How are you going to introduce your kids to gaming, if at all?

[jester47]

Trust me when I say that a lot of your perspectives on parenting change when you have kids...I don't say that with any sort of derision, but as a simple fact that every person I know who's had kids find that some things change when the rubber meets the road, so to speak. Practice and theory, like in so many things, sometimes differ radically.

Thats a good point, and while this is the idea that I will work with, I DO like scifi and fantasy movies and my mother is a prof of english anglo saxon lit. So some things will rub off. But I think depending on who the wife winds up being and other real world factors, that D&D will be "that game dad plays." But there is a chance that they could play. I guess we will see.

Aaron.

 

[Hypersmurf]

My parents' group played once a week when I was growing up, on a Friday or Saturday evening... usually 6 or 7pm through 'til midnight or 2am.

Mum and Dad would bring my sister and I along - it was like a bunch of aunts and uncles

By the time my mother ran me through my first solo adventure at 6 (a modified Palace of the Silver Princess), I had the 1E PHB and most of the DMG pretty much memorised (to the spell-casting-time-in-segments level)... although I doubt I knew the difference between a Cheap Trollop and a Slovenly Trull.

Incredibly, the group let me play with them. I look back on that and am simply awed by the tolerance that must have taken - a group of 25-30 year olds allowing a 6 year old to play. And I played with that group for four years... until we moved to a new city, and my parents pretty much took a break from gaming until 3E.

I still played some with a couple of school friends, but a group of 3 kids isn't quite the same when you're used to a group of nine or ten adults

-Hyp.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Neat for you, Hypersmurf. My last really good gaming group consisted of a pack of 30-somethings and the 8-year-old son of one of the guys. The 8-year-old was a fantastic player, he had a druid PC and I liked the way he dealt with animals in game. I know there's a tremendous difference in maturity level between 6 and 8, but I don't think it's at all outside the realm of possibility that a 6-year-old can be a good roleplayer (as you demonstrate in your post).

How much is that Pokemon adventure game? My husband told me just this afternoon that my 2-year-old daughter said she wants to learn to play "Mommy and Daddy's game." She already knows how to play Candyland, maybe she's more ready for this than I credited her.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I know there's a tremendous difference in maturity level between 6 and 8, but I don't think it's at all outside the realm of possibility that a 6-year-old can be a good roleplayer (as you demonstrate in your post).

It was sort of brought home to me a couple of years back when the 12yo son of one of my players joined. (My parents play in the group I DM now... twenty years later...)

And while he's gradually settled in, he was somewhat annoying for a while.

And I remember commenting to my father one day - "If that's what it's like bringing a twelve year old into an adult group, I can't imagine how frustrating I must have been..."

"You were nothing like that," he informed me.

Which, when I think about it, was probably true But I still have to take my hat off to the group I started with.

-Hyp.

 

[Silver Moon]

We just spent this evening playing another installment of our family game. The 10-year-old has the makings of a future DM and did an excellent job of thinking through the situations. My favorite line from her, when investigating the cave where the Rex character once lived, and finding a sleeping bear inside "Rex, is there anything that you really need in here?"

The 8-year-old is exploding with enthusiasm at playing her character. She also tossed in some good role playing moments, some of them little things. For instance, after everyone had unloaded their equipment she yells out "Oops, I left my pack back on the wagon." And after they found deer tracks by the lake she said "Oh no. I'm afraid. My father was once almost killed by a deer's antlers."

The 5-year-old is surprisingly bright at the game too, thinking things through with a minimum of prompting.

 

[Templetroll]

Our daughter was three or four and we overheard her telling her grandmother, "..and I turn Thomas the Tank Engine on his side and you take three points of damage."

She started gaming with our regular group as a magical cat when she was 10; she worked through 5 of her 9 lives before TPK. She took that right in stride, actually better than the rest of us did. Only thing the group has to deal with now, and she is 14, is that she doesn't like to play anything humanoid - they die too quickly. She has been an owl, a wolf, a faerie dragon, a silver dragon and is now a sabre-toothed tiger. They ended up being pretty cool characters.

My dwarf almost got reincarnated as a bear and one player stated that he would drop out if there were too many animal characters in the party. I guess one is his limit.

 

[cdsaint]

I've got two kids, daughter 18, son 16, and I never tried to get them involved in gaming. I actually pretty much gave gaming up for many years after my son was born. The only game I kept playing was Advanced Squad Leader, and that only 2 to 3 times a year. My son was still interested in playing from the time he was old enough to see the game on the table. When 3e came out he used his allowance to buy the PHB, and I looked through it and was amazed! They had fixed the problems that had made me quit playing. So he actually got me back into gaming. About a year ago, my daughter and her boyfriend also started playing. Now it's very much a family affair. We (my kids and friends) play D20 Modern every Saturday night, and we're about to start a new D&D campaign on sundays.

I guess my point is you don't have to try to con your kids into gaming, if they see you playing and having fun they will show an interest.

Chris

 

[Ace]

From personal experience, I will not introduce them to roleplaying games.

I can trace many of my social and academic problems back to gaming, and I don't want them to have those problems.

Now this does not mean that they will not play games, just nor RPGs or games that take up lots of time.

I will still play, and I fully expect them to ask why I have never introduced them to RPGs, and I will tell them about the difficulties in my teenage life that arose from gaming. This does not mean that I will say no RPGs, it just means that I will not teach them to play and I will not purchase books. They will have to use thier own cash for that and chances are they will most likely be introduced to it by their friends.

This way they get social and fiscal responsibility and a parent that understands they may or may not be like dad.

Basicly they will probably have to get a job to pay for the books to game. I plan on paying an allowance but I figure that the best way to do that is to give them enough per week (when they are teenagers of course) to go out somewhere and get dinner and a movie. Then take the min wage, knock off .50 and divide that into the amount I give them. This will show the number of hours I can extract work from them for the week (i.e. chores). Start the allowance at 10, and then increase it steadily until driving age.

Granted they are as fictional now as my D&D characters, so... maybe thier fictional mother will also have some things to say about how they are raised.

Aaron.

I was tempted to just post AOL and be done with it but I think this deserves a bit more attention

I agree with Jester 47 on most every point in the post (maybe not the allowance thing but hey)

-- Gaming can be a very bad thing for some people and JMO there are better outlets for a kids creativity than RPG and computer games-- I would rather that they find better choices

When I have kids I have no intention of teaching them gaming -- I won't forbid it but I won't encourage it either. If they find out about gaming on their own and if I am still gaming and they want to play with Dad--

Good on them and they would be very welcome -- I still would rather the kids pursue a different hobby though

JMO but a kid should have a go at finding out who he is before he spends a lot of time pretending to be someone else

 

[Silver Moon]

I guess my point is you don't have to try to con your kids into gaming, if they see you playing and having fun they will show an interest.

That's how this game came about in the first place. My wife and I were playing a solo campaign up at our camp and the kids wanted to join in.

 

[Silver Moon]

Gaming can be a very bad thing for some people and JMO there are better outlets for a kids creativity than RPG....a kid should have a go at finding out who he is before he spends a lot of time pretending to be someone else

I have to take issue with that opinion. My wife and I are both teachers in real life. The children's playing characters in this game are all children ages 11 to 15 and the NPC's that my wife and I are playing are their school instructors. While the plot of last night's game involved visiting and camping on an island, the real focus of the game was on problem solving and creative thinking. It also involved a spelling and penmanship lesson, as they all wrote out their own equipment lists.