I ran my D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign this weekend. This is the second session since we brought in two very young players, Caitlin (9 year old girl) and Sean (10 year old boy). They are the children of one of the other players, Trey. My last thread garnered some good advice on adding kids to games and I followed some of it and it paid dividends. This session was a strange dichotomy of very excellent and very disappointing play. However, I think we've had enough instances of play now that some patterns are emerging and perhaps solutions to certain problems can be found.

There are a few things about our play that I need to address up front so that everyone knows how it works with us.

Reward Cycle - When the group or a player does something to merit XP, I award it immediately. Defeat a group of monsters... get XP right then. Disarm the trap and get into the castle... XP right then. This means that my reward cycle is relatively short but the individual rewards aren't very large.

Tokens - I have a jar of about 100 blue glass beads and 1 black bead. At the beginning of every session each player draws 3 beads. These bead represent a +2 bonus (or -2 penalty) to any roll in the game. Players can spend them whenever they like. The black bead, should someone be lucky enough to draw it, is a +5.

Now for a relatively quick overview of what happened in the session.

Scene 1: The party is back at the Prancing Pony Inn in Silverymoon and are met by a mercenary sorcerer that they know. He's heard about the orc horde (with Frost Giant allies) that have attacked Mithral Hall and he's headed that way to take advantage of the opportunity for proffit. He's willing to take the party along with him, if they want to go. Catch is that he's Teleporting there and there's a limit to what he can take in number of characters. The party decides to take him up on the offer and they choose who is going so that everyone has 1 character and 1 player has 2. Interestingly, they left behind all the healers and instead stocked up on healing potions.

This scene accomplished two goals. First, I got to see whether the party wanted to pursue the orc horde plot or whether they wanted to go after some of the stuff still up in the air in Silverymoon. Second, the limited method of travel forced them to make some strategic decisions.

Concerns - Sean really wanted to take his horse which was impossible with the Teleport spell and was pushing to travel overland instead of via magic so that they could do so. He eventually caved in after discussing it with the rest of the group. I think his decision had a good bit to do with player/player pressure from his father. This bothered be some but I'm unsure how to deal with it yet and it didn't end up being a big deal this time.

Scene 2: After the Teleport, the sorcerer goes his own way and the party trudges towards Mithral Hall. They are ambushed by a group of Orc and Bugbears while traversing the edge of a cliff.

Good Things - Caitlin is generally pretty quiet and a little shy (not surprising). When it came to be her turn to act, several people offered suggestions for actions with her father suggesting to stay back and use her bow. Instead, from out of the blue, she said she wanted to cast her 1 Entangle spell at the orcs and bugbears. Internally I said "Hell, yeah!" and sure enough that spell incapacitated about 66% of the bad guys and the party handily defeats the remaining enemies. This is the second time in 2 sessions she's used a spell to good effect.

Not So Good Things - Sean killed two Bugbears and then decided he wanted to make a cool helmet from the skull of one of them. This didn't surprise me since his father's Wemic character (who is a bit uncivilized) had done so with a dragon skull. What did kind of concern me is that he decided to do this while the fight was still going on rather than waiting until the enemy was defeated. I could tell this annoyed some of the other players too.

Scene 3: After defeating the orcs and bugbears, the party runs into a lone Frost Giant. This is a tough fight as the giant has the capability of KOing half the characters in the party in one shot.

Good Things - Sean has his fighter (the toughest character in the party) run forward and taunt the giant. I thought this was a brilliant tactic for him. His character was the only one pretty much assured to survive 2 hits from the monster and maybe even 3 hits. His fighter also deals out a crap-load of damage with his 2 handed sword. I had him do an opposed roll with the Giant and it worked! The Giant goes after him and ignores everyone else.

Not So Good Things - Sean's character got hit... hard. I mean, it's a Giant after all and he did taunt the thing. It does a lot of damage. As soon as this happened, he tried to run away, wasting 2 rounds trying to escape when he could have been beating up on the Giant. This happened last session too. If his character takes damage he immediately goes into "survival mode" or something. He does this despite having a very, very effective fighter character who can pretty much dish it out and take it quite well.

Scene 4: The party sees a plume of dust coming from the north. They investigate and they see a large battle between orcs and dwarves with the dwarves trying to set up defensive lines between the mountains and the river to the east. They note that at one location the dwarves are being pressed hard. A large number of orcs and 2 Frost Giants are attacking a group of dwarves and 2 humans. The party comes in to the rescue.

