Tolen Mar
First Post
We've been short players for a while now, so I decided to see if my eight year old (eight and a half!), named Luke, might be up to joining in once in a while.
Every game session, he prefers to spend time in the game room with us anyway. So over the past few weeks I've been telling him how the game works, and how he would have to work on his 'focus', instead of interrupting us constantly with jokes and stories from his books (he does love to show off!), he'd have to learn to keep his attention on the game, and realize that even if the dice aren't rolling, we are still playing.
So, I helped him stat up Drogo today. A 1st level Halfling Ranger with Two-Weapon Fighting. Then I made up a small adventure on the fly to teach him some of the rules.
Drogo is in his hut, skinning some small creature he caught earlier in the day when a local farmer comes up to him. The old man claims he needs Drogo's help, since Drogo is a tracker. The man left his son to work the cornfields this morning, and when he came back later to check on him, the boy was gone.
So my boy immediately decides that he has to help the famer out, and heads out to go looking. (This was the only point where I had to prod him a little. "Do you know where the boy might be?" I asked.) Luke quickly realized he still needed to talk to the farmer, and before long, the old man was leading him to the south edge of his field, where there were signs of a struggle and tracks leading further away to the south.
Here comes Luke's first ever skill check, a survival roll to track the creatures. His first roll was a natural 20. With luck like that, he's going to stomp all over everyone else's PC's (and my poor NPC's).
Anyway, he follows the trail to a small cave in the hills. Cautiously, he enters the cave to see a small kobold encampment. In the first chamber are two kobolds. He draws his bow, and shoots one. The other immediately runs down the tunnel at the far end of the chamber. Luke has just enough time to drop his bow and switch to two swords. He gets hit once, then manages to hit and crit, dropping the wounded kobold. Picking up his bow, he continues down the tunnel.
The tunnel twists and turns, and I have him search as he goes. His roll fails him then, though, and he sets off an arrow trap. He fails his reflex save, and so takes a point of damage. ("I'm not doing so good, dad." He started with 9 hp, and is now at 4.)
He spots the next trap and avoids it, and sees another small chamber. The kobold that ran off is there, as well as two of his buddies. Drogo Fires his bow into one. Since he has cover, the kobolds spears miss, and they all draw swords. One by one they move toward him, letting themselves get bottled up in the tunnel. Hey, he's only eight (and a half!), and they are only kobolds, so I wasn't pulling out the tactical stops here.
One by one he whittles them down, dropping one on the first round, wounding the second next round, and then dropping it with an AoO when it panics and tries to flee. The third, seeing his two companions being cut to ribbons in just a few seconds, also turns to run, and Luke's AoO misses. When he catches up, he finds the kobold standing over the farm boy's unconscious body, threatening to kill the kid if he moves any closer.
After thinking things over for a moment or two, he decides to chance missing the kobold altogether (it was already wounded), he charges the creature, and almost, but not quite crits it.
Now this halfling is carrying studded leather armor, two short swords, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. He picks this kid up and carries him back to the farmhouse, one slow encumbered step at a time.
He didn't care about the gold or the XP. All he cared about was doing the right thing.
If he weren't such a rookie at it, I think this kid could play a pally.
And thus is a role-player born.
Every game session, he prefers to spend time in the game room with us anyway. So over the past few weeks I've been telling him how the game works, and how he would have to work on his 'focus', instead of interrupting us constantly with jokes and stories from his books (he does love to show off!), he'd have to learn to keep his attention on the game, and realize that even if the dice aren't rolling, we are still playing.
So, I helped him stat up Drogo today. A 1st level Halfling Ranger with Two-Weapon Fighting. Then I made up a small adventure on the fly to teach him some of the rules.
Drogo is in his hut, skinning some small creature he caught earlier in the day when a local farmer comes up to him. The old man claims he needs Drogo's help, since Drogo is a tracker. The man left his son to work the cornfields this morning, and when he came back later to check on him, the boy was gone.
So my boy immediately decides that he has to help the famer out, and heads out to go looking. (This was the only point where I had to prod him a little. "Do you know where the boy might be?" I asked.) Luke quickly realized he still needed to talk to the farmer, and before long, the old man was leading him to the south edge of his field, where there were signs of a struggle and tracks leading further away to the south.
Here comes Luke's first ever skill check, a survival roll to track the creatures. His first roll was a natural 20. With luck like that, he's going to stomp all over everyone else's PC's (and my poor NPC's).
Anyway, he follows the trail to a small cave in the hills. Cautiously, he enters the cave to see a small kobold encampment. In the first chamber are two kobolds. He draws his bow, and shoots one. The other immediately runs down the tunnel at the far end of the chamber. Luke has just enough time to drop his bow and switch to two swords. He gets hit once, then manages to hit and crit, dropping the wounded kobold. Picking up his bow, he continues down the tunnel.
The tunnel twists and turns, and I have him search as he goes. His roll fails him then, though, and he sets off an arrow trap. He fails his reflex save, and so takes a point of damage. ("I'm not doing so good, dad." He started with 9 hp, and is now at 4.)
He spots the next trap and avoids it, and sees another small chamber. The kobold that ran off is there, as well as two of his buddies. Drogo Fires his bow into one. Since he has cover, the kobolds spears miss, and they all draw swords. One by one they move toward him, letting themselves get bottled up in the tunnel. Hey, he's only eight (and a half!), and they are only kobolds, so I wasn't pulling out the tactical stops here.
One by one he whittles them down, dropping one on the first round, wounding the second next round, and then dropping it with an AoO when it panics and tries to flee. The third, seeing his two companions being cut to ribbons in just a few seconds, also turns to run, and Luke's AoO misses. When he catches up, he finds the kobold standing over the farm boy's unconscious body, threatening to kill the kid if he moves any closer.
After thinking things over for a moment or two, he decides to chance missing the kobold altogether (it was already wounded), he charges the creature, and almost, but not quite crits it.
Now this halfling is carrying studded leather armor, two short swords, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. He picks this kid up and carries him back to the farmhouse, one slow encumbered step at a time.
He didn't care about the gold or the XP. All he cared about was doing the right thing.
If he weren't such a rookie at it, I think this kid could play a pally.
And thus is a role-player born.
