[Eleanor's Dream] Playtesting with an 8-year old

[Eero Tuovinen]

Eleanor's Dream is my game for children and adults. It's totally the ultimate mainstreaming effort based on up-to-date theory and praxis. My last playtest was here.

This time (a couple of days ago, to be exact) I playtested Eleanor with this teenager, Sipi, from the nearby town of Iisalmi. I've known Sipi for a couple of years and played plenty of indie-type games with him. I like his company, for he's especially perceptive and smart for his age. Anyway, we played with Sipi's younger sister (Helena, I think is her name), who is 8 years old; I've played the game with Sipi and other teens a couple of times before, but with my Finnish language materials playtestable, I'm now trying to get plenty of play with young people. Sipi promised to help by corralling up one or more of his siblings, and there we were. I was rather intrigued by the opportunity, as I'm keen to build a rough understanding of children's development as relates to my game - what a child of given age can be expected to like and understand.

We played Eleanor for an hour and a half, I think. After that we played some High Society (I'm making an habit of playing German boardgames with children, it seems) before sending Helena off and continuing with Sipi and an in-depth discussion of this Finnish rpg Heimot, which I'm working up to play. Helena was rather perceptive and curious through the whole play process, and I never once stumbled in communicating with her - we got through all the material I had planned to test and then some without any difficulty in understanding the purpose of play. I'm sure she would have enjoyed the full rules, also; it makes a big difference if you can and want to read, Helena was keen to shuffle through the Dreambook herself to pick interesting elements for play.

The actual content of play was very varied, fantastic and accompanied by powerful color; I'd say this was the best session of the game ever substance-wise. We played according to my newly formed conception of "play lessons", where we start with simple rules and add more according to how well we do with the last batch. The design challenge in this approach is to make every step of the pedagogical progression also enjoyable by itself; the game has to work in all steps as a game, in other words. Here's my current "lesson plan" shortly described:

First lesson: for two players. At the beginning, pick an interesting element from the Dreambook. The adult (teaching, dominant) player reads the description of the element and spins up an interactive situation for the other, adventuring player. A decision point as per the full rules is entered, except there is no conflicts: whatever the player chooses to try, happens, and the player can describe how. This is repeated twice, for a total of three decision points. At the third point the reader warns the adventurer that "morning is approaching, this is the last choice of the night". After the third choice the story is wrapped up and ends. The goal of the exercise is to learn to interact through the decision point structure and to learn pacing: three decision points allows a short vignette type story, but there is no time for tomfoolery.

One game of "First lesson" takes at most ten minutes. We played it through with Sipi once, to give Helena an idea about what kind of game this is (she had no previous rpg experience). I set Sipi's dream at the Trollcliffs, where Sipi wasn't finding any animals, despite crawling over large rocks and under huge treeroots. Then he met a snake, and had to decide whether to examine it or escape the large adder. Sipi opted to examine the snake, at which point it suggested to him that if he climbed the large tree and brought magpie eggs to the snake to eat, it would teach him to find the animals of the forest. Sipi decided to do as the snake suggested and climbed the tree. When up, he met the magpie, which couldn't speak human, but did crow scared for it's young. The snake encircled the tree and egged Sipi on. Sipi had to decide whether he'd come down with the eggs or without; he opted for the third choice of doing nothing (as per the rules of decision point) and ended up growing a large beard sitting on the tree branch, like Buridan's ass. But that was his third choice, so he woke up and the dream ended.

The above should give a good picture of what a short dream with these minimal rules looks like. In practice this is a pretty fun activity, even with children, although it does require a bit of storytelling nature from the reader, who defines the initial situation and might have to supply decision point narration as necessary. The adventuring player interacts in choosing the element where the dream is centered, as well as joining in describing the resolution of decision points. My primary goal in the formation of "First lesson" has been to make it easy and low-pressure for everybody.

After playing the above with Sipi I asked if Helena understood what we did, and it was clear that she did (she also enjoyed our storytelling mannerisms with the snake and the magpie, as well as the absurd image of Sipi getting stuck in the tree because he didn't dare to come down). This being the case I gave the Dreambook to Sipi and suggested that he run the same exercise through with Helena. Sipi opted to set the dream in Arborharbor, and it ended up being about Helena trying to build a small cottage out of trees that the elves had dance out of the way of the axe. The dream ultimately ended with Helena climbing the tree to negotiate with the elves, but she got mad and threw them down instead and took to living in their tree home. All the elves that were thrown to ground changed into... uh, dwarves (this doesn't work in standard English, you don't have separate words for Tolkien-type elves and the homely land-living kind with a pointed hat; the former are airy and light, while the latter are like small dwarves) with a desperate wail. They lived in trees, you see, so when they touched the ground they changed. (This, as well as all the other weird dreamy color during the game were a direct result of participant improvisation. I don't rightly remember who came up with that detail.)

