I unfold the scroll, plant seeds to stampede the globe
--Nas
So you may not see me for awhile guys. What you see below is the contents of a
package I received yesterday. I've been blogging about my decision to
teach my kid D&D. Well the moment is here. I've been going through
all the old rule-books and stuff--this has to be the most complicated
"game" ever invented. It's more like a guide to acting or something. I
had forgotten how hard it was to be a dungeon-master. Nevertheless, if
you want your kid to be an actor/writer/director I really can't think
of a better start. I swear I am gonna start a movement to get kids here
in Harlem playing table-top role-playing game. It's a great time-killer
and it really builds on imagination and abstract reasoning skills. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Oh the nostalgia. I distinctly remember having that same players handbook, the keep on the boarderlands, and the green one (forget the name).
I wonder what my mom did with those. . .
My son is much too young to worry about teaching him AD&D, but that does seem like a great idea for when he's older.
Good for you! I too am an old gamer who took the plunge to teach my 9-year-old son AD&D. I've dragged my boxes of books, modules, old copies of Dragon magazine, and yes, painted figures with me from childhood home to college, first apartment, first house, and move to the Midwest. Digging that stuff out and sharing it with my son (and 11-year-old daughter who got interested despite her middle-school coolness) has been a hoot for all of us. I hope you roll nothing but natural 20s.
dude, buy your kid a xbox.
they've got some pretty good RPGs.
I would recommend Mass Effect, or Oblivion
TC,
Tying D&D in with acting/theater is an interesting idea. Even so, D&D in Harlem is going to be a tough sale.
While I enjoy computer RPGs myself, they really are a different beast. Pen-and-paper RPGs are more akin to playing make-believe with some structure provided. In CRPGs you're exploring a pre-programmed world crafted and then abandoned by its creators. It's communal storytelling vs reading a book.
Old AD&D is great for the nostalgia factor. If you ever want to look into something that's much easier on the game master or that is much more into promoting acting and player imagination, there are a lot of very cool small-press tabletop rpgs floating around these days that take several steps away from the war gaming roots that are a hallmark of D&D in all its forms.
In particular, I'd recommend Primetime Adventures, In A Wicked Age, Polaris, and 1,001 Nights, though there are dozens more out there.
I'm a current player with a group that started back in college and kept up over the past five plus years. Sounds like you should have a great experience. That said, I'm not really an old school player, most of my gaming has been with third edition.
Anyways, you might want to check out fourth edition at some point. Just came out and there's still lots of promotions out so if you're around any game shops it shouldn't be that hard to find a demonstration night or something. To each their own, but I tend to think the current system is simpler and more consistent without losing the roleplaying/acting/directing aspects (although third edition on expect you to play with a map). It's particularly nice for dungeon masters as a lot of the simplifications lighten the mechanical workload and let you focus more on creating an involved world.
(From an economic standpoint, these changes came about because I think a lot more roleplayers are now in my demographic, people with day jobs with less time to devote to campaign planning and such. So there's a reason they did that.)
Regardless, have fun!
I want to second the reason you are teaching your kids D&D,"it really builds on imagination and abstract reasoning skills." I found you can start w/ the younger ones by watching wheel of fortune w/ them. It has numbers, letters and colors. After a while they pick up grammar from the phrases. As mine got older they did Pokemon. Those cards have colors, numbers and symbols. In order to play you need use strategic and tactical thinking and be able to count, read and reason.
I'm with Greg. I'm DMing 4e right now, and I find it to be much better at both the tactical and story-telling ends of the game than the earlier incarnations.
[nerd] The recent editions, 3.0 and 3.5, streamlined some of the crazy and counterintuitive math, including to hit/AC and saving throws. There's more to recommend it than that too. Granted, it looks like you've already got a good chunk of the older source materials, and if it doesn't catch on at your place, you're not out any $$$ for new books.
But if you do choose to check out the new version, you both can bond over being total newbies to the new edition. (It's not hard to get started in 3rd ed)
In any case, good luck and have fun. This reminds me that my nephew is coming up on the same age I was when I started . . . [/nerd]
Moradin's beard, I didn't realize there was already a 4th edition out!
Where can I put my face in shame . . .
While 3rd and 4th edition are indisputably better and more fun versions of D&D, I think it's good for you to teach your kids on AD&D so they have a better frame of reference. Sort of like teaching your kids the value of a dollar even if your family is affluent enough not to really need to worry about it.
What a nerd.
:)
Ah. Those photos bring back memories.
I think you have a great idea teaching it to your son.
I've mostly switched over to online RPGs but the paper & pencil version is retro-cool.
I just started playing a game (my first RPG since 1992) the other night. It's sort of the reverse of what you're doing. Guided by the GM, the (very smart, very capable) 20-year-old son of one of my friends, we chose to play Burning Wheel, which so far feels like a great system. It's surprising how much fun it is. I think it might have something to do with the difference between a bunch of late 30s/early 40s professionals and the hormonal teenagers I played with 25 years ago.
