Deforch's Adventures--my son's first game (updated 7/1/12)

[Cerebral Paladin]

Last Friday was a momentous occasion--my four year old son played his first Dungeons and Dragons adventure. My son played a human ranger named "Deforch" (I'm spelling that phonetically--he named the character, and it sounds like DEAF-orch) who wields two swords, or rather, as he quickly and emphatically informed me, two lightsabers. I had the good sense not to argue with him about lightsabers, so I just statted them up as longswords and moved on. A girl had been kidnapped by skeletons, and Deforch was asked by her family to rescue her. First, he looked for skeleton footprints (I was pleased that he came up with that idea without prompting), and one natural 20 later, he was on his way. Deforch found that the trail led to a dark and dangerous cave, but my son decided Deforch wasn't scared because he had two flashlights in addition to two lightsabers. (I explained that they were magic instead of like the flashlights we have.) Inside the cave, Deforch was attacked by two skeletons, but he won initiative and smashed one to pieces before it even moved. The other clawed him once before he could beat it, and there was a little upsetness about needing to let the monsters take their turns as well, but Deforch prevailed and the unhappiness passed.

My son then declared that the skeletons were working for a dragon, at least in part because I had a white dragon mini out, and I figured, what the heck, why not? So he went into the next room, where there was the dragon as well as the kidnapped girl. So Deforch used his daily power to attack the dragon. The dragon breathed ice and cold on him, and hurt him pretty badly, but Deforch persevered and triumphed. I asked if the dragon was going to get away, but my son insisted that Deforch was going to beat all of the skeletons and dragons, so Deforch cut its head off. He returned to the village with the rescued girl and with some treasure and it was the end of the adventure. He then said that next time, he wants to play in an adventure with a nice dragon (about which more in my next post). He also said, "now that I can play Dungeons and Dragons, can we play two adventures each day?"

I think we can categorize that as a total win.

 

[thejc]

yes win indeed. Happy bonding!

 

[ellinor]

Love it! And I look forward to the friendly dragon.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's second adventure

My son and I played another game of D&D yesterday afternoon. As might be expected, it was another day of milestones. He began by telling me that Deforch wanted to go to the castle where his family was. I asked about Deforch's family, and he told me that they were all heroes, and that Deforch has a baby sister (who is not, I presume, a hero yet). He also reminded me that he wanted there to be a nice dragon in this game.

The trip to the castle was convenient, because the adventure I had prepared (i.e. thought about vaguely in the shower) started with an encounter while Deforch was camping by the road. So I said that the trip to the castle would take a while, and that Deforch would have to camp on the way there because it was farther than he could walk in a day. My son agreed with this, because the castle was in Mexico. (I was a little surprised by this, but I was happy to accept it. He later said that the first adventure was in Germany, whereas this adventure was taking place in Japan. This surprised me for two reasons: (1) I had no idea that he knew that Germany was a place and (2) if he's traveling from Germany to Mexico and he's currently in Japan, I think he's chosen a poor route.) So I described how he had made camp, started a fire and cooked some food, and was now sleeping in his camp. I then had him roll a Perception check (he was clearly very nervous about this roll). Fortunately, his rolling was terrific, so I told him that Deforch woke up to the sound of some skeletons walking towards him. He leaped up, drew his swords, and the battle was joined. The trio of skeletons won initiative, but because he woke up before they got near him, they could only close part of the distance without being able to reach him (I haven't introduced charging yet). On Deforch's turn, he ran up to the skeletons and used an encounter power which allows him to attack every enemy that's adjacent to him. Some decent attack rolls later, and he had hit each of the skeletons. They were only minions (although again, I haven't explained minions to my son), so almost as soon as the fight had started it was over, with three shattered skeletons at his feet.

In the morning, a great dragon appeared to Deforch. It explained that its name was Califax the Gold, and that it needed to speak to Deforch. Deforch introduced himself, more or less politely. Califax asked if Deforch had recovered a gold cup in his previous adventure. Deforch said that he had (the treasure from the previous game was 5 gold pieces and a gold cup). When Califax saw the cup, he explained that it was a powerful magic item, the Cup of al-Faisal (which we can think of as the Maguffin of al-Faisal). The cup has powerful magic for good, but it can also be twisted to evil, which is why the skeletons and the other dragon wanted it. The dragon explained that the skeletons from the last night had been drawn to the cup, and that Deforch needed to go to their dungeon to stop the threat. My son also helpfully clarified that the cup had been stolen from the dragon, who had kept it in his attic. Sure, why not? Its message delivered, Califax disappeared in a puff of smoke and fire.

Deforch found the skeletons' footprints, and followed them back to a spooky old abandoned graveyard, and in particular to an ancient crypt in the graveyard. The heavy stone door was sealed shut, but there was a stone carving on the front of it: four stone hollow columns, labeled 1, 2, (scratched out), and 4. There was also a tray filled with colored polished stones in front of the door. Deforch had encountered his first puzzle. My son immediately figured out that the scratched out section had been another number, although he was a little unsure whether it was a 3 or a 5. At first, he was a little reluctant to engage with the puzzle, but I encouraged him, and he tried putting one stone in each slot, counting them as he did so. A brass cover came out in the 1 column, but nothing else happened. He then tried removing the stones and counting with different stones, but there was no effect. After a little while, he tried putting a second stone in each column as well--the second stone in the first column fell out, but a brass cover came out in the 2 column now that it had two stones in it. That was enough for him to figure it out, so he put a third stone in the scratched out column and a third and a fourth stone in the 4 column, and the stone door swung open.

