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Glorantha for the Yoots

My Young Son's First Roleplaying Adventure

By Ian Young
Web Adaptation by Nick Eden

Introduction

About a year ago, my then-4-year-old son was watching me read my copy of HeroQuest with considerable interest.  He'd been eager to tell impromptu bed-time fantasy stories for the previous year, and had been discovering an interest in board games (checkers, Candyland, chess), so when I told him the book I was reading was a game, he declared that wanted to play.  I already had some ideas rolling around in my head, and I was eager to put my new game to actual play, so it wasn’t long before we got down to business.

The stories that follow relate my son’s first steps in roleplaying – first character creation, and then actual play as the campaign developed.  In them I also deal with the roles of being a new HeroQuest Narrator, and a father playing games with his very young children, both of which present some unique challenges.

Character Creation

Character creation presented the first of the challenges posed by using the HeroQuest system in a game with a 4-year-old.  First, his degree of literacy, while admirable, wasn't up to the challenge of learning the rules himself, and writing a 100-word narrative was right out of the question.  So what I decided upon was a combination of the "List Method" and "As You Go" character creation rules.  What I did was ask a few pivotal, leading questions – keywords, really  – letting my son improvise from there, assuming that we'd probably not come anywhere spending all of the character creation points.  Any unused character points could be spent later as he got the hang of the game and developed new ideas about what he wanted his character to be like.

Very roughly, here's how his character took form.  In spite of some initial confusion, I was pleased by how creative he got.

Father:  Fly?  Uh...why don't we just stop here for now?

So, using the suggestion from page 177, I decided to start his keywords off at 13 and use just 15 extra points instead of 20.  Relationships I let start at 17.  His character, before beginning play, looked like this:

All told, 12 of 15 character points have been spent, for a 12-year-old Mevi is downright dangerous with a sling, and he has some very interesting background to play up without being too deep and complicated.  I decided that I might give him more character points if it seemed he needed them to introduce new ideas as they occur without trying to explain them as in-character development with Hero Point expenditures.

First session

Before I even decided to sit down with my son to create a character, I figured that our first session of play would be a variation on a simple scenario I like to use to introduce new or young players to roleplaying games – a young cowherd on the way to market saves a nobleman's daughter from a troll...with a twist.  However, my son threw me a curve in describing a boy from Teshnos, so I changed things around a to fit the new setting.

As the game began, Mevi's father entrusted his son with the task of taking two bundles of furs – half a season's worth of labor – to market to trade for gold.  While walking along the forest path with the bundles of furs yoked over his shoulders, Mevi spotted a large, upright lizard (later revealed to be a beaked dragonewt) coming toward him along the path with a large sack slung over its shoulder.  Something in the sack seemed to be writhing about, and Mevi was almost sure he heard the muffled voice of someone crying from inside.

This juncture proved the first big hurdle for a 4-year-old.  Though playing a much more mature boy, my son's initial reactions were along the lines of "I go back to get my dad."  So I coaxed and coached him along by letting him know that Mevi was too far from home to get his dad in time, and that Mevi was probably old enough to do something on his own.  I emphasised that as the dragonewt drew closer (it apparently had not noticed Mevi yet), it became clearer that there seemed to be a person inside the sack trying hard to get out.  At this, my son took the bait and Mevi sprang into action.

Before the game started, I realised that the bookkeeping necessary to perform extended contests was simply beyond my son's grasp, so all contests would be simple contests – no AP bidding.  I was a little concerned that combat might seem rather flat with this method alone, but then I realised that the boy had nothing to compare it against.

Mevi ducked off the forest path, dropped the yoke of furs, and readied his sling with the sharpest stone he had.  For some reason my son declared that he was aiming for the dragonewt's belly and Mevi cut loose from ambush.  Mevi rolled a Success as I scrambled through the book trying to figure out what resistance a beaked dragonewt should have in combat (drat! no stats for dragonewts in the rulebook!), eventually settling on not-too-tough resistance of 17.  The dragonewt rolled a Success as well, though higher than Mevi's, granting the boy a Minor Victory with the bump from his Sling mastery, striking the lizard square in the belly and winding it soundly.  The dragonewt dropped the sack and doubled over to the ground.