During the above I stayed a participant, made suggestions and such, but didn't have a rules-based role. When we all agreed after the above dream that we were doing fine with the rules, I moved on to lesson 2:

Second lesson: the second lesson is just like the first one, except that now we add the small conflict as per the full rules. I didn't realize before the session that the addition of the small conflict clearly necessiates some restraint from the reading player: only set conflicts as a result of decision point choices, and tell in advance that one (never both) of the options includes a die-roll. This most basic form of conflict is stripped of all internal structure, you see, so its only function is to balance choices that would otherwise be easy: the standard example is the choice of being the hero (and risking the roll) or being the coward so you don't have to roll. In other words, only use the small conflict as a balance in the context of value-based provocation. I had a couple of redundant rolls in the game before figuring this out, but after that it went well.

This time I was the reader for Helena. I still made the choice of dream element in this dream, although Helena was already intrigued by the Dreambook. I set the dream in Winter, where Helena had lost her skis. She had the choice of trying to find the skis or following some tracks made by trolls. She followed the tracks, which didn't necessiate a conflict, as the tracks were huge and six-legged. Eventually she found her way to the troll cave and had the choice of climbing on top to block the chimney (and drive the trolls out of the warm cave) or going in carefully. She chose to go in, at which point she faced three six-legged trolls in different colors. The last pair of choices was to escape the trolls, or entangle them dextrously in ropes and nets they had hanging in their cave. Helena opted for the latter, but failed the conflict. The trolls caught her and threw her into their pot (of which they had complained earlier that it didn't have any meat in it). That ended the dream.

Although my Dreambook seems to really be all about trolls who eat men, it didn't seem to bother Helena. Therefore we continued on to the third lesson:

Third lesson: otherwise the same as second, but now we added more players: with three players you can run the above three-point dreams mixed, so that each player gets one decision point in turn. One player is still the reader who frames and defines decision points, but this time any other player may add one choice to the decision point if they want to. Also, the reader has an additional challenge: both players choose (or have chosen for them) dream elements individually at the beginning of the game, and the job of the reader is to frame and fit the stories in a manner that ends up weaving or entangling the two dreams that probably start from different elements. Note that this is a structural method, not a definition of success; whether it happens or not, it's useful to try, as the friction generates Crosses even if no entanglement happens.

Interestingly enough I myself forgot my own rules at the beginning of the third lesson: I played the beginning by insisting that the reader only gives one choice in the decision point, while the third player would supply the second. I find it curious that this didn't work nearly as well; apparently I've had good reason to specify it the way I have. After I found the decision points slowing down I figured out the problem and changed to the correct rules.

The actual dreams were more of dreamy bizarrity: Sipi escaped Deserted Island by catching sea gulls in a sack and floating up over the sea. He directed the sack by hitting it with a stick, with the notion that this would knock out any birds trying to fly in the wrong direction. Despite called conflicts he succeeded in flying into a city, where he let the gulls out of the sack and bought ice cream for the whole bunch of thirty or so birds. They made a pretty sight twadling in line after him, for they couldn't fly after the long trip to the city.

Meanwhile, Helena had a dream at the Lonely Shore (which I wouldn't choose for such a young one, but she wanted it after looking through my Dreambook). She was rather lonely there and ended up writing messages in the sand in the hopes of attracting somebody. Ultimately she did find an old man with a long beard that disappeared in the horizon. But because the two had found and befriended each other, they weren't lonely no more, so they found their way out of the Lonely Shore. The old man wanted to go to the city to buy lots of candy (after spending 30 years eating seaweed), and Helena opted to go with him. In the city she succesfully reined in the old man's buying frenzy and saved him from bankcrupty. Then they sold the old man's immense beard to a wig factory and ended up living comfortably.

An interesting point was that when I gave Sipi his last choice of either rewarding the birds or trying to find his sister in the city, it flew right past him that I was referring to this sister right here. Helena, on the other hand, naturally assumed that as both dreams ended in a city, it was the same city. Both found the concept of meeting in the dream rather exciting (even if it didn't happen this time), and it is true that it adds a certain elan into the otherwise already familiar dynamics. That might be the saving grace of the "Third lesson", as it does gain a bit of clumbersome weight from having turns between the players. Have to play more, and with larger groups, to find out if participating in decision points and potentially meeting in the dream are enough activity for when it's not your turn.