Deforch bravely entered the crypt, although my son was clearly a little scared, and two zombies leaped out and attacked him. He fought the zombies; it was a little dicey at times, but his rolls continued to be on fire. Eventually, after having dropped the first zombie, he did his twin-strike attack at the second zombie and rolled a natural 20--his first critical hit! It turns out that zombies have the special weakness that they're automatically killed by any critical hit, so that finished the second zombie off, and he had won the battle.

Deforch found a place for flowers at the back of the crypt, which was the ancient family crypt of the al-Faisal family, with the flowers knocked on the floor. He hesitated about putting the flowers back where they should have been--he also wanted to bring the flowers to his mommy at the castle. But finally, with some prompting, he put the flowers back and heard singing. A box under the flower stand opened, and he found a potion of healing. Califax then appeared again and explained that by making the ghosts happy, he had solved the problem, and there would be no more undead from this graveyard. Deforch said that because the ghosts had gone away, he could now take the flowers to his mommy, which Califax agreed would be fine. And so, Deforch set off again to head towards his family's castle, having eliminated another undead threat and having gained some flowers and a potion of healing.

Among the momentous milestones of the day: Deforch's first critical hit; Deforch's first fight against multiple non-minions; Deforch's first puzzle encounter; and Deforch's first (useful) magical treasure. All in all, another very successful D&D game with my son.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's Third Adventure

I ran my son through his third D&D game today.

He insisted that the game had to begin with Deforch arriving at the castle and seeing his parents. That was fine, so Deforch hiked for another week or so and reached the castle. In order to open the castle gates, Deforch had to count backwards from ten--that was all my son's idea, although now I'm trying to come up with a plausible explanation. My best guess is that there are dopplegangers or other impostors/possessed people who for some reason can't count backwards, so having people count backwards is a way of checking for impostors. But we can leave that aside for the moment. This was also quite funny because my son set the challenge, but then proceeded to have difficulty with it. I counted up to ten, and then prompted him again, and at that point he was able to count down with only a little additional assistance. (He often has trouble with the sequence 6-7-8, in either direction.)

With that accomplished, the guards ushered Deforch into the castle. My son then insisted that we pick out miniatures for Deforch's parents. I explained that we usually only need figurines for characters that are going to be involved in combat, and that the rest of the time we can just use descriptions and our imaginations, but my son was having none of it. He was grudgingly willing to accept that we didn't need to draw out a map of the castle on the battlemap, but he demanded that there be figures for Deforch's parents. So I picked out a female armored warrior-type figure for his mommy and a wizard figure for his daddy (after checking that it was okay to have his dad be a wizard), and we were able to move on. I also asked if the castle was Deforch's parents' castle, or whether they were guests there, and he said that they owned the castle. Apparently Deforch comes from a noble family--who knew? He also said that this was their second castle, because their first castle had been destroyed. I thought this was a great potential hook for the future, but my son then explained that Deforch's mommy didn't like the first castle, so she had it knocked down with a wrecking ball and built a new one. Alrighty then...

Deforch spent a little while talking with a friendly dragon in the castle, which he kept on calling white but I insisted (somewhat successfully) was in fact a silver dragon. My son informed me that the name of the dragon was "Freezie," which is very consistent with his overall naming convention of naming things by adding "-ie" as a diminutive to a descriptive word, but that also makes Freezie's draconic nature die a little bit each time his name is used. Orichalcum suggested that it might be short for Freezax or something. I'm not sure that helps...

Deforch then met with his parents, and gave his mommy the flowers he found in the crypt in the last game. She was touched, and thanked him and mentioned that Deforch's daddy used to give her flowers from dungeons all the time. Deforch's parents also complimented him on his accomplishments on his previous adventures. We then had a bit of an issue: my son wanted to speak for other characters besides Deforch. I let him do so to some extent, but my son kept pushing for more.

Anyway, at that point a cook rushed in, curtsied to Deforch's parents, and told them that one of the serving boys had been attacked by some form of monster in one of the store rooms of the castle while he was fetching some flour for the day's bread. The boy's injuries were being treated, but everyone was very worried about the report of monsters. Deforch immediately said he would go to deal with the monsters--I was prepared for his parents to send him, but I was glad that it wasn't necessary. He said that he would go with Freezie, which did catch me a little off-guard. I asked if Deforch wanted to fly on Freezie to get down to the storeroom quickly, and my son enthusiastically agreed. After they flew down, though, he found that the circular staircase down to the store room was too small for Freezie to go down, so Deforch would have to go on his own.

