D&D@40 Blog Hop: Day 2

Day 2: First person you introduced to D&D? Which edition? Their first character?

 

Well, I introduced my wife and a couple friends to Basic D&D in a cabin while on vacation a while back, and posted about it here. Now, all three of them were pretty much just trying it out as a one-shot, "let's see what all this is about because Anthony is nuts about it" kinda deal. It really wasn't anything they would every really want to do again, and that's all good.

 

But last night I introduced my son and daughter to D&D through Mentzer's Red Box (see the picture above), and it was very cool, and a little surreal. I mean, when you're a kid playing D&D like I was back in the 1980's, you're not sitting there thinking "I can't wait to introduce my own kids to this game!" Well, at least I personally wasn't daydreaming about it back then.

 

Anyway, yeah, so I've been talking to my kids for a few weeks now about D&D, and finally sat down with them (my son is five and my daughter is seven) to roll up some characters and play a bit. Now, given their ages, I wasn't really a stickler for every rule, especially when it came to my son. He wanted to be a magic-user, and I didn't get too deep into the limitations of spells for a traditional 1st-level D&D magic-user. He insisted that his character had a spell that would teleport bad guys into a nearby volcano. Who was I to argue with that? I told him that the spell made him really tired to he had to rest his character (who he named Wizo Wizo) for a while after he cast it.

 

My daughter really likes Korra from the latest Avatar series, so she wanted to be a fighter (who she named Wissia). She and Wizo Wizo the wizard are young friends who live in a town called Three Streams. The town is nestled in the foothills of some mountains and is, you guessed it, surrounded by three streams (once again, see the pic above for the map I drew for them...they added in the sun and a giant they called "Crusher").

 

Well, suffice to say that my kids were really liking D&D and didn't want to stop for the night. We went to be and, in the morning, it turns out they woke up before me and my wife and broke out the D&D stuff on their own, and were playing it on their own! Ah, warms this old gamer's heart! Here's to the next generation!

 

P.S. At one point over the last couple weeks, when my kids were asking over and over what one does during a D&D game session, I tried my best to explain it to them. They sorta got it, but then I tried to make it easier on them by saying "You can also think of it like an episode of Adventure Time." I'm not so sure how good an idea that was, but since the show's creator is apparently inspired by D&D, it was the best way I could think of to encapsulate it for them and frame it in something they are familiar with...