The hunters, armed and alert, proceed on the path to the cave. Their leader, Sven, guides them through simple gestures, avoiding speaking to do not report their presence.
Sven is furious, his honor is tied to this hunt, the greatest of all his glorious career, and he will not be denied his glory by an old superstitious fool, or by those two strange girls with horns! They may have scared the carriers with their magic and their illusions, but he and his men are not afraid of some witch's tricks! Diamante is higher, hidden among the bushes. Behind her, the entrance of the cave. The lair of the sleeping Dragon, the Dragon that should not be awakened. Only her quick reflexes saved her and Geli a short time before, when her friend had imprudently risked waking the beast that slept for centuries.
So far they have only tried to scare the men without killing them, but it was not enough .. They did not obey, did not turn back. Now they will suffer the consequences of that decision.
Quietly, she strings the bow, a bow longer than her height. Then she nocks the arrow, draws and takes careful aim. A moment later, Sven emits a groan, looking at the arrow that has just pierced his heart. He is dead before he falls to the ground .
The others flee at that point, but it is too late. The already discovered the secret path. Relentless, Diamante kill them all, one after another. Nobody will wake the Dragon, the inhabitants of the valleys below are safe.
The old guardian of the cave runs toward her, and notwithstanding his age and his frailty, picks her up and hugs her, then place her astride his neck and carry her in triumph. Yes, because Diamante is her:
She is 7 years old, just like the girl that is role-playing her.
She is the daughter of one of the other players. The last few times she watched the game sitting in her mother's lap, rolling the dice, and in general cheering for the Trollbabes. I knew (from her mother) that she would have liked to play, so I asked her if the next time she would have like to play a Trollbabe too.
Her mother tell me that she talked all week with anticipation of the next game, but when it was time to make the character she was a bit intimidated. This quickly solved itself when she began to delineate Diamante bit by bit. She did choose (apparent) age, number (6), size and shape of horns, human object (a doll) and troll object (a sword) etc., and the drawing has been done (by Silvia, another player) following her instructions . That is precisely Diamond like she imagined her.
During the session? She played very well and with a lot of enthusiasm, and thoughtfulness, and carefulness when things got tough. And I realized that seeing her eyes open wide when I was describing a cave, a sleeping dragon, etc.. pushed me to describe things with more care and attention, with much more vivid details than usual. By comparison, I realized how all too often I usually rely on bland and banal stock descriptions, with players who can't wait to take action and are impatient with too much exposition.
So? So after this experience I would say not only that a 7 years old child (at least, one raised with books and stories) may well play Trollbabe, but that she would also improve the experience for the GM too... :-)
With some care, though. I read some time ago this thread on the Forge (which refers to the first U.S. edition of Trollbabe, more complicated and less clear):
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=29084.15 That thread describe as a game with an older girl (9 years) started well but ended badly, and I did not want to end like this. So I looked at all the reasons why Ron says in that thread Trollbabe is not a game for children, and I tried to correct them.
- Narrating failure:
"Making failures heroic – and thereby enhancing and deepening heroism – is a developed skill in authorship, and I can understand that any number of people have no intention of doing so, and that a child in particular simply didn’t come to any game-situation with that in mind" Fortunately the girl was "her mother's child" in the sense that he inherited a freaking luck with dice (in the adventure in question she did win almost every conflict) so there were not a lot of possible problematic moments in the game. But before playing I had agreed with the mother that, to avoid self-humiliating narrations of defeat, (which I see often even with adult players to the demo), she would have suggested the possibility of some more heroic events as for example telling her that "perhaps one of his men got in the middle and you hit him instead "or other similar suggestion (or a succession of suggestion, if the first one had not convinced her). During the game she often waited for 2-3 suggestions before making her choice (and in at least one case the did make a choice not suggested by anyone) but in every case the narration was not humiliating in the least.
