Rel
Liquid Awesome
So my 3 year old daughter has been watching a LOT of Dora the Explorer lately and I asked her if she would like to go on a REAL adventure, just like Dora. So this morning we had our first adventure.
I ginned up a map using clipart pasted into word. The sites of importance in our (fairly large) yard and home were: Mailbox, Christmas Tree, Horsie, Computer. I loaded her up a Backpack with various sundries including: A bandaid, a little shovel, a small watering can, a paper towel and of course the map.
Off we went to the mailbox where she discovered a fake $5 bill inside. This was promptly added to the backpack and we consulted the map directing us to the Christmas Tree (just so we're clear, we don't have our Christmas Tree up for this year. This was a live christmas tree we planted in our yard from a few years ago and she knew that this was what the map referred to).
Along the way, we were accosted by a monster (a stuffed monster wearing a backward plastic fireman's hat) who demanded money in exchange for a secret. She promptly whipped out the $5 bill and handed it over in exchange for this info about the Christmas Tree:
Water the stick and dig underneath
And there you'll find a special treat!
I congratulated her on solving the monster problem in a non violent manner and we continued to the tree. She located the stick and pulled out her watering can from the trusty Backpack. She scooped water from the nearby water garden and watered the stick and then proceeded to dig at the softened earth underneath. There she found a plastic apple (actually a plastic red bell-pepper but we were pretending). This went into the Backpack and we consulted the map once again and proceeded to the Horsie.
The Horsie in question was easily identified as her rocking horse set up in our carport. We hastened there as she yelled, "We HAVE to HURRY!" (she yelled this on every leg of the adventure). The Horsie offered to give her a ride and a secret in exchange for a treat. Out came the apple and she was soon happily rocking along, grinning like crazy. Then she demanded her secret, which she received via the little "pocket voice recorder" (you know those things that record and play back a little 30 second message to remind you of things? One of those). The message told her:
Go to the Shed and find a Key
To continue your quest, it's what you need!
After explaining what a "quest" was I sent her along to the shed where she got a house key. This allowed her (with some assistance) to open the locked back door to the house that let us in to the next item on our map: The computer.
At the computer she found a treasure in the form of one of those gold-foil wrapped chocolate coins as well as some pictures up on the screen of all the places she had gone on vacation this summer, notably: The lighthouse at the NC coast, the Zoo, the mountains of Colorado and a boat in the Florida Keys. I explained that part of her prize was pictures from all her other adventures! She was most excited about the chocolate though.
To complete her roleplaying experience she immediately insisted that she run the same adventure for me. So I was led rapidly through the same stages I just described, albeit with a few continuity errors (I was required to "dig up" the apple/pepper despite the fact that it was plainly sitting right there on the ground). She did an excellent job with the NPC's, particularly the Monster, for whom she adopted her deepest, most gravelly voice.
But I'm now a victim of my own success. She instantly demanded another adventure "RIGHT NOW". After I explained that it takes some time to plan these things and that the earliest I'd be able to put together another adventure would be after her nap this afternoon, she considered briefly before reiterating her demand of "RIGHT NOW!!".
After some wrangling, use of "the Daddy Voice" and heavy bribery with more Dora videos and a snack, she has relented for a while at least. So now I'd better run and get cracking on my next adventure for the most demanding player I've ever had. Maybe I need to force her to GM more often...
I ginned up a map using clipart pasted into word. The sites of importance in our (fairly large) yard and home were: Mailbox, Christmas Tree, Horsie, Computer. I loaded her up a Backpack with various sundries including: A bandaid, a little shovel, a small watering can, a paper towel and of course the map.
Off we went to the mailbox where she discovered a fake $5 bill inside. This was promptly added to the backpack and we consulted the map directing us to the Christmas Tree (just so we're clear, we don't have our Christmas Tree up for this year. This was a live christmas tree we planted in our yard from a few years ago and she knew that this was what the map referred to).
Along the way, we were accosted by a monster (a stuffed monster wearing a backward plastic fireman's hat) who demanded money in exchange for a secret. She promptly whipped out the $5 bill and handed it over in exchange for this info about the Christmas Tree:
Water the stick and dig underneath
And there you'll find a special treat!
I congratulated her on solving the monster problem in a non violent manner and we continued to the tree. She located the stick and pulled out her watering can from the trusty Backpack. She scooped water from the nearby water garden and watered the stick and then proceeded to dig at the softened earth underneath. There she found a plastic apple (actually a plastic red bell-pepper but we were pretending). This went into the Backpack and we consulted the map once again and proceeded to the Horsie.
The Horsie in question was easily identified as her rocking horse set up in our carport. We hastened there as she yelled, "We HAVE to HURRY!" (she yelled this on every leg of the adventure). The Horsie offered to give her a ride and a secret in exchange for a treat. Out came the apple and she was soon happily rocking along, grinning like crazy. Then she demanded her secret, which she received via the little "pocket voice recorder" (you know those things that record and play back a little 30 second message to remind you of things? One of those). The message told her:
Go to the Shed and find a Key
To continue your quest, it's what you need!
After explaining what a "quest" was I sent her along to the shed where she got a house key. This allowed her (with some assistance) to open the locked back door to the house that let us in to the next item on our map: The computer.
At the computer she found a treasure in the form of one of those gold-foil wrapped chocolate coins as well as some pictures up on the screen of all the places she had gone on vacation this summer, notably: The lighthouse at the NC coast, the Zoo, the mountains of Colorado and a boat in the Florida Keys. I explained that part of her prize was pictures from all her other adventures! She was most excited about the chocolate though.
To complete her roleplaying experience she immediately insisted that she run the same adventure for me. So I was led rapidly through the same stages I just described, albeit with a few continuity errors (I was required to "dig up" the apple/pepper despite the fact that it was plainly sitting right there on the ground). She did an excellent job with the NPC's, particularly the Monster, for whom she adopted her deepest, most gravelly voice.
But I'm now a victim of my own success. She instantly demanded another adventure "RIGHT NOW". After I explained that it takes some time to plan these things and that the earliest I'd be able to put together another adventure would be after her nap this afternoon, she considered briefly before reiterating her demand of "RIGHT NOW!!".
After some wrangling, use of "the Daddy Voice" and heavy bribery with more Dora videos and a snack, she has relented for a while at least. So now I'd better run and get cracking on my next adventure for the most demanding player I've ever had. Maybe I need to force her to GM more often...