Deforch failed a Perception check, so while he noticed some blood, he didn't spot or hear the monsters. My son then said that the blood must be from a four-armed skeleton with blood on its swords, based on the Monster Manual picture of a "skeletal tomb guardian" that he had been very impressed with before. I said that he wasn't ready to face the four-armed skeleton yet and that the monsters were something else, and he got pretty upset. There's an interesting issue here--to what extent should I let the game move towards just freestyle make-believe versus trying to maintain some sense of actual adventures where he controls Deforch and I fill in the gameworld. But it caused a little bit of tension--I also think that both my son and I were not quite at our best in terms of mood, focus, and so forth today. But I insisted on this point, and once the game got moving again, he calmed down and seemed to forget the issue.

In any event, as Deforch went forward, he was attacked by four kruthik hatchlings. For people who don't know the 4E Monster Manual well, kruthiks are kinda like dogs crossed with crabs with a large dollop of viciousness added--they're quadruped hunters with chitinous armor, nasty claws, and an aggressive willingness to attack people. Three of them moved into position around Deforch, but only one of them could attack during the surprise round, and it missed. On Deforch's turn, he did his encounter attack that attacks all of the enemies adjacent to him and hit all three, killing each of them (as they were just minions that only take one hit to defeat). He then moved next to the last kruthik and spent an action point to take an additional action and to attack it as well, killing it. With the kruthik defeated, he noticed the tunnel that they had dug to enter the store room. With a little prompting, Deforch climbed down the tunnel to find if there were more of the kruthiks.

My son was insisting that Deforch was going to find a room filled with a bunch more kruthiks, or as he referred to them, "me-mes" (apparently the noise he thought they would make). My son spent a while clambering around on all fours going "me me" as he imitated them. It was very cute. Fortunately, I planned on a kruthik lair as well, so he rushed out to find two more of the kruthik hatchlings and a kruthik young (which are a tougher type of the same creature). The hatchlings won initiative, and one of them wounded him, but then on Deforch's turn he moved into position to attack all three and unleashed his encounter power again. He hit the tough kruthik and one of the hatchlings, and then used another power to turn the miss against the last kruthik into a hit. That eliminated the hatchlings, but the tougher kruthik hit him pretty hard on its action. He then used his daily attack to hurt it very badly, but it hit him again. At this point, both Deforch and the kruthik were bloodied (i.e. below half hit points), and my son was pretty nervous. I was a little nervous too, but I knew something my son didn't: the kruthik couldn't do enough damage to drop Deforch in one hit, whereas it only had three hit points left, meaning that it was almost guaranteed that any hit by Deforch would finish it off. Sure enough, a round or two later Deforch hit it and won the fight.

My son recognized, correctly, that Deforch had to rest up and regain hit points. He insisted on going back to the castle to do this, even though I pointed out that he could take a short rest in the caves he had found. Still, no problem with wanting to rest at home, and this way he got to tell Freezie about what he'd found.

Deforch returned to the kruthik cave. There were two exits--one was a kruthik tunnel that was too small for him to enter, and the other was a break into a square, carefully carved stone chamber. Deforch sent Freezie's "younger brother, who's really small and can fit and can use his fire breath to burn up all of the rest of the kruthiks" into the tunnel--who am I to argue with a plan like that? Deforch then went into the other room, which was a beautifully carved dwarven hall, with about a 7' ceiling and relief carvings of dwarves doing heroic dwarven things with hammers and axes. My son was nodding along happily, when something occurred to me. I asked him if he knew what a dwarf was and he said "no." So I showed him some pictures and explained the basics of dwarves to him. We then got back to the game, and I said that there was a fancy armor stand at the far end of the room with some very nice looking hide armor on it (like the armor Deforch wears) and a chest filled with gold. i also pointed out a crushed kruthik midway along the floor. My son figured out that the crushed kruthik probably meant that there was a trap, but Deforch headed across the room anyway, at which point a large stone cylinder swung through the room (like the clean-up bar that knocks down any remaining pins in a bowling alley) and knocked Deforch back to where he entered the room, in addition to battering him. My son thought about how to get past the trap, and decided that he could jump it (which was one of my planned solutions). He rolled badly though, and Deforch got battered again and flung back to the entrance once more. He used his Second Wind ability to get back some much needed hit points and tried once more. This time, he rolled a 19, which when added to his high Athletics skill, easily allowed him to jump the stone cylinder.

At the far end of the room, he found a lever that allowed him to disable the trap. He then took the chest of gold and the hide armor. I told him that there was clearly another door out of the room, but that it was locked and that he couldn't figure out how to open it (because there pretty much had to be, on the one hand, but I wanted the adventure to be decidedly over, on the other--this will provide a starting place for a future session). Deforch returned to the castle, had Freezie's little brother breath on the chest three times to open it (my son clearly had invented some sort of magical locking mechanism, although I was vague on the details), and told his parents about the adventure. Deforch's daddy cast a spell and informed him that the hide armor he had found was magical. Freezie said that it was getting late, and he had to go back to his home cave (again, an improvisation of my son's). And with that, we ended the session. As the session ended, I told my son about experience points, and that Deforch had gotten enough to go up to level 2--we'll handle the process of leveling up before the next game. (I originally hadn't planned on leveling him up yet, but either his next game or the game after that will be with a friend of his whose character has reached second level and gotten some magic items. I figure that while it can be perfectly fun to play a first level character with a second level character, Deforch has gotten enough experience to level by the book, and it will be more fun for them to be balanced.)

