C&C with the Kids

Last night, my son had a bunch of his friends over, and I GM'ed a game of C&C. For the most part, the two systems I am playing are C&C and Pathfinder. C&C works well for my son and his friends as it is simple and there are plenty of class options available.

As I have noted in my earlier blogs, for my Golarion 2009 campaign, I am going to start the characters off at the entrance to "The Goblin Cave." The basic premise is that they are searching for a minor artifact which they believe is located somewhere in the cave complex. Initially I planned for this to be a small warm up dungeon, and it has grown quite a bit, and I probably will be adding another level to it. I have no plans to make it a mega-dungeon, but it has clearly grown quite a bit. Currently it is clocking in at 12,157 words, and I suspect that it may hit 15K words before all is said and done. In my last campaign, I had put together several small dungeons that weighed in at ~4K words each, so this is quite a bit longer.

In order to get ready for my 2009 campaign, I am using my son and his friends as the play test group for the dungeon. While I am not expecting my group to play quite like the kids, it is interesting watching to see how they approach the various challenges that the dungeon has for them. After watching them for a couple of sessions, I have a couple of observations:

1. To them, it is a fun game. Yes they play video games, but there is still an attraction to pen and paper games with a group around a table.

2. They have not mastered the finer points of the encounters. To them, its about collecting stuff. In their enthusiasm to finding treasure, they sometimes miss the big picture.

3. They continually try crazy things. There is something special about this.

4. They are not rules lawyers. I find this very refreshing. They just go with the flow.

5. They are always telling each other stories about the different monsters that they have faced. The gelatinous cube holds a special place in their folk lore, as it ate up two of their characters in an earlier adventure. When faced with a fight or run situation with a G-Cube bearing down on them, they choose to fight, which was not the smartest thing for them to do, as it just swept them up as it continued sliding along.

One of the things that I do want to share with my son is the history of the game itself, as I think that is what really makes the game special. The game has gone through several iterations, and I think each one adds something to the game. There is a history there, that I can say I have been a part off. This is not Monopoly or Scrabble, but this is something entirely different, and I think it falls into the category of respecting the game. I think that the players (& DM's/GM's) that respect the game, have a better appreciation of it. It gives it more depth than your average game.

All in all, it was a good time, and I think they all had fun, which is really the most important thing anyway.