Round two faced the same problems of indecision for my son.  At this point, I think he was either too tense to decide or concerned for the dragonewt's welfare.  I pushed (maybe just a bit too hard) to counter his declarations that Mevi ran away at this point, reminding him that someone was in the sack who seemed to need help.  I also used this moment of indecision to inform him that the dragonewt was staggering to its feet and scanning around to determine who had attacked it.  My son then firmly declared that Mevi was really good at hiding and promptly did so.

I referred to Mevi's Occupation Keyword abilities, noting that Hide would be at 13, which didn't strike me as "really good".  Spending the remaining 3 character points would raise him to only 16, so I gave him a freebie and wrote down Hide 17.  No more character points for developing his background, which left me a little dissatisfied.  In any case, the dragonewt rolled a Failure to Spot Assailant, while Mevi rolled a sound Success, a Minor Victory.  I interpreted this to mean that the dragonewt had figured the general direction from which the stone had come, but didn't know precisely where Mevi was hiding.  With the giant lizard shambling ever closer in his direction, drawing its fearsome klanth from its scabbard (the description of the klanth did wonders for character motivation), Mevi loaded up another sharp rock and aimed for the dragonewt's head.  Again, both contestants rolled successes, and again Mevi rolled lower, granting him another Minor Victory with the mastery bump.  The dragonewt reeled backwards at the sharp blow to its forehead from the whizzing rock, falling down thoroughly dazed.

Again, the state of tension and concern for the dragonewt bogged the action down a fair bit and I had trouble getting my son to make a decision.  Eventually (again with perhaps too much encouragement from me), Mevi skirted around the fallen dragonewt to the unattended sack, releasing a young girl from inside.  The girl had long, wavy blonde hair, dark brown eyes, and pale skin, like no one Mevi had ever seen before (she was, in fact, a Yelmalion from Sun County in Prax, taken as a slave by Morokanths and literally sold down the river – not that either my son or Mevi had any idea what that meant).  Here again there was trouble getting my son to make a decision as to what to do, with the dragonewt recovering and the girl still in bonds.  He eventually resorted to asking me to decide for him, but I encouraged him to choose the most simple yet heroic thing to do.  At that suggestion, Mevi led the girl to the nearby trading village and (hopefully) safety, leaving the bundles of furs behind with the dragonewt.

The girl's arrival in the village caused quite a stir with her strange looks and Mevi's state of distress.  Not long after, though, the dragonewt arrived with the furs in tow, demanding to see the person who attacked him.  This was a fun example of an introduction to the strangeness of Glorantha, as my son had assumed the giant lizard was just a monster with no sort of legal rights.  The village headman was summoned and an impromptu hearing was held.  Both Mevi's story and the dragonewts were recounted, the dragonewt demanding his fairly-purchased slave to be returned as well as compensation for his wounds.  Here my son rose to the occasion, refusing to turn the girl back over.  The rest of the humans in the village were sympathetic to Mevi's reasoning, feeling more akin to the foreign girl than to the dragonewt, so the headman informed Mevi that he would have to provide fair price for the slave and compensation for the wounds he had caused.  The dragonewt protested slightly, but allowed that the bundles of exotic furs would suffice, and the bargain was struck.  The dragonewt left with Mevi's father's furs, and Mevi left for home with the girl.

Upon returning home, Mevi's father flew into a rage, declaring that without the proceeds from half a season's hunting and trapping, he wouldn't be able to support his own family, much less the extra mouth he brought home.  Mevi was cast out of the home with the girl and told not to return until he could come up with the fortune he lost and could earn his own keep.  I was surprised that my son took this part as well as he did, though he was visibly shaken – perhaps it was a little too intense, but it played out well.

That night by firelight in the camp that Mevi made for himself and the strange girl, she was able to communicate her name to him – Ruihella – and draw a picture of the Sun Dome temple from where she lived.  Mevi recognised the temple that she drew as resembling the Kralorelan-influenced Yelm temple he had once seen on a far-ranging hunting trip he had taken in the mountains bordering on Matkondu in northern Teshnos.  My son had already decided that he wanted to return the girl to her parents, so he declared that Mevi would lead the girl to the Yelm temple in the mountains where the priests there could hopefully help him find out where she was from and how to get her there.

Thus ended the first session.

