[Eleanor's Dream] Playtesting with a 6-year old

[Eero Tuovinen]

Eleanor's Dream is my current big rpg project. I introduced the project here.

I got my Finnish dream book (a central play component) for Eleanor's Dream translated last week, and after spending the weekend under a flu I ended up arranging a small playtest of the game with the most challenging audience imaginable, my 6-year (well, more like 5 and nine months) old nephew. I'm the boy's godfather and in close relationship with the family in general (the sitcom kind, where I just pop in to sit on their couch for no reason whatsoever), so we see each other frequently with the boy Osvald. He's usually very keen to play or look at me playing all kinds of console games and board games. I've lately made something of a point about playing adult board games like Domaine, Shogun and Fist of Dragonstones with him. We haven't, however, played anything remotely roleplaying-like before.

Osvald is a rather curious boy (insofar as I know about children), but he also has a very strong will to win and little patience with losing. He craves all kinds of play and games constantly, but he's also quick to get mad and/or quit when a game goes against him. I've had many discussions with him about the necessity of being graceful about losing and the sheer fact that it's not the end of the world if you lose in a game. This will to win translates naturally and immediately to a roleplaying game as well, as I came to see today.

Stripping the rules

Now, if you take a look at the rules of the game, it's easy to see that they are a bit much for a 6-year old. My philosophy in this regard is very clear: I will go and play, make notes, play more and ultimately end up with a good understanding of what's appropriate and what's not. I accordingly didn't do any excess preparation before the game, but rather sat down with Osvald and figured out on the fly which concepts to include from the game and what to leave out. Already when sitting down I knew that I wouldn't be doing the extended prologue with Princes and what not with Osvald, those are all besides the point for a boy who has never played roleplaying games.

Instead I started very matter of factly: "This is a game about dreaming, specifically telling stories that are like dreams. We'll start with a place called Trollcliffs..." and then I started narrating as per the basic turn structure of the game. As can be seen, I not only stripped the introductory episode I recommend in the rules sketch, but I also just picked one element to start the game with, instead of going through the Prince-based determination routine and player-initiated choice. This is something that happens at least in my own playtesting all the time: I write some rules, find them unimplementable at the table, throw them away on the spot and play in a functional manner instead. In this case my actual play was very influenced by my play partner, who I didn't want to confuse with irrelevant bits or rules explanations. Straight to the game, I say.

Anyway, I chose one suitable dream element, Trollcliffs, and narrated how Osvald was there, climbing large rocks and exploring the forest. Interestingly I found myself more comfortable in addressing Osvald in third person, as in a story. Later on, when we both got more comfortable, I started using the more usual second person. Be that as it may, my narration was quite short, one paragraph about the Trollcliffs and one about a snake Osvald encountered there. This was just something I drew from my hat, Osvald had just been harassing me with a rubber snake before we started playing. The snake was long and green, and I gave Osvald the choices of "trying to catch the snake" or "escaping from the snake".

This was the first part where there actually was a necessity of Osvald doing anything in the game, so it was interesting to see how it'd go. I hadn't given any preliminary speeches about what rpgs are or what this game is like or anything. Osvald asked me "what would be a smart thing to do", and I told him that we don't know, they might both be good options. So Osvald chose to escape from the snake, at which point I narrated how the snake tried to speak (difficult with it's forked tongue): it was asking Osvald to wait and hear what it had to say. I again gave the choice of stopping to listen or running off, and Osvald chose to run.

At that point I narrated how Osvald was afraid of the snake and ran away quick. He stumbled, however, on a gorge, and had to manage a small conflict to not fall down in his fearful state. (The GM's power to initiate conflict is one of the less clear things in the rules currently; here I went with the idea that conflict happens whenever a suitable situation is narrated, no choices necessary if the conflict seems obvious from the narration.) Osvald immediately understood why the die was to be rolled, and did it very pompously, failing miserably. I told him that he'd stumbled into the gorge, and the dream would end there.

Now, and interesting turn of the events: immediately after the dream ended, Osvald told me that now it was my turn to play. I hadn't expected this at all, but I went with it, describing the Windy Plains as the place where my dream happened. Osvald's not much for reading at his tender age so I read the description of the Plains for him, and then he wanted to give me the choices; the decision point mechanic is apparently very natural, as Osvald grasped it immediately. So we played a small dream for me as well, where I was trying to dig myself into the ground to escape from the storm blowing overhead on the plains.