Good Things - Caitlin sees one of the NPC humans get pummeled by giants throwing boulders and has her eagle animal companion take the NPC a potion of healing. Nobody suggested this tactic to her. She just did it. It showed some pretty creative thinking about how to employ her character's resources. I liked it.

Not So Good Things - Sean seemed to hang on to his reluctance to enter into combat from the last scene. He had his fighter throw a dagger at a giant and miss. Then he decided to go find the dagger instead of continuing the fight. He wanted to do this despite the party telling him that daggers are a dime a dozen and he could get another one after the battle. His father exerted some pressure on him and he stayed in the battle instead. Once again, this bothered me but I'm not sure the group could have survived if he hadn't stuck around. After all, he is the tank of the group.

That was the last scene.

I have a couple of concerns. First, I'm concerned about Trey putting pressure on Sean to have his character do (or not do) certain things. He wouldn't do that to one of the adults at the table and I don't think he'd do it if Sean wasn't his son. Anyone else have fathers and sons play at the same table before? Anyone have this type of issue come up? Suggestions on dealing with it would be appreciated.

Second, Sean has a tendency to turtle up after taking any damage whatsoever. I'm seeing this as an issue of him wanting his character to be cool and that getting hit and taking damage to him is definately "uncool". The problem is that his character is only cool when in the middle of the fray, duking it out with the bad guys. He's a melee stud in heavy armor with a metric shit-ton of hit points. The fact that he can take that much damage and still remain standing IS cool. Anyone have suggestions on how I can get this point across to Sean? He does fine on the mechanics of the game and this seems to be the only real sticking point with his play.

I share your concern with children and parents playing in a game together. In my Arcana Unearthed campaign last year, we had two children playing. One was the daughter of a male player, the other was the son of a female player. The daughter never really came out of her shell. The son definitely engaged, but his mother is very much into empowering her child, she also was only present for about 1/2 the sessions (which raised some concerns about "babysitting"). Sadly, our culture really discourages child empowerment in adult partnership.

Some thoughts on your specific instances: It sounds like you did a real good job of rewarding Caitlin for initiative, but you need to look at what's happening with Sean.

The teleport issue may have put him in a shell. How much did it really matter that strict interpretation of the rules didn't allow the horse to come along? Could you have empowered the player in this circumstance?

On the bugbear helmet deal, I see a couple ways to handle it. First, if that kind of thing cheapens the game too much for you and your players, you need to gently break that to the player, realizing you're shutting them down. You could point out that it's going to take an hour of careful work to make the helmet. Now if you don't find such a thing cheapening, and want to empower the player, make him spend a round making the helmet, and then immediately give him a bonus against the rest of the bugbears.

As to Sean's turtling: have you played pretty hardnosed on damage and going down? Is his father giving him signals? If you want players to hang in there and tough it out, you need to make sure the reward isn't to get bashed into oblivion. In my AU campaign, we had a similar situation, the boy had a tank, and got frustrated because he sucked up a lot of damage. I didn't really do a good job of pointing out that he was the perfect character to suck up the damage. I wish I could have handled that better.

Hmm, one thought: really get into the fact that D&D hit points do not represent abuse done to the body. Describe the apparently crushing blow from the giant, which takes a chunk of his hit points away as him deflecting the main force of the blow, although it causes him to stagger, where everyone expected the blow to crush him to a bloody pulp (because that's what would have happened to them with the same damage roll). Describe the coolness of his hit points allowing him to absorb that blow and still keep on ticking (and that isn't a bad image to bring up if Timex adds today are what they were like in the past - certainly to me, describing a blow as "he takes a licking and keeps on ticking" would be a phrase that confers instant coolness - I don't even need a graphic description because of the images that phrase brings to mind).

Frank

I think Sean is acting quite normally for a 10-year-old. Is he active or passive in real life? Does he read the sorts of books and see the sorts of films that would lead him towards playing the action hero? You might want to point out scenes from his favourite stuff where X takes damage and comes back fighting. Or you might want to think about a different sort of character for him. Caitlin's seems ideal for her: she gets to do things in cool kid-book ways without taking too much physical risk (often how kid-books work). Maybe Sean needs more guidance for his fantasy-fulfillment.

Kids want to start on projects right away and have little concept of time. Just be patient and say 'Look, Sean, the others are still fighting and they could be in danger--you sure you want to spend all that time with the helmet? You can do it later, you know?'