Session Two

This session got off to an interesting start.  My son declared that his character didn't actually have his golden cuffs and boots yet, but that he wanted to find them during the adventure.  Frankly, I was stunned – a desire for delayed gratification?  From a 4-year-old?  I thought this was a particularly cool thing, and very much in keeping with the narrative style of HeroQuest.  Just for that, I arbitrarily decided to bump the possession from Golden Bracers and Boots 17 up to 1W for free.

The journey from Wokistan to the mountain temple of Yelm took a number of days, described as tough hiking, but not presenting any immediate dangers.  Basically, I just wanted to get Mevi and Ruihella to the temple and then on to greater adventure.  Once in sight of the golden-domed temple, Ruihella expressed great relief and joy, which pleased my son nicely, though I think he may have thought he had already gotten her home.  The temple guards were reluctant to let the two foreign children in at first, but Ruihella was able to exhibit her related cult status while Mevi related recent events.  They were admitted to the courtyard and told to wait.

Before long, a temple functionary arrived to greet them and find out what the two children sought of Yelm and the temple.  Again, my son briefly recounted the story, emphasising the link between Ruihella's drawing of a domed temple and this temple.  The priest then turned to Ruihella and began to speak to her, and Ruihella began to speak back to him haltingly.  The priest shortly informed Mevi that she was able to speak a dialectical form of an ancient temple language, and she was able to let him know that she was from a Sun Dome temple in a strange land far to the west – Prax and Sun County.  Further, she had been taken captive by marauding Morokanths, sold into slavery, spending weeks on a ship until they made port and she was sold to the dragonewt.  The priest was sure to impress upon the two children that it was a great honor to be chosen by the inscrutable dragonewts, even if it was possibly with the intent of being eaten.  At this point, Ruihella produced a necklace that was hidden in her clothing, at the sight of which the priest's eyes went wide with surprise and awe.  He then hurriedly excused himself to consult with his fellow priests and promised to return shortly.

Now, it's worth mentioning at this point that I played fast and loose quite a bit here.  In my original plans, this scene was supposed to take place at the Sun Dome temple in Sartar, in which case the language barrier wouldn't be quite so significant.  However, with the relocation to Teshnos things had to be stretched significantly.  Gloranthan truists may be quick to point out that there is no known temple language among the Yelm pantheon that spans the entire continent of Genertela.  Well, there is now in my game, and at least it is still subject to dialectical drift.  Also, the exact nature of the necklace and is still undetermined at this point.  It was originally rolled up at random from the old RQI book Plunder, a necklace that serves as a deed to land, and was the original inspiration for the character of Ruihella all those many years ago.  So, basically, Ruihella is heir to some special role among the ranks of the Yelm pantheon worshippers, something important enough to raise eyebrows all the way on the other side of the continent.  Again, this would be more easily waived aside if the distance involved was simply between Prax and Sartar.  Thankfully, my 4-year-old son is not so critical.

I noticed that all this talky-talky stuff was beginning to make my son's eyes glaze and he began to fiddle with the dice.  Seizing on the priest's absence as an opportunity to introduce a gratuitous simple contest to keep the boy's interest, I had a captain of the temple guard approach Mevi, scoffing at his claims that a mere boy bested a dragonewt warrior with only a sling.  My son pressed his claim to his merit, whereupon the captain challenged Mevi to a contest.  He walked twenty paces and balanced a gold piece on edge on top of a low wall.  Knock the gold piece off with his sling, the captain challenged, and you can keep the coin.  Two good things in play here – a chance to show off his one really top-notch ability, and also an opportunity to start collecting that repayment for the loss of his father's furs.  The first roll, given Mevi's skill and the tiny size of the coin matched a success against a success, with my son rolling lower again – a Marginal Victory.  The coin was grazed by the whizzing stone, setting it spinning and then rattling to a halt still on top of the wall.  Amid the jeers of the other onlooking guards, the captain grudgingly picked up the coin and flipped it to Mevi.  However, declaring it a lucky shot that barely succeeded, the captain further bet Mevi another gold piece that he couldn't repeat the feat, obviously hoping to win back his losses.  Mevi accepted and the captain placed a second gold coin on top of the wall.  This time around my son rolled a 1, a critical hit, and the roll for the coin failed – a Major Victory.  Mevi hit the gold coin squarely, sending the coin ricocheting off the wall so hard it made the captain duck.  The other guards cheered Mevi heartily, the captain handed him the second gold piece, then clapped the boy on the shoulder and half-jokingly declared that Mevi would have to teach him how to use a sling like that some day.  My son seemed deeply satisfied by the results of the contest, particularly excited by the captain's praise.

