HRSegovia
Explorer
South Texas is not the arid wasteland it is made out to be. Much of the Rio Grande Valley is laden with green rolling hills of mesquite and cactus. It is not a hospitable place, but it is certainly not a barren one. My weekends were spent with my cousin Alex in Hebbronville: a once bustling train depot, now in near ghost town status with a population of 4,500 for the entire county of Jim Hogg. At night – dominated only by the isolation of darkness, the white noise of cicadas, and the occasional circle of yellow light from old lampposts – the village looks much like a place abandoned by God. Houses lay in shambles with caved-in roofs and rotting wood. Trees grow through old living rooms and sporadic acres of monte (mesquite woods) make it difficult to discern any cohesion that could be referred to as neighborhoods. Strangely-enough, it is a peaceful fear that comforts the lone wanderer of Hebbronville. It is a time and place in time and space where the imagination can run wild – where mythology and wonder are born. In a modern era where fantasy is dying and gives way to reason and science, Hebbronville, at night, is the last bastion of the imagination.
It was there that I spent my weekends with my cousin Alex, and - in 1983-84-ish - he introduced me to a new experience to which he, in turn, had just been introduced. It was Dungeons & Dragons, and played it only once every few months. At the age we were (6 or 7), we had no idea what we were doing. We didn't have the rulebooks and played from the memory of what little experience we had with his friends. So we grabbed a sheet of paper, wrote some arbitrary stats and numbers and rolled whatever dice we could find (usually a single d6). We paid little attention to the numbers and just got excited if we rolled very high.
I was reminiscing on this when I got the inspiration to recreate this feeling for my 6-year-old son - just a single d6, a couple of arbitrary stats, and get excited when you see more dots on your die (often, the rules don't even get in the way - a high die roll is enough). IT WORKED! My son grasped the system and learn to listen to what I was saying. Within minutes he was immersed in a village as a monster-hunter and eliminating ghouls and werewolves. He fully understood what he was doing, envisioning it in his head, and knew to ensure I understood what he was doing:
"Do I still have my torch," he asked, after slaying the final ghoul, and explaining early-on what a torch was and that it was night.
It worked for me. Let me know what you think would work better (keeping in mind that the whole concept of the system is to fit in 1 double-sided, laminated page to keep in your pocket with a single d6 - and be understood by a 6-year-old).
http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=file&fileid=1853
It was there that I spent my weekends with my cousin Alex, and - in 1983-84-ish - he introduced me to a new experience to which he, in turn, had just been introduced. It was Dungeons & Dragons, and played it only once every few months. At the age we were (6 or 7), we had no idea what we were doing. We didn't have the rulebooks and played from the memory of what little experience we had with his friends. So we grabbed a sheet of paper, wrote some arbitrary stats and numbers and rolled whatever dice we could find (usually a single d6). We paid little attention to the numbers and just got excited if we rolled very high.
I was reminiscing on this when I got the inspiration to recreate this feeling for my 6-year-old son - just a single d6, a couple of arbitrary stats, and get excited when you see more dots on your die (often, the rules don't even get in the way - a high die roll is enough). IT WORKED! My son grasped the system and learn to listen to what I was saying. Within minutes he was immersed in a village as a monster-hunter and eliminating ghouls and werewolves. He fully understood what he was doing, envisioning it in his head, and knew to ensure I understood what he was doing:
"Do I still have my torch," he asked, after slaying the final ghoul, and explaining early-on what a torch was and that it was night.
It worked for me. Let me know what you think would work better (keeping in mind that the whole concept of the system is to fit in 1 double-sided, laminated page to keep in your pocket with a single d6 - and be understood by a 6-year-old).
http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=file&fileid=1853
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