Also, shut his father up. And he should think about it: if Dad kills things and makes their skulls into helmets, the boy is going to follow.

I don't personally approve of putting children into games of this sort. I think it's too violent. Also, by the sounds of it, the kids may need a more free environment to express their creativity.

droog,

I agree. Sean is acting normally for a 10 year old. I forgot to mention this before but he tends to want to cheat with his dice rolling too. I don't mean to make that sound like a horrible sin but it indicated to me that he wants to always succeed and never be at risk. I think that is a normal kid thing. However, a role-playing game seems like a pretty safe environment to start learning that a little risk can be exciting and fun and that winning when there is an element of risk is a lot more satisfying. Thus I'm looking for constructive ways to coax him into that type of play. I don't expect it to happen overnight. He is just 10 years old, after all.

droog and Frank,

I do think I'm going to have to have a talk with the father. Fortunately he is one of my best friends and I feel like I can do that without upsetting him. In order for the game to work with the kids, I think they need to be players just like everyone else with the same rights and priveledges. I think Trey feels the same. I'll bet he just hasn't thought about what he's been doing. Just bringing it to his attention might alleviate the problem.

I believe you are right about Caitlin's character being ideal for her. I hadn't thought about her not being in direct danger before. Although she did take a lot of damage in the fight against the orcs and bugbears. She just doesn't seem to react to the damage in the same way as Sean.

What I'd like to do is start rewarding Sean in some way for playing his character effectively so that he can stop worrying too much about getting his clock cleaned. Because as tough as his guy is, it isn't going to happen often anyways. I'm thinking about modifying my Tokens a bit. Let everyone draw 1 at the beginning of the session and then reward them with additional tokens when they do something smart or neat. Sort of a non-XP reward for in-game coolness. Sean does love to spend those Tokens, so it'd be a good reward for him. He spent all 3 of his on the first Scene. Heh.

I wouldn't get discouraged, I think the issues you bring up are (at least from your discription) hardly game breaking. I offer the following suggestions / remarks.

You said:

When the group or a player does something to merit XP, I award it immediately.

Good Things - Caitlin is generally pretty quiet and a little shy (not surprising).... <snip> This is the second time in 2 sessions she's used a spell to good effect.

Good Things - Caitlin ...<snip>Nobody suggested this tactic to her. She just did it. It showed some pretty creative thinking about how to employ her character's resources. I liked it.

Apart from teaching him that risk can be exciting, you're also teaching basic standards of fair play and gamesmanship. I would suggest that everybody including the GM rolls all dice prominently, in the open, if you want to set a real example.

I would also like to suggest that you give some thought to trying a different game specifically for the kids (I know it's easier said than done). My specific recommendation would be HeroQuest, for the following reasons:

1. It's easier to do things that don't involve combat.
2. It flows more easily and allows for a great deal of creativity (esp. in chargen).
3. Characters don't 'take damage', they win/lose in a single roll (assuming simple contests). Defeat can be fun too. Death doesn't happen unless you're up for it.
4. It's more usable if you want to teach some social stuff like the value of relationships, or belief systems, or having a cause.
5. It's highly playable in a narrativist style where the GM can riff off the players' ideas. This will help the kids create their own stories, rather than following the GM's.

This may be out of left field, but I'm inclined to think that being a frontline combatant is not the place for kids.

What I mean by this is that many societies have used children on the battlefield, but mainly as scouts and skmirmishers (and indeed, Baden-Powells Scouting organisaiton shows this in a modern context). I would expect that a 10-year old has not yet had the big dose of hormones that comes with adolesence and triggers greater aggression and confrontational behaviour. It may be entirely right that when suffering injury, a 10-year old runs away.

Possibly, a scouting/skirmishing type role, like that of a thief, would be more viable. This still allows the kid to get close to danger, but also to leave when it gets hot.

Ralph's perceptual shift is excellent.

Also, cheer him when he takes damage. Encourage others who wouldn't be able to take the blow, to show their appreciation of him taking it for them.

And give him some crap when he runs away "Well, I guess you can't handle it", "Mmm, I thought the other players were better at this game than you.". Human feedback.

I can almost hear the cries of rage at that suggestion "Our children don't need to have such things thrust upon them!". Well, why is he in a game designed for it?

It's natural for new players to be overly cautious and unwilling to risk thier character .. the first one feels a lot more important than when you've made hundreds over the years.