After that it was again Osvald's turn. We had a dream at the Deserted Island, as Osvald didn't want another dream at the Trollcliffs when I offered either that or a dream of my choosing. Osvald tried to get a coconut from a palm tree, got abducted by monkeys, brought to meet the gorilla king Goom, and ended up getting some bananas from the apes. Then he had to help carry rocks for Goom's monument, and ultimately, as he's so small and weak, he had to choose whether to leave the apes or challenge Goom for the right to not work in the hot sun. Osvald chose to challenge and lost, which again ended the dream.

Through this all Osvald had been very interested in playing, as well as increasingly excited in getting to roll the die. The die, however, constantly failed him. When the dream ended by Goom winning the (undescribed) kingship contest Osvald ran to his room crying. This is a relatively common occurrence when we play a game he's excited about and he loses, so no big deal (as my sister was in the room also, I'd say the game had the Mother's Seal of Approval). The good part was that Osvald came back in about a minute and wanted to play more.

Osvald chose to have his third dream with Goom, which was an interesting choice when he had such adversial relations with the gorilla last time. This time we had pirates hiding a treasure on Goom's isle, which Goom wanted Osvald to drive away. Osvald agreed, went to spy on the pirates and found them hiding a treasure chest on the island. So Osvald digs out the treasure when the pirates are gone, but can't open the chest. He finds an ancient robotic nutcrusher that could do it, but didn't manage to get the chest and the robot into the same place. Then, when the night had already fallen on the island, he stumbled on Goom, who had went a-looking for Osvald, worried that he'd get lost during the night. (This was all a long string of mostly failure regarding several choices of how to open the treasure chest.) So Goom and Osvald went back for the treasure chest, as I gave Osvald the choice of lying to the gorilla or telling him about the treasure (which Goom would probably take for himself). Goom and Osvald came back to the other apes and were celebrated for getting the treasure.

This third dream was very popular with Osvald, no doubt because I eased up a bit in my GMly duties and stopped driving the horrible adversity up the wall like I do with adult players. Goom was now a conflicted character, as it had helped Osvald, but was still an arrogant ape-king. I suspect that Osvald will choose Goom again when he gets another chance to play. Which is soon, because Osvald absolutely insisted that we'd have to play more. We had just played an hour at this point, but I was emotionally and intellectually tired after having my brainchild of a game operated by a 6-year old, so I called it quits. I also promised to come play tomorrow, but Osvald insisted for more play tonight. Actually, now that I'm writing this, it seems I only have five minutes before our play-date. Have to get going. I'll write more after playing some more with Osvald. Have to introduce him to the dream tokens, next. (I wrote the conclusions, below, earlier, so the message should be more or less finished. If you find that I left something unexplained, ask.)

Conclusions

For the rules, my preliminary conclusion is that the right way to write and offer this kind of all-family game is as a series of lessons; the first lesson would be narration and conflict resolution, exactly like our first session with Osvald, and the rest of the rules could come in later lessons. The reader could apply the rules one lesson at a time, playing as long as necessary or fun before adding more rules. Adults would go through the process fast, while children and mixed groups can take their time. I think this is how I'll be playing with Osvald: I know for a fact that he can take most of the rules in my current draft with time, but for now the play is much more rewarding when we start with simple, immediately accessible stuff. The resource management aspect can come later.

The most rewarding part of the playtest was that while I ended up stripping the rules to their bare bones, those bones are solid: the narration -> choices -> dice -> narration cycle works very well and is completely natural to Osvald at least. (I'll have to arrange for some more playtests at the child care center during the winter to see how peculiar Osvald is in learning the game.) I'd very much like to try this "lesson one" rules set with several players, too, to see which parts of the multiplayer rules I'd end up including.

What I found interesting was Osvald's natural assumption that the game would have turns, and that we'd change places as narrator and adventurer. I'm taking this bit very seriously, and will try to see if it was just a fluke, or if non-GMed play is actually completely natural in this case. The game as I've conceived it will have both GM and non-GMed versions of the rules, but thus far I've thought that I'd be offering the GMed version as the primary one, and the no-GM version as an "adult variant" suitable for groups where everybody knows all the rules. (My reasoning on this has been based on some smart analysis Paul Czege gave a while ago for why there is a gamemaster in most games; according to Paul combining the game-initiator and in-game authority into one role makes it more likely for actual play to happen.) I'll maybe have to rethink that part.

