I’ve been greatly inspired by The Newbie DM’s rpgKids publication and then by the Daddy Dungeon Master’s account of trying rpgKids with his son. My 2 year old is a bright kid. Well…isn’t everyone’s kid? He`ll be 3 in a couple weeks. He has a robust vocabulary, constantly uses full sentences consisting of 12-15 words, and can pass gas on demand. Cool kid.

While it’s too early to tell what his interests are other than Mickey Mouse, Matchbox cars, and playing with his Thomas the Train play table, I would still like to encourage a vivid imagination and critical thinking skills.  A few weeks ago we were up in our attic putting something away. Actually, it was some of my old Generation 1 Transformers toys that I’ve been showing him. While up there, he saw an old globe I have tucked away. He announced to me, “Daddy? This is the Earth.” I stopped, still holding the box, and looking at him. I tried to think when he would have been up here last as the door is locked. “Yes. It sure is. …Where did you learn that?”.  He answered by spinning it slowly and asking me, “Where do we live on here?” Absolutely floored, I dropped my box and went over to give him his first geography lesson.

But that got me thinking..if he can understand a giant map like a globe, could he comprehend something much more important in the grand scheme of life? … a D&D map?!

A few weeks went by but last night I busted out my Paizo dry-erase battlemap and a black marker. I also had a bucket of tokens made in the style of The Newbie DM’s token tutorial. He was very attentive and very interested in handling everything and giving it a thorough inspection.

Rule #1 for others trying this. Have -TWO- dry erase markers. I only had one at the moment and my boy wanted to monopolize it. Instead of turning this experience in to a sharing lesson that would most likely end with him having to sit in the corner, I let him doodle on the map. It occurred to me that  he has never seen these tools before as I normally game online via Gametable when he’s asleep.  Pretty soon, he has his first battle map scribbled…er… drawn:

In exchange for letting him play with the tokens, he allowed me to use the marker. I quickly drew a rectangle. “Okay kiddo. Pretend you’re in your room but you’re up on the ceiling looking down at your room.” I made a space for his door and put his bed and rocking chair on the map. He put down the tokens and began to pay careful attention to what I was drawing. I asked him where his dresser would be but he pointed to the wrong end of the map. It dawned on my that perhaps I need more realistic representations of the items in his room for this to work at this age.

So I abandoned the bedroom map idea and went for something else. I drew a 10 x 2 square hallway and placed two tokens at one end next to each other. I explained to him that each token takes turns moving and showed him that on one token’s turn, he can move 2 squares and the other can move 3 squares. We were going to have a race to see which token would make it to the end first, of course giving him the token that can move 3 squares.  However, when he began to touch and move the tokens around, the lines smudged on the map and he became distracted with playing with the tokens again.

In the end, I’ve decided to bring out these tools/toys regularly so he becomes familiar with them before I began diving in to some game theory and moving tokens around. Also, I plan on making a map of his bedroom using printed cut outs from pictures I`ll take of his bed, chair, dresser, and so on so he can place them on the map himself.

I`m very excited about all of this!