It sounds like the fighter is taking a pretty rational approach and saying "hey, I've got 50 hit points overall and one blow just took 30 off, I'd better not go toe to toe on this one". It's the right call. Let him experience the more tactical approach to combat, skirmishing, using his speed and fighting defensively. This way he gets to evaluate risks and consider different solutions.

I'd also agree with the suggestion of giving them all more narrative encouragement, and indeed ad hoc bonuses for interesting or 'cool' play.

contracycle wrote: This may be out of left field, but I'm inclined to think that being a frontline combatant is not the place for kids.

I tend to agree with droog here. My daughter is still young, and still a few years away from any serious gaming. However, I think exposing kids early on to hack n' slash gaming not only may be not wholly appropriate, but would define gaming in a way I wouldn't want it defined for her. Is it about killing baddies and snagging loot? Or ist about adventure, creation, storytelling, drama, and character development? I don't propose you try an in-depth character study with a 7-year old, but neither should the campaign center around front-line battle. Many children already have a skewed, unrealistic ideal of battles and war that will not be served by unfortunate choices in RPing.

If you think about it, most great adventure books of children's literature have the characters trying avoid fights or violence and just come through safely. While combat and battle may be unavoidable at times, it should not be a central tenet of children's gaming early on.

While perhaps an interesting philosophical discussion to have in RPG Theory, I'd like to remind folks that this is a thread about a specific game and specific children. Clearly the FATHER of the children is perfectly happy with his kids playing D&D complete with hacking and slashing. Since that's HIS call to make I suggest that this tangent on whether or not kids playing D&D is appropriate be closed for this thread and taken to discussion elsewhere.

Apologies.

I will agree that descriptive prose is the way to go with Sean. I mean, stress how insanely deadly these enemies are. If he walks away with superficial damage or "cinematic damage", he'll have a Die-Hard Bruce Willis vibe going on.

Valamir wrote: While perhaps an interesting philosophical discussion to have in RPG Theory, I'd like to remind folks that this is a thread about a specific game and specific children. Clearly the FATHER of the children is perfectly happy with his kids playing D&D complete with hacking and slashing. Since that's HIS call to make I suggest that this tangent on whether or not kids playing D&D is appropriate be closed for this thread and taken to discussion elsewhere.

Just another tip: Maybe you can make a house rule that if the fighter takes damage, if he does something cool, brave & fighter-like the very next round, he can get half his hit points back or similar?

It seems to me like Dad in this case is trying to be the rpg equivalent of a little league coach. Maybe you could suggest to him to do the coaching "pre-game", keeping his in-game suggestions to in-character suggestions?

I certainly appreciate all the advice and good ideas that have been thrown my way here. I'm with Ralph on this topic though. The kids are playing and that's not going to change. Nor are we going to change systems any time real soon either. The topic of when kids should start playing and which games are better than others is an interesting topic but not one I was trying to start. I was looking for ways to engage the kids playing in my current game using my current system.

Please, note that I'm not offended or upset with any of the responses. I'm just trying to keep things pretty narrowly focused on the subject.


I'm definately going to talk with both Sean and his father before the next session. I'm also going to talk with the other adults at the table and get them to help in reinforcing good play verbally. The rewarding of cool play with XP or Tokens seems like a great idea too, so I'm going to integrate that. I'll probably get around to trying everything suggested here at some point or another but trying to shoe horn too much into the game at one time might not be a good idea either.

Does Sean "cheat" at other games? If not, then he's not cheating at this one. What's going on is that he's playing a different game - he doesn't understand the social contract of this one. Basically he doesn't see how it's fun.

If I had to guess, you probably have a little narrativism player there. More interested in telling a cool story about his character than winning or losing. So he modifies the rules on the fly to do so. Standard incoherence behavior in a player of any age. I did it myself in D&D games as late as, oh, 14 or so? After that, I knew enough to make up my own games that had rules that worked for me instead of against me.

What this means is that you're going to have a very tough time "converting" this player to the CA that you're trying to play with. As everybody says, use the system as well as you can while not taking away any of that nar protagonism that he wants to see. And maybe he'll come over to your side eventually.

But I wouldn't hold my breath for a ten year old to change his stripes.

