Thursday, May 10, 2012

I'd Like To Know About Your Mom...

...Lyndsay's got a neat entry up about playing with her mom.

Which got some interesting comments about playing with moms on G+...

"
I never actually played an RPG with my mother, though I did try to get her to make a character back when I first started playing D&D back in '79. She never actually sat down and generated a character, though I will never forget that she said, when I pressed her, that she'd play a fighter named Conquistadora. It was then that I had definitive proof that my mother was cool."
"
Not my mom, but I played with my Dad a few times. He liked the adventure in the Holmes basic book because he felt like he was solving mysteries and using his head, but didn't like a later wilderness adventure I took him on because "if felt like he was just rolling to see if he killed stuff." An early, unexpected lesson in adventure design!
"
"
My mum used to play a few games when we were kids. She liked to play thieves, stealing stuff, and was always cheating.
"
____

Plus a fun Q&A with a certain Sam...

Sam:
I play Pathfinder with my mom every two weeks or so. She loves it.
Q:
that's so cool! what can you tell us about her as a player? who else is in the group?
A:
Well, she's currently playing a Gnome Cleric named Pixette Polifax. She's extremely cautious, always carries as many mundane items as her bags will hold and tries her best to find uses for them, and often puts off healing the party until it's nearly too late. We play with my brother and his wife and a couple of other friends who bounce in and out of the games. I GM.
Q:
how old is she?
A:
Late 50's.

This is the woman who brought us up on Lord of the Rings and Shannara. She had some preconceptions about it but once I told her it was like WoW on paper, she was cool.
Q:
what were her preconceptions?
A:
Ah, I don't know if they were that concrete. Mostly, she'd heard it was evil back in the day and had never revisited that idea.
_____
Anybody else have any Gaming With Mom stories? (Or Dad?)

26 comments:

Lars Larsen said...

Growing up in a small town in West Texas and being a die-hard would-be DM I didn't have any players. I was so desparate I bought a "Christian roleplaying game" called DragonRaid. This game seriously had you memorize and recite bible verses in order to cast spells. I ran it for my parents and siblings once, and it was a total failure. That game is completely hilarious, looking back though.

NaldoDrinan said...

Most of my early gaming was with my younger brother, so it was kind of a given that mom would be at least sort of involved. She never did play, but she would listen to us when we told her about what happened in our sessions.

It ended up being the reverse of being told a bedtime story. I'd tell her about how my paladin found this really rad sword that could summon pheonix, or my brother would talk about his character managing to tame a wyvern so he could ride it around and mom would act like she was totally into it. She was actually pretty alarmed when my first character did finally die, if I recall.

Looking back on it now she was obviously humoring us, but it meant a lot to 4th grade me.

NaldoDrinan said...

Ha, I remember Dragon Raid! A friend of ours tried to get us to play it, we ended up just being extra horrible that session.

Good times.

Justin said...

I'm a second generation gamer. Both my parents played D&D back in the day, my Mom "grew" out of it, but my Dad is still a geek.

I remember when I was wee lad, and my parents had their friends over. They were playing some weird game that involved little miniatures, and my blocks! Luckily, they let my play with the figures and the unused blocks (along with the other kids, we were mimicking our parents).

I thought they were playing a Robin Hood game, since there was a miniature that looked like Robin Hood (and as I kid, I was a big fan of Prince of Thieves).

Fast forward a few years later to Christmas '99, and my Dad gives me this box set of Dungeons and Dragons (the TSR Silver Anniversary Adventure Game). He killed my wizard with rats, I then chose the fighter and never looked back.

Loquacious said...

*I* am the mom, and I game with my kids. I have an 18 year old and a 15 year old. I've been playing RPGs of some sort with the 18 year old since he was about 2. He has always loved games - mom and dad do it, it must be cool, right? and getting him involved was easy and a wonderful way to connect. We still play games together at least once a week (board games, RPGs, MtG- whatever sounds good at the time) and have a ton of fun doing it.