Fourth lesson: finally, we ended the session with the fourth lesson, which explained the connections: this was otherwise like the third lesson, except now the reader had to introduce a new dream element in each dream after each decision point, and he had to pick it according to the connections listed in the already active dream elements. In other words, each dream would have three elements instead of one, making for much more structured dreams, hanging closer to the Dreambook. I consider the fourth lesson the first one that starts to reveal the manner of play implied by the very fact of having the Dreambook; the read-out descriptions of each element are rather trivial, but the connections set out between them are what the game has for an implied setting geography and relationship map.

Anyway, I was still the reader here. Helena wanted a dream at the Trollcliffs, so she was there, trying to figure out how to get inside the trollish halls to get a hold of the troll treasure (these motivation bits are all part of the situation as outlined by the reader; Helena had expressed an interest in the trolls before, so this was my response). What's more, she had a brown felt hat, which meant that she was quite obviously a treasure hunter. Helena opted to wait for the Night, at which point the trolls opened the hall and trolls from all over the cliffs started going in for a party. (It was quickly specced out by Sipi that this was for the annual "Moraine Awards".) Helena kidnapped a kid troll and threw him into a pond (these trolls wouldn't be harmed by that; they were stone trolls) after stealing his clothes. Then she snuck in with the trolls and scampered off to steal the Treasure. Unfortunately it was in a large chest which she tried to drag out unnoticed. The chest screeched in a loud manner, which made the trolls notice; the troll that won the Moraine award and the troll-king ended up both grabbing Helena and tearing her apart, fighting for the right to eat her. (Hmm... sounds grimmer in writing.) The dream elements here were Trollcliffs, Night and Treasure, the descriptions of which I read aloud when they came in after decision points.

Meanwhile, Sipi was at the Windy Plain, where he met some wolves. He tried to escape them with his horse, but the wolves brought it down and dragged both the carcass and Sipi into their cave. Come the Night he talked a large gray wolf into letting him go and going with him, so the two could go on a zany adventure. They went to Trollcliffs, where the trolls were a bit distressed, as a troll child was stuck in a pond and the morning had almost come. Sipi and his wolf friend helped drag the child from the pond in exhange for a big bear carcass (for the wolf, you see) and the promise of getting to see the trollish treasure (the point of Helena's quest was to find out what the troll-king had in that chest). Unfortunately, just as Sipi was about to see the treasure morning came and the trolls closed their kingdom doors, which ended the dream.

At this point I was out of ammunition, as I hadn't though up Lesson 5. We'd also played for about an hour and a half, so I suggested playing some light card game for a change of pace. Helena did like the game as we played it, so I gave the Dreambook to Sipi so they could play some more, perhaps with other siblings. We shall see what comes of it.

***
In hindsight, what I'm going to do is switching the second and third lesson with each other. Otherwise the first four lessons seem rather solid. They're simple enough for an 8-year old to get in one session, for certain. The lessons are rather small and simple, but that's all the better. Getting all the rules crammed into lessons will require a dozen lessons, though. Not a problem, because the game is functional along the way, and there's no reason why one can't stop or even backtrack for an extented period of time, choosing the game to fit the situation.

Other than that, comments... well, nothing of import, really. The session went really well, so the only thing I'm wondering is how much of it was that I'm getting better with the kind of fiction I want the game to have, and how much is that the rules are starting to work at peak efficiency. No idea. Have to put some non-roleplayers up to playing without my interference to see what kind of zany dreamstuff they think up given the chance.

Hmm... that should be all. I'll have to ask Sipi if his sister's name really is Helena, as I seem to remember. I'll also have to play with them again, it was simply fun. What a surprisingly well-mannered and smart kid she was.

[Simon C]

Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I'm really interested in what you're doing with this game, and I'm following these posts with interest.

I notice that in this game, Helena seems much less "win" focussed than the boy you played with last time.  Do you think this is becasue she doesn't expect this to be a game about winning and losing, as the boy might have? Or do you think that by introducing the game first in Lesson One, with choices without rolling, it creates the idea that any interesting dream is "success"?  That's an important lesson.

I really like the direction you're taking this, with the Lessons set out so that it's a functional game at any point of rules complexity.  It seems like that's going to be a lot of work, but good luck!

[Eero Tuovinen]

Thanks Simon, it's important to know that there's interested readers.

I think Helena was definitely less victory-oriented than Osvald. This was also the case when we played the card game High Society afterwards, so I'd say that it was a matter of personality. Also, the way I introduced the game was really clear on what it was: as I played through one dream with Sipi first, it became totally clear (at least in my mind) that this is not so much a "game" as a shared storytelling activity. In Osvald's case we have an established history of playing games and he has gone into a huff several times over losing; therefore he had more of a social motivation in interpreting the game as win/lose than Helena, who came to it with less preconception.