LEGO Hogwarts

So I am a HUGE LEGO fan.  I have been my entire life.  I still have (almost) all of the sets I ever received growing up, including (almost) all of manuals.  Don't get me wrong--it's always more fun to create your own thing, but it's nice knowing that I could still build those sets from my youth.

Unfortunately, my kids historically have not been interested in playing with them.  That is, until about seven months ago, when a new family moved in down the street.  Their kids are almost identically aged to ours, and they have become great friends.  One great thing about their kids is that they are all LEGO fanatics.  They have more sets than I had and have many creations on permanent display.  This, of course, prompted my kids to get interested in them.

We've purchased a few sets for my kids, and they are really enjoying playing with them.

My middle boy is a huge fan of LEGO Heroica.  We've played a lot of that since Christmas.  We have four of the five sets and really get into it.  I plan on writing a longer post about Heroica another time, so more about that then.

My oldest received the Haunted House for Christmas:


She and I have been slowly putting it together since Christmas.  It has made for some really nice father-daughter time.

She and I are also reading the Harry Potter series at bedtime.  Before now, I had only ever read the first book.  Together, we are 15 pages from the end of Book 2 and about to start Book 3.  We are really enjoying it.  The reading is making for some really nice father-daughter time as well.

Tonight, as I was browsing the interwebs before dinner, I came across this photo:

                                 

To see more, go to this Flickr page and look through all of the photos.  How absolutely amazing is that Hogwarts LEGO creation?  I wish that I had that kind of free time on my hands--or the disposable income to buy all those bricks.  Of course, I flipped through those photos with my kids oohing and aahing the whole way.  Pretty impressive.

Then we came to this picture.  I asked, "What is a thestral?"  Keep in mind that my daughter has NOT seen any of the Harry Potter movies yet, and that we haven't gotten to any thestrals in the Harry Potter books.  (Frankly, I wouldn't have been able to tell you that there was such a thing as a thestral in the HP books until I came to that photo.)  My daughter answered, "It's kinda like a ghost horse." "Oh, well, how do you know that?"   Because, seriously, I was curious to know where she had heard of them.  She replied, "Dad, when you read as many fantasy books as I have, you just come to learn these things."  I LOVE IT.  My daughter is a huge fan of fantasy, and I didn't even have to try.

If you want to read more about that LEGO Hogwarts, go over to The Brothers Brick to read an interview with the woman who built that thing.

RPGs, Problem Players, and Parenting

So Dave over at The Concierge posted last night about a situation that he experienced at his gaming table.  Technically, it wasn't at his table, because he was playing in a game DM'ed by his highschool-aged son.  I found it to be an interesting post, and dilemma, from a number of perspectives.

I say go take a look at it, and then stop back here.  (If you decided not to, here's the gist: Dave is at the table DM'ed by his son.  Two players (his son's age) prove to be 'difficult'.  Dave reacts as a parent, perhaps instead of as a fellow player.  Interesting thoughts and a few questions ensue.)

First off, while I know many bloggers out there (here?) write about getting their children into gaming and/or DM'ing for their children and children's friends, I don't believe that I've ever come across a blogger talk about playing in his or her kid's game.  I'm sure it's happened--I just haven't encountered it.  So, in my mind, the first question becomes, how many people out there play in their kids' world?  Based on relative ages and mathematics, I'm sure that there are plenty.  What's it like?

Second, if you aren't the DM and therefore not "responsible" for play at the table, how far do you let an awkward situation go before you step in and attempt to "fix" it?  Are there ever situations where you just decide to let the DM go down with his ship?

I've some other thoughts, but my bed is calling out to me,

If you've come across this situation or similar ones, drop over there and leave a comment or two for Dave.

Encouragement for rpg Blogging

Most of us had one: That person who introduced us to rpg's back when we were younger.  For me, that person was my older brother.  He owned the LBBs; he owned the AD&D books; he owned a bunch of modules; he owned a bunch of miniatures.  He taught me to play at a very young age--or maybe not, seven or eight I think.

Anyway, we were typing back and forth the other day at each other.  The conversations went basically like this:

Me:  You said that you were looking at some old notes and got excited again. Anything good?  How about you type up some of your old notes into a formal adventure, I draw the map, and we publish it? The Fantasy Cartographic could use some new products...

Him:  hhmm.... what say we publish a setting? We had started one several years ago.

Me:  Couple of thoughts:
- Settings are a dime a dozen. Unless it is a small area nicely detailed (a single island, single kingdom, single city), or a large area (typically nowadays mapped on a hex map) with numerous specific locations detailed in the text.
(Advantage of the small area is that it can easily be dropped into someone's existing campaign. Advantage of the large area is that any one of the specific locations that you choose to detail can, by itself, be dropped into an existing campaign.)
- Why not start with some thing easier--aka an adventure? (Easier in terms of length, complexity, just about everything I can think of.)
- How about start slow and (eventually) build up to a setting?

Him:  LOL... only because my mind doesn't work that way! I'll try to come up with an adventure, but don't expect anything soon... in a few weeks, though, I'll suddenly "remember" an adventure, along with an entire world. The difficulty isn't in the ideas, it's in the editing and pruning process.

When it comes to me, it's truly like remembering, bits and pieces, then whole swaths, then worlds. I've never written a novel, because it would come out more like an encyclopedia. Perhaps I could write a travelogue and have you map it... but I know that was done in Dragon years ago.

Me:  Well, if that's the case, why don't you start writing a blog with each post being about some aspect of one of the worlds? There are a great many such blogs with people just detailing their campaigns, and all the cool shit in them. They get widely read, too.

The advantage of that is that once you establish yourself in the blogosphere, you can THEN prune it into a nice, easily-digestible format and sell the setting. Since you're already known by your blog, you drastically up the sales that you will receive.

And if you don't want to start your own blog, you can guest-post on my blog.

Him:  I'd have to read some others to see how they're set up... any recommendations?

At which point I pointed him in the direction of some of the many blogs that lots of us enjoy that discuss all sorts of goodness.

But I would really like him to start a blog.  It could be incredible.  Anyone want to leave a comment for him to encourage him or otherwise comment on the blogging experience?  That would be nice.

Mertwig's Maze

Does anybody (besides myself) remember this game?

Now I realize that no serious gamer would have played this little gem when there was real D&D to be played, but I have to admit that I wasn't always a very serious gamer.

I didn't even own it; my cousins from Michigan owned it.  I only saw them once a year or so, so there was a period of 2-3 years when I hoped that they would bring it each time that they came to my place--in addition to all of the normal gaming material.

Cheesy?  Yes.  Corny?  Yes.  Childish?  More than a little.  But I LOVED it.

Frankly, sadly, I don't even remember that much about the game, other than that you had to travel around and overcome a bunch of different obstacles in order to win.

It was always good for an hour or so of light hearted enjoyment.  And it is the perfect game to play with some little ones.

An Update to My Daily Read

I'm not sure why I haven't added it before now, because I am there every day.  As soon as this post is published, I'm going to make it official: Beyond the Black Gate is now part of My Daily Read.

And it was this post that did it for me.  There is so much right about it that I don't know where to start.  The first cover IS D&D for me.  My older brother owned that set when I first started playing, and I loved looking over those miniatures--even though he hadn't painted most of them.

A Healthy Gamer is a Playing Gamer

As I sit in my gaming lair pondering the nature of our hobby and our lives in general, I have come to the conclusion (not original by any means) that our hobby does not lend itself to a healthy lifestyle. Picture the average gaming situation: Sitting around a table with a bunch of people, eating copious amounts of junk food, drinking sugar-laden and/or calorie-laden beverages, and doing little physical activity beyond rolling some dice or lifting a rulebook for quick perusal. Take this scene and stretch it across multiple hours per month (for those lucky enough to do so) and a recipe for dangerous living is born.

Now before I go any further, I am going to say that this blog is NOT going to become a place where I discuss health all the time. In fact, the only reason that it has entered my thoughts today is that my stream of consciousness took me back to several blogs just before and after the New Year that talked about gaming resolutions for 2010. Many of those touched upon the idea of trying to place more of a focus on health than last year. I think that it is fair to say that most of us are starting to get up there in age and we all immensely enjoy a hobby that, by itself, does nothing for our physical wellbeing. It may do a lot for our emotional and mental wellbeing—but not so for our bodies.

I am also going to say that I can be as unhealthy as the next guy. Sitting down and finishing-off a bag of tortilla chips, a jar of salsa, and a one liter of Coke by myself is a favourite pastime of mine.

But with those things said, I do believe that there is room to at least broach the subject from time to time, compare notes, maybe even throw out some ideas or tips. So here I go.

I truly believe that part of the fun of playing rpgs is getting together with a group of friends and doing the aforementioned “eating copious amounts of junk food, drinking sugar-laden and/or calorie-laden beverages, and doing little physical activity beyond rolling some dice or lifting a rulebook.” That is part of the experience—no way around that. And I don’t want to change that. Instead, what I do recommend is changing our diets outside of the gaming environment, so that when we do game, we can afford to be a little unhealthy because we are that much healthier the rest of the time.

What do I recommend? I recommend that everybody purchase a cookbook that my wife uses for our family that is healthy, tasty, and just plain full of awesome. The name of the book is The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre. You can order it directly from their website or from Amazon although Amazon is currently Out of Stock. The recipes are healthy, the food is really tasty, and it contains recipes for foods that you would swear are not ‘healthy’ because foods that good just cannot be. And to be clear, I do not know either of the authors, nor do I have any financial stake in you purchasing their book. I recommend it because we use it, we love it, and we are eating healthier as a family than we ever have.

I’ll get off my soapbox now. I would invite anyone else in the blogosphere to perhaps comment here or, even better, throw up a post of their own talking about health. Even just talking about it may cause some people to take action to improve their situations, leading to longer-lived gamers (hence more gaming) and more fun for everyone. If you have any question as to why I believe that this is important, repeat after me: A healthy gamer is a playing gamer.

Writing Fiction for Children (And Me)

I have always been interested in writing--and not just for rpgs but writing fiction.  I like to write stories.  I'd like to someday try my hand at writing a novel--if only for myself.  Of course, 100, 200, 250+ thousand words is a lot, and even the thought of that is daunting to me.  But I do want to try to write something longer than ten to fifteen pages.  I think that I have hit upon a way to write a little each day and eventually end up with a sizable story.

My daughter is six.  Each night, my wife and I take turns doing bedtime with her.  It always involves talking about the day for a little while, reading, hugs and kisses, saying goodnight, etc.  My daughter really enjoys being read to, despite the fact that she is a voracious reader in her own right who begins each day reading in her bed before one of us wanders in to tell her it is time to start getting ready for school.  Many of the books that she reads are about horses or ponies, unicorns, fairies, and other fantastical things.  Nice.  (And unlike many out there, I haven't even approached the idea of D&D with her yet.)

What I have decided to do is write her a story.  In addition to whatever other bedtime activities are going on, I will read her one page each night of the story that I am writing for her.  One page every other night equals 500-600 words every two days.  Not too difficult.  Shouldn't be a problem.  And I'll write something fantasy related, so I get some personal pleasure out of it as well.

I haven't thought too much about the story or what it will be about, but over the past three days, we've read the first two pages.  She seems to be enjoying it.  I think that it is a great way for us to bond and for me to work on my writing.  Who knows?  Maybe I have a future in children's literature.