"D&D Gaming Session with Daughter and Friends" Topic

Well this weekend the SupremeCmdrKiley and I hosted a sleepover for CdtKiley and 4 of her friends from school. This was short notice for me and my daughter wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons. She's been pouring over my old 3rd Edition Players Handbook ever since our trip back from Disney World last month. I had introduced them to the game about a month prior to that, using some quick computer generated characters and they loved it. Now she's learning how to make characters, old school, with paper, pencil and dice. This past Easter she received a pink tie-dye dice bag and some pink and gold dice and we've made an occasional trip to a hobby shop where she was able to look through the Reaper rack to find a model that best fits a character she's made.

So this past week CdtKiley has been furiously designing characters, something she really loves to do. Every once in a while sitting down with daddy to ask him a question about a rule or something. It's just neat to sit back and watch her plough through that book actively reading it.

So the party starts with the girls all arriving and immediately wanting to get into a water fight. Chaos ensues and a lot of wet muddy footprints got tracked into the house. After drying off and a change of clothes, I and the wife were preparing dinner with me manning the grill making hot dogs and cheeseburgers. Then finished off dinner with some Blue Moon Ice Cream.

Then we went to the War Room in my basement and I introduced them to Dungeons & Dragons. Well after my daughter distributed characters around, I got to experience something I don't normally experience. Little girl whining. Yep, don't like this character, don't like that character, this one's too short, etc. So after some horse trading and some really quick character generation on CdtKiley's part we were on our way. Now only 2 of these 5 8-year old girls knew what D&D was like, so it took some explaining but surprising went quickly. I had just realized that the last time I had seriously DM'd a game of D&D was back in high school and that was the old AD&D. I think the last time I seriously ref'd an RPG was just after high school and that was Twilight: 2000.

So we ended up with CdtKiley playing a Halfling Rogue, and accompanying her was a Half-Elf Rogue, and Elf Fighter, a Human Fighter and an Elf Monk. We got into the adventure as I described the party arriving in the village of Zsu Zsu where they noticed signs of economic depression. Going into the tavern they were disapointed that there were no mango smoothies and the pizza did not have any pepperoni. As the waitress explained to the party that the trade caravans have been few and far between lately and they haven't been getting the shipments of cookies, mangos and pepperoni. Just then some soldiers come in and the officer in charge pays for the party's bill. The officer tells them they have been invited to Duke Montaqi's castle for a proposal.

Arriving at the castle the Duke treats them to a dinner and proposes that these brave adventurers venture forth into The Dark Woods to find these raiders that have been plaguing the trade shipments into his village. Also the Duke offers 500 gp to each if they recover the Golden Unicorn Amulet, which was to be a gift for his daughter Hannaqi Montaqi. The party accepts the offer and stays the night in the castle as guests of the Duke.

The following day they ventured forth into The Dark Woods. They select one of the Half-Elf Rogue to scout ahead of the party. The rogue, making a successful Move Silently check, comes across a camp of goblins who are sitting about counting their loot unnoticed. She fails her Listen check to find out what they are saying but was clearly able to determine they were goblins (as she's familiar of the goblin language) However when she decides to turn around to warn the rest of the party before they stumble onto the goblin raiders. She fails her Move Silently roll and steps on a twig alerting the goblins of her presence. This results in a mad dash run as 4 goblins chase after her.

So placing a forest flip-map on the table, the girls place their figures where they were supposed to be on the pathway and I placed the rouge at the edge of the map as she's running toward her group with the goblins close behind. Now presenting the girls with the situation, they had to react. Unfortunately, CdtKiley, decides rather than rush forward to assist her fellow rogue (or sneak around the goblins for a back strike) she runs down a different path to see what's in this hut on the other side of the map. Meanwhile, the Elf Fighter (already a veteran from playing with CdtKiley on their first game) puts on her magic Amulet of Invisibilty and charges forward with her magic +2 Axe (both items she aquired on their first adventure). However I had to make them roll to see whether the Half-Elf Rouge would run into her invisible companion as both of their paths were going to cross and as I warned them invisibility and pointy items don't mix well. They make the roll success and avoid any mishaps as they pass each other. The half-elf pops out of invisibility in front of the lead goblin and cleaves his head open. The girls cheer as they made their first kill.

Meanwhile, my daughter who run off to do some exploring of her own. Well, as the Elite Game Master Doug Douglason once said…"tactical stupidity must be punished", even if it's my daughter she should learn something from this. So as she charges into the hut I make a random monster check and place some models in the hut and describe to her halfling rogue stumbles upon 3 zombies feasting upon the corpse of an unfortunate traveler. After a unanimous little girl "EEEEEEEEEWWWWW!", my daughter remembers her back strike as I had described that the zombies backs were to her. Unfortunately her morning star fails to destroy the zombie as it crushes the ribcage of the zombie nearest to her. She's a bit grossed out as I describe the sick sucking sound as she pulls the morning star out of the dent in the back of the zombie.

Now the girls are stuck between 3 goblins and 3 zombies and not sure who to fight. The elf fighter takes down another goblin as the half-elf rogue joins in but fails to connect. The human fighter also joins in but fails to connect. Meanwhile the elf monk charges into the hut and swings at another zombie with her pole arm. Unfortunately she rolls bad and scores a minor wound on the zombie. The girls get into a quick discussion on how does one kill a zombie if it's already dead. CdtKiley simply advises them to aim for the head (daddy is proud).