Osvald's obsession with victory is another thing I'll have to look out for in other children. I have no idea if all children his age are so singular and, dare I say, childish about losing. The primary point of interest here is that Osvald naturally assumed that the game would be about winning, and was very willing to interpret the events as him winning or, mostly, losing (falling into the ravine = losing, for example). I suspect that an important inspiration in this regard was the die-rolling, where I quite explicitly said that rolling high would have him succeed in whatever it was that he was trying to do. If so, this is quite manageable GNS-wise, as it's just moment-to-moment victories. In any case, great fun.

[Ben Lehman]

Hey, Eero --

Interesting to read.

Why do you want to do things in lessons?  It seems to me that you could tie phases of the game pretty effectively to the fiction: the relationship with Goom is clearly a new state of game play, and you can have special rules for such relationships without trying to force them by dividing it up into a seperate "lesson?"

yrs--
--Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

Good point, Ben. Lesson is just how I interpreted my actual actions when I came from the session: I had intentionally stripped down most of the rules of the game to make it easier for the boy to understand, but not with an intent of thrashing the rest of the rules, but rather just to give the boy an opportunity to learn the game in phases. I can imagine structuring it as an in-game phenomenon of some kind, although I also suspect that it would be more complex that way; somebody would have to keep an eye on the activation conditions of various rules, and you might end up adding rules too soon or too late if the system wasn't smartly done. By comparison a fixed lesson plan is a simple and robust, and ultimately allows the actual play group to use or ignore the phased structure. If you're adults and experienced, you can probably add most of those rules right away, while a mixed group can choose a subset that's still functional and reasonable to learn. Not unlike the old D&D system of higher level box sets. But I don't know, this is just preliminary thinking at this point. Certainly elegant growth through game play is the ruling design aesthetic right now.

Now that you mention it, it's certainly true that the "phase system" in the rules was originally conceived as a possible vessel for rules of different complexity. I've currently abandoned that thought, because I'm pretty sure that tying the introduction of rules elements on the dramatic arc (which is what the phases are) is a horrendously bad idea. Tying rules introduction to the manner and intensity of player participation, on the other hand, is a possibility. For example, I could imagine introducing the familiarity rules when the player develops a strong relationship (like Osvald and Goom) with an NPC.

***

We played another hour just now, for a total of two hours today. During the second hour we had two dreams (4 and 5 dream tokens) during which I explained the dream token system (you run out = dream ends) and showed Osvald how the game is structured based on the explicit elements in the book. Osvald was now very determined about which dream elements he'd want in the next dream; the first time he again chose Goom, but the second one was started with The Laughing Pirate, who had a guest appearance in the first dream. The first dream began with Goom dropping a mysterious box into a ravine, when he couldn't get it to open, despite Osvald helping him. Osvald though of getting a rope, but didn't dare to climb down when it proved that Goom was too heavy to do it. Then pirates came to the other side of the ravine and started climbing down to get the box. They told Osvald that the box had a radio in it, and the pirates wanted it. It was interesting that Osvald was very careful about not climbing down into the ravine, because he didn't want to fall. He instead sent Goom to run around the ravine to the pirate side to chase them away, and left himself to get the rest of the apes to help. When he came back, however, the pirates were already down and climbing up with the radio. The Laughing Pirate himself offered to take Osvald as a cabin boy to his ship, because it is not fit for human boys to live with apes. Osvald agreed (instead of fighting for the radio) and went with the pirates, which ended the dream.

The second dream started with Osvald and the pirates, and the pirates arguing about whether they'd go to the Big City or Lonely Coast (as per, whether they were afraid of the cops or not). Osvald got into it and talked the pirates to go to the Lonely Coast. There he searched for treasure (found none) and went to sleep when Night came. During the night a large troll came with a large pot and started a cooking fire to eat the pirate crew, while the pirates slept noisily. Osvald had the choice of awakening the pirates despite the troll warning him not to, and running away. He ran. In the morning he found a road to the Big City and started following it. However, the troll from the previous night was encountered on the way, with his large pot in one hand and a big sack on his back, with the rest of the pirates. Osvald had the choice of following the troll to save the pirates, or continuing on to the Big City. He agonized over it like a nar-head, asking for my opinion. Ultimately he ended up going on, because the troll was scary (and his elder brother, who now listened in, suggested in). Getting to the city ended the game. However, about ten minutes later Osvald asked me whether I'd already figured out what I would do in that situation (when he asked during the game I just pondered the consequences of the choices aloud, and said that it's a tricky situation), so apparently it was really a powerful situation. I told Osvald that I would have probably tried to save the pirates, because if trolls of the world are not stopped, then they're just going to eat everybody.

