Hello folks, I haven't posted much here in, well.. years I guess but I lurk from time to time.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy a little tale from the table I've had recently and I know I'll enjoy telling it.

I played D&D back in 77 through about 1987 vigorously, as many of you here did.  But, then, college got harder, then work, then dating, marriage children.... And before you know it I have a garage full of D&D stuff I haven't played in 20 years.  

I am seeing my kids grow up in a truly magical age of video games... stuff we never dreamed of back in the 80s.  Skyrim, Minecraft, all the FPS's.  I thought for sure the days of D&D were up.  There was just no way that these kids who are raised on 3D high-res gaming are going to be satisfied looking up a THAC0 table and keeping notes on paper. The collection I've saved would be only for me, and my few old-school friends who still like to reminisce about the good old days of Old School Gaming.

But, this vacation I had a few days of downtime and Grodog had asked me if I could look something up in my 1st Ed Woodie which was locked in an airtight box, in another box, in a cabinet behind another box of my "original set", my special box of AD&D materials that are my 'own' set from the 70s and 80s.  My original books, grenadier miniatures (badly painted), notebooks and the few modules I ran as DM.  Also, my original dicebag.  I keep these apart from the rest of my collection even though the stuff I've collected is in MUCH better condition, my copies are beat to hell.. they are more valuable to me than the rest of it.

So, I hauled out the box with my woodie, and to get to it I brought in my 'original' box as well as a spare box of 'normal' AD&D players handbooks and a monster manual.  I figured, maybe it was at last time to sell off much of my collection.

My kids were AWASH in Christmas presents (due to divorces and remarriages, they are doubled up on grandparents who all live nearby.. and that's just on my wife's side).  Despite that, when I was hauling in the boxes I mentioned I was going to list some stuff on Ebay my son perked up 'Hey, you're selling your D&D stuff?  I thought you were going to teach us to play?".  Lightning hit my head.  We'd tried a few games before and I had the impression that they were unimpressed and didn't push it... so I mentioned that, he said "Oh yeah, but we thought those were just practice games and didn't count, I thought we had to be older to really play..".  And it's true... the first time we sat down to play it was like herding cats... that were on fire.  The kids just wanted to move the miniatures around, shoot lightning bolts at everyone and tried to break in and rob every house in the town.  My kids, who are in actuality fairly lawful good were the most vile chaotic evil PCs you've ever seen! It was Skyrim poisoning of the worst kind.  My daughter, a kind and beautiful girl, had become notorious for 'looting corpses' as soon as they hit the ground... even those of her allies.  Skyrim is a terrible teacher for RPGs (although a great game for what it is).

Despite this, I thought maybe I'd give it another go.  At least we would have a few days to kill and what the heck, it got them off the computer.

So, we recruited 2 neighborhood friends... a brother and sister and rolled up characters.  This is AD&D 1st Edition.  I also schooled them that I eat first level characters for lunch and that this is not a video game and they were going to start weak and get stronger *IF* they lived.

I had a world ready to go (I've been working on it off and on for a long time) so we were off.   Believe it or not, the neighbor rolled up a Human Fighter and got 18/61 Str and 18 Con.. and his other roles were not bad either!  I used the 4d6 method but still.. unbelievable.  Everyone else had decent roles too.  My son managed to qualify for Ranger, my daughter a 1/2 elf thief, and the other girl a gnome MU.

Well, I'll skip the adventure journal (unless you want to hear about it) but... in short, they had a 3 chapter mission of various kinds (strategy/puzzle solving with some social RPGing, straight out combat mission, and finally a 'slave pits' experience where they will lose everything and have to get it back)

The rest of the story is, they had a GREAT time.  The kids sat still for 4 hours and I managed to keep them pushing forward.  They were focused, argued about strategy, considered the consequences of their actions, asked a lot of questions.. I couldn't be happier.  They were competent players already!  I did have to help them understand how to accomplish things in game terms and expand on some of the options their characters had but it was great.  The neighbors parents came up on one of the nights to 'listen in' because the only thing they know about D&D is what they saw on 'The Big Bang Theory' (ugh..).  They were pleased and had good questions about the game.

The greatest moment of the second night was, as we were walking the kids home the neighbor kid said to my son "Hey, you know... D&D is actually more fun than Skyrim!"  My son agreed.  We have had 3 more games in the past week.  We have one more scheduled for Saturday.  They're currently in a bit of trouble having been captured by a necromancer.. but one of them might be able to slip their bonds and ... we'll see!

So, I guess a note of encouragement to you parents out there.  If you've tried and failed to get your kids into gaming... try again.  My kids are 11 and 13.  They have an XBox and a library of Games on Steam that would be enough to keep anyone busy.  We have board games, we have Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.  They have friends and activities.  In other words, all kinds of things for them to be distracted by.  And yet, I managed to get them to the table.

I don't know if this will emerge into an ongoing campaign once school starts.. I hope it does.  I'm having a great time!  But even if it  doesn't, it's been worth it just for these few days.

Over the last two years I had been running my older grandchildren through various adventures.
Mostly my own making with some older TSR scenarios tossed in.
Like you, I at first experienced the herding of burning cats.
During this phase I allowed some silliness to occur, but not overly so.
They were aged at 14 (Boy), 11 (Girl), and 7 (Boy) at the beginning.
The oldest granson attended the first two Nort Texas RPG Conventions with me as well.

After a relatively short time they settled into a more level gaming speed and expectations were also lowered to a more reasonable level.
We had a lot of fun during those seasons with more gaming during summer and holiday periods (no school of course).
I have posted a couple of times here some details of some of those adventures.

The EX-wife's daughter (mother of the grandkids) was not related to me and so Unfortunately with the divorce I have almost no contact with the little ones except for the occasional visit (Short).
Non-related parents and grandparents get screwed royally in divorces.
Gaming with them is now a lot of pleasant memories.

That said, I am likely to sell off most of my treasure hoard of D&D and related RPG's which fills seven large storage shelves in my 20'x10' garage and three large book shelves inside my apartment.

Treasure your times gaming with them as they will all too soon go on to other things.

grodog wrote:Ethan and Henry were very demanding of playing D&D while in NJ---we gamed with my brother Brian, who was happy to indulge the boys since it has probably been ~15-20 years since he's played that much D&D at once (we made up new PCs and then played on December 23, 25, and 26 ):...

So, Jon---go for it and share some more about your adventures with your children

Just playing in the room looks incredibly cool. Great to see you and the boys playing in photos, Allan!

My youngest son (age 15) has Asperger's Syndrome (a form of autism) and his psychologist said RPG's might be good for him to learn some social skills. As it turned out, his best friend's dad turned out to be an old-school DM from years back, so we started playing a father & son 2e game that's been going for a couple years. Then later, at his therapy group, I met one of the other dads who was also a player, and we started another father & son group, this time 3.5e, which has been going for about a year.

I asked my son why he likes to play tabletop RPG's when he has so many video games available, and he said he still likes video games, but RPG's just offer a different experience and give him a chance to hang out with his friends.

It is fun getting our kids to play, isn't it?  We have to be careful because they are not us (but we can hope that they'll want to play).

My 15 year old son and I play with his friends every so often; they prefer Basic and 1st Edition AD&D.  My son and I also play with a few of my friends once a month (we play ICE's MERP); I think he likes that the best.  He also play-tests my new adventures and game rule changes for my system too.  I run him and usually a few of my playtesters through when the content is ready.  He's actually submitted a few guideline additions on the community section of my site.  He may like MERP better than my system though... I guess I have to be okay with that.  

Anyway, I love playing RPGs with him.  I hope he continues to play for many years too.

-Throwi