Well CdtKiley finishes off her zombie and her monk friend runs through the other zombie, scoring lots of damage but failing to destroy it. The zombie reaches out and scratches the monk, wounding her pretty bad. Now my daughter wishes someone had chosen the cleric character she rolled up. In the meantime the goblins are now outnumbers and getting beaten up bad. The three girls make quick work of the remaining two goblins.

The rest of the party arrives at the hut to gang up on the remaining zombies and make quick work of them as well.

So then the customary looting of the bodies ensues, and the human fighter finds a small locked chest at the abandoned goblin camp. The two rogues both try to pick it open with the half-elf successfully opening it to find Princess Hannaqi Montaqi's Golden Unicorn Amulet. Of which they decide to take back to Duke Montaqi's castle. One dynamic I noticed while playing with girls was that rather than sharing the loot amongst each other they were very greedy about it. Whatever each one found they kept for themselves and didn't want to share or split up the total loot. As I said "that sounds very greedy of you", the response I got back was "yep!".

So the party returns to Duke Montaqui's castle and presents him with the amulet, but before his daughter's birthday. They are invited to the birthday party just as new trade caravans arrive to the town bringing fresh mangos and other exotic foods. They finish off the adventure with cookies and mango smoothies.

Tallying up the XP, the Elf Fighter with the Magic Axe scored the most due to having the most kills. However the half-elf rogue scored the next most. As I pointed out to the new players, that despite her having only killed 1 zombie, she was able to find the goblin camp and open the treasure chest. Thus showing that the game is not all about killing and that the player of that rogue was doing her job. All the girls enjoyed the game and said it was "Awesome!".

However, as the great gaming sage Doug Douglason once said "I predict relentless carnage….followed by crying."

There was relentless carnage in the form of 5 girls running around all night after watching some movies, despite the best efforts of the SupremeCmdr and myself. The noise levels dropped quickly to whispers after I had to use my authoritive "SILENCE!". However they still stayed up, changing rooms and beds, gossiping and such until late into the night. The following day after all the guests left, CdtKiley realized that she still had to go to Chinese School and broke into tears. So on our trip to school, a good 40 minute drive, she wailed pretty much the entire way up stating she was too tired. At the start of the trip, I stated to her that "Daddy doesn't give in to terrorism, or little girl whining." So we made it to school and she had stopped crying about 5 minutes from there. After class she came staggering out and I told her she looked like a zombie. I got a snear and sort of a smile out of her.

Hannaqi Montaqi.

You sir are evil personified! I like that in a dad.
Sounds like a good D&D run. One silly question though.
Did the one character get healed???????

Yes, she did receive medical attention back at the duke's castle.

That was awesome! I like how you made the adventure more to the girls liking by using the pizza and smoothies, etc.

Yeah, I thought that was wiser than what my old group, back in the day, would be doing when in a tavern.

Somehow the repercussions of them going home and telling their parents they got to play a game where they got drunk and fondled bar maids was just not a good idea.

Super cool. My daughter is 6 and we play Song of Blades and Heroes, but we haven't done roleplaying. No multiple kid sleepovers yet.

Well I'll tell you, it will probably be a while before we have multiple kid sleepovers again.

However, I predict more games of D&D will be played, probably earlier in the day and possibly with less kids.

BTW, after the first trial at role playing my daughter, who's been playing games like Star Wars miniatures and Heroscape, said she liked D&D much better because "you can do anything in this game." Furthermore I found that she really loved making the characters and filling in all the blanks in the personal information sections of the character sheets. I think I've got her imagination all fired up now.

I'm surprised with the limited amount of exposure to the D&D style fantasy and the amount of enthusiasm she has towards Star Wars in general that she's shown far less interest in the Star Wars RPG when I showed it to her.

Star Wars doesn't have elves…

ah, good point. You too noticed the trend towards elves amongst my daughter and her friends.

Even with two princesses in the middle of it all, Star Wars is still loud boy stuff.

Get enough elves and horses mixed in to your D&D and you'll have to turn the tween girls away in droves…

Well you are doing better than I ever did.

My daughter said -- very early on, "It's all just dice Dad". Never played again.

Her sleepovers generally involved 4 player monster trucks races on the computer.

mjc

Well done, sir!

Doug

Wizards just had an article about D&D and little kids. They put out a 14 page game called Monster Slayers.

link

It's free and complete, a very, very simple version of 4e. It has a battlemap, counters, and characters included.

Sounds fun! Well, after the whine session.

That doesn't get better when they hit their teens, BTW. They just whine about different things, that cost more.

One dynamic I noticed while playing with girls was that rather than sharing the loot amongst each other they were very greedy about it. Whatever each one found they kept for themselves and didn't want to share or split up the total loot. As I said "that sounds very greedy of you", the response I got back was "yep!".

I think that's less "playing with girls" than "playing with eight year olds." I have never seen a group of more selfish, vicious backstabbers than my cousin and his friends that I introduced to D&D when they were all ten.

Little kids are sociopathic. People think kids need parental guidance to keep them safe. Nuh huh. Kids need parental guidance to keep the rest of us safe from them.

I have several vivid memories of our older daughter's 8 year old sleep over. Number one of the better ones was waking at 4:30 AM and hearing two walk by our bedroom wondering aloud if there was any pizza left in the kitchen. Number two was watching seven 8 year old girls doing cheer leading to "Firecracker! Firecracker! Biff, Boom, Baah!" Never thought of trying D&D with them.

Little kids are sociopathic

A guy in my gaming group is a Criminal Psych, and he said that his college professors used young children as the classic example of sociopathic behavior, because no-one else is real to them.

Hah, that's hilarious because it was a class on criminal psychology where I first learned that children are essentially sociopathic until taught to recognize the reality of others.