I do errands with my young children (oldest just turned four). So when I went to discover my friendly-local-gaming-store today, I had kids in tow. And when I was ready to go, D. (my eldest) said "Daddy! It's a game-store! I wanna play a game!"

Who could pass up a straight-line like that?

The Sessions

I reached into my pocket. Thirty-seven cents. A quarter, a dime, two pennies. Enough to play Nighttime Animals Save the World. So, in full view of God and the cashier-lady and everyone I handed D. a penny and a dime, and said "Okay, do you want to be a squirrel or a skunk? Squirrel? Your squirrel is right here... right where I'm pointing. Do you pretend-see him? Good. Way over there is a dog. He stole your nuts. And he's sending cats to stop you from getting them back... here they come, over the tables! Eeeek! They're gonna scratch you! What do you do?"

We ended up playing two games ("Daddy, daddy, now I'm a skunk!"), and I was quite entertained to see what roleplaying looks like absolutely devoid of guile.

• D. didn't really "get" how the coins were negotiating our input into the shared imaginary space. There were a few times when I narrated something other than what he asked for, and all he could do for a moment was repeat "But I want this to happen!", confident that we were just having a misunderstanding, not a disagreement.
• Once D. found something that could be applied, he applied it with great consistency until it stopped working. "There are rats coming!" "I spray them with stinky stuff!" "And now there are big heavy balls rolling toward you!" "I spray them with stinky stuff!" The known response became a way of asserting his control of the game. It seriously makes me think differently about power-gamers. "An orc attacks you!" "I blast it with my Staff of Power!" "Okay, the princess runs up, grateful!" "I blast her with my Staff of Power!"
• I managed (yay me!) to not step all over this confidence builder. When he stinky-sprayed the big rolling balls, I just said "You spray 'em so hard they roll somewhere else." Then I said "And the cats build a big brick wall, right there." His response? "Ooooh... I can't stinky-spray a wall! I'll go around... here!"
• Having been shaken out of the pattern once, his penultimate confrontation with the cats was not "I spray them with stinky stuff." It was "You be nice, or I'll spray you with stinky stuff!" Said threat, sadly, did not mend their evil ways, and he got scratched on the nose.
• To express the full range of his vengeance he went naturally to Director mode. "I spray them with stinky stuff!" "Yuck! Now they're all stinky!" "Yeah, and they try to clean up with their tongues! EWWWWW!"

The after-battle discussion

So we're heading back to the car, and D. asks "Daddy, why did the cats scratch my nose?"
"Why did they try? Or why did they succeed?"
"Why did they succeed?"
"Because I had a bigger coin. That's how the game goes, like in chutes and ladders when you really want to spin a three, but you spin a five instead, you still have to go five spaces."
"But it's a story."
"And a game."
"Oh. Like Chutes and Ladders?"
"Yep."
"So I need bigger coins?"
"Yep."
"Okay. Next time I'll have all the big coins."
"That's a good plan."

Wow. Four!

That's really cool.

-Vincent