This is going to be an altogether different campaign that anything I - or my son Logan, who will be DMing - have ever attempted.
Some background: my wife's nephew, Harry, has lived with us since he was a mere two and a half months old. He's now 10 years old and in the 4th grade. I ran a 9-year D&D 3.5 campaign (link: Wing Three Story Hour) for Logan and the family of one of my co-workers, and when that ended we started up our current campaign (link: Kordovian Adventurers Guild Story Hour). The first campaign was specifically designed to introduce my co-worker's 8-year-old son to D&D, and somewhere around year 6 of that campaign we added in my co-worker's youngest son, who by then had turned 8 years old himself. I always figured once Harry turned 8 (or thereabouts), he'd join our gaming group as well.
Things didn't turn out that way. Despite frequent invitations, Harry has always opted to stay home when Logan and I would head over to my co-worker's house for a D&D game session. Part of his refusal is because most times when Logan and I would go off to play (generally from noon to 5-6 PM on a Saturday), he and my wife Mary would go on what he calls a "date" - generally, a trip to the toy/electronic store and a lunch out at a local steak place. Mary would often pick him up a new Skylanders figure as part of their "date" and then he'd be content for the rest of the day, playing with his new character in the games.
(For those unfamiliar with Skylanders, it's a series of video games that comes with a portal that holds a number of these Skylanders figures - put the figure on the portal and the corresponding character shows up in the game for you to run. It's a brilliant concept, guaranteeing the company a near endless stream of money since they come out not only with a new edition of the game every year but also dozens of new characters for purchase. You don't need all of the characters to be able to play the game, but the more you have the more options you have in the game.)
Anyway, Harry's been a Skylanders fanatic since the first edition, "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure," came out in 2011. (This was followed by "Skylanders Giants," "Skylanders Swap Force," "Skylanders Trap Team," "Skylanders Superchargers," and last year's "Skylanders Imaginators.") How big of a fan, you ask? Not only does he have all of the editions and a goodly chunk of the available characters, but he also has Skylanders bed sheets, blankets, and curtains in his room, a half dozen Skylanders stuffed animals, all of the McDonald's Happy Meal Skylanders tie-in toys, three or four Skylanders T-shirts, a Skylanders backpack, half a dozen Skylanders novels...and two separate Skylanders board games that we created ourselves. (Our original board game was based on the first edition of the video game and then we created "Giants" and "Swap Force" additions to the game as they came out. "Trap Team" was sufficiently different that it warranted a new board game.)
But Logan and I realized that Skylanders was an opportunity to introduce Harry to D&D. Not that we're trying to force him into playing D&D with us, but it's a pastime that's provided Logan and I (and Logan's older brother, Stuart) years of entertainment and we hate to see him miss out if it's something he'd like to do with us. Up until now, I think he's seen D&D pretty much as just a much-slower, tabletop version of World of Warcraft. But when we mentioned that the DM creates whatever kind of game world he wants, and Harry questioned whether "Skylanders D&D" was possible and was told it certainly was, he vowed to give it a try. We decided, since I've been the DM for our D&D campaigns for the past decade and more, this would be a perfect opportunity for Logan to try his hand at DMing a campaign. (Plus, Logan occasionally plays Skylanders video games with Harry and thus is much better versed in the history of the game world - I only know what little I know about the Skylanders universe from what I've gleamed from the novels I've read to Harry at bedtime.)
So last week I gave him a verbal rundown of the D&D character classes. He decided he wanted to be a barbarian (specifically, a "baabarian - which is apparently a thing in the Skylanders universe: a tough, humanoid sheep with a penchant for two-handed melee weapons), but he also wanted to be able to cast healing spells. So there was our first campaign decision: I had heard of gestalt character rules, so I did some research on the SRD site and got the gist of how gestalt PCs work. When we tried to come up with an appropriate name for his barbarian/cleric sheep-man, Harry came up with "Baabby" (pronounced just like "Bobby") which I, an inveterate pun-lover, couldn't help but love.