And, having played a fair number of computer RPGs, I can say that the tabletop variety is infinitely more fun.
D&D works like candy to babies in the hood. Growing up in Washington Heights in the late 70s-80s (crack attack/drug capital of the world time) we used to escape to my boys house that had all the books and play for whole weekends without any sleep...pizza, lots of sugar, wrecking dungeons and collecting loot.
Only problem we had is that we all wanted to be assassins and thieves. :P
Stick with that teaching it to kids in Harlem idea, street smart kids and future hustlers have the best immagination out there...how else do you survive the wish sammiches in the ghetto without going mad?
I'm with shani (no relation, lol). But I remember as a kid, any time with Dad was good time.
@ Ta-Nehisi:
What about the backlash from parents in Harlem, many of whom will identify D&D with satanic cults, "the white devil", and the Illuminati/New World Order?
Your D&D initiative could be read as another type of cultural colonialism/white cultural gentrification which would surely earn the ire of Dr. Ben, Dr. Na'im Akbar, or Jawanza Kunjufu author of the Conspiracy to Destroy Young Black Boys (or whoever their current heir apparents may be).
Please don't forget the power of Tom Hanks's cautionary movie "Mazes and Monsters"!
But, yes, this ghetto nerd fully supports your D&D for the 'hood initiative.
Chauncey
@ Ta-Nehisi:
What about the backlash from parents in Harlem, many of whom will identify D&D with satanic cults, "the white devil", and the Illuminati/New World Order?
Your D&D initiative could be read as another type of cultural colonialism/white cultural gentrification which would surely earn the ire of Dr. Ben, Dr. Na'im Akbar, or Jawanza Kunjufu author of the Conspiracy to Destroy Young Black Boys (or whoever their current heir apparents may be).
Please don't forget the power of Tom Hanks's cautionary movie "Mazes and Monsters"!
But, yes, this ghetto nerd fully supports your D&D for the 'hood initiative.
Chauncey
@ Ta-Nehisi:
What about the backlash from parents in Harlem, many of whom will identify D&D with satanic cults, "the white devil", and the Illuminati/New World Order?
Your D&D initiative could be read as another type of cultural colonialism/white cultural gentrification which would surely earn the ire of Dr. Ben, Dr. Na'im Akbar, or Jawanza Kunjufu author of the Conspiracy to Destroy Young Black Boys (or whoever their current heir apparents may be).
Please don't forget the power of Tom Hanks's cautionary movie "Mazes and Monsters"!
But, yes, this ghetto nerd fully supports your D&D for the 'hood initiative.
Chauncey
Good luck getting Harlem kids to openly play a game that would be deemed both white and nerdy-even-for-white-kids, and thus totally gay. youth cultures are conformist, blahblah-blah, but i guess they can change real quick too.
Sincerely, good luck if you ever take up that cause, maybe they will dig it. I never played this game myself, though i sat in on one once - it was like guided group story-spinning, pretty entertaining.
I did a fair amount of gaming when I was a kid, back in (as Paris Hilton might say) "the olden days" -- I started with the original D&D (back before they had to call Hobbits "halflings") in the 3-volume box. Also used the Arduin Grimoire books, and played a little Runequest, too. I still have the AD&D Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and DM's Guide that I bought 30 years ago.
But it's very hard for me to imagine my parents being involved in it at all. Not that adults weren't gamers -- I went to a Con once and nearly everyone there was older -- but part of the point was that it was a kind of secret society for us kids, with its own rules and lingo and values and accomplishments. I played cards and board games with my parents, and did jigsaw puzzles with them. But until reading this post I've never even considered gaming as something I could have shared with my parents, or that I could share with my kids.
What are everyone else's experiences along these lines?
I heartily approve!
It's a very interesting decision, though, to teach them first edition rather than the more unified 3.0/3.5, or the more current 4.0. I would be curious to learn your reasoning?
Sounds great. Please keep us updated on how it goes.
I started out on AD&D years and years ago, and it was a blast. But I would still recommend D&D 3.5. My friends and I found it far more sensible mathematically.
All the same, I applaud you for teaching this stuff to your child. I recently introduced my niece to the actual Pokémon card game (I know I know, lame as can be, but at least it's the gateway to Magic for the young'uns =) ) and I am proud to show her.
But more to the point, I can add up lots of strange sums in my head due to years of playing games like D&D, as well as my father teaching me Blackjack and Cribbage as a lad. I've already started my four year old on a regime of games, and he's picked it up fast and loves it.
I hope we get to hear how your son takes to the game!
At least play a little Raekwon, too, as a mitigating influence.
Oh, respect rolling old school with 1st Edition rules. You're bringing him up right!
You ought to get Atlantic to send you to PAX to do a write up on the increasing number of parents gaming (both table top and video) with their kids. The guy from GamerDad is hosting a panel on the subject iirc.
