Ostensible Cat

Today has been an incredibly lovely day. I decided to try something a bit different and do some gaming outside. Bear has been bugging me to get a game started. Unfortunately, he is only reading in Italian at this point and the academic advisor recommended that we hold off teaching him to read English until he has a better grasp of reading in Italian so as to not confuse him. So, I decided to come up with a very basic on the fly RPG system using percentile dice as the resolution mechanic and my D&D minis to create a 3d "dungeon". It actually turned out to be quite fun. The key here was to be free form enough so as to keep Bear's interest while having something of a structure. I created a four class system so Bear, my daughter Rosa, and their "cousin" Marco had a field of characters to choose from. I had a hobbit, wizard, warrior, and amazon princess. Each character had hit points, a percentage chance to hit in melee, a percentage chance to block an a

So I'm about halfway done keying up the first level of Polstrus Lev. This is proving to be a bit more challenging for me as I'm making this adventure specifically with my six year old son in mind. So I'm wanting to downplay the combats and really play up the traps, tricks, and puzzles. I'm also intending this to be a bit more forgiving so the younger gamers don't get discuoraged when they spring a trap and die. I want to encourage critical thinking and learning from mistakes so the traps will be less deadly and more of, well, um traplike (detaining/restraining/delaying) in nature. Also, I am planting clues for situation that arise later in the dungeon. I'm thinking about watching Goonies again as that really is the sort of feel I want for the Warrens of Polstrus Lev. We've played several games of Dungeon! and that is great fun. My intent with Polstrus Lev is to now bridge the gap between RPGs and board games like Dungeon! There is enough danger to

When I was younger, Wizardry, Bard's Tale and the Might and Magic series occupied quite a bit of my time (well, that is when I wasn't actively engaged in face to face RPGs).  At any rate, as I work through my first adventure with my son, I've been thinking a lot about these early CRPGs and the value of porting them to a Pen and Paper environment, or more precisely, stealing back elements of them to make the adventure a little more engaging for my six year old.  I was thinking about essentially creating a dungeon with wandering monsters and some key locations with a fairly static town where the party could leave the dungeon, resupply, etc and go back for the delve.  Much in the same vein of Wizardry.  I'll expand it out as he gets the basics of dungeon exploration such as finding traps (suspect everything is a trap!), crazy zones, weird encounters, etc.  It also makes it easier to replace dead/lost characters (remember the adventurer's inn in Wizardry 1?).  I'd b

I remember when I was back in the States, that there was a campaign for kids fishing and it had a slogan of "it's catching on". Apparently, family members would encourage ehir youngsters to learn fishing and it seems to have had some impact voer the years. Now I'm just guessing since I don't have any hard data (and frankly don't care enough to look it up - even though I applaud the campaign for getting kids fishing) but from what I can tell by the number of kids that I saw fishing in the sate of Missouri, it is indeed working. I'm interested in encouraging kids to roleplay (note I said encourage, not manipulate, coerce or force) as I think that it does have some good side benefits. My kids know I'm a gamer and are highly interested in what I'm doing. Today, I reached a landmark in every gamer's life. We created my son's first character. I took the morning off to care for my son who was home from school with a sore throat while my wife