Since I'd be the only other player in this game, I decided I'd let Harry pick out my two character classes for me - I have every intention of being the mere sidekick in our little duo. He wanted me to be able to shoot a bow and open locked and trapped treasure chests, so I ended up with a gestalt ranger/rogue. For a race, I decided I'd be something other than a humanoid sheep (no sense in diluting Baabby's originality), and since "baabarians" are usually bad guys but Harry was going to run a good one (we decided on chaotic good), I opted to take another "bad guy" character from Skylanders and run him as a good guy. There are two enemies in Skylanders that are humanoid crows: Cross Crow (who uses a crossbow) and Tae Kwan Crow (a martial artist enemy from an earlier edition who's since become a good guy in the latest game); I decided I'd be Cross Crow's cousin, Sam Crow. (Pun explanation for those who aren't followers of the "Sons of Anarchy" TV show: SAMCRO stands for "Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original" - Redwood being the fictional California county where most of the series took place.) As an added pun, I decided Sam was a former member of a bow-hunters club, the "Sons of Archery."
So, now we have our two gestalt characters. I did up initiative cards for Baabby and Sam (for Sam, I just used a picture of Cross Crow; for Baabby I grafted a Skylanders sheep head onto the body of Ookla the Mok from the old "Thundarr the Barbarian" cartoon), as well as for a bunch of low-level Skylanders enemies: chompies, a chompy pod, flame imps, and eight different elemental spell punks. Likewise, I made a stand-up token for the two PCs and a bunch of the low-level monsters. Logan's going to be designing the first adventure, which we'll run through either tomorrow or sometime next weekend.
So if Harry has a good time playing "Skylanders D&D," this will be a recurring thing for us. Since these Skylanders adventures will be designed to be short (we're thinking about an hour and a half, tops), it shouldn't be too difficult to run a Skylanders adventure on the weekends that we don't get to play through a Kordovian adventure. Conversely, if Harry isn't impressed with tabletop gaming, we'll have given it our best shot and I'll feel better knowing he at least gave it a try.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Some background: my wife's nephew, Harry, has lived with us since he was a mere two and a half months old. He's now 10 years old and in the 4th grade. I ran a 9-year D&D 3.5 campaign (link: Wing Three Story Hour) for Logan and the family of one of my co-workers, and when that ended we started up our current campaign (link: Kordovian Adventurers Guild Story Hour). The first campaign was specifically designed to introduce my co-worker's 8-year-old son to D&D, and somewhere around year 6 of that campaign we added in my co-worker's youngest son, who by then had turned 8 years old himself. I always figured once Harry turned 8 (or thereabouts), he'd join our gaming group as well.
Things didn't turn out that way. Despite frequent invitations, Harry has always opted to stay home when Logan and I would head over to my co-worker's house for a D&D game session. Part of his refusal is because most times when Logan and I would go off to play (generally from noon to 5-6 PM on a Saturday), he and my wife Mary would go on what he calls a "date" - generally, a trip to the toy/electronic store and a lunch out at a local steak place. Mary would often pick him up a new Skylanders figure as part of their "date" and then he'd be content for the rest of the day, playing with his new character in the games.
(For those unfamiliar with Skylanders, it's a series of video games that comes with a portal that holds a number of these Skylanders figures - put the figure on the portal and the corresponding character shows up in the game for you to run. It's a brilliant concept, guaranteeing the company a near endless stream of money since they come out not only with a new edition of the game every year but also dozens of new characters for purchase. You don't need all of the characters to be able to play the game, but the more you have the more options you have in the game.)
Anyway, Harry's been a Skylanders fanatic since the first edition, "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure," came out in 2011. (This was followed by "Skylanders Giants," "Skylanders Swap Force," "Skylanders Trap Team," "Skylanders Superchargers," and last year's "Skylanders Imaginators.") How big of a fan, you ask? Not only does he have all of the editions and a goodly chunk of the available characters, but he also has Skylanders bed sheets, blankets, and curtains in his room, a half dozen Skylanders stuffed animals, all of the McDonald's Happy Meal Skylanders tie-in toys, three or four Skylanders T-shirts, a Skylanders backpack, half a dozen Skylanders novels...and two separate Skylanders board games that we created ourselves. (Our original board game was based on the first edition of the video game and then we created "Giants" and "Swap Force" additions to the game as they came out. "Trap Team" was sufficiently different that it warranted a new board game.)