I will gladly admit that I might drive the game a bit hard for a young child with my man-eating trolls who really end up eating people (certainly up to par for my own childhood and trad fairytales, but I understand parents today are made of softer materials), but that's because I've only played horrible games with horrible people. Luckily Osvald seems to take it well, and while he's very careful, it's a refreshing change of pace from homicidial roleplayers. He also seems to think that the game is exciting and fun, so in that regard all seems to be well. I will, however, be asking his mom whether he'll end up sleeping well this night. Not my intention to scare children more than necessary for pedagogical and entertainment reasons ;)

We'll be playing more tomorrow, at which point I was thinking of including either the familiarity rules or awakening tokens (or rather, introduce the concept of either one and one simple option related to them). Also get a third player, if Osvald's elder brother or sister wants to play. It seems I'll have a horrendous amount of material to integrate when the week is through, I'm wasted from just playing with the boy today.

[pells]

Hi Eero !! I like those games with children. It really interests me. So, two questions and a comment :

- Your nephew seems to play a lot of game for a kid of his age. What is his reaction toward Eleanor's Dream ? Is it just another game ? Or another type ? Usually, I guess, most games he play must make use of some kind of board/pieces, now it is "all in the head". Does he seem to find this more serious, challeging or creative ?
- I don't know if this your intend, but there seems to be some moral dilemmas at some point in the dreams. For instance, when he brings back the treasure. He could have kept it to himself and not be faithful to his word. Was it your intent ? How do you/your nephew/his mom think about this ? Do you feel that your nephew made his decision honestly or did he use some kind of others "advantages" to make the call (or pressure from adults being there) ? I like this, I think it is a good thing. Those are "childish" situations, but still, there is something there.

- About the rules. I think that you need to playtest this more a little, with various groups of ages. In my opinion, some guidelines would be welcomed for the reader about the "degree" of rules to use with what type of children (age, maturity) and how to advance in the degree (ie add more rules). And this doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

[Matt Machell]

Eero,

one thing I notice about your second post is that the conflicts are much more about "which of A and B happens" rather than "do you succeed at A". It seems to have gone over much better. Was that a conscious choice on your part? It seems to me much less frustrating for Osvald, which is probably a good thing in my mind.

-Matt

[Eero Tuovinen]

Pells: Yeah, Osvald plays comparatively lot, I guess. Or at least as much as his skills permit. His reaction to Eleanor has largely been excited; he doesn't view it as fundamentally different from other games (I think), but he likes it a lot. A significant portion of that could simply be that it's a game I'm interested in playing with him, I don't know. Osvald is very keen to play games with me, but I have no idea if it's because he wants to play games or wants to play with me.

As for moral dilemmas, they're rather intentional. As I described in my second post, the second playtest ended with a very harsh and pronounced sequence where Osvald abandoned his pirate crew to a man-eating troll. Narrativist agenda galore, I might say. I'll have to play more with children to figure out where the real boundaries lie on what's acceptable and what's not. This will sound horribly pretentious, but even not having kids of my own I'll hazard the opinion that children are robust little things and will only benefit from horrid tales and moral dilemmas, the same as adults. So I'm not particularly worried about traumatizing Osvald or anything like that. His mother seems to agree with this assessment

Matt: that might be true. I didn't fiddle with my scene framing and choice of conflict intentionally between the two sessions (they both happened on the same day), but it is natural that our skill in playing together developed during the two hours of play. Remembering the second session, I'd say that a lot of the difference came from the mere fact that Osvald had better luck with the dice, winning about half the time as the odds should be. Also, I might have resorted to the dice a bit less this time around.

As the rules of the game stand, the decision to use the dice is completely up to the fictional situation: you do something risky, you roll the die. This is very primeval in execution, and does require some thought as to how the story continues on failure. The reason for using such almost task-like dicing is that it ties to the turn order: when you fail with the die, your turn ends. With just the two of us playing this didn't mean anything, of course.