My 15 year old is still learning RPGs but loves MtG- we play often, and she kicks my backside every time.

Lars Larsen said...

I really want to buy it again to run as a one-shot/drinking game now.

Joethelawyer said...

My brother, sister, and I would be playing in the room off the kitchen for the whole weekend straight, along with whatever friends we could rope into playing with us. Anyhow, my mother would be in the kitchen, doing whatever mothers did in the kitchen when we weren't paying any attention to her. Apparently she was paying attention to us, because whenever there was a part in the game where some sort of flying could help the situation, she would come into the room and say "Hey, why don't you use a jet backpack?" A lot of moaning and groaning would ensue, we told her for the 1000th time that this was about swords and magic, there were no jetpacks, etc. and eventually she would leave the room laughing.

It makes me wonder now if she actually wanted to play. We never asked her to because she was a mom, and its uncool to play games with your mother at age 14, right?

A year or two ago, I made up a game of "Star Wars Dungeons and Dragons" with my nephew Matt, aged 5 or so at the time. My mother was in the kitchen at my brother's house, as we were jointly babysitting his 4 kids (3 of which were triplets aged 2 at the time---she was needed for diaper duty, which I don't do.) Anyhow, there was a pit that Matt's jedi needed to get into. Sure as shit, she yells out from the kitchen "Why don't you use a jetpack!" Matt, all of age 5, patiently explained to her that Jedi don't use jetpacks.

Zak Sabbath said...

Y'know what sucks? The first thing I thought was "That's pretty cute" but then right after that, the very second thing I thought was "Someone somewhere that Joe pissed off once is going to take his cute story about his mom and use it to spin out some insane troll logic psychobabble conspiracy theory about Joe based on his mom story.
oh well
anyway--that was funny

Joethelawyer said...

Glad you liked it. As to the rest, the way I figure it, I have enough conspiracy theories myself, so who am I to deprive others of theirs? The main difference being, of course, that mine are all true. ;)

Kiel Chenier said...

My mom is still convinced that D&D has ties to satanic cults and teens killing themselves.

I did, however, get my dad to play a bit with my little brother (with me as the DM). My little brother was a human paladin, my dad was a dwarf fighter. They started off the adventure with this little tidbit of roleplaying:

Little brother: So, uh...after this dungeon...you wanna...I dunno...get some coffee?

Dad: (in a gravely piratey voice) I PREFER GROG!

Then they killed a wererat. I've never been prouder.

Erik Jensen said...

My Mom had no interest in playing, but she covered the support role; she fed the crew, taught 'em some manners, and brought you a popsicle if your PC died.

Mandy said...

My aunt wasn't playing but she was listening and totally figured out how to kill that sword skeleton guy before we did.

Trent_B said...

Zak! Use your powers for good and organise "D&D WITH MUMS" for like... a day. Maybe the week after Mother's day or something? WHATEVER.

MadMadMad said...

A couple months back, I posted about my first D&D game, where I got my whole family--including dear old mom--to play with me. In short, it ended in tears and with Mom chastising me for "letting" my brother get devoured by gnolls. Good times.

Manfred said...

Hmm, I have never played rpg with my mom, but she is definitely to "blame" for a lot of my nerdiness. She intoduced me to Star Trek, Watchmen, Prince Valiant and Thorgal when I was very young. So I had a good starting point to explore all the wonders of nerd entertainment.

Simon Proctor said...

I never got to play RPG's with my Mum, and she died 10 years ago, but she did get me the Purple Box D&D for my 8th Birthday. Everything else followed on from there...

MTN said...

after buying the red box in 1985, I started to be SO addicted to DnD that I needed to play even when I wasn't with my friends. And Mom and dear Uncle where the perfect guinea pig for my Dungeon Master training.
I was 11 yo and they did that just to make me happy (I guess...). Never killed any of their pc's... I was afraid of hurting their feelings :-)

Munin said...

My mom bought me the RedBox D&D back in the day. She always encouraged my sis and I to make up our own Lego based rpgs as well.

