R turned five this weekend and we celebrated with a party, some amazing cupcakes, a trip to the carousel, and a brand new Nonviolent Dungeons and Dragons for Kids adventure. This one was more puzzle-based and less monster-focused than The Haunted Castle. It was also a little longer and more open to different routes through it.

Props (all optional)

• a scepter
• a crown
• Some sort of horn
• box with coins and jewels
• frog boots
• rope

Introduction

King Ricardo (your father, if you’re a princess) has a special mission for you: You must deliver this scepter and crown to your cousin Princess Soldina for her birthday in three days. He gives you a map of the area–it looks very far and there is no direct route. The King then smiles and gives the players a beautiful magic flying carpet. He says it is very fast and should get you there in plenty of time. It will also return to the King as soon as you step off of it.

What do you do?

Your flight is very pleasant until you start to cross the Black Mountains. That’s when a roc notices you and starts swooping in for a closer look.

What do you do?

The player can try to avoid each roc capture attempt by rolling 3d6 under her dexterity, but eventually the roc will get them. If they roll exactly their dexterity, they fall and just barely grab the edge of the carpet where they are gently plucked off by the roc.

1. The roc’s cave

The roc flies north and brings you to her nest and then flies off again, in search more food for her chicks. The nest is in a cave high on a mountain (see DM’s version of the map of the land). There are two hungry baby rocs in the nest. They don’t like jokes, but can be soothed to sleep with a lullaby. The cave entrance is a cliff dropping thousands of feet to sharp rocks. You get a little dizzy looking down. In the back of the cave, it looks like a tunnel goes further into the mountain.

There is a weird glowing mold growing on almost all the walls of the caverns that provides enough light to see.

The DM should draw the roc’s cave on a blank sheet of paper for the players and extend the map as the players explore without showing his own complete map of the caverns.

2. The abandoned bedroom

It looks like someone has been living in here recently, but they aren’t here now. There are dirty clothes and some fresh food and drink. If the players search the room, they will also find a long coil of silk rope, a sharp knife, and some magic green boots with frog eyes on the toes. These will let the wearer jump long distances.

3. The giant spider nest

The giant spider is working in the back of a giant web–she is busily wrapping her silk around something large and doesn’t notice the players. In fact, she has caught Boris, the human who lived in the bedroom on food stolen from the roc’s babies. He made his rope from the spider’s silk, but he got too close to the spider recently. The group may try to rescue him, though the spider is a tough opponent. She is scared of fire though. The web is extremely sticky. Players will need to either be very strong to escape or use a knife to get out.

4. The chasm

The bridge that once crossed this chasm broke long ago. Players will need the frog boots and possibly rope to get across. The cave turns into a tunnel on the other side and winds down for a long way on the other side to the underground river.

5. The underground river

The tunnel opens up into a small cave with a low ceiling and a fast-moving river running through it. Next to the river is a small boat. If you want to make the adventure tougher, you could put a hole in the boat and make the players figure out a way to repair it. The river flows underground for several miles and then exits the mountain flowing another several miles to the ocean. Show players on the King’s map.

Just before the river takes a sharp turn and joins the ocean is an unusual multi-colored arched rock about the size of a horse. It is called rainbow rock, but the players don’t know that yet. It can’t be seen directly from the ocean.

6. The Pirates

After being swept past the odd arch-shaped rock, the players’ boat is caught in the ocean’s current moving south. They soon encounter a pirate ship. The pirates (led by Pink Beard) are a rough crew but not very hostile. They are looking for a treasure chest that is supposed to be buried under something called Rainbow Rock. The pirates have been unable to find it thus far. The players have the option of telling the pirates where it is or keeping quiet.

7. Rainbow Rock

If the players dig under the rainbow rock, they will find a treasure chest. Inside are gold coins, jewels, and a horn covered with intricately carved animals of all kinds. It is a magical Horn of Animal Summoning. When blown, some animal will come to the aid of the player. Some animals are more helpful than others. Aquarius the whale will come if the players blow the horn at this point. He can tow their boat along with the chest all the way to Princess Soldina’s Castle in time for the birthday party.

How it went

R started by creating a new Princess character and enjoyed coloring her map of land throughout her adventure. R was initially very cautious exploring the caves–I had to goad her into moving down the tunnels–but by the end she was feeling quite comfortable underground. She was also wary of the frog boots and certainly didn’t want to tangle with the giant spider. The whole adventure took about half an hour and my favorite moment was at the very end, when she said “Can we play another story now?”

