My five year-old daughter (aka “Thing One”) has taken yet another step on the path to becoming a full-fledged gamer. She’s touched on board games, miniatures (well, a stripped-down version of Heroscape), and now she’s tasted roleplaying games.
We played Faery’s Tale from Firefly Games. We didn’t really use the system (it’s too complicated for a kid whose just started kindergarten), but embraced most everything else: the fairy tale “Brightwood” setting, the different types of fairies, and the fairy social system (which I think is one of the coolest parts of the game).
Thing One chose to play a Brownie, which meant she worked in a peasant’s cottage, could turn invisible, and work simple “household magic” (i.e., simple repairs and construction). She named her Brownie “Lena,” which is actually one of most normal names she’s made up. For our first outing, I kept it simple, so it was the two of us playing on a Saturday afternoon while everyone else was napping.
It turns out my daughter is like me in that she can’t roleplay sitting down. We started at the dining room table, but she didn’t really get into it until she got to feet and started essential LARPing the scene. Whenever the scene changed, she’d lead us into another room: the living room was the forest where she freed a fellow fairy from a spider’s web; the kitchen was a clearing outside the night-troll’s cave; the basement, of course, was the troll’s lair.
My proudest moment (in a session full of proud moments) was when Lena tricked the troll into walking into the sunlight (and turning to stone) by secretly moving his clock ahead. In true gamer fashion, after I described the scene of the troll’s lair, Thing One asked, “Does he have a clock?” So yes, of course he did.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience for both of us. I was impressed with my daughter’s creativity and imagination, and she had a blast with her fairy tale adventure. The game took a little over an hour, which seemed about right. Thing One’s still a bit short on the attention span, and nap time runs two hours at the longest, so it’s best to keep these things short.
Most importantly, she’s looking forward to playing again. And to tell you the truth, so am I.
