The Zygote of Gaming.
Feb. 25th, 2007 06:56 pmWe went over to the world headquarters of Zygote Games this weekend for lunch (with a parasite of the day on the web site I was worried, but they assured us that the green noodles were just made with spinach) and the young Ms. Zygote and her father shared stories of his attempts to run a D&D game for her and three of her (male) friends; all players are ages 10-11. The party is her human sorceress and three elven rangers (Mr. Jackson, you have a lot to answer for) and of the three only Ms. Zygote has the slightest degree of impulse control, leading to much charging and slashing of ferocious... things like the Bags of Tricks that then spilled cute woodland animals all over the room.
Anyway, to the point: it's his second attempt at a game for these youngsters, the first being something in GURPS Mars, which the boys abandoned after a single game in favor of standard hack and slay D&D. I commented that this isn't surprising, as GURPS Mars is more demanding and less prone to hacking up orcs. Mr. Zygote disagreed, saying that he'd put in Lowland Martians for just that purpose. I've been giving it some thought, and I think it's still more demanding - he's right in that he includes viable Orc substitutes, but the very nature of giving it a setting means that the players are expected to Care about it. By saying they're on Mars you're giving them information that you consider to be relevant. Even if it has no bearing on orc-killing, it's still a detail that they're supposed to know. It would be just as distracting to say they're outside of Rivendell, of course, but setting it on Mars, or Colonial Africa, or 1450's Russia, gives them extra detail that will just distract.
This is one of the great advantages of D&D as a gateway game: the initial environment is just the dungeon. There's likely a town nearby that you came from, but it doesn't even need a name. You characters don't need backgrounds, and all of the relevant bits of a balanced character have been done for you. Just go in there, kill things and take their stuff. You can worry about the rest of it later, if ever. I'm not sure this is a good thing, but it is apparently showing its worth among the elven ranger slayers of cute woodland animals. it also means that I have a tough row to hoe once![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kriz1818's son gets to be old enough to game.
Anyway, to the point: it's his second attempt at a game for these youngsters, the first being something in GURPS Mars, which the boys abandoned after a single game in favor of standard hack and slay D&D. I commented that this isn't surprising, as GURPS Mars is more demanding and less prone to hacking up orcs. Mr. Zygote disagreed, saying that he'd put in Lowland Martians for just that purpose. I've been giving it some thought, and I think it's still more demanding - he's right in that he includes viable Orc substitutes, but the very nature of giving it a setting means that the players are expected to Care about it. By saying they're on Mars you're giving them information that you consider to be relevant. Even if it has no bearing on orc-killing, it's still a detail that they're supposed to know. It would be just as distracting to say they're outside of Rivendell, of course, but setting it on Mars, or Colonial Africa, or 1450's Russia, gives them extra detail that will just distract.
This is one of the great advantages of D&D as a gateway game: the initial environment is just the dungeon. There's likely a town nearby that you came from, but it doesn't even need a name. You characters don't need backgrounds, and all of the relevant bits of a balanced character have been done for you. Just go in there, kill things and take their stuff. You can worry about the rest of it later, if ever. I'm not sure this is a good thing, but it is apparently showing its worth among the elven ranger slayers of cute woodland animals. it also means that I have a tough row to hoe once
kriz1818's son gets to be old enough to game. 