1) This is totally awesome. I so look forward to teaching my own kid someday.
2) I second Karl's recommendation of Burning wheel, and add The Shadow of Yesterday to the list of recommended games. Both games come from the independently published role playing game community, which has been (I am not kidding) pushing the boundaries of game design for about a decade.
3) One of the boundary pushing products of the indie gaming community is Steal Away Jordan , a game designed to tell slave narratives, like Incidents in the life of a slave girl or The Autobiography of Fredrick Douglass .
"I swear I am gonna start a movement to get kids here in Harlem playing table-top role-playing game."
We may never know how many pizzerias this idea was able to save.
Oh, man, the old school! I remember re-discovering the old 1st Player's Handbook and DM Guide. It was a fun trip down memory lane but God! those rules were complicated.
The other posters are right about the d20 system being a LOT simpler and more intuitive. I'd say that the difference is this:
3.5 is more complicated but much, much more customizeable. The skill point system and feats are a bit detail heavy, and the rules for multiclassing and/or taking a prestige class even more so, but it offers an almost mind-boggling depth of play. Also, the Bard is a base class, so in terms of role-playing goodness, it's a great jumping off point (not that I'm biased).
4.0 is much smoother but offers fewer options with regards to its skill system, feat selection, and multi-classing options . Having said that, you can figure out the character creation system and combat mechanic almost right away, and no more "fire and forget" spell system for clerics and wizards. The jury's still out vis-a-vis role-playing fun but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Depending on your kid's age, I'd also recommend that the two of you each sign up for an RPGA membership which would then allow you to participate in a "living" campaign setting in which your characters advancment is tracked and your actions can actually have an impact on your campaign world. Go to the Wizards of the Coast site if you want to look into that more.
Sorry to go off like this, but as someone who returned to D&D at the age of 36 (two years ago, that is), I'm only too happy when I hear/read/meet another adult happily embracing his inner geek! Congrats, srsly. Hey, if it's good enough for Colbert and Diesel...
Longtime lurker, but I had to say something as a D&D nerd.
I think it's great you're getting your son involved in a habit that builds the skills honors students need to excel and get into a good college.
One suggestion: Upgrading your materials to D&D 3.5 (or maybe 4, which I haven't played yet) is a good idea. The rules are simplified and make less weird, and the transition into the game is less intimidating. Everything is streamlined and exhausively balanced.If you're trying to get some non-standard players, the upgrades make the game feel a bit more like eipic fantasy - and that's a good thing.
If you want someone to help you come up with the plot of youfr first game, some ideas on how to get people who haven't played before to play or naything else just send me an e-mail. My D&D nerd card was issued beause of my last ew campaingns, which boasted a majority of sorority girls haveing a blast.
Kids games can be fun, too.
It's that kind of game, and you strike me as the kind of dad who sees a bunch of modules and laughs because you could do better.
-neal
lessthanpleased@gmail.com
Yay. Now he too can build story lines based around derivative cliches!
Apologies if you experience was actually good stories but while about half my friends played it in college, they couldn't story tell for shit and I tried it like 3 times.
"Only built for elvish linx..."
Holy shit. No comment on your post. I didn't even read it. I don't want to. This headline made me cry.
Ahhh....the memories.
The greatest game ever.
It's sad that we lost Gary Gygax recently.
KC, cool, thanks for the recs. I can't take any credit for rec'ing Burning Wheel. That's all the GM's suggestion. Left to my own devices, I would have gone with D&D 4e, which I heard about through reading Penny Arcade (and which is probably more responsible than any other site for reviving my long-suppressed inner geek).
What's weird is playing a fantasy RPG with two professional medievalists (one of whom is me!). Let's just say we really got into the social/economic aspects of the world we were building....
Oh, cool! First edition rocks!
Just to put my two cents in: if you're gonna DM the low-level old-school modules, "T1: The Village of Hommlet" and "U1:The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" are far and away the best, game-play-wise. Both of them have a well-written story and an emphasis on the players solving a specific mystery (rather than just moving around and killing things.)
I only bring this up because, even at the remove of twenty-five years, I can remember "The Isle Of Dread" and "Palace of the Silver Princess" boring my players to sleep. Tastes of course vary, but those two modules were real turkeys in the opinion of everyone I ever D & Ded with.
Start with Tunnels & Trolls and work your way up (hopefully past D&D to a system like GURPS). T&T is simmple but plenty of fun and communicates the essence of role-playing gaming--you just need lots of dice.
Sweet. I never got to play D&D as a kid -- ended up picking it up in gradschool a few years ago and now I've been DMing for eight months. DMing wastes even more time than the game -- but I love it.
That said, my tastes run to JRPGs.
I look forwrd to reading your blog in ten years when your kids are blaming you for their inability to get laid.
I look forwrd to reading your blog in ten years when your kids are blaming you for their inability to get laid.
STFU, jock. I met my (blond, attractive) wife over a game of D&D.