For added security, her Trollbabe and her mother's played together on the same adventure, to allow the mother to help her "in character" too (during the adventure it worked in reverse, her mother's Trollbabe was saved in at least a couple of occasions by her)
What would I have done if, after all these precautions, she had lost a conflict that involved her capture or other serious effects? I do not know, but I think I would have tried to avoid conflicts of that type, by suggesting conflicts that did not involve similar losses and suggesting to abandon the conflict if it got too dangerous.
I must stress that all these "suggestions" did not happen at the table in a noticeable numbers, because the Girl won almost every conflict and she had not problem in choosing "heroic failures" when she didn't. I don't know if, in different circumstances, the amount of suggestion could become excessive, as a sort of "play her Trollbabe for her", but I don't think so: she welcomed suggestions, and we were careful to phrase all them really as simply suggestions, first asking her phrasing the question like "something happened that disturbed your shot, what it could be?" making clear that it was her decision.
What would I have done, if, all precautions notwithstanding, she would have been captured with a GM hostile narration of failure? I think I would have "toned down" the rules in that case, making a not-hostile narration (but I am not sure it would have been a real violation: with a child of her age probably even a not-hostile narration of defeat and capture would have been equivalent to an hostile one for a adult player)
For example, the week before (when all she did was rolling the dice sitting in his mother's arms) there was a conflict in which the Trollbabe wanted to "stop the spectre from sucking the life out of the child" (the classic ritual sacrifice to a "undead big boss", with children as victims) and the trollbabe , with the dice rolled by his daughter, lost the conflict.
If I had known earlier that her child would stay up to watch the adventure I would not have put a child in danger (she usually goes to bed before we play, because we play in a school night, but in this season the school are closed). It was already established in the backstory that the spectre killed the sacrificial victims.
What did i say? I thought quickly about the way the trollbabe goal was stated: it didn't say "avoid the death of the child", so I described he as weakened and tired, but still alive, and that the rite was not finished yet, with the last part still to come .. .
- One important thing: she was the only one in the group that had not already played Trollbabe least a dozen times. So I could devote my explanation exclusively to her without having to explain the same thing to an adult and a child at the same time (and having to check both for errors in play)
- About declaration of conflicts: I didn't explain the rule, I simply played every explicit declaration of conflict in fiction ("I kill them") as a stated conflict from her, and in doubtful cases I simply declared them myself (in addition to those that I would have declared anyway)
- Describing the victories with adult players sometimes is problematic too, because they do not say what they really want to do (reminiscent of the games where "you should not give the GM too much informations, he will use them against you", I guess), and after the narration they are not satisfied and say "but I wanted to do this other thing ..." "Why do not you say so before? Ok, then I will change the narration .." . Etc etc ".
I was afraid that this would have been worse with a child, and instead it was very easy. She has not yet learned to "do the poker face", it was obvious what she wanted to do in conflict, and during the narration of victory she was not timid in making everybody know how excited she was by some detail or event.
- Relationships: she has not taken any, but if he had shown attachment to any character in fiction, I would have asked her if she wanted him or her to be her friend (or whatever the case, I would have followed the events of the game).
In general, I avoided trying to explain too many rules and I simply asked, in terms of fiction, what she wanted to do.
Two things I feared but have not been a problem:
- The complexity of the rules: Trollbabe is a very simple game, but I was afraid, however, that it could be too complex for her. Instead, he immediately grasped the concept and had no problems of that type.
- Violence: both me and the other players decided to tone down the violence. I created an adventure that could clearly be solved by talking, no dead bodies at the start or horror tones: a hunter who wants to kill a sleeping dragon, a guardian who wants to avoid it. And the mother has toned down her trollbabe's nature (usually rather bloody and violent) using non-violent methods, beliefs, illusions, etc. throughout the adventure.
So we got to the scene I described at the beginning, with the hunters near the cave. And as I described the scene, the girl jumps up, and says "
I'll kill them all!" . I look at her a little shocked and ask her "uh ... what exactly do you want to do?". "
I'll kill them all with my bow."
As I said, she is her mother's child... :-)
