Real Life with Ryuei

My daughters further adventures!

Ok, so as I was saying I have been trying to retool the D&D game for the sensibilities of a 9 year old girl while at the same time keeping it interesting for myself (because truly Dragon Tales makes me gag).

Now Julie had decided that her elf princess Ruby was going to stop going on "seek and destroy" missions against goblins and their ilk and was instead going to travel far far far up the Velvedyva River to the frozen plains of the north on the edge of the Burneal Forest to visit her elven kin. And as she put it, "Then I'll come back and play with my friends." "Playing with her friends" is how she thinks of traveling around with the warrior band in the mountains hunting goblins. I wonder if the US Rangers who are hunting Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan and Pakistand think of what they are doing as "playing with their friends"?

Anyway, Julie/Ruby go to the city of Vebebonc where she spends time cashing in all the gold she "recovered" from the monsters. Julie then spent a lot of time describing to me all the bracelets, rings, and other jewelry that Ruby would buy. Now I doubt a 9 year old boy would use the D&D game to imagine a fantasy shopping spree for jewelry - but this is Julie's game. I then asked Julie if she was going to wear all this jewelry around town (thus becoming a thief magnet) or hide it in her backpack unless she suddenly had to attend a fancy ball at the palace. She wisely chose the latter course.

Julie then had to find a captain willing to take her upriver. I described several inns to her - from rough and tumble dives (not that I got too explicit) to the upscale inns for the nobility. Naturally she picked The Golden Spoon, an inn catering to the aristocrats and wealthy merchants. Alas, she was not going to find any sea captain's there. She eventually got pointed in the right direction and found an inn by the docks where several captains were. My daughter's criteria for finding a good captain? "I only want someone who's good looking." Hmm, not nice, not trustworthy, not competent - just good looking. I had a little discussion with Julie about this - along the lines of not everyone who is good looking will be nice, trustworthy, competent or a good friend and that she shouldn't judge just by appearances. Also, I have been creating the people she meets by using random tables for their personality, appearances, traits and abilities - so if Julie sticks with that criteria she will, as in real life, get her character Ruby into real trouble. Nevertheless she found the only decent looking captain in the room, Catpain Seith, a half-elven captain with an eye-patch like a pirate (but who is actually not a pirate and is actually one of the good guys according to my dice rolls though more than a bit of a rogue).

The next part was quite a learning experience for me. I had to do a bit of research into river traffic in the middle ages, and I probably still have a lot of stuff wrong (as if Hollywood movies ever try to be accurate though). I eventually decided that Captain Seith's ship was a galley called the White Goose. At this point I got all multi-media for Julie. I showed her clips from the movie "Jason and the Argonauts" so that she could see what a galley looks like. And despite the anachronism I decided to use the old sea shanty "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor" (performed by the Sea Dogs) to give Julie a sense of what the sailors were singing as they pulled out of port and into the river. When I told Julie that the sailors were singing as they worked she said "Boorrring!" However, when I played the Drunken Sailor song she loved it and actually started singing along, and then insisted on listening to it again and again for the rest of the night.

Then using random weather tables (tailored for the region and the season) and random encounter tables I described to Julie what the weather was like as they travelled and all the different kinds of ships they passed. I told her about how they had to pull into shore villages at night to set up camp because the galley couldn't travel in the dark of night and there was no room to stay on board. This was the way things were done when traveling by galley along coasts or rivers as I discovered after doing a bit of research. At one point they stopped at a village outside the Iron Wood forest and could hear the wolves and werewolves howling in the distance at night.

The next day a giant eagle flew overhead. Now the way I am doing this game is that I am not just describing things and letting Julie decide what to do on her own. Rather, I am making this more of a "choose your own adventure" kind of deal. In other words, I present her with different options and let her choose. So she had a choice of ignoring the eagle or calling out to it to talk. Sometimes I give Julie a moment to see if she comes up with something on her own, but at this point it is easier to let her pick different alternative actions and then learn the consequences of them in creating this story. In this case Julie/Ruby chose to talk to the eagle, and in fact Julie had created a character that can speak the languages of all the elemental spirits, and giant eagles are intelligent birds that can speak the Common Trade language (which surprisingly sounds like English) or the language of the air elementals. So Ruby made friends with the eagle named Windcarrier. I then had Julie roll the dice to see how well Ruby was able to impress the eagle and she got the highest possible roll (a good thing) and so I decided that the eagle like Ruby so much that he chose to stay with the ship until they reached Highfolk, the city of the elves (though still far south of Ruby's homeland by the Burneal Forest). Julie loved the idea of having a giant eagle as a friend but was sad that he would eventually leave and was very concerned that he be able to find her - which got into a conversation about how in medieval times no one had addresses or telephones and so you just had to find people by going to the area where they lived and asking around. I also found it curious that she chose to talk to the eagle at all and that she liked being friends with one because Julie is actually very nervous around large birds like falcons or hawks ever since one screeched at her at a children's museum. But in this story her character Ruby is not afraid of large giant sized raptors.

