So on Sunday my daughter and I decided to play a game of D&D - using mostly the Shadowghast manor tiles. She seemed to have a lot of fun and was very excited and engaged at a couple of points.
A couple of things I noticed playing with a 6 year old.
Kids love superheroes(heroclix) - if you look at her desk, its mostly female superheroes/dragons/unicorns minis. She also seems to love the mage knight dark riders mounts. Her PC was 'Halo' from heroclix.
She especially likes the minis we have made together, some of which she helped paint too. And these seem to engage her even more in the game.
No cards/character sheets.... she even asked to play with the cards I normally use for my modified ddm game, but I didn't think her trying to read my chicken scratch when she is still learning to read would have been productive. We had dice to roll, but mostly it was just for effect, this was a noob friendly adventure... no way to actually die, and I let her talk to anything/one she wanted to.
Her character was the center of action, but she made the 2nd her sister which I thought was nice, and the 3rd character was a magic unicorn that could warp in at any time and fight monsters and heal party members. I told her she could have a party up to 6, but she only wanted 3.
She would tend to get fixated on something in the adventure and keep at it, even when it was clear that it was not significant. She must have spent 5 minutes with her character talking to the jam, jellies, and puddings that had been enspelled to provide entertainment for the party at the manor. She even managed to make them mad at her and she was lucky her character had flight, as they kept trying to eat her feet. She was so fixated on them, she was ignoring the dwarf she was supposed to talk to advance the quest, so I had to make him wander into the room to talk to her. ;-)(although from what I've read adult PCs can also ignore the stuff they are supposed to do in a quest too. ;-)
Later on, she discovered a baby lizard, and it bit her when she caught it, and said it didn't want to go on since it was scared of the monsters later in the dungeon. Everytime it got away, she kept catching it, and it kept biting her(it got some lucky rolls), plus she couldn't fight while carrying a lizard that kept trying to squirm away. I could not get her to let it go, no matter how naughty it was. ;-) She dragged it all the way to the end bosses.
ALso she met a goblin that led the way thru the dungeon, and when they went down a dark hallway, he warned her to be quiet and sneak by the tentacles which he did, but then for some reason her characters started screaming in the hallway when they went down it and got grabbed by all the tentacles. It was a very bizarre moment, and I guess she was truly role-playing. ;-)
Getting to the end bosse vampires was kinda anti-climactic as by them my wife was yelling at us to hurry up and finish as we had wasted too long playing a game and so we kinda rushed thru it. :-(
The one funny thing at the end was as she entered the end boss chamber - she just announced that she was invisible and was sneaking up on the vampires at the end. I had to call her on it, as her characters didn't have invisibility. If you've ever seen the movie "Giff the invisible" it was kinda like that...I'll just announce I'm invisible, and the monsters will believe me. ;-)
Although my daughter got a magic ring as a end reward and is excited to find out what it is in the next adventure.
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| My daughter about to start a D&D adventure. You don't usually get such a cute smile at the gaming table. ;-) |
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| She can be very serious |
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| The guards keep the right one out, and the talking mushroom will chat with you if you like. |
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| It was funny... in the game while her character was talking to the nannies in the nursery, my other daughter who is 1 was crying loudly in the other room, gave some great ambiance. |
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| The goblin party got out of control, they all jumped on the table and started eating the food. |
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| Yes, these tentacles are effective at grabbing you if you scream. |
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| end boss vampires, don't wake the sleeping ones |
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| The whole adventure |
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| An overview of the party upstairs |
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| The purple octopus attacked immediatly, I think it was hungry |
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| That looks much better with the evil columns... Are they Dooric? |
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| Which way do I go? |
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| The brave party. K, S, and the magic Uni..... Guards, may we please enter? If you check you will see we are on the list. |
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| CHecking out the party |
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| Jellies, Jams, and puddings, where is the secret item? We don't know, we only are here under spell compulsion to dance and wiggle....repeat 10 times..... Jellies, Jams, and puddings(now angry) and the spell was lifted... come here and we will eat your feet.... |
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| A friendly family of GBM, until K tried to get them eaten. |
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| still talking to Jellies, Jams, and puddings..................... |
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| still talking to Jellies, Jams, and puddings....................the dancing is getting less happy |
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| What's that mr dwarf? You have the secret to continue the adventure? and its hidden behind this chair? |
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| towards the secret door, about to meet Shrek, who is friendly and will tell the goblin not too attack if you are nice to him |
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| And of course the ginger gnome, just cause he's cool. ;-) |
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| We've acquired a goblin guide |
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| There's that naughty lizard |
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| The goblin finds a giant doughnut and starts eating it immediately without sharing... That's just how goblins roll. |
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| The snowmen sitting on the magic ice room so they don't melt are not significant. |
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| The hallway of tentacles....shhhhh... be vewy vewy qwiet |
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| Assaulting to the end boss with "invisibility" |