My daughter R spends half of her life in a fantasy world pretending she is either a pony, a cat, a princess, a fairy, or some combination of these. She also loves reading about fantastical adventures like The Wizard of Oz, Comet in Moominland, or The Bravest Knight. So when a friend sent me Cory Doctorow’s account of how he plays Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) with his four year old daughter, I got very excited. A game that has players pretending they are characters exploring mythical lands and fighting fabulous monsters seemed like an almost perfect match. Cory simplified the rules to fit into a little kid attention span, but there was still a problem: We run a nonviolent household and a game that revolves around bloodshed is a nonstarter.

In middle school, I played a lot of D&D. Sometimes I’d play with friends who were all about the monsters, the combat, and the treasure. Sometimes I played with friends who set up a vivid land, an intricate plot, and complex characters. These games revolved around solving mysteries, working together, and the occasional backstabbing. We stepped into another world when we played and while combat happened, it was just a small piece of the puzzle. This was the experience I wanted to share with R.

After some experimentation, I think we’ve come up with a decent set of rules and R is still talking about our last adventure (“The Haunted Castle”). I’ve written up our rules and a description of that adventure here so we don’t forget them and also for anyone else who might want to take the plunge. The biggest innovation is the replacement of the combat system with an “interaction” system. Instead of fighting monsters, we try to befriend them or avoid them. And while the monsters might try to scare players or even imprison them, no one can actually hurt anyone.

Creating Characters

Cory Doctorow wanted get his daughter adventuring as quickly as possible, and so had her make up a bare bones character up front, fleshing her out as needed during the game. We found that creating a character was one of the most riveting parts of the game. I pre-printed some character sheets (.docx, .pdf) and R enjoyed rolling dice, writing down numbers, and drawing her character’s picture. We started by choosing the character’s name, race, and job. Races include:

• human,
• fairy (can fly),
• elf (good at hiding and finding),
• dwarf (can sniff out gems), and
• hobbit (can squeeze into small spaces).

Possible jobs are:

• princess (good at horseback riding),
• knight (also good on horses), and
• wizard (casting spells).

There are no functional differences between knights and princesses just in case we end up playing with boys some time in the future. I didn’t think thieves or clerics were kid-appropriate.

Each character has three attributes:

• strength,
• intelligence, and
• dexterity.

These affect the characters’ chances of doing things like finding traps, climbing obstacles, jumping over things, or pushing/lifting things. I had R roll three six-sided dice (aka 3d6) three times and each time decide which attribute she wanted that roll to be. I also let her roll again if she got a really low number.

I’m sure we’ll be adding new races, jobs and attributes as we play more.

Magic

Wizards start off with one spell, but anyone can find and use scrolls with spells. Possible spells currently include:

• Rainbow (can impress or distract monsters)
• Sleep (can put monsters to sleep for 10 minutes)
• Universal language (allows character to speak to any animate creature)
• Smoke cloud (good for creating diversions)
• Invisibility (lasts one hour)
• Flight (lasts one hour)
• Super strength (lasts one hour)

Magic Items

The sky is the limit on magical items that can be found in the course of the adventure. R already has a Wand of Stone (that turns living creatures to stone) and a Bracelet of Teleportation (that works once per day).

Basic Game Play

Every adventure has a big goal. The player(s) have to do something like rescue someone, find something, or stop someone. In our first adventure, the party had to rescue a princess that had been kidnapped by a giant frog army and brought to a volcano. Our second involved helping the frog army (now our friends) get back to their home pond through a magic tunnel. The players always start somewhere specific and get a short description of what’s going on. Then I say “What do you do now?”

Cory’s fairly improvisational method can work well if you have a great imagination and a library of “situations” you can bring to bear. I’ve found I do better with a little bit of preparation– not nearly as much as you would need to run a game with older kids or adults, but more than none. Our third adventure (“The Haunted Castle”) is described below. Be inspired by books (yours and his/hers) and movies. These are great sources for monsters, characters, situations, and plots.

Some sort of board or map is very useful in anchoring the action. We used a dinosaur landscape first and then just a hand-drawn map of a castle. If you have a big pad of paper (like Melissa and Doug’s Easel Pad), you can quickly draw anything you want.

As the action unfolds, we do a lot of ad hoc dice rolling. This definitely adds an element of excitement. If you don’t have dice, I highly recommend the Chessex Pound of Dice.

We’ve been keeping track of who we befriend during each adventure and counting them up. This might eventually be a decent analog of experience points (traditionally acquiring by killing monsters) but we haven’t used these numbers for anything yet.

The Interaction System

When a player comes into contact with a creature, they can do anything except attack. Possible actions include (but are not limited to):

• Greet the creature
• Give a present
• Smile
• Tell a joke
• Sing a friendship song
• Run away
• Use a spell

If the player decides to tell a joke or sing, they must actually do so. The joke or song must also be relevant to the situation at hand. If the player’s action is friendly, they roll a die. The size depends on the quality of the action–e.g., a good joke gets a greater die. The creature also rolls a die equal to his/her “friendship resistance points.” More ornery creatures roll bigger dice. The highest number wins. If the monster wins, s/he stays ornery and doesn’t cooperate. If the player wins, the monster becomes a friend. No one ever gets hurt. If friends are helping, they can roll dice too.

The Haunted Castle

All descriptions and scenarios in this adventure benefit from extemperaneous elaboration–think of everything below as a jumping off point. The main goals are exploration and escape, and the only way out of the castle is to find and use the Bracelet of Teleportation.

Props:

You don’t actually need any props, but in general, with little kids, the more props the better. This set worked well for us:

• a big hand-drawn copy of the castle map (you can also use a real doll house)
• a way to dim the lights
• spooky music and sound effects (the DJ Halloween iPhone app is awesome)
• a fancy box (doubles as jewelry box and treasure chest)
• a bracelet
• a key

Introduction:

One day you were out exploring the Tangled Forest and there arose a terrible storm in the late afternoon. In the heavy rain, you couldn’t see much, but then there was a flash of lightning and it illuminated a castle to your left on a hill. It looks dark and foreboding but you need shelter.

What do you do?

As the player moves closer to the castle they see flickering lights in the windows. The castle is made of heavy gray stone and is surrounded by a moat. Strange dangerous creatures seem to be swimming in the moat. On the right side of the castle rises a tall tower. A drawbridge slowly lowers.

The five rooms of the castle (.pdf map):

3. The Great Room

Once inside the castle, the drawbridge slams closed and three skeletons (FR points = 1d6 each) appear and laugh. They tell the player she is trapped. The room is dark but has torches on the left and right walls. On each side of the room are two doors. R made friends with these skeletons right away, but they aren’t very helpful.

1. The Kitchen

Three witches are huddled in a corner around a big bubbling cauldron with their backs to the door. They are completely engrossed in cackling and stirring, and won’t notice a player until the player talks to them. Until they are befriended (FR points = 1d6 each), they will threaten to turn the player into a rat even though they won’t actually do it. They also won’t chase the player out of the room.

Once befriended, they can’t answer any questions, but they will refer the player to the rats in the dining room and offer up a universal language scroll so the player can talk to them.

2. The Dining Room

The room is dominated by a huge table covered with rotting food on beautiful plates and big bowls of boiling stews. It smells terrible and there are rats sneaking around in the corners. As the rats get comfortable, they will hop on the table to steal food and drinks.

The rats here know a lot, and they can answer direct questions, but they usually run away after they answer them. Of course, you need the universal language spell to talk to them.

• Q: How can I escape? A: You need the magic bracelet–it can transport you anywhere in an instant.
• Q: Where is the bracelet? A: In the dungeon–but don’t open the wrong chest!
• Q: Where is the key to the chest? A: In the tower–but don’t wake up the vampire!

4. The Dungeon

The dungeon is dark–the player must bring a torch from upstairs or she won’t be able to see a thing. The stairs are long and the dungeon is deep underground. The ceilings are low. The dungeon itself is filled with rubble, broken furniture, and loads of cob webs. It’s more like a messy basement than a true dungeon, but it’s still scary.

In the far corner lie two large ornate chests. They look much fancier after the dust has been blown or brushed off. One is unlocked and inside is a mummy (FR=1d12). He moves slowly and just says “Leave me alone! Leave my dungeon” over and over.

The second chest is locked and can only be opened with the key from the tower. It contains gold coins, gems, and the Bracelet of Teleportation which will take the player home.

5. The Tower

The stairs to the top of the tower are long and they lead to a heavy unlocked wooden door. The player must roll 3d6 lower than their strength to push it open. Entering the room, the player sees an old decrepit bedroom. The bed is wrought iron with chipped paint and dirty white silk canopy. Sleeping on his back with his arms crossed over his chest is a vampire. He has pale white skin and two sharp canines protruding from his mouth.

As the player walks around the room, she makes noise stepping on broken glass and knocking things off dressers. These noises wake up the vampire if she rolls a 6 on a d6. Otherwise the vampire simply moves and groans. In a jewelry box on a table next to the bed is the key that opens the locked dungeon chest.

If the vampire wakes up, he is very angry and has 1d20 friendship resistance points. At this point, the player should notice the jewelry box. If she still doesn’t grab it, the vampire should throw it at her, miss, and have it smash on the stairs revealing the key. The vampire will chase them down the stairs, but not into the dungeon.

Happy adventuring!

This post has moved to Teach Better.

This post has moved to Teach Better.

I’ve always valued a catchy beat over insightful lyrics and my favorite genres tend to reflect that. In other words, I listen to a lot of songs with dumb lyrics, so it means something that the other day I heard some extra dumb lyrics on the radio.

Lets take a closer look at Bonnie McKee’s “American Girl” line by line:

I fell in love in a 7/11 parking lot
Sat on the curb drinking slurpees we mixed with alcohol

Either you’re underage and shouldn’t be mixing in alcohol or you’re of age and shouldn’t be drinking slurpees in the parking lot. I’m not sure which is worse.

We talked about all our dreams and how we would show 'em all (whoa oh oh oh)
I told him I got a plan and I'm gonna dominate
And I don't need any man to be getting in my way

This is as good as it gets–girl power!

But if you talk with your hands then we can negotiate (whoa oh oh oh)

I think she’s making a subtle sexual reference here.

I just keep moving my body (yeah)
I'm always ready to party (yeah)
No I don't listen to mommy (yeah)
And I'll never say that I'm sorry

First off, not one of these four lines actually rhymes, and I don’t think she’s trying to emulate Emily Dickinson. Second, you’re to old to be calling your mother mommy. And third, I think even Gandhi had to occasionally apologize.

Chorus
Oh I'm an American girl

If the rest of the world thinks this girl is representative of the whole population of American girls, we are in deep trouble.

Hot blooded and I'm ready to go I'm loving taking over the world
Hot blooded, all american girl (Whoa) I was raised by a television

I spent a good chunk of my childhood in front of a TV too, but I watched relatively wholesome fare like The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, and Gilligan’s Island. She must have been raised by Bridezilla, real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Jersey Shore.

Every day is a competition Put the key in my ignition (Oh-way-oh)

Oh no; another subtle sexual reference. I think she needs to go to AC DC school

I wanna see all the stars and everything in between

Unless she has a thing for dark matter, I have a feeling she’s talking about celebrities more than astronomy.

I wanna buy a new heart out of a vending machine
Cause It's a free country so baby we can do anything (Whoa)

We may be a free country, but we still have fairly strict laws banning the sale of organs.

Chorus

You know we're gonna shine so bright (Oh we're gonna shine so bright...) Oh baby gonna go all night (Oh we're gonna go all night) You know we're gonna shine so bright (Oh we're gonna shine so bright...) Oh baby gonna go all night

Chorus

Every American should be embarrassed that this song exists. I was doubly embarrassed when I saw the “artist” was my namesake. And I’m triply embarrassed by how much I actually enjoy the song. It’s not as good as “Party in the USA” or “Call Me Maybe,” but it just makes me want to get up and dance whenever I hear it. Maybe I should just stop talking before I embarrass myself further.

I went to college in the late 1980’s, and my school was just close enough to NYC for the radio stations to play a lot of what was “hot” in the “hot” clubs in the city. And that was a Latin-infused pop dance music called freestyle. It was awesome:

I even used my fake ID to see Sweet Sensation perform live in Albany. After graduation, I moved to DC where (Indie Rock was king) and only heard freestyle driving through NYC on my way to and from Boston. The genre died out in NYC just a few years later.¹

Amazing dance music came into my life again in 2003 when 103.1 FM in Los Angeles started calling itself KDL and playing “Dance Hits.” Instead of building on a Latin groove, they injected what seemed to me to be pure European pop trance directly into unsuspecting American ears.

I was obsessed and then devastated when KDL went off the air after less than a year. And I wasn’t the only one–there’s a “KDL Resurrected” YouTube playlist containing 133 videos that now has 1,607 views! That number would likely be hundreds bigger if almost all the videos had not been removed due to copyright violations.

And so we come to today. I like Pink, and Maroon 5 and Katy Perry as much as anybody, but I’m ready for some fresh pop blood. In just the last two days I’ve heard these three super catchy and extremely danceable songs on the radio:

Lets all cross our fingers that this is just the beginning.

Footnotes:

Several years ago my wife and I spent a week in Costa Rica during the rainy season. As expected, it rained most of our trip but was warm and fun nonetheless. And those brief windows when the sun came out were magical. I think raising kids is a little like this–mostly great, but some periods when all the stars align that are truly amazing.

When R was born, my exercise regime changed. I stopped going to the gym or training for particular events, but I still managed to get out a couple times a week for a run and stay in reasonable shape. When B was born, planned exercise (i.e., beyond chasing kids and racing to work) disappeared as two kids is a bit more work than one and something had to give.

Some people are good at combining exercise with parenting. They backpack with their kids and push them around with jogging strollers. My kids don’t like activities where they aren’t active–they like pushing strollers more than sitting in them. Also, sleep is like gold in our house and our kids sleep best in beds. I would never risk waking a sleeping child miles from home because I hit a pot hole. I’ve also seen other parents go bike riding with their kids. These parents sometimes look like they are having fun, but they certainly aren’t getting more exercise than if they were out for a leisurely stroll.

Last week, I entered a fantastic window in my parenting career where I can finally join the ranks of the co-exercising parents. R is getting pretty comfortable on her bike and I’ve been putting on my running shoes to run next to her on her rides. Yesterday she said she loved the feel of the wind in her face as she rode down a long hill. She calls the bike trail near our house “the country” even though it runs behind the local strip malls on one side, and the highway and an office park on the other. To her credit, we also saw a ground hog cross the trail and watched ducks congregate in a little pond.

I’m terribly out of shape and she currently tires easily, but we’re both getting better as she learns the fine arts of balance and pacing. It also helps that R and I have had a fair amount of one-on-one time as B’s school started full-time last week but R’s won’t be full-time until next week. Unfortunately, I think this window is destined to be brief. R will eventually want to ride faster and longer than I want to run. I don’t know when that time will come, but it won’t surprise me if it’s soon given the current trend. Every day she’s substantially more comfortable on the bike and she loves speed.

Going on these bike rides has been incredibly fun and I’m just trying to focus on the moment and appreciate them. I’m also already hoping to do it all again in a couple years with B.

I spend a lot of my time creating and editing plain text files. It isn’t the prettiest or most powerful format for documents, but I still love it. Plain text is trivial to copy and paste between applications, and the files are human readable. Unlike .doc files, PDF files, or even RTF files, there are a gazillion apps that will show and edit text. And the format has staying power–it’s been around since the 1960’s and I’m willing to bet it will be easy to work with in 20 years and maybe even 50 years.

This post has moved to Teach Better.

I watched a lot of Saturday Night Live in the 1990’s and one of my favorite recurring bits was Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey. The soft music would come on, the gentle first sentence or two would scroll by and then BAM–the usually evil but always absurd gotcha at the end. Like a cross between a haiku and a fart. I didn’t know Jack Handey was a real person until a few days ago when he released his first novel: The Stench of Honolulu.

The book is about a guy with very few redeeming qualities who travels to Hawaii with his friend Dan in search of the legendary Golden Monkey. To be honest, the story reminds me of the road trips I took with a high school friend when we were in our early 20’s. We toured the American Southwest, Baja California and even the jungles and beaches of Taiwan. And we did bad things in all of these places. I’ve been trying to figure out which of us was Dan and which was the narrator. He was a little meaner (like the narrator) but he also did all the cooking and vehicle maintenance (like Dan). We were both idiots. It’s a tough call.

I listened to a big chunk of the audiobook at the supermarket last weekend and got plenty of funny looks as I giggled and snorted my way through the aisles. Seriously, this was the funniest stuff I’ve heard in a long time. But that doesn’t mean you’ll find it funny. Plenty of Amazon reviewers say it’s just a big pile of potty jokes and they’re kind of right. I mean, the main character wears his underwear on his head for half the story. On the other hand it really does read like an amazing 240 page Deep Thought. If you have a low brow sense of humor but can also appreciate Sartres, this book is pure gold.