Currently my mom, sis, and I are all working on a Cthulhu scenario.

ravenconspiracy said...

A few shorts things:

1) I couldn't read at the age of 4 so when I rented Dragon Warrior (NES) my mom had to read what was happening. I never got anywhere because in said game you start with no weapons and my mother would freak out and insist I run away from even the lowliest slime. She was fully immersed.

2) Shortly after learning D&D, I played with my dad, mom, and brother. Only thing I remember is that my dad played an Elf named "Willy Two-Berries" - which he admits was a twisted reference to Buckaroo Bonzai (John Smallberries).

3) Just this year I broke my leg and my mom (who is very clingy with me ever since I moved out) was helping me during recovery and wanted us to play a game together - so I ran her in Warhammer Quest. She played a Knight named "Sir Stanley". I think "Stanley" was the name of her high-school crush - how cute. After all these years she is still can't help but play a coward.

Jesse said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gabriel Harley said...

In the late 80s, my parents bought a cabin on a remote lake in southern Indiana. We'd go there on weekends and, although my younger brother and I often lamented how BOOORRRRIIIIINNNNNGGG it was at the time, some of my best memories come from that place. (I have since wanted to return to that awesomely bored state on a weekly basis.)

One weekend, my aunt and uncle came to the cabin, too. It was either too rainy, muggy, or both to be out on the lake (at least for most of us; I have no doubt that my dad and uncle were out there anyway) so my mom, aunt, brother, and I sat inside and played cards, Trivial Pursuit, etc. for many hours. It's probably because they'd downed too many wine coolers at that point, but toward the end of the evening, I convinced mom and auntie Mo to play a game of West End's Ghostbusters game. I (who must've been 13 or 14 at the time) GMed while mom & Mo played Ghostbusters versions of themselves. I don't remember too many specifics about the game, except that I set the scenario at the lake and it involved de-ghosting the cabin of one of our neighbors (who was a b**** in real life that nobody liked much). There was much snickering and cackling as private property and a few pets were toasted by errant proton streams. I also remember that my aunt went out of her way to make sure everyone (NPCs) knew how big her character's boobs were. Like I said, wine coolers and boredom.

Anonymous said...

the only time i ever played video games with my mom it was immersive for her.

she loved beating shit up in teenage mutant ninja turtles.

i play games with my stepdaughter but that's on more of a 'you're obsessed with games and so was i when i was your age but now they're completely different so i'm going to let you be the expert' kinda headspace.

Anonymous said...

I have never gamed with my mom, but I got a 1st Ed. AD&D Dungeon Masters' Guide -- the one with the big red demon-guy holding a scantily-clad maiden -- for Christmas when I was in third grade.

And at some point I realized... my mother bought that book. For her eight-year old. That's pretty cool.

Thanks, Mom!

The Cramp said...

I learned D&D from my friends step-dad, and his mother played with us. She played a thief named Asha. She had a cut out from some British music mag of a front woman of some goth punk band stapled to the front of the character sheet. "Asha looks like this... but with daggers."She would hide in shadows, move silently, and back-stab everything. Unless there were cadaverous undead, in which case she would leave the game and go make tea, on account of a crippling acid trip involving swimming in a pool at night after watching night of the living dead. My dad bought me the red box, and tried to play with me once. We both on the same page that this was not an activity for us to share, though he did suggest that we draw the character's gear, so we sat around a drew swords and shields and coils of rope, which was fun.

Will B. said...

I've never played with my mum, but she did relate a story to me of the one time she played D&D back in 1979. She was given a pregen Dwarf that she didn't want to play, and later died to an unlucky die roll. :(

ravenconspiracy said...

I know this is a dead post but I just remembered something cool:

I've been playing D&D for years and years but just 2 years ago my aunt (who I never really connected with) revealed that she used to play D&D while she was in the Peace Corps, in Africa during the late 70s.

She told me a story about how one player was turned into a gelatinous cube and hated how he could no-longer talk in-character. The rest of the party considered having the cube around a tremendous asset.