Ah, the good old days

I remember playing DnD as a teenager.  There was a lot of dirty jokes, mindless monster slaying, and arguing about rules.

The height of humour for some of the gaming groups I was part of looked like this:

"You are all in a tavern, and a stranger comes up to you to give you a quest."

"Wait, screw that, are there any girls in the tavern?  I ask them if they want to see my LONGsword.  Get it!? HAHAHA!"

Typical teenage boy behaviour, basically.  Thankfully we mostly grew out of it.

We grew out of the sexist behaviour and terrible pickup lines, I mean.  We still slay monsters mindlessly and argue about the rules all the time.  That is just how you play!

Recently Pinkie Pie told me she wanted to play DnD with her friends.  Fine enough, I think.  Running a game for 13 year olds ought to be easy as anything.  Due to hilarious failure at communication though, several of the would be gamers showed up at my place not even knowing that we were going to be playing a roleplaying game at all.  Still, they were eager enough to try it out.

They came up with names for their characters that weren't quite what I had hoped.  One character was called "School Bell" because school bells are what kids hate most, amirite?  Another was called Select because that is the kid's online handle.  A third was named after an anime character.  None paid any attention whatsoever to the naming conventions each race has, nor did they attempt to build something that felt real.  Every decision was just an attempt to get the other kids to giggle.

I wanted to yell "These names are awful!  What are you, 13?"

But they *are* 13.  So that doesn't work so well as an insult.

Notably Pinkie Pie came up with a perfectly good name, one that fit with the lore behind her character's race and background.

We ended up playing for an hour and a half, then the kids got bored and wanted to do other things.  They came back 2 days later, but again it only lasted an hour before they quit.  I don't think this is going to stick.  Pinkie Pie likes it, but the others aren't particularly into it. 

So my first foray into gaming for my daughter and her friends was ... mediocre.  They had some laughs, but in the end they just weren't that into it.  Which is a fair result, I suppose, pretty much right down the middle in terms of the possibilities.