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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Musings - I'm Building a Pig From A Kit

One thing that came out in last week's musings that one of my readers felt it was unfair to count a daughter as a female player because she had been manufactured rather than recruited. Fie on this, as we say around this blog. Fie! I am a wholehearted supporter of manufacturing your own gamers, from kits or by other more standard stork/cabbage routes. 

The trick, of course, is getting them to properly embrace the gaming parts of their heritage - and then to rope in their friends. In my case my 6 year old daughter is very interested in the concept, even if she's a little put off by the content of the games (she doesn't like anything scary and is very susceptible to emotional downbeats) but I plan to lure her into gaming after her 8th birthday with an Uncle Scrooge game.

The three kid players in my Parent/Kid gaming group are all very interested in gaming - for two of them their dad has been running some games for them for a couple of years, while the other has seen mom go off and game monthly for the entire time he's been alive - so getting them in to play hasn't been a hard sell, but I worry about luring my children's friends into the hobby. 

How have any/all of you done on getting your kids to play, and then getting their friends to play, so that we might produce a solid base to pass along this great hobby to the next generation? 

2 comments:

  1. Both my kids enjoy RPGs, but I have to say I never really took active measures to recruit them. I think they just observed the grownups having fun at the weekly game sessions and so asked if they could play.

    I think that dynamic is actually important. You aren't _asking_ your children to play, you're _allowing_ them to do so.

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  2. Don't forget, one aspect of being allowed to play at our house was "being old enough." So you also made playing RPGs a privilege of being a "big kid," pushing the dynamic even further toward the desirable.

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