This weekend is my 10th year gamemaster anniversary! I am not sure how I feel about this. I guess I still feel uncertain because somehow I think I should know how to GM by now. And I guess I kind of do, but I also don’t. We are having a lot of fun even though I still fumble my way through it all, and that is what tabletop RPG’s are about. This weekend though, I am going to take a big leap of faith in one of my campaigns; a toddler is going to join the table.
I already wrote a blog some time ago about how my GM life started. It was a bit messy and chaotic, but I have learned that is just who I am. I think I can boast quit some experience as a GM; I have run several rule systems, I did plenty of oneshots, I have ran and still run several campaigns, long-running ones as well, and of course I did a lot of demo’s at cons and fairs. So yeah, I have had lots of different types of players at my tables, and have had to improvise a lot because of crazy, cool, weird, questionable and sometimes even very smart player actions. All in all, even though I am still always doubting on if I do it “right”, I can rely (and boast about) a lot of experience.
Next up: the leap of faith with the toddler.
Yeah… I am going to do that.
In one of my long-running campaigns, one of the players got a child about 3.5 years ago. We play about once a month, depending on calendars, schedules and life. Sometimes the kid can stay at home with the other parent, sometimes that is not possible.
Now, it is important to know that I have a child too, she is an adult now and plays in this campaign as well. When she was born I lost a lot of hobby-time, friends time, social time and so on. I am not going into any details about the why and how, but it frustrates me to see it happen to others. So, I will never tell young parents their child is not welcome, I will never exclude them because the child is… well, being a child. We play tabletop RPG’s because we are friends. We want to have fun together and the arrival of a baby should (in my opinion) not change that. It will require a lot of flexibility from everyone at the table, but that is what friends are for.
So, we had sessions with diaper-breaks, cry-as-loud-as-baby-could moments, and ones where we all had to take our shoes off because of something crawling around on the floor. When I look back I think the only one really bothered by it was the parent of the child. It was mentioned several times during the less funny moments that we all felt for the parent, and how we would have loved to take over for a bit but that would only enhance the crying volume.
But now we are at the point where the child is 3.5 years old, is capable of speaking, can climb the stairs and most of all can go MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM-MOM for a very, very, very long time. Attention is demanded, and it is demanded NOW! Either by pulling limbs of the parent, fake-crying just around the corner, stomping on the stairs, whatever it takes. That is the Terrible Threes for you. It will pass, but for now I can assure you: a crying puking baby is less of a disruption of the game than a headstrong attention-demanding toddler.
So I am going to do it!
We are going to do it, the whole party.
The toddler is going to play with us.
Although “play” is a very big word. She will sit at the table, she got her own dicebag, she gets dice with colors and she gets her own character and mini’s. Her main skills will be ‘disguise’ (that is why she gets 2 mini’s) and ‘getting in the way’. In disguise the monsters will not know she is not a monster and when she gets in the way she blocks the path of a monster. She will probably get more skills as we go, it really depends on how she likes it, if she likes it and how much she grasps of what is possible in the game.
Because I have some experience with toddlers I printed one of the mini’s in a very large size. It is about 15cm high and I hope very durable. This way she can have and play with her big mini, and the small breakable mini’s will (hopefully) not get wrecked.
We do not expect her to stay at the table and play along the whole afternoon, she can come and go as she likes. If she wants attention, she can get it at the table by joining the game. It could very well be that she does not like it, that is also fine, we will just have to come up with something else then. However this is going, it is going to require a lot of improvisation skills and a certain amount of flexibility.
As for the campaign, I am not going to change the setting, the story or the plans for that. The politics will stay complicated and grim, there are monsters and demons and lots of nasty stuff. She may learn words that might not be desirable, but she also will go to school after the summer and I am pretty sure she is going to learn those words there anyway. At least we can tell her those words are not very nice to say to other people. And yes, it might get scary, but in a safe space. And let’s be realistic, whatever horrors I might come up with at the table, tv can come up with a lot worse. That being said, she will have impact on the story, every player has, and I am very curious what my little player will come up with.
I have been told plenty of times that it is not possible to add a toddler to an adult tabletop rpg party. I wholeheartedly agree with that. It is not possible to add any toddler to any adult tabletop rpg party.
But this table is my table, the party consists of friends who have now played together for years. They have crashed and airship, found a secret library, endured baby-to-toddler years, and are now on a quest to destroy a demon who is posing as an elf. They can do anything!
It somehow feels fitting that my 10 year Gamemaster Anniversary and this leap of faith are in the same weekend.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to prepare my session for tomorrow.