Last night my older daughter made her first D&D character, a female human chaotic good cleric named Yue.
They grow up so fast…sniff…I promised myself I wouldn’t cry…
Actually, she expressed interest in trying out “real” D&D recently (although this technically isn’t her first experience with the D&D system since she’s a huge Neverwinter Nights fan). Since I didn’t have a copy of the most recent rules I opted for the D&D Basic Game, which I purchased at a local Toys R Us.
We played through the first very short programmed adventure with a precreated character and she really enjoyed it. Wizards of the Coast went ahead and integrated the D&D miniatures game into the basic rules, so the basic game we bought came with a whole bunch of plastic miniatures and mapboards. She had no trouble picking up the rules and she thoroughly enjoyed bashing some kobold brains out.
Ah, kobolds…I remember when I…sniff…no, must be strong!
But she didn’t like any of the pregenerated characters and wanted to make her own, so she cracked open the advanced rulebook, which has character creation rules for the four basic classes (fighter, rogue, cleric and sorceror) and the four basic races (human, elf, dwarf and halfling).
Then she sat at the table for about two hours voluntarily reading and doing math. God I love paper and pencil RPGs!
Now, overall the quality of the D&D Basic Game is quite high, but in the player section of the advanced rulebook there is one vital omission…nowhere does it tell you what your starting Armor Class is! There are tons of rules about how to modify your starting AC based on your race, your Dexterity score and your armor, but nowhere in the book do they tell you that your base AC is 10! That seems like a weird omission. That one stymied us for a bit…I knew in previous versions that the starting AC was 10 but I didn’t know if it was still the case. I was able to look at the pregenerated characters and figure out from them that base AC was still 10, and she was finally able to finish her character.
Who will probably go on her first adventure tonight!
For the record:
Name: Yue
Race: Human
Class: Cleric
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Deity: Pelor
Ability Scores:
STR: 16 +3
DEX: 14 +2
CON: 15 +2
INT: 12 +1
WIS: 17 +3
CHA: 16 +3
Saving Throws:
Fortitude: 14
Reflex: 16
Will: 18
Skills:
Diplomacy: d20
Hide: d20
Listen: d20
Move Silently: d20
Search: d20
Spot: d20+2
Combat Stats:
HP: 13
AC: 14
To-Hit: d20+3
Damage: d8+3
Initiative: 12
Feats:
Iron Will
Toughness
Spells:
Detect Magic
Light
Read Magic
Bless
Cure Light Wounds (heals d8+2)
Cure Light Wounds (heals d8+2)
Equipment:
Holy Symbol
Morningstar
Leather Armor
Man, I love pen and paper RPGs. And it’s strange how much they are liked by so many, and yet they don’t play, usually because they don’t have the time. I am guilty of the same thing. I think the real concern is that there just aren’t enough DMs out there in the world. That’s the real time consuming factor and that’s possibly why so many opt for the lesser solutions of playing MMORPGs and really any computer or console RPGs.
Maybe someone could get by with a “professional” DM service, like a game shop or something. But the problem is that a disproportionate amount of people like playing to running.
I’m ranting now. Congrats on the D&D, though. Some of my old group are indoctrinating some new people ourselves. The more players, the better.
I too got my girls into PnP D&D. I was concerned with exposing my girls to the tendency to solve problems in the genre with violence, and with implicit approval of theft in stripping dead opponents of their worldly goods, so I waited until they were about 10 each. And I also wanted to make VERY clear the division between Good and Evil as a result of action, not labeling.
My older daughter’s first character was Veronica, a Half Elven Sorceroress. I had my best friend Rick, who I’ve known for 27 years now and who I trust implicitly, make a character to play and help her along. Her first mission was to rescue her little sister from a kobold raiding party 🙂 Rick was great with helping me in presenting options other than pure violence. After that Rick and I switched off DM’ing. I made a character out of an NPC from the first adventure, a poor kid from the poorest family in town who by necessity was a rogue, using his wits to survive and with some morality issues but a heart of gold, named Dirk, but whom the townsfolk nicknamed Dirt, because he was always in rags. He took to the nickname as a defiant gesture. It really allowed me to present some social issues to her in a non-lecturing way 🙂 Sadly, soon after that campaign got rolling, Rick became a father of a mildly autistic boy, and due to some other issues with his wife and post-partum depression, that campaign died off.
Her real-life younger sister took up the game about 5 years later when she hit 10. She played a Human Cleric/Fighter named Firasa. That character was based on an online character she had created in Dark Age of Camelot that was a Warden (I had let her play with myself and a few carefully per-chosen folks and she loved the game). She simply wanted to be able to not worry about getting hit, and heal herself if it happened. Good self-preservation instincts. She didn’t require a lot of explanation and hand-holding because she’d sat and listened to her sister playing all those times 🙂
Anyway, I had a point when I started, and ended up just being long winded. I loved showing my girls PnP role-play!! I really hope your time spent in the game is as fun as the experience I had with it. It really helped my girls understand me, and we became even closer with the shared experience of playing.
Even though, now as a high school senior, and popular and a cheerleader, my older daughter does tease me about making her into a secret geek 🙂
Ah man. Now you’ve got me wanting my kids to bet old enough to play RPGs with me (they’re 2 and 4 months). They grow up too fast already 😛
I absolutely love PnP RPGs. D&D *was* my social life back in high school and for several years after. Some of my fondest memories revolve around spending entire weekends camped out at a friends house playing every moment we could.
Then I lost contact with the my D&D group when I moved out to San Diego when I was 23, and did not play D&D or any other PnP RPGs for 8 years. During that time frame I met my future wife and daughter (who was 2 at the time) and brought our son into this world in January of 2003.
In September 2004 my wife convinced me to try to get ahold of my former gaming group. I had often talked about them and really missed them as well as gaming. I was reluctant to call them because it was my fault that we lost contact in the first place.
I didn’t mention this earlier but the real reason I moved out to San Diego was because I had lost my best friend (who was also in our gaming group) to leukemia. The loss hit me profoundly, and as a result I slacked so much at work that I ended up getting fired. So when my sister came to me and said that she and her husband were moving out to San Diego, she invited me to come along and so I packed up and went. But I didn’t say hardly anything to anybody, including my gaming group. I just sort of left without saying goodbye.
So you can see why I was reluctant to call them. I felt like they would hate me for just disappearing like that. But when I finally got up the nerve to call, I was so glad that I did. Turns out that no apologies were necessary, and we had a great reunion.
Since then, we’ve been playing D&D about twice a month and are still having a wonderful time. I’ve introduced my daughter (she’ll be 12 next month) and my niece (9) to the game. My daughter chose to make a human sorceress, and my niece chose to make a halfling druid. My son likes to roll the dice for everyone.
It is great to see them get excited about it, and how their perception of the game has changed. At first my niece didn’t seem too thrilled to play, but ever since the first session she asks to play whenever she comes over. My niece genuinely gets scared when I describe to them what they see when they enter the “creepy cavern”.
Also, it is fun to see their play styles evolve. At first, my daughter would just blindly go everywhere and would get herself into trouble. She had no caution at all. After she was captured by bandits and had to be saved by my niece, she became a lot more careful.
Anyway, this post has become a lot longer than I thought it would. Long live PnP games!
The long posts are good! And I don’t just say that because so many of mine are 🙂
I enjoy hearing about other peoples experiences.
[…] She recently read the post I wrote up about her first roleplaying experience. When she got to the part about “voluntarily reading and doing math” she said, “Hey! You tricked me!” […]