After the contest, the priest returned to the courtyard and invited Mevi and Ruihella into an inner chamber to meet with a small group of other priests.  There, the priests explained the importance to the temple of Yelm and Yelm's children that Ruihella be returned to her rightful home.  Something about destiny and yadda-yadda-lofty-templespeak.   Mevi was praised for his bravery and his role in restoring Ruihella to her intended path.  Furthermore, he was invited to help return her to her home if he wished to do so.  My son readily agreed, thoughts of Mevi's previous life in the forest far behind, and Ruihella expressed her eagerness to include Mevi as a companion.  Preparations were set in motion to organise a mission to travel to Prax.

At this point I asked my son if he wanted to adventure in the desert or on board a ship.  He eagerly announced that he preferred to go by ship, but that afterwards he wanted to travel in the desert on a horse.  So, a party of monks and guards was put together to travel from the mountains of Matkondu to the bustling port city of Gio to hire a ship bound for the West.  I foresaw shades of Star Wars already – "The seaport of Gio.  You'll not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

The session concluded with the small caravan assembling for its departure.  Bactrian camels laden with supplies.  Guards and monks mounted on decorated horses.  The captain of the guards resplendent in his full armor and horse bow over his back, greeting Mevi as an honored equal.  Ruihella appearing on the back of a cloud-white horse, freshly washed and dressed in new silken finery, a bow across her back and a spear at her side.  Mevi was offered a mount, but being a backwoods trapper, he hardly even knew what a horse was.  I wrote Ride Horse 6 on his character sheet and let him roll.  Not good.  Mevi failed and the horse succeeded, indicating a Minor Defeat.  The horse minced and pulled as Mevi attempted to mount, causing the boy to slip from the stirrup and fall to the ground.  My son was unhappy with this result, but Ruihella rode up to Mevi, offering her hand to him and helping him astride to set behind her.  Both Ruihella and the captain promised to teach Mevi to ride in the days to come.  My son was satisfied and we brought the session to an end.

Session Three

By our third session, we invited my 3-year-old daughter to join the campaign.  She had been watching us play and expressed an interest in actually playing, so my son offered her the character of Ruihella.  This, unfortunately, didn't work out very well.  The girl is whipsmart, but wasn't quite ready to structure her imaginative thoughts into a linear narrative.

None the less, she had a fun time watching my son and me play, she became quite excited by the narrative, and was fascinated by the die-rolling.  In general, she enjoyed the game in the role of an audience.  So, she's expressed an interest in attending our game sessions now, if not actually playing them (though she actively roots for Ruihella and occasionally shouts out desired actions for her to take, which I try to heed when appropriate).

With regard to the action, Mevi and Ruihella set out from the Solar temple in a caravan of supply-laden camels and warrior guards, resplendent in yellow, gold, and red silk uniforms, mounted on fine horses.  Following Mevi's unfortunate mishap with his first attempt to ride a horse, Ruihella had taught him the basics of riding (spending a Hero Point for Ride 13), and the captain of the guards had begun to teach him the fundamentals of the bow and arrow (another HP for Archery 13).  Mevi also taught the captain how to use a sling properly, which was a good ego-stroke for the boy.  These events were used to help drill the mechanics, but they didn't pack much drama, so I decided to cut loose and spring something more fantastic on him.

By and large, the caravan stuck close to a river for their journey, but in order to make better time, they eventually struck out across a plain covered in a vast sea of tall grasses.  Swaying waves of green and tan grass tassels washed around the heads of horses and the seemingly legless torsos of their riders, heads of camels with their humps like swaying islands covered in packs of supplies.  Everything seemed calm and uneventful until, springing from its hiding place in the grass, a huge tiger leapt across the back of Ruihella's horse, seizing the girl in its huge jaws and unseating her from her saddle.  Much to Mevi's surprise, the tiger didn't complete the arc of its leap to the ground, but continued to bound swiftly higher and higher into the middle air – a Storm Tiger!

