Influence of your children on your hobby (OT)

[Savage Wombat]

I wanted to share this anecdote, and so I thought I'd invite everyone to talk about incidents they've had with their children and their hobbies.

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I just got a T-shirt for my birthday. Many of you have probably seen something like it - it's for Miskatonic Coffee, and has a coffee cup with Chthulhu's tentacles writhing from it.

The other day my two-year old daughter pulled it out of a stack of my laundry, handed it to me, and said, "Squidward?"

(I'm sure any gamers with kids know who that is.)

So, now it's my Squidward shirt.

What's happened in your households?

 

[JoeBlank]

My 5-year-old (Joseph) and 3-year-old (Jacob) sons know that I go off to play "Dungeons and Dragons," but they don't really know what that is. So far, my 1-year-old (Benjamin) has not eaten any dice.

Joseph was very impressed when my pound 'o dice arrived, and he helped me sort them and told me which ones he liked best. I explained the differences, being the number of sides, as his exposure to dice up until now has been primarily 6-siders for Yahtzee. (Note to gamers, a good game to get kids used to rolling multiple dice at once, and counting different totals.)

I am sure that when I go to a game session, Joseph thinks I am watching television and "playing" the Scourge of Worlds DVD, as he and I refer to it as Dungeons and Dragons. It is also an excellent intro to gaming, as he can watch the action and then I read the choices to him and he decides what the characters will do next, for good or for bad.

Now, when they are ready to play I will explain how we use our imagination, instead of watching the characters on television, and use the dice to determine the success or failure of their actions.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

What's happened in your households?

My son, at my grandmother's funeral: "Can't a priest just bring her back to life?"

I've told that one here at EN World before, but it always brings a smile to my face.

 

[Orias]

I don't have kids myself, but my younger siblings, who I sometimes will run a short game every once & a while when I have time to stop by my parents house, will refer to things as failing various skill checks. They aren't particually young (8 & 12), but I always think it's funny.

 

[WizarDru]

My kids are endlessly fascinated by 'the dice game', as my daughter calls it. One of my players, Scorch, is an excellent miniature painter, and brings over his collection for the game. Each week, my 3-year old. son insists on seeing the new ones he's painted. He also loves to look through the Monster Manual.

My daughter just loves the dice. Sometimes I let her roll for the NPCs or Mommy's sneak-attack damage.

 

[Rel]

My daughter is only two, but she has an impact on my gaming hobby.

I'm fortunate that my wife pretty much lets me "geek up" the basement as much as I like. Since my group plays there every week, I leave a lot of the stuff sitting out. But the carefully painted minis have to be put out of reach or they'll get mouthed and thrown about.

When we play, our method of keeping track of hit point loss for the PC's is that we each have a little bowl of marbles that we add or remove marbles from to indicate when our characters get hit or healed. My daughter LOVES to redistribute these marbles when I'm not looking and there has been many a session when the player of the Barbarian has started off by looking in his bowl and saying, "I'm pretty sure my character has more than 7 hit points and a bottlecap."

The other little thing that I do to make her laugh is my little "Bag of Devouring" schtick. I take a dicebag with a drawstring and put one of my jumbo-sized d20's in it. When she reaches in to grab it, I pull the drawstrings closed on her fat little wrist. If you're 2, apparently this passes as hilarity of the highest order.

 

[tburdett]

I have three daughters, ages 11, 6, and 5.

My 11 year old daughter is not really into the role playing games, but she loves to play boardgames like Dungeon, Talisman, and Dungeonquest. Because of this we RPG one week and boardgame the next.

I think I will have more luck with my younger daughters. They both love to play with the dice (they each have about 50 of them from my junk dice drawer) and play with miniatures (they each have a dozen or so and I buy them a new one whenever they go with me to the game store). They will sit and move the miniatures around while we (the adults) are playing and tell each other that this or that miniature is dead. It is so cute.

 

[Desdichado]

I've tried doing some real basic RPGing with my older kids using the Star Wars setting (since they like that well enough) and it's gone over well. My kids like to play with dice, minis and books with pictures of monsters and "tough guys" in them, too.

We particularly like to use the Blood Bowl block dice and apply the results to ourselves instead of to minis. My kids think it's pretty funny when I roll a skull and have to fall down.

 

[Dimenhydrinate]

The Old Lady

My 3 year old already does impressions. My wife works in a retirement community as a CMA (she passes out pills to the residents). One day my daughter out of the blue puts a sheer scarf on her head and starts talking in this creepy voice, well it was creepy to hear her doing it anyway. She says "I'm the old lady. Give me back my nose." We usually try to trick her into doing once a week 'cause it is funny. She steals our dice to roll in her room. And she knows who spider man, The Hulk, X-men, Superman, Batman and several others are. We do need to work on Cap. America though... today we played with the playskool spiderman and spidergirl action figures and Cap ended up being a dresser from her doll house. and he could talk.

sometimes I just shake my head and blame my wife's genes.

 

[Greyhawk_DM]

I just started DM'ing "The Sunless Citadel" with my wife and kids.
The kids are 10 and 8. My 8 year old nephew is also playing. They are having a blast.

BTW: My two kids are both girls. One is playing a 1st Level Fighter and the other one is playing a 1st level Sorcerer.
My nephew is playing a 1st Level Fighter and my wife is running a 1st Level Ranger.
I am running a 5th Level Cleric of Pelor to help things along.