Something happened over the weekend that I found a little unnerving. As I mentioned on Twitter, I took my son and his buddy to Brickcon last Sunday and it was cool and all (until my camera battery died) but afterwards we stopped for a couple of slices.
On the way to the pizza place, we passed a used book store. “Ooo, books,” buddy said, and I suggested we stop off there after lunch.
We did, and my son was a complete pain about it.
The first thing I did, as always was look for a copy of my own book. Once I found it, I checked the title page; it had been inscribed to “Patty” and overall looked very lightly handled. We joked about apologizing to her and then my son was ready to go.
His buddy and I were interested in browsing the shelves, snapping up stuff by authors we had heard about, looking for books in series we hadn’t finished, all the usual stuff. But my son just wanted to joke about making messes in the valuable book section and complain about going home to play Minecraft.
It was a little disheartening.
My kid does read. Currently he’s on a tear through YA post-apocalyptic thrillers and obviously he reads for school. But his mom and I delight in books, while he doesn’t seem to care at all.
Maybe it’s a phase. Maybe he’s the cobbler’s barefoot son. Maybe it’s that I’ve been bringing him new library books every Saturday for years and he’s become blase.
For folks who don’t know, this is a superhero-themed cooperative fixed-deck card game. It can be a little fussy, what with keeping track of all the plusses and hit points, but the enhanced edition makes that easy. What’s more, it’s fun.
The boy and I both wanted to play tonight, but I’m just too wiped for it. This weekend we are going to be doing two Pokemon tournaments, so I’m not sure when we’ll have a chance to take on some of these new villains, but the boy and I are pretty psyched to give it a try.
Second was on Twitter. Game designer Rob Donoghue kicked off a discussion about bringing new people into gaming. I tried to use Storify (for the first time) to preserve that conversation here, but that looked like a pain in the ass so here’s a couple of screen caps. Of course they’re behind the cut. Continue reading
So, my 10yo wanted to play some fantasy rpg, and after looking around a bit, I found this video
Looks pretty terrific, if you asked me. Best of all, it has an introductory adventure using simplified rules and pre-generated characters to teach you the game. This is a good thing, because we can not be coming to this cold. My wife has zero interest in rpgs and will only play as a family activity. My son is still learning the rules, and I just don’t have time to read through a huge game rulebook. I wanted something quick and fun.
So we open the box, the materials are beautiful, we pass out character sheets, and we start the introductory campaign.
And it’s a fucking dungeon crawl.
Okay, it’s a cave crawl, where you go from one chamber to the next, fight goblins here, defuse a trap there, fight this fight that. Sure, each room has something a little different: the spider shows how to do poisons and saving throws. The “goblin king” and the cliff you’re supposed to climb do skill rolls.
But there’s no story. No hook. Four generic characters on a generic crawl. You start by reading the situation aloud from the book (as is traditional) and then they drop you right at the entrance to the cavern.
Now, look, if this was 1981, that shit would be fine. No one expected better. But at this point, when you’re trying to reach new players, you need to pique their interest. You need a little narrative.
Why not start the adventure in the town? Role-play a neighbor complaining about some lost sheep, and a crowd bullying the mayor into arranging a tournament. Use a bit of the contest to teach the game. Maybe the PCs win, or maybe someone else wins and they go off in the wrong direction looking for the Big Bad.
How about establishing the stakes? What if the fighter (described on his sheet as having a liking for pretty women) is trying to impress a farmer’s daughter, the most beautiful milk maid in the valley? What if the cleric is frustrated that none of the locals come to his teacher’s temple, and decides to make a big show to draw in worshippers? What if the rogue needs to get some information from the local goblin bandits but they just drive her away? Give each character something to do besides kick down doors and fight random crap.
What if the local crowds blame a disreputable family at the lower end of the valley, and the heroes are sent there first. Yeah, they’re all bad guys, but their innocent of this particular crime. If the PCs drive them out, they end up killed in the dragon’s cave. If they spare them, they anger the locals who sent them there.
What if the quest is not to find the monster, but to find the sword that will destroy the monster? Then, mid-way through the adventure, something goes wrong and they discover they’ve been in the dragon’s lair the whole time.
What if? It’s the most important part of the game. Do you want to hook new players? Give them actual dilemmas to deal with, not just monsters to stab.
Look, it’s not as though I need yet another creative endeavor to fill up my days. DM-ing for my wife and son would be exhausting, and might even slow down my new book. But this was armor classes, dragons, magic missiles, the whole deal! It could have been fun as hell.
Instead, it’s just going to be another box on the shelf. Disappointing.
As promised, here is the comic fantasy “novel” that my son wrote as a home-school project. I’ve decided to split it in half because cliffhangers are fun and ten thousand words in a single blog post is a bit much. The first half went online yesterday.
I ran to the fire and threw the contents of my canteen over the raging flames, extinguishing them.
Cass ducked into the cabin and started casting spells through the door while Garth grabbed a shield and blocked the next blast of flames, melting the shield completely in the process.