Mevi readied a stone in his sling, but was afraid of hitting Ruihella, so he sat frozen in his saddle for a moment, trying to figure out how to help the girl.  Just when all seemed lost, the tiger growing smaller in the distance, a sleek Cloud Leopard bounded next to Mevi, whispering in a low growl, "Quick! Grab hold!"  The beauty of playing with a little boy is that he did just as the leopard said without paranoid hesitation.  With Mevi holding on for dear life around the cat's neck, the Cloud Leopard proceeded to leap upwards from cloud to cloud, pursuing the Storm Tiger and Ruihella.

Things got good here.  My son declared that he was going to try to bean the tiger with his sling after all.  When I asked him how he was going to free his hands, he stated that he was going to hold onto the leopard with only his legs.  A bold move, and the roll went surprisingly well, allowing him to do just that.  Unfortunately, in the subsequent roll to sling a stone, my son rolled a 20 – a fumble – and the fleeing tiger did pretty well on his resistance roll.  The result was that, in all the excitement and bustle, Mevi failed to cast the stone at all, but instead smacked himself in the forehead with it and fell off the back of the leopard, plummeting toward the ground far below.  The leopard snarled out to him, "Reach for the clouds!"

My son took the advice to heart and Mevi tried to grab the nearest cloud as he fell.  He was close, but managed only a Marginal Failure.  Mevi felt the cloud almost break his fall, but he still slipped aside and continued to fall.  The next two attempts didn't go much better, and eventually, Mevi had to be saved from certain death by the Cloud Leopard who snatched him by the collar at just the last moment and began leaping upward through the clouds again.  The leopard eventually let Mevi off on a cloud, exhorting him to follow the tiger and save the girl.  "It's vital that you do so! Don't fear the sky. Leap from cloud to cloud as I do – it's your birthright!"  Then the leopard leapt off and away into the mist.

Now, if you'll go all the way back to the beginning of this story, you'll note that my son said he wanted his character to be able to fly, but I poo-poo'd that notion.  Well, I changed my mind, and it makes sense in context now.  I haven't told my son yet how it is that Mevi is able to do it, but the character now has the ability of Cloud Leap 13.  Unbeknownst to my son (and probably incomprehensibly, too), Mevi has become caught piggy-in-the-middle of a conflict between Storm Rune extremists who are out to undermine the power of both the Solar temples and certain Storm Rune moderates who are trying to rein in the extremists to maintain a state of détente with the Solar pantheon.  Of course, the only thing that really matters is that, now, Mevi really can fly…sort of.

Session Four

Good Lord.  I let almost six months pass as everyone became busy with bigger fish to fry before getting back to the game.

Well, as the flu swept through the Young household, both kids were tied down to the home fort, the videos had all been watched a couple times over, and we were all getting a little stir-crazy.  In a moment of inspiration, I said to my son, "Hey, should we pick up where we let Mevi off?” grabbed the book and the dice, and instead of debating the matter we just got down to it.

Here's an added bonus.  My daughter, who is now 3-and-a-half years old (you’ll recall her from our previous session – "I'm a princess! I wear a pink dress!"), who had just gotten done vomiting the only meal she'd had for the day, who was staring at us like a zombie from the sofa, pricked up her ears as my son and I re-capped who Mevi was, what he could do, and what he was going to do now that he was on the mountain peak stalking the storm tiger.  She slid off the sofa, disappeared to find herself a pencil and paper, picked up a die (the frosted clear one), and settled in on the living room floor with us.  She had matured a lot in the intervening six months, and she was into it.  Agreeing to take the role of Ruihella, her only question was, "Does she wear a dress?"  I showed her the robes and pants that Jen Yu wears in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, suggested that they were yellow and red in color, mentioned the rose-gold sunburst medallion at her throat, and my daughter was fine with it.

So here's what happened...