So anyway. I had to bring in some river pirates. Oh, and in researching this I discovered that there have been river pirates here in the USA well into the 20th century along the Mississippi River. They were vicious bloodthisty cutthroat types hiding in caves along the riverbanks. Now there was a little piece of Americana I did not know about. So anyway, I had six pirate ships (keelboats actually, with ramps for boarding galleys) lying in ambush up the river. Fortunately Ruby had Windcarrier the giant eagle scouting ahead. That's when I presented Julie with some more options: either go ashore with the Captain and sailors from the White Goose and try to attack the pirate ships lying in wait by the riverbank, or have the eagle carry Ruby over the ships so she can use her magic on them. Julie chose option 2. And so Captain Seith rigged her up with a harness and away Ruby flew over the first three pirate ships. At this point I told her that the ususpecting pirates were singing "Yo Ho Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for Me" which I also had downloaded onto my computer and was able to play for her. Did I mention how much Julie enjoyed Pirates of the Carribbean"?

Now I haven't played D&D for years, and even when I did I never had much use for wizards, esp. low-level wizards like Julie is playing. They always struck me as incredibly wimpy - easily hurt and killed, and with only a few spells that didn't really do much damage except maybe by taking out a few bandits or goblins by putting them to sleep. Big deal! Give me a Conan type with a broadsword or an axe anyday of the week. So I was a bit surprised in looking over Ruby's spell assortment and helping Julie pick out a pirate fighting strategy how powerful Ruby was - esp. being carried around by a giant eagle. Basically Ruby was able to cover herself with magical forcefields and had the eagle dive again and again on the ships. Reading spells off of scrolls she had prepared in advance she stuck two ships together with a giant spider web, then set the web on fire thus taking out two of the three ships. The crew of the third ship then shot a barrage of heavy crossbow bolts, many of which shot up the eagle and one of which penetrated the magical armor badly hurting Ruby who dropped the scroll in the water and wasn't able to set that ship on fire. Badly hurt, Ruby and Cloudcarrier returned to the White Goose but they had destroyed two pirate ships.

At this point we had a chase sequence as the White Goose with wind in her sails sped past the remaining pirate ship as it came at them out of the tributary it was hiding in. At this point I used Google image search to show Julie pictures of the ballistas and catapults the ships were using against each other and described how they shot Greek Fire at each other in order to try to set the ships on fire. The White Goose set the pirate ship's sails on fire and so they too had to turn away. Then the White Goose maneuvered around the three other pirate ships moving agains the wind further upriver. All of this was done with little cardboard cut outs of the ships and using a ruler to determine the distance and maneuverings of the ships, and Julie had the "Drunken Sailor" song going on the Mac as we moved the ships around to see if the White Goose got away, which it did. Julie seemed to find this pirate adventure very enjoyable, and one interesting thing is that all she did was set the pirate ship's riggings on fire - once again she defeated all her enemies with magic without having to actually kill anyone (since the pirates either jumped off the ships and swam for shore or were able to eventually put out the fires).

At the next shore village Ruby and her eagle were able to rest and get healed. Ruby then found a friendly female elf warrior working with the local garrison named Traetha to teach her fencing and horseback riding. Juie was concerned that Traetha be nice and not speak to her in a mean way, but I assured her that Traetha was a nice and gentle teacher. I was heartened that Julie asked this, because some people play D&D only concerned about how powerful they can make their characters, but for Julie the game is about making friends and meeting nice people and not just about the action-adventure side of things. And this is where Hollywood movies actually miss the boat (or the pirate ship in this case). Too many movies focus too much on making their stories like amusement park thrill rides and forget that even children (or at least 9 year old girls) also want to be able to relate to the people and watch as friendships are developed and tested. One needs to have believable characters who don't just serve a function but are characters that one can relate to and care about. So even a bit player like Traetha in our game becomes more of a full-fledged person and not just a cardboard cut-out (although that is kind of funny because Julie and I are using cardboard cut-outs instead of expensive painted metal miniatures to keep track of who is doing what).

I then gave Julie a new choice, continue north immediately or have the eagle search for the pirate's secret base and then go after the pirate treasure. Julie chose to go after the pirate treasure, so we'll see what happens with that next.

Anyway, I hope no one finds any of this too boring or tiresome, but I am finding this story that my daughter and I are creating rather fascinating. Julie asked me last night how I was able to make this story up - and I had a hard time trying to explain that to her. The fact is that I am not making it all up - I am randomly generating a lot of it, I am using the "World of Grayhawk" setting that is or was the default setting for the D&D game, and I am just going by the choices that Julie makes based on the options I am giving her and following the consequences of those choices based on the rules and the setting and some of my own ideas of what would interest or test or teach Julie. So the story is really emerging out of many sources and interactions and I am not even sure where it will ultimately go. In many ways Julie is herself learning how to create this story and is doing so more and more.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at September 5, 2006 11:56 AM