***
Hey, while I'm here, our third playtest: this happened perhaps a bit under a week ago, we haven't played since then due to my other commitments. The third session had Osvald's brother along for the ride. He's, what, 12 years old or something like that, and he approached the game with a mix of awe (the boy is rather the nerd, just has never played rpgs) and bemusement (as the game was, basicly, geared for his 5-year old brother). I had enough on my plate in this session with two players, so I ended up not introducing any new rules apart from turn order between the two players.

In this session Osvald chose to start the dream with the Big City; this follows the pattern thus far in that although the rules do not require or recommend it, Osvald wants to make the game a continuous narrative between dreams. He always seems to choose to continue with the last important element encountered, and while we haven't explicitly discussed it, he apparently expects some continuity between the dreams.

Osvald's story in this session had him work as a loader of ships in the harbor, when he suddenly noticed that a grid that opened to the undercity had been left ajar (as can be seen in the description of the Big City, the undercity is a home to giant crabs). Osvald went to tell about it to the harbor-master, but while he was gone, a giant crab crawled out from the undercity and started terrorizing the harbor. After some figuring and creative usage of long sticks Osvald drove the crab back under the city. Afterwards he was much lauded, and a rich merchant came to ask him whether he'd like to go on a journey with the merchant marine. Osvald declined (he didn't want to leave the city of his victory). Then a mysterious, dirty man came to ask him to meet the Giant Oyster. Osvald agreed to this and ended up travelling under the city, where it is dark and crabby. The Oyster wanted Osvald to help carry him (a naturally legless creature) to the overcity; Osvald agreed, and with the help of some giant crabs he succeeded in the engineering challenge of getting a large Oyster hoisted up to the light.

The latter part of the story started getting tense, as it proved that the Giant Oyster was a criminal mastermind of the highest caliber: he made his nest in one of the abandoned warehouses in the city and started cackling madly about how he was going to rule the place. It was quite surprising that Osvald went with the Oyster, supporting his vile plans. This came to head when the Oyster asked Osvald to burn down the docks to cow the mayor of the Big City. Osvald did as the Oyster wanted (never underestimate the power of a funny antropomorfization on a young mind!), but was caught by the police afterwards. The police were rather dismayed that the crab-taming hero had turned to crime, but they did put Osvald into a jail cell. Osvald's last choice of the dream was whether he'd try to lure a witch to free him (witches had been introduced in his brother's dream, previously) or whether he'd wait for his trial like a good boy. Osvald opted for the witches, but they wouldn't have anything to do with an arsonist, so Osvald's dream ended in jail.

Now, the above was Osvald's dream, and as can be seen, it was pretty long at this point, as Osvald already had six or seven dream tokens. The dream was interleaved with that of Osvald's brother, Pauli, so the session in all easily took an hour. Because Pauli was playing for the first time, he started with just one dream token and thus had time for several dreams. The most significant of these was the last one, which had Pauli end up at Gear Mountain, where he was detained as an illegal immigrant and put to jail; Pauli escaped handily with a bunch of other immigrants, but in the end he was the only one who found his way out of Gear Mountain, while the rest of the escapees were caught by the Gear Mountain police.

There was no doubt that the two dreams influenced each other, Osvald especially took ques from Pauli's adventures with witches and the police. I managed the practical shift of turns manually, giving each player a turn after a couple of exhanges with the other; the rules have provision for turns, but for some reason I didn't want to trust them completely, and ended up switching turns a couple of times for no rules-based reason. Apparently I'll need to simplify and make the turn rules more strict; I've been thinking of making it so that the turn always changes after a decision point, but that wouldn't necessarily work with more than two players. Problematic.

Anyway, other than that the game went rather well. Osvald was very exact with the rules, and when I did something I hadn't explained to him yet, he wanted to know why I did it. "Why you gave Pauli just one dream token, shouldn't he get three?" (Osvald himself got three tokens when I finally introduced that mechanic to him after the first couple of dreams.) and such. The boys could both appreciate the similarities between their dreams, and afterwards discussed why it was OK for Pauli to get into prison and escape from his overzealous jailers, while in Osvald's case it was clearly justified to jail him for his horrible crime.

Hmm, that's more or less it. I should play more with the boys, but for now I'll try to internalize the lessons of these sessions and write some rules based on them. More play after I understand what's going on.