All told, it was another successful game, although perhaps somewhat less so than the previous games. My son clearly had a lot of fun, but we also had an increased amount of friction about the issue of authorial control. I'm trying to strike a good balance--being flexible, but still maintaining some structure and not letting it just become a pure free-form make-believe, but it's difficult, and I'm not sure that I'm getting it right. I also think that I need to stat up a friendly dragon as a companion shortly, which isn't a bad thing anyway in a game with a single PC. (I'll probably find reasons for the dragon to not be along on the adventure when my son plays together with his friend).

We also had some new milestones: the first real trap that he's encountered, the first permanent magic item he's found, and of course the first time he's leveled up. We also added in some additional rules in my effort to gradually ramp up the complexity and get him to the full ruleset without ever overwhelming him, although there are still some rules that I'm just ignoring (opportunity attacks stand out, for people who care). And when I asked him to describe the game for Orichalcum at dinner, his first response was "It was great!" so I must still be doing something right.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's fourth adventure--now with another player!

My son and I played another game of D&D last Wednesday--his first game with another player.

We briefly tried to play on Sunday, but my son was too hyped up for it to really be feasible. We talked a little about what powers he wanted to get as he leveled up--my son chose to have Deforch's mommy teach him to be extra skilled with his sword, so I gave him the Heavy Blade Expertise feat, and then he chose the Hunter's Privilege utility powers. My son also said that Deforch wanted to learn his mommy's sword power, "Overstrike Sword Pinwheel," but I said that he needed to be higher level to learn that. "Yes," he sagely agreed, "you need to be 15th level to learn Overstrike Sword Pinwheel." So I guess Deforch's mommy is Paragon Tier. I also thought that "Overstrike Sword Pinwheel" sounded like a completely plausible 4E power. But at that point, things got too chaotic, so we decided that my son would just make up a Deforch story instead of playing D&D.

A few days later, we got together with my son's friend to play a game of D&D together. His friend is about the same age as my son--a couple of months older--and he's played a few sessions with his dad, but this was both of their first experience playing together. His friend's character is an eponymous human fighter, which led to a little confusion, because my son had trouble understanding that his friend's name was both the player's name and the character's name.

We began the adventure basically where Deforch's last adventure left off. First, we introduced his friend's character, saying that he was old friends with Deforch and had come by to visit Deforch's family's castle and to go on an adventure with him. (I personally assume that Deforch and the other PC fostered together somewhere, since the implied setting details make them similarly aged nobles who are friends, but I didn't really want to explain the idea of fostering to two four-year-olds, so I kept this assumption to myself.) The friend's PC knew Deforch's family, but Deforch introduced him to Freezie. Then, Deforch's father, a wise and learned wizard, explained that he had translated the runes on the door in the dwarven hall that Deforch discovered. The runes said that two dwarven warriors should pass through together, and I drew two special stones for standing on in front of the door. He also explained that teamwork would be really important for this adventure, and that nobody had seen any dwarves in many years. With that, the adventure began.

The two boys quickly figured out that they should stand on the stones, and the door rolled open. They then went through into the next room. Two zombies and two skeletons attacked them. My son correctly inferred that the undead were undead dwarves, which is what I had planned but not wanted to make explicit, for fear that it would upset the boys. They dispatched the enemies without much difficulty, but we discovered an interesting problem along the way: combats with multiple players take much longer than a combat with only one player, leading to some frustration and attention wandering on the part of the two players. My son got pretty upset about waiting for his friend's character, both skeletons, and both zombies to go before he got his first turn, and he also kept wanting Freezie to fly by and blast the zombies with its breath weapon. But with a little gentle effort, my son calmed down and got into the game. Still, it was a good thing that both the friend's dad and I were working to keep things focused, because otherwise the fun of spending time with a friend might have overwhelmed the ability to play the game.

With the undead dealt with, they saw that there were two doors out of the room. Initially, the boys decided to have their characters split up, so each could go through one of the doors, but with a little nudging from their dads, they decided that splitting the party was maybe not such a good idea, and went through only one of the doors. Behind that door, they found an ancient dwarven statue that spoke to them. The statue explained that no dwarves had been in these halls for many years, and that they should explore and find out what happened to the dwarves. Perhaps, if they found the dwarves, they could reunite them with the good humans and make everyone happy. The statue also told them that they might find some useful treasure in these halls, but to be careful, as there were some traps that would not recognize them as allies.