Mevi leapt from the clouds to the mountain's peak, and proceeded to use the hunter's skill he learned from his father to track the Storm Tiger.  It wasn't easy, but he managed it.  However, the Storm Tiger was waiting in hiding to ambush our young hero.  What the tiger didn't count on was rolling a natural 20 and fumbling his ambush.  Even masteries didn't keep Mevi from scoring a marginal victory – Mevi was alerted to something wrong.  So, taking a cue from the character Haku in the Hayao Miyazaki film Spirited Away, my son declared a new magical power, picking up a pinch of snow and blowing it from his fingertips in the Storm Tiger's direction, succeeding in creating a disorienting swirl of cloud and ice.  In the confusion, the tiger stumbled and Ruihella got away, while Mevi readied and loosed a stone from his sling.  The slingstone connected with the tiger's front leg, causing him to go lame for at least the time being.

Given the break from the threat of the Storm Tiger, my son had Mevi try to hurry Ruihella away and off the mountaintop.  My daughter had other ideas, though.  Grabbing Mevi's bow, Ruihella nocked an arrow, let loose and pinned the tiger's other front leg.  Not to be outdone (and trying to cover for Ruihella's foolhardy bravery), Mevi slung another stone, beaning the tiger in the head.  At this point I expected our heroes to beat a hasty escape, but my daughter was just beginning to get the hang of rolling the dice.  Ruihella nocked another arrow and she declared that she was aiming for the tiger's eyes.

Now, archery is Ruihella's best skill, and my daughter proceeded to roll amazingly well.  Bumping up with a mastery, while the tiger rolled unfortunately poorly, Ruihella plugged him in the eye.  At this point, Mevi took to higher ground to get a better shot at the tiger (don't ask me why – it didn't make much sense at the time, but my son's not a seasoned tactician) and break one of its other legs, while my daughter declared that Ruihella intended to plug the Storm Tiger in the other eye...and rolled well enough to do just that!  The great beast stumbled to the snow, quite dead.

At this point, I realised that a combat like this wasn't playing out properly with simple contests.  Strictly speaking, the first simple contest should have been the only one, resulting in a minor victory and a broken foreleg on the tiger.  However, my son and daughter wanted to keep going at it, so I sort of fudged together a rough extended contest.

Having slain the storm tiger, Mevi rolled exceptionally well on his skinning ability and took the exquisite hide from the beast.  Then, with the hide strapped to his back, he lead Ruihella to the cliff's edge, and hand-in-hand they leapt downward from cloud to cloud until they got to the ground at the caravan.  With the skin as a trophy, the two were hailed as heroes and honored with song and dance at a feast in camp that evening.  The look of pride and excitement on my kids' faces was like treasure to me.  My son was particularly happy, as he intended for Mevi to bring the skin home to his father to repay the loss of the hides at the beginning of the adventure.  Good memory this one has.

From there, the caravan made it's way to Gio on the Teshnan coast.  Some of the porters on caravan talked Mevi into letting them cure the hide and make a gift to him and Ruihella.  Once in Gio, they presented the two of them with beautiful storm tiger skin coats, Mevi's with the paws and top of the head still in place (my own little Harrek...sort of).  Again, my kids were thrilled, and I'll allow a tidy augment to Mevi's Cloud Leaping ability while he wears his.  In Gio itself, I regaled them with descriptions of the sights and sounds of the bustling, urban port, with its exotic peoples and atmosphere.  Together, Mevi and Ruihella explored the marketplace, trying to catch jewel-eyed geckos from sandstone walls, and Mevi settled on buying a prehensile chameleon as a pet.  I left them there, their caravan camped to one side of the market, while the captain of the guards seeks passage on a ship bound for Corflu.  Night falls, and the caravan guards vigilantly set watch against opportunistic thieves....

Future Sessions

As I write this, Mevi and Ruihella have already set sail from Gio aboard a westward-bound Kralorelan junk.  They’ve met and made friends among a congregation of sea-going raft-homes of the Sofali Turtle People.  Their new friend among the Sofali is about to get them embroiled in a conflict with the Seabird Army as they help try to recover and re-establish the last of the long-lost Sofali egg nests on Choralinthor Bay.  Ruihella will eventually find her way home, and may also eventually find herself astride a unicorn and being inducted into the temple of Yelorna.  If Mevi continues far enough west, he may find himself squired to an unruly Seshnelan knight.  And, of course, Mevi will eventually discover the secret of his birthright, regain the riches that he lost his father, and return home a hero.

I don’t know how long it will take to play out all these adventures, but it’s an opportunity I look forward to in all the years to come.