I ran back next to Garth and drew my sword. Cass suddenly stopped casting spells. I almost turned and asked her why, but I saw the dragon land in front of us on the ship, crushing various boxes. Without the blinding sunlight in my eyes, I was able to take a look at it. It was a dark red dragon, not much bigger than me, with small red eyes that seemed to carefully inspect the environment around us. From the minute I saw it I knew it wasn’t a common dragon from Casanopala that evolved with more brute force than smarts to survive against various wars going through the area, but a clever dragon that came from far away, where you had to scare off a single knight a year to preserve your treasure and stay alive. It must have come through a portal made by one of the swords. It growled at me. Then I noticed it had an emerald green sash over its shoulder. The sash was as oversized as Garth’s helmet (which, at the moment was lying face-down in the cabin) and had a badge that said: reserved for elite team.
That told me that this dragon was very clever.
”Why do you fight for those Invastigan fools?” I asked it.
“Because they have archers locked onto me every second!” the dragon replied in a different voice than I had expected that suited a stand-up-comedian more than a dragon.
“Okaaaaaay,” I replied. “And are dragons afraid of archers?”
“No.”
“Are you a dragon?”
“Yeah”
Everyone was silent for a moment then the dragon ripped the sash off his shoulder and tore it to shreds with his claws.Continue reading
As promised, here is the comic fantasy “novel” that my son wrote as a home-school project. I’ve decided to split it in half because cliffhangers are fun and ten thousand words in a single blog post is a bit much. Look for the second half tomorrow.
UPDATE: My son offered to share this book as one of the stretch goals of my Kickstarter for The Great Way, so it’s now available to read in a variety of (DRM-free) ebook formats, if people would rather not read it as a pair of blog posts.
Also, the book now has cover art by the amazing Kathleen Kuchera, fine artist and children’s book illustrator. Here’s the cover:
Download links for your tablet, phone, or e-reader:
Today is the last day to eligible-ize yourself to win a free book–all you have to do is sign up for my I-have-a-new-thing-out newsletter. Details here.
For those of you concerned about being spammed with my newsletter, let me mention that later tonight, when I send out the message about the new book giveaway, it will be the first ever issue of this newsletter.
In other non-news, since my wife has to work on Sunday and my son has a tournament on Saturday, today is my Father’s Day. We’re celebrating by having breakfast at a restaurant (I love restaurant breakfast, for serious) and having burgers for dinner. With buns. I know, crazy, right?
I’ve asked to have the Chris McGrath prints of my Twenty Palaces cover art either framed or matted as my Dad’s Day gift–like most people, I don’t need more stuff. However, my wife and son have been eyeballing a flat screen TV for our Netflixing. Nevermind that I think our 19″ CRT still works just fine; they have the temptation and I may be the excuse.
Anyway, I’m going to do a bit of work in the Star$$ until they get here, then they’ll leave and I’ll work some more. Work! It’s what’s for dinner.
Now, I’m not exactly Mr. Moderation, so I don’t play all that much. I tend to get stuck in games, trying to do one more thing one more thing. Of course, the games are designed to make you do exactly that, which sort of sucks. As a result, I have to keep away from them for the most part if I want to create books, stay married, pay rent, move my body, and/or feed myself.
But sometimes, I say what the hell. Last night after I did the dishes, I turned on Neverwinter Nights. (It was an Oppressmas gift.) I turned it off at 4 am.
It’s possible that my wife is correct when she points out that these games aren’t good for me. And that I’m a boring husband when I play. Worse, I still couldn’t find that third werewolf. And why am I carrying around this troll head? I know someone wants it, but…
Anyway, I will now get back to formatting my son’s 10K comic fantasy for publishing on the blog while I wait for the fam. Have a great day, everyone.
In other news, I just paid for the right to publish my son’s first “novel” on my blog. It’s a comic fantasy called “The Twin Swords of Zordain,” and it’s almost ten thousand words long. I haven’t decided if I’m going to post it all in one post (behind a cut, obviously) or break it up.
As I mentioned last month, I had an idea to create a homeschool project based on Mur Lafferty’s post on sexism. Basically, I asked my son to keep watch for three instances of girl-hate just like in the opening of BURN NOTICE.
It took a few weeks (we don’t watch a lot of TV or partake of other media), but he identified them. Two came straight out of episodes of BN, basically “punch like a girl” type stuff.
But the third one makes me a little sad. There’s a game I really like called Sentinels of the Multiverse; the boy and I play it a couple of times a month. In the course of supporting and following their Kickstarter, I discovered they have fun downloads on their site, one of which is a group of story challenges.
It’s a cool idea: You give yourself points based on in-game challenges they set: Defeat Baron Blade while playing as Legacy. Defeat a villain using only two heroes. Deal 20 or more damage in a single attack. Let the enraged T-Rex defeat the villain for you. Each is worth a certain number of points, and you get to count them up.
The problem comes from this challenge: “Catfight: Win a four-hero game against Citizen Dawn while using only female heroes.” Citizen Dawn is sort of a Magneto-style villain, the leader of a large number of low-powered villains and she’s pretty tough. However, as I explained to my son, if you have to come up with a special word for it when women do it…
Anyway, it’s still a great game and I still enjoy playing it. I really like trying to work out the best ways to pick heroes whose powers complement each other, especially against a specific villain. When the second edition comes out, I plan to push it to you guys (or you can still get it from Kickstarter.) But, you know, I wish I hadn’t had to explain this thing to my son.
