His First Time...

Well, I went ahead and did it. If my wife reads this blog post, so be it; it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

My son had his first chance to play D&D today. Conditions were right, and he got his work done, so I decided to take him across the Rubicon for his first taste of role-playing games. It went about as well as I could have asked.

Although my wife is very opposed to the game and always has been (she maintains that if she'd known when we first met online that I was a D&D player that she wouldn't have gone any further in the relationship), I still have a lot of my old books from the BECMI system. That's Basic, Expert, Companion, Masters, Immortals for you non-gamers, a series of five boxed sets that introduced the game and gradually increased its complexity back in the early and mid-1980s. The Basic Set from 1983 is still considered by many the best introduction to role-playing games ever written. So, naturally, I pulled it out, handed him a 20-sided die, a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, and let him get started. At first he wasn't thrilled that there was reading involved instead of getting to his character, but Frank Mentzer wrote a great introductory story, and drew him in to the setting and the most basic concepts of the game. I did some of the reading at the beginning, but he quickly got absorbed in it and didn't need my supervision after that.

He thrilled at chasing the goblin away, had a big grin when he killed the snake, and got upset when he failed his saving throw against Bargle's charm person spell. But he didn't get angry about not 'winning,' so that's good. He enjoyed it quite a bit, and it was quite the experience for both of us.

I did it for a couple of reasons. First, because I wanted him to experience the game while he's still young. Two, because it's something of an incentive for him to keep up with his homeschooling and chores. The other benefits (the improved vocabulary, the critical thinking and problem solving, the eagerness to read) will come in time, assuming his mother lets us play again. Or, gets out of the house long enough for us to pull out the box and see what happens next.

If all goes well, I'm going to let him read the Player's Manual in the Basic Set, then run him through the introductory adventure in the DM's book. Once he's gotten the hang of that, I'm going to let him run his own adventure, using B1 In Search of the Unknown. That should be exciting, especially with all the advice included in the module.

After that, though, I've got something else in mind for him: A bound set of D&D books that I put together as part of my Ultimate D&D Project. I've redone the original 1974 boxed set using the 1st Edition Advanced D&D rules. So, it's a pared-down version of the game, with only 138 monsters, three classes, limited spells and magic items...it's going to be an interesting trip. If he enjoys it, there's a lot more after that.

Just don't tell my wife yet.

To read something inspired by my Ultimate D&D Project, check out The Chronicles of Meterra: Arrival, available on Amazon in both e-book and paperback.