Mike

Mike,

You know.... I hadn't thought of it that way. I don't know whether he cheats at other games or not. He loves to play Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh but I'm not a big CCG player so I don't know how he does with those. His father plays with him and I'll ask. The insight there is interesting though. I remember cheating on rolls much later than 14 because I thought, "The hero shouldn't go down here. That's just not right." I did that until I realized that story really wasn't "the point" of the game we were playing no matter what people said. Then I was old enough to make the cognitive switch to Step On Up and all was well.

I'll definately keep an eye on this and see what I can do to help Sean out. That's not code for "convert him to our way", either. I mean I'll try to drift things for him some so that he gets what he's looking for out of the game. Assuming it really is CA Incoherency and not just a 10 year old not wanting to lose.

Gaerik wrote: Please, note that I'm not offended or upset with any of the responses. I'm just trying to keep things pretty narrowly focused on the subject.

Droog, you need to stop there. The topic of this thread is not how to protect children, although I do respect your views as they apply in reality and we all do need to consider these issues. However, I'm sure that Andrew has taken your points seriously on his own, and needs no further reminder. If you really need that affirmed, send him a private message.

Thanks,
Ron

I don't want to stir the behavior modification pot here so much as affirm a peer relationship is needed.

If your acting the boss to get the kid to do something, then there's no point in trying to play with them, because that isn't play as I know it. If your the only one modifying your behaviour to assist them but not vise versa, then your not both doing the same sort of activity (your making them the boss from before)

I've run into this with my 5 YO son. I've hit a few points where what he was doing frustrated me and I REALLY wanted to pull out the 'I'm your dad, do as I say' card. Except that would defeat the point of play since if he's under my control, I'm essentially playing by myself because I'm controlling everything. So I had to talk to him as a peer or stop playing with him.

From some D&D tabletop and a lot of PS2 champions of norrath, it's interesting to have the playing field leveled between us so I have to negotiate with him as a peer. And I think he's figuring out what it's like to talk to daddy, not just talk up to him. Lots of stuff like him saying 'Hey, I was killing that monster!' and either I say 'Okay, sorry, reflex on my part! I'll try harder next time!' as a peer statement or I have to stop playing with him. Sometimes this works the other way too, where he thinks he should just have something and I say 'Well, I need some healing potions too!'.

On a side note, conflicting over resources is helpful for that. When we conflict over resources, we either work out a peer relationship or stop playing the game. I'm not so sure that 'everyone should just create stuff in play' aids that particular goal. Not that you have to have that goal, of course.

Okie Dokie...

I talked to Trey, the father. I asked him some questions about Sean and how he behaves when playing other games. His indication was that Sean is highly competitive and really hates to lose at anything. (I think this is a fairly common trait in 10 year old boys.) After discussion we *think* what is going on is that Sean sees getting hit and taking damage is "losing" so he is either avoiding it through his character's actions or fudging to avoid it. This is comforting in that it means that we are playing the same game but after only 2 sessions I wouldn't neccessarily bet the farm on that analysis. I'll keep my eyes open for other tells during the upcoming sessions.

I also talked to Trey and the other adult players about being sure not to come down from on high and tell the kids they can't make their characters do things. I mentioned to Trey that he seemed to be trying to be "Coach" with Sean during the game and that he probably needed to do that between sessions and let the boy play during the sessions. He agreed. We also agreed to be conscious to give the kids verbal affirmation when they do something cool with their characters as a social reward for good play. I, personally, am going to be watching for chances to reward everyone at the table (including the kids) with Tokens or XP for doing cool things.

I'll let everyone know how it works out but I'm optimistic.

Yeah, it's a bit hard to learn that 'loose something to gain something' gamist tactic, since that's part of gamism itself, learning tricksy skills like this.

Could you sit down and tell him about this tactic? Tell him something like "Well, you could face monsters who could never hit you...they just wouldn't be able to get your guy. But you'd get nothing out of them...they don't carry much treasure and you don't get much XP. While all the dudes in the other D&D games have their characters beaten up really bad most of the time, but will be many levels ahead of your character and have thousands more gold! They get hit, and that means their winning more than you. Do you want them to win more than you?"

Perhaps design into the session a challenge choice, where in game he is presented with a choice between fighting wimps for little reward, or fighting guys who can hurt him, for much greater reward (if you go left to save the princess, its goblins. If you go right, bugbears). In fact, be transparent and tell the exact gold piece amount each choice gives. Let him weigh it up.

Though keep in mind he might try to do both paths, weak first then strong latter...which is actually a good gamist tactic. And it still proves the point to him by his own choice.