But Logan and I realized that Skylanders was an opportunity to introduce Harry to D&D. Not that we're trying to force him into playing D&D with us, but it's a pastime that's provided Logan and I (and Logan's older brother, Stuart) years of entertainment and we hate to see him miss out if it's something he'd like to do with us. Up until now, I think he's seen D&D pretty much as just a much-slower, tabletop version of World of Warcraft. But when we mentioned that the DM creates whatever kind of game world he wants, and Harry questioned whether "Skylanders D&D" was possible and was told it certainly was, he vowed to give it a try. We decided, since I've been the DM for our D&D campaigns for the past decade and more, this would be a perfect opportunity for Logan to try his hand at DMing a campaign. (Plus, Logan occasionally plays Skylanders video games with Harry and thus is much better versed in the history of the game world - I only know what little I know about the Skylanders universe from what I've gleamed from the novels I've read to Harry at bedtime.)
So last week I gave him a verbal rundown of the D&D character classes. He decided he wanted to be a barbarian (specifically, a "baabarian - which is apparently a thing in the Skylanders universe: a tough, humanoid sheep with a penchant for two-handed melee weapons), but he also wanted to be able to cast healing spells. So there was our first campaign decision: I had heard of gestalt character rules, so I did some research on the SRD site and got the gist of how gestalt PCs work. When we tried to come up with an appropriate name for his barbarian/cleric sheep-man, Harry came up with "Baabby" (pronounced just like "Bobby") which I, an inveterate pun-lover, couldn't help but love.
Since I'd be the only other player in this game, I decided I'd let Harry pick out my two character classes for me - I have every intention of being the mere sidekick in our little duo. He wanted me to be able to shoot a bow and open locked and trapped treasure chests, so I ended up with a gestalt ranger/rogue. For a race, I decided I'd be something other than a humanoid sheep (no sense in diluting Baabby's originality), and since "baabarians" are usually bad guys but Harry was going to run a good one (we decided on chaotic good), I opted to take another "bad guy" character from Skylanders and run him as a good guy. There are two enemies in Skylanders that are humanoid crows: Cross Crow (who uses a crossbow) and Tae Kwan Crow (a martial artist enemy from an earlier edition who's since become a good guy in the latest game); I decided I'd be Cross Crow's cousin, Sam Crow. (Pun explanation for those who aren't followers of the "Sons of Anarchy" TV show: SAMCRO stands for "Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original" - Redwood being the fictional California county where most of the series took place.) As an added pun, I decided Sam was a former member of a bow-hunters club, the "Sons of Archery."
So, now we have our two gestalt characters. I did up initiative cards for Baabby and Sam (for Sam, I just used a picture of Cross Crow; for Baabby I grafted a Skylanders sheep head onto the body of Ookla the Mok from the old "Thundarr the Barbarian" cartoon), as well as for a bunch of low-level Skylanders enemies: chompies, a chompy pod, flame imps, and eight different elemental spell punks. Likewise, I made a stand-up token for the two PCs and a bunch of the low-level monsters. Logan's going to be designing the first adventure, which we'll run through either tomorrow or sometime next weekend.
So if Harry has a good time playing "Skylanders D&D," this will be a recurring thing for us. Since these Skylanders adventures will be designed to be short (we're thinking about an hour and a half, tops), it shouldn't be too difficult to run a Skylanders adventure on the weekends that we don't get to play through a Kordovian adventure. Conversely, if Harry isn't impressed with tabletop gaming, we'll have given it our best shot and I'll feel better knowing he at least gave it a try.
I'll let you know how it goes.