You know, the great thing about having your gaming group be comprised of you and your children1 is that all your D&D stories double as cute kid stories, so perhaps if you reader don’t care for the one aspect, you’ll enjoy the other. Of course, if you don’t like either one ... well, see you next week, I suppose.
Now, as I explained in my post on game rotation, we’re actually doing a few different game
If you don’t know what Pathfinder is, the short answer is that it’s an offshoot of an older version of D&D.3 The components of roleplaying games (TTRPGs, in any event) typically get divided into two categories: the nitty-gritty, mechanical bits, and the more abstract roleplaying bits like the setting and advice on how to roleplay and that sort of stuff. Or the crunch and the fluff, as we generally refer to it. The current version of D&D tends to try to strike a balance of about half-and-half crunch vs fluff, but there are other games which lean hard on the fluff and are pretty crunch-lite4 ... and then there are games which are super-crunchy. Pathfinder is one of those. That’s mostly why we haven’t tried to play it yet: it’s a lot to take in for our younger players. But my middle child is ready (mostly), and my youngest has been playing for over a year now, so despite her young age she’s got some real experience under her belt. So we thought we’d give it a shot.
I eventually came up with a character idea that I thought was pretty hip, and my middle child went with one of their first-ever5 non-shapeshifter-centric characters, basing him on the old videogame character Vexx. But I promised you a cute kid story, so let’s focus on what my youngest came up with.
She’s going to play a young child: specifically, the long-lost brother of her character in the Freak Campaign,6 Rose Redd. His name is Levi,7 and he’s 11. At first, my eldest was none too keen on this plan, not wanting to run a game where they regularly had to put a young child into dangerous situations. But my youngest persisted, and she explained further. See, this young boy doesn’t actually fight when there’s trouble. Instead, he lugs around a stuffed toy that he found (who knows where) on his long travels.8 This toy looks like a demo
Now, this on its own is a pretty inventive concept. (For those of you wondering how we plan to implement this mechanically, Pathfinder has a class called a “summoner.” It’s never been my favorite Pathfinder class,9 but this is actually one place where it can make sense. The demon will not be an actual demon, but rather Levi’s “eidolon,” as a summoner’s pet creature is called in the game.) Is the demon real? Is it perhaps a protective spirit from some other plane that just somehow got stuck in this unsettling form? Or maybe it’s a psychic projection of Levi himself, hinting at potential power that might be unlocked someday. But that’s not even the point of the story.
See, in addition to being wildly inventive, my youngest child is also very crafty. Like, as in arts-and-crafty. She’s a maker, is what I’m saying. And, at some point while we were coming up with all these ideas about Levi’s demon doll and how it would work in the game, she decided to draw it, for reference. And then she decided she’d just make one. So she did.
To be clear, she drew that picture all by herself, then (with minimal help from her mother) cut out some fabric pieces, put them together with hot glue, stuffed it with stuffing, then hot-glued all the pieces together, including the button for an eye. What was once just a vague idea in her head is now an actual, tangible thing in the real world that she can hold on to at the gaming table. It just blows my mind.
Did I mention she’s only just turned nine?
Anyhow, that’s my D&D story for today. Or my cute kid story, if you prefer. Tune in next week for what will probably be a more normal-sized post.1 For more details, see my post on the Family Campaign.
2 There’s also the game that my younges
3 And the long answer is: read this.
4 Pretty much any Powered by the Apocalypse game, like Dungeon World, for instance.
5 Outside of one-shots, anyway.
6 Again, see game rotation for (a few) details.
7 Currently. He’s gone through a few name changes so far.
8 It is yet unclear whether Levi was kidnapped or ran away from home, and, if the former, who took him, or, if the latter, what possessed him to run away at 8 or 9 years old.
9 In fact, given that you summon a creature from a pocket dimension who can look like anyhting and evolves as you get to higher levels, I long ago pegged being a summoner as playing a Pokémon trainer in Pathfinder, and dismissed it outright. I can tolerate a lot of atypical high fantasy in my D&
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