to run as a situation based game so I encouraged him to think of a situation where I could use my coins.

He started off feeling a bit embarrassed to come up with ideas as he perceived the whole "lets pretend" thing to be a little childish, but after encouragement and initial prompting he proceeded to take total control of the storytelling. Before I knew it my character had a love interest, a Black Knight rival and I was trying to convince the Seargent-at-Arms (he knew about them from He-man!) to let me borrow some decent equipment for an upcoming tournament.

I was extremely surprised by the success of this experiment but unfortunately it was a school night and he had to go to bed, and as I was only visiting home, I never actually got to see how it would all pan out.

My overriding impression of the game we played was one of surprise, that an eight year old could so thouroughly grasp the concepts of Running an RPG in such a sophisticated way. It was a much more freeform, improvised, collaborative style of play than I was used to, and I found it more fun than most games I had played up until then.

looking back I now see that we were using a style that encouraged shared narration and scene-framing, but at the time I had no way of understanding what had happened to make it so enjoyable but so unlike RuneQuest.     

Has anyone else had experience with similar styles of games with children, i.e. shared narration or child narrated play.

[MatrixGamer]

Around 1999 I was running a Star Wars Engle Matrix Game at Gen Con. It used miniatures on a 2x2 foot terrain board of a Arabesque city. The set up was simple. Duke Skywalker, Princess Leah Ortega and Hans Soloman were on the planet to raise a revolt (or at least evade capture by the local bad guys Captains Caratich and Milosovich). The rules are easy for young players to do because they get to make up an argument for what happens next in the game. "Duke senses the storm troopers are coming so he and the gang get away." A referee decides what the chance of success is and the player rolls. Very simple - players can literally do anything.

A young boy and his father played the game but most of the players were teenagers or older. Of course the young boy wanted to play Skywalker. That makes sense - he'd seen the movies and who wouldn't want to be the Jedi?

This is where the problems started. Your brother was shy about jumping in and taking control of the story. It probably seemed like cheating to him. Piage, the child development educator, said that kids of this age finally start understanding set rules (like checkers) and become very rigid in following the rules. Your encouragement brought him out of that and there was no one else there to peer pressure him into not being creative so it worked. I didn't have the same social context.

The boy was shy. He made arguments, and they were fine, but they were tenative and uncertain. The other players were all experienced role players who dove into the freedom Engle Matrix Games allow. They had their own vision and inserted it into the game. They didn't try to control the boy, or make arguments for Skywalker, but instead took the game off in very different directions. The end result was that the game did not revolve around the story of Duke and the gang. They were minor characters because the boy and his dad didn't assert them more.

For a young boy to really take hold of a narrative they need a very specific social mileu. They need same age peers, a lot of attention from the game moderator, encouragement to take chances and freedom to act. In a way, we are fighting against developmental psychology. The kid initially will say cows are purple and float in the sky because they don't know they don't. At some age they realize cows are not purple and they never float in the air. That is real and they can be very rigid in imposing this reality (even though purple floating cows might be more fun in a story.)

I go to a wargame convention every year in South Bend Indiana (The Seven Years War Association convention - which starts this evening, in fact). I run a miniature game that uses a variation on the Matrix Game. My players are usually the kids at the con - 10 to 12 year olds. They like to play because they say "Oh, it's the wish game." They get one argument a turn and immeidately "wish" for something. This is clearly a good hook for young kids and worth putting into a kid version of the game. Of course they wish for foolish things from a gamist perspective but they have fun.

Alright, that's my experience.

I wonder, can you tell us what your borther did with gaming after that session?

Chris Engle

[Callan S.]

He started off feeling a bit embarrassed to come up with ideas as he perceived the whole "lets pretend" thing to be a little childish, but after encouragement and initial prompting he proceeded to take total control of the storytelling. Before I knew it my character had a love interest, a Black Knight rival and I was trying to convince the Seargent-at-Arms (he knew about them from He-man!) to let me borrow some decent equipment for an upcoming tournament.

How much did the actual system come up during that, for him to be running the RPG in question?

It's the cynic in me, but I'm wondering if you had some rules you described and some ideas (all conveyed through social feedback), all to indicate that you will respect his contributions to the imaginary space. But ironically, when the time comes all those rules go out the window and really the only thing in effect is the mutual agreement of respect. But I'm getting ahead of myself...how much was the system applied?

[Web_Weaver]

I wonder, can you tell us what your borther did with gaming after that session?

To be honest he flirted with D&D with some friends, and a bit of fantasy wargamming, but that was it. He would have played more but not many of his peer group were interested.

I was out of town.

[Web_Weaver]

How much did the actual system come up during that, for him to be running the RPG in question?

...

But I'm getting ahead of myself...how much was the system applied?

If you read the rules of PV you will realise that the system is so simple that an eight-year can grasp it instantly.
The game is written from the perspective that everything is just story until the GM frames a situation that requires the toss of coins.

The interesting part of this, was that I didn't understand, back then, that the system mattered, so I wasn't prepared for the very different style of play. But, I would say that the game is written with a clearly designed agenda that is unlikely to drift.

Unfortunately I cant go into detail as I don't own a copy to analyse and my memory is poor on the details.

I remember that the rules were a single side of A4, with reasonably clear directions. I also remember that I thought that the rules seemed lacking until I actually played it and realised the experience differed from RuneQuest or Pendragon (my only real experience back then).

[Ron Edwards]

I'm a big, big fan of the Prince Valiant game, and it had a primary and overt influence when designing Sorcerer.

I think one of the most important features concerns using the "star" rewards. Did the kids use this, to any extent?

Best, Ron

[Web_Weaver]

I remember the reward certificates being a cool element of the game (especially for reward purposes so that children have a sense of achivement).

For those not familliar they are printed awards for cool play that can be spent on one-off narrow but flexible effects. But again, without the rules and only a rusty memory, I cant remember what the effects actually consisted of.

We didn't really get the chance to utilise them properly.

[MatrixGamer]

Your brother tried to follow up on the experience but given that his peers were not gaming or only gaming D+D or WarHammer, he was not going to get that experience again. Sad really.

Behavior change - like styles of play - just takes time. Peer pressure can make people conform to other styles real fast.

Chris Engle