They went into the next room, where they found another round door with stepping stones in front of it, but this one had three stones. There was also another statue in this room, but this statue didn't talk. There was also another door out of the room that was covered with rubble--I made it clear that they would not be able to move the rubble in the scope of this game session. They immediately identified the puzzle of how to open the door; with a little nudging, they started trying things. First the other PC and Deforch each stood on one stone--the stones sank into the ground, each with a different sound effect, but the door remained closed. Then my son's friend's PC tried moving from one stone to another really quickly, but the stone he stepped off came up before the other one went down, and the door remained closed. Next Deforch tried standing on one stone and pressing down on the other with his swords. I thought that was a really good idea, and I considered letting it work, but I ruled that the swords couldn't exert enough pressure to cause the other stone to go down. At that point, I prompted them to look around the room to see if there was anything else they could use. My son said that they would try to move the statue. Deforch got a truly woeful Athletics skill check, but his friend did better, and I said that they slowly dragged the statue across the room. This was all done with moving around minis--I had a mini for a living statue that I used to represent the perfectly normal stone statue. Throughout, my son definitely, and I think his friend as well, found it much easier to interact with symbolic representations on the battlemap then with purely imaginary concepts. (This had also showed up with the insistence that we needed minis to represent Deforch's family, even when they had never been in combat in the game.) With the statue on one of the stones and the two PCs on the other two stones, the door finally rolled open.

In the next room, they found a magically enchanted crossbow that could fire on its own (an arbalester from MMII), and a bloodthorn vine. The friend's dad improvised minis for both from his collection of random gaming supplies, which was great because I had nothing to represent either in my minis collection. Deforch won initiative, and I explained that the crossbow looked really dangerous, but not very tough, while the vine looked really tough, but not very dangerous. Deforch immediately decided to attack the vine. Oh well. The friend's character initially wanted to stay back and use his bow; since he's a melee-oriented fighter, and substantially tougher than Deforch, that could have been disastrous, but his dad persuaded him against it. The fight was satisfyingly challenging--Deforch was bloodied and the other PC took some damage before they destroyed the vine. But with the vine destroyed, Deforch was able to run up to the enchanted crossbow and start attacking that as well. The crossbow fired even when Deforch was right next to it, allowing Deforch an extra opportunity attack (which is a concept that we've now introduced, but without really explaining the rules--we just say things like "if you walk there, then the monster will get to attack you, but you can walk to here without the monster getting an attack.") Finally, they finished off the crossbow, and found the treasure. There was a treasure chest with 200 gp and a potion of healing, as well as a magic sword that could split into two magic swords (a Paired Sword +1, basically intended for Deforch). They also found a book that explained that when earthquakes began to shake the dwarven halls, the dwarves moved deeper into the earth (since they think of deeper as safer). So my son and his friend realized that the blocked passageway must have been from a collapse during an earthquake, and that if they wanted to find the dwarves, they would have to go deeper. With that, we ended the session.

Overall, it was a success and both boys had a lot of fun. That said, wow, the chaos level involved in GMing for two four-year-olds is vastly higher than for one. Also, combat is much slower. My guess is that each fight balanced for two takes between one and a half and twice as long as a fight would if balanced for a single character. And that in turn makes the attention side of things much harder. The game probably ran 45 minutes or an hour, and that really pushed the limits of both of their attention spans. At the same time, they really enjoyed playing together.

I'm also amused that the little adventures that I'm throwing together for them are starting to develop more of a story and an ongoing campaign feel. I don't really know what the story of the missing dwarves is, but this is clearly going to be an ongoing storyline over the course of the next several adventures.

As an addendum: On Chrismas, my son gave me the D&D Monster Vault, a collection of monster descriptions and counters for each monster. He was clearly as excited to be giving it to me as I was to be getting it. I think this marks the first present he's given to either of his parents where he actually understood why they would want to get the present. I look forward to using it in a game with him soon.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch's Fifth Adventure

Last Sunday, I ran another D&D adventure for my son. There were some worrying signs beforehand, but I basically had to run the game anyway. My son basically refused to take a nap that day, which meant that he was overtired--never a good situation when starting something complicated. At the same time, we had promised him that we would play D&D with him on Sunday while trying to assuage him on Saturday, when we refused to let him play in a D&D game with some of our (adult) friends. Suffice to say that as a 4-year-old, he is not ready to play with the adults yet, but he didn't really understand that. So, faced with the choice between running a game for an overly tired child and triggering a (justified) tantrum about our breaking our promise, we went with running the game.

His mom joined us as a second player, playing Deforch's mommy (statted up as a warlord with lots of powers oriented towards giving other characters extra attacks, so that her actions would bolster his instead of overshadowing them). She asked what Deforch's mommy's name was, and without hesitating my son said "Lovestar." After a little speculation by his mom and me about whether this indicated some elven ancestry, she asked whether that was a first-name or a surname, and he said that it was a last name--her first name was "Alberta." So we decided that "Alberta Lovestar" and her son, Deforch, would go on an adventure together.

The adventure began while Deforch was having a conversation with Camiflax the Dragon. (We've more or less changed the name of the dragon to match my son's pronunciation.) They heard a humming noise, and Camiflax asked if Deforch was carrying the Cup of al Falsal. He said he was and took it out. They could see that it was making the humming noise, and Camiflax explained that the Cup of al Faisal had magical powers of prophecy (and then explained what that means). Deforch filled the cup with water, following Camiflax's instructions, and an image appeared in the water of a group of zombies and skeletons walking across a bridge into the nearby village. My son was gratifyingly impressed with the idea of an image appearing in the cup. He said "oooooooo..." It's kinda awesome how easy it is to produce a sense of wonder.

They immediately headed off to defend the village against the undead. I described how Camiflax dropped them off and then flew to defend the other bridge into the town. Deforch and his mommy then fought a group of two zombies and three skeletons. The fight basically went fine, but my son got really upset when Deforch's mommy got bloodied by a critical hit. He was like, "That means she's almost destroyed! And I'm not very effective right now! Waaaah." I'm not really sure what he meant about not being very effective--he was actually perfectly effective. <shrug> It was also a little surprising because Deforch had been bloodied in previous games (and actually had gotten a lot closer to being defeated). I think that the idea of Deforch's mommy being destroyed was actually a lot more frightening than the idea of Deforch being defeated, perhaps especially because Deforch's mommy was being played by his mommy. This was also clearly a function of my son being too tired. We spent a while comforting my son, and after he calmed down, they finished defeating the undead.

At that point, the Cup began humming again. Deforch quickly filled it with water from the river and a new image appeared--it showed Deforch going off into the woods and finding a clearing with a checker-board pattern. Deforch quickly headed off and found the checker-board pattern--some squares had green grass, while others had blackened and dead grass on them, in a 5 by 5 grid with black squares in the corners. He also found a pile of 13 shiny stones (represented by a pile of beads I put on the map, next to the map of the checker-board.) At this point, the Cup spoke and said "3-2-3-2-3." My son figured out that he should put the stones on the black squares of the checker-board, although he followed the diagonals instead of the horizontal patterns as I had intended. When he had placed the last stone, all of the stones sank into the checker-board squares and the whole field became green and healthy looking.

Deforch returned to the castle, and Camiflax told him that he had destroyed that source of undead by curing that field. He also asked if the Cup had begun speaking to him. Deforch said that it had, and Camiflax told him that that was a very good sign--it meant that the Cup was awakening and beginning to attune to Deforch as a force for good.

At that point, we wrapped the game and had dinner. All in all, it was not the most successful of games--probably our worst session so far, in fact. In addition to the issues with Deforch's mommy getting bloodied, there were some pretty big issues with my son having wandering attention and wanting to tell his own story. Starting when my son is tired is never a good idea, although I didn't feel like I had much choice. Still, he mostly had fun and everything turned out okay.

 

[The_Black_Cat]

I'm really enjoying this story hour! I can't wait to find out the truth behind the missing dwarves. DMing for youngsters is never an easy thing and I find you're handling it quite well.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Deforch and the Crystal Sword (Adventure 6)

Thanks, Black Cat! It's been an enormously fun, sometimes baffling experience.

Now, on with the story...
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Early last week, my son mentioned that he wanted to play a Dungeons and Dragons game. He said that the adventure would be about Deforch finding a crystal sword. There wasn't any time that day for us to play, but I thought that it was a perfectly good concept for a game. So yesterday, we sat down to play Deforch and the Crystal Sword. The other relevant design consideration was that my son really likes my displacer beast mini. He calls it "Slingie," and he said that he wanted Slingie to be in an adventure. He said that many people are scared of Slingie, because they think that displacer beasts are mean, but that Slingie is actually really nice. (Incidentally, hearing a four-year-old stumbling through the phrase "displacer beast" is amazingly cute.) I wanted to put that in the game as well.

I started off by saying that people were getting very nervous at Deforch's family's castle and that he could hear guards running to the gates, saying that a monster was coming. Deforch went to see what the matter was, and he saw that his friend Slingie was walking towards the castle's gate. Deforch reassured the guards and went out to meet his friend.

Slingie greeted Deforch and said that he needed help. At this point, my son cut in and began speaking as Slingie. "Deforch, all of the people in the castle think that I'm mean and nasty because I'm a displacer beast. It makes me sad that they won't be my friends even though I'm nice." My son then switched over to speaking as Deforch and said, "Don't worry, Slingie. I'll come with you to talk to them and to tell them that you're actually really nice." So Deforch spoke to the guards and introduced them to Slingie, and they became friends.

I then went back to trying to advance my idea of the plot. Slingie thanked Deforch for helping him become friends with other people, and then said that many of his friends had gotten very sick and could only be cured by going back to their homeland. Going back to their homeland would require a magical journey that was only possible with the Crystal Sword--but only a human can recover the Crystal Sword, so Slingie needed Deforch's help.

Deforch was happy to set off on the adventure with Slingie and Freezie (Deforch's silver dragon friend). They traveled to the location of the gold-roofed cave (my son's description) that contained the Crystal Sword. My son said that there was a heavy stone blocking the entrance, but that Slingie could roll it aside with his tentacles because displacer beasts are really good at rolling stones. So that got them into the cave.

As they entered the cave, a group of skeletons emerged from the walls of the cave and began attacking them. Beyond the skeletons, they could see the Crystal Sword. (Incidentally, I used the Excalibur mini from Shadows over Camelot to represent the sword. My son was very excited by this. "I didn't know that we could use things from other games to play Dungeons and Dragons! Oooooo.")

Deforch won initiative and rushed forward. He destroyed three of the skeletons with his Dire Wolverine Strike, and then Slingie destroyed another. Freezie rushed forward and breathed on the two remaining skeletons, but he only destroyed one of them. At that point, the remaining skeleton struck Freezie... and another five skeletons formed at the wall. Deforch finished off the last of the original skeletons, and the second wave began to engage. As they destroyed a few more of the skeletons, yet more skeletons came out of the wall. Deforch and his friends had light wounds, but they still weren't making headway, as the skeletons kept coming. Freezie said that he thought that the skeletons would keep attacking until Deforch reached the Crystal Sword. So Deforch ran over to the sword and grabbed it.

When Deforch touched the sword, there was a brilliant, almost blinding flash of light. As his vision cleared, Deforch realized that he was in a totally new space. As I drew the map, my son looked at it and said, "this is shaped like a sword!" Which was completely correct: Deforch was inside the Crystal Sword. He then read a message on the floor:

To escape the sword,
You must prepare it for battle.
Ruby to the pommel,
Steel to the tip.
Seek in the quillions
and ye shall find.

We spent a little while going over the vocabulary, to make sure that my son understood "ruby," "pommel," "steel," "tip," and "quillions." With the help of a picture of a sword in the Players Handbook, he mostly understood what was going on. I then asked him where he would go, and he said the quillions and pointed at the map. Deforch moved into the first quillion, where he met a creature of living fire--a fire elemental. The fire elemental won initiative and attacked, lighting Deforch's clothes on fire. Deforch responded with his Twin Strike, and got a critical hit and a normal hit--almost destroying the elemental in a single round. He then failed his saving throw, so he remained on fire--but that wasn't the worst thing in the world, since it meant that the elemental couldn't make thinks any worse. On the next round, he finished off the flaming sentinel and then made his saving throw and succeeded in stopping the fire on his clothes. Where the elemental had been, he found a red gemstone--the ruby! So he brought the ruby back to the pommel, rested to regain his hit points, and went into the other quillion. He saw a steel bar on the ground, which he immediately recognized as the last thing he needed, but he also saw the air swirling into a coherent form--an air elemental. The air itself began to move to attack him, but Deforch won initiative and in a single massive attack destroyed the air elemental before it even got to act. That was a little anticlimactic, but oh well. My son seemed happy, so that's good enough for me.

Deforch carried the steel bar forward to the tip of the sword, and with another flash he disappeared and reappeared in the cave. The skeletons crumbled to the ground, and he rejoined Slingie and Freezie. They then went back to the town where Slingie's friends lived (which my son declared was "Displacer Beast Town") and used the Crystal Sword to cut a hole in reality, opening a portal to the displacer beast's home realm. The sick displacer beasts went through to their home, where they would be able to recover from the sickness. Slingie thanked Deforch for helping him and for being his friend when so many people would have thought of him as a monster. With that, we wrapped up the game.

It was a pretty successful game. My son seemed a little less engaged than in some of the other games, but that was in some ways a good thing--he never got upset during the game, which was very nice. During some of the puzzle solving (such as it was), he did a bit of "Clever Hans"--pointing at random points and waiting for me to confirm one of the points as correct. But he also seemed to have some understanding of the puzzle, so with a little bit of coaching he figured it out on his own. And the effort to make friends for Slingie and to explain that he was a nice displacer beast was almost saccharine in its sweetness, but in a good way.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

The Adventure of the Dragon's Eye Temple: Deforch's 7th Adventure

Yesterday, my son played Dungeons & Dragons with a friend (the same friend as last time). This time, the friend's dad ran the game instead of me. This was my son's first game with a GM other than me. I thought people might still be interested in hearing about my son's experience, so I'm including a write-up just like the games that I run.

The game picked up where the friend's last adventure had ended--he was mounted on a friendly dragon, very tired from having fought a battle against the chocolate golem machine in the tiefling House of Valrhona. (The games that the friend's dad runs for him have a Candy Land theme; I think I tend to run more serious games for my son.) Looking for a place to rest, the other PC and the dragon flew to Deforch's family's castle, where they met up again with Deforch.

After they had rested, the other PC's dragon asked them if they would be willing to help him by going on an adventure. The Dragon's Eye Temple was nearby, and it held a legendary glowing crystal (the Dragon's Eye). Dragons couldn't go into the temple, but the dragon needed the crystal to heal his sick mommy. He asked if Deforch and Deforch's friend would help him by getting it. They of course agreed enthusiastically and flew to the temple, the other PC on his dragon and Deforch on Freezie.

The DM and I had built the Dragon's Eye Temple out of Duplo Lego bricks on a battle map, so there were physical walls that the minis were moving around within but still a battle map grid for combat. (He omitted the roof, of course, so the kids could move their figures around inside.) I think this worked really well for helping the kids visualize the situation. They also had fun decorating it by putting shiny stones on the walls. The only complexity was an issue of scale--the battlemap was ruled in a 1" square grid, but the standard four stud (2x2) Duplo brick is about 1.25" square, so it was hard to build a set of walls with the Duplo bricks that lined up with the battlemap grid. Searching on the web suggests that a Duplo brick is in fact 16 mm wide per stud, less a little at the end of each brick to reduce friction between bricks, so a 2x2 Duplo brick is 31.8 mm on a side, with works out to 1.252", for people who care about precision. For people who care, Lego bricks are based on 8 mm scaling, again with a slight reduction at the edges of pieces to reduce friction. (I suppose that you could make every wall, excluding corners, multiples of 16 (Duplo) studs long, so a short wall is 16 studs=5 battlemap squares long, a medium wall is 32 studs=10 battlemap squares long, and so forth, but we didn't think about that before we built the temple. Because the bricks end up forming structures that are 16 mm X the number of studs, really big structures will end up a little larger than the number of squares this suggests, but for reasonable numbers of studs, the error should be manageable. Anyway, something to try for next time.)

Getting back to the game, the dragons had to stay outside (although I'm not sure whether this was because they couldn't fit through the doors or because of some magical effect). In any event, this time my son accepted that more readily--I think he's starting to get used to the idea that there are places where Freezie can go with him, and places where Freezie has to wait outside. This makes life easier for the DMs.

Within the main chamber of the temple, there was a large door underneath the Dragon's Eye, with three-horizontal bands: red on bottom, white in the middle, and green at the top. To either side of the door, there was a torch with a giant flame on it (represented by a black Duplo block that projected out from the wall and then a fire elemental miniature on the top of the Duplo block. There were two statues flanking those (using the Living Statue minis). There were also three pairs of colored Duplo blocks projecting out into the main temple room. Each pair consisted of blocks on opposite walls of the temple, on the side walls. The first pair was green, the second pair was white, and the third pair was red.

The other PC and Deforch ignored the pairs of colored blocks and went straight up to the door. When they pushed at it and tried to open it, a ghostly dragon appeared and said that they could never have the Dragon's Eye. At that point, both the ghostly dragon and the torch flames, which came to life as fire elementals, attacked.

The boys did a good job of focusing their attacks--by the end of the second round, they had killed the ghostly dragon. (For people who care, the dragon was mechanically the wyrmling blizzard dragon from Monster Manual III.) I don't think the dragon ever hit either of them. The fire elementals burned the other PC several times, and Deforch once, but neither of them was even bloodied, and they quickly finished off the monsters. My son was very keen on using his magic swords to cool off Deforch's friend and put out the fire--I'm not sure quite what he was thinking there, but it was him trying to help out his friend and it was nice.

They then turned to exploring the room some more, trying to figure out how to open the door. Eventually, one of them tried touching one of the colored squares. It glowed briefly, as did its twin on the other side of the room, and then they both stopped glowing. They then spent a while trying to figure out how to make progress on that, but they clearly found the next step hard. They also distracted themselves by trying to interact with some of the shiny stones they had placed on the top of the walls--it was kinda interesting that it pretty clearly didn't occur to them that an element that they added probably wouldn't be the key to the puzzle. They also started thinking that maybe they needed to press all six stones at once, so the other PC tried to move around the statues (they wouldn't budge), and both the other PC and Deforch suggested recruiting their (in-character) parents to help--an idea that we rejected, because this was an adventure for just the two of them. Finally, with a little nudging from their (out-of-character) parents, they touched both green stones at the same time. At that point, two green bricks appeared on the black bricks where the torch flames had been.

They quickly moved on to press the white stones (causing two white bricks to appear on top of the green bricks on the black bricks) and the red stones (with the predictable result). At that point, the stack of bricks moved to in front of the door--but it didn't match, because the door was red-white-green, whereas the stacks of bricks were green-white-red. At that point, the statues animated and attacked our heroes.

The animated statues were quickly dispatched, although perhaps not quite as quickly as they could have been. By this point, both of the players were pretty distracted and had wandering attention. They were still having fun, but they were less focused on the game. After they defeated the statues, they pressed the pairs of stones, this time in the right order, and the DM popped the Dragon's Eye out of the wall (a crystal looking Duplo block). They clearly knew that they had succeeded, and brought it out to the dragon. They then switched over into full scale disassemble the temple mode, so the DM declared that the temple collapsed behind them, and we called the game there.

All in all, it was another fun game. The boys really enjoyed playing D&D together. The DM's use of Duplo bricks to create actual solid terrain and a physical puzzle was, I think, really successful at immersing the boys in the game. Props to him for using props. I also think that the presence of another player makes my son, at least, more willing to play along with the constraints of the game and the setting the DM is describing, instead of trying to just interject his own elements. I think in that way he actually benefits from the structure of being one of two players instead of having the whole thing focus on him.

There continues to be the complication that it's much harder to maintain the kids' focus in a two-player (plus DM, and helping parent) game then in a one-player game. Partly that's because they distract each other, but it's also a function of it taking longer to accomplish things. Combat, in particular, is much slower--doubling the size of a fight from 1 PC and 1 monster to 2 PCs and 2 monsters probably increases the length of the combat to 1.5 or 1.75 times as long. (It's not quite double, because the PCs can focus their fire and gain some benefits from actions that affect multiple opponents, but it's still nearly twice as long.) That meant that this session ran about 70 minutes--a comparable session for one player would probably have finished in 45 or 50 minutes. And that's a big difference for four-year-old attention spans. Still, I think it's good for the kids to practice focusing on things for a longer period of time, and they had a ton of fun.