I think I get it now…

Things did NOT go well. Chris Elfine immediately started things off by ratting out his shady companion Shendra to the gate guards, claiming that she was a theif and had lots of stolen property on her, and that she had murdered a gnome on the road to the keep, an act that her still-bloody sword would attest to. Of course, while Shendra was a thief by trade, the rest of these accusations were pure fiction. Of course, the gate guards didn’t know this, and insisted on turning out Shendra’s pack and carefully inspecting it’s contents for anything unusual, as well as checking her blade. While the only thing amiss they discovered was Shendra’s thieves tools, the wild tales and Shendra’s profession was enough to earn them a stern rebuke and a promise that the guard would be keeping an eye on them before they were admitted to the keep.

Once inside, Chris Elfine spent the rest of the day gathering rumors about the Caves of Chaos, which warranted him some extra rolls on the “rumors you’ve heard about the caves” table.

The next moring they set out in search of the caves of Chaos. Luckily, they started in the right general direction and after a day of blundering about in the forest, Chris Elfine had the idea to climb a tree to see if they could discover anything. While he failed to climb to the top of the tree, Shendra managed the feat and reported seeing a large clearing to the Northeast. Once there, they found a huge iron banded door, but had no luck opening it. Chris even tried digging through the surrounding rock with his sword, which went about as well as would be expected.

From this higher point on the hill, however, they climbed another tree and saw a tree-lined defile further to the northeast. Traveling there to inspect the ravine, it was obvious that they had found the caves of chaos! This was also when Chris Elfine thought it would be amusing to push Shendra into the ravine, but a stern look from the thief put a stop to his shenanigans.

They carefully entered the nearest cave. Despite making a racket in the strange echoing passