Magical Children - RPG for kids

I ran a session in my experimental RPG about Magical Children with 8 players yesterday, aged 6-43 (7 children one grown man, three boys and four girls!). I use a liberally adopted version of D&D rules and a whole lot of improvisation and spin the story very much on the spot. The premise is that in 2012 something happened awakening magical abilities in children (and possibly some adults) and subsequently special summer camps have been developed for such kids in Iceland - in other countries special schools have been set up .... yep - there is definitely a Pottereseque element at play here... The summer camp Huggusnudur is where three campaigns they have been on so far are based... and in the last one there is serious involvement of sci fi, what with the enemy being a mysterious alien. It is implied that somehow the 'event' of 2012 is connected to these alien visitations, but this remains unclear and for a later date to specify (or not). I experimented with allowing the players to have cell phones and this has some interesting consequences.... running a game with this large number of players, especially children, is a challenge, but on the whole I think we had a lot of fun. The last part of the adventure was complete instant creation where they had a class in IT magic, in which they conjured forth a ship, a spaceship, a sword, a star, a chair and last but not least a dragon's egg! All items that will be crucial in their future endeavours - after they return the Princess the rescued from Gomliholkur the alien to her palace in the mountains.... or while this goes on, I'm not sure.

My daughters and their friends have really enjoyed these session, even though they have been few and far between. They get their creative juices flowing - there is a lot of laughter (I enjoy going for things being a bit loony) .... there is excitement and even occasionally it gets a little bit scary.... It is important to have simple mechanics - my approach to DM-ing clearly favours story and fun above technicalities - just like my teaching style does. I really recommend trying this out - getting to know a little bit about RPGs and then just setting up a little game - if it fails miserably that's a lesson in itself, like we say in Reykjavík:

það fer ekki verr en illa!

Good gaming!

Leaving Mundania

I was inspired to sit down and write by one of my  cultural heroes, Cory Doctorow, by his comments in this interview, on how blogging is a powerful mnemonic device. This interview also reminded me of what I, of course, know to be true (not least now after reading Outliers) that practice makes perfect, and thus, by writing this blog I'm not wasting time from other stuff I could do in connection with either my job as a teacher or my role as a graduate student.

Anyway, I finished Leaving Mundania by Lizzie Stark just recently. This is a non-fiction book about Larping. It's a very interesting read.

The subject is fascinating. We get to know all kinds of different approaches to larping, from the traditional foam weapons and calling out damage to the weird and fascinating world of Nordic Art Larp. Stark has no previous knowledge or experience with table top RPGs so this also makes for an interesting and fresh approach.

The writing is personal and captivating, even moving in places. I especially found her confession concerning how she resents the fact that her husband is not her first reader to be moving, and it made me wonder how that will have gone down.... (208).

I highly recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in gaming, and the weird and wonderful variety of human endeavours.... It serves well to quench prejudice people have against this hobby, even though I see a number of problems in getting started - mostly problems concerning time and effort. However, her discussion of the so-called 'free-form' format, a mix between larp and table-top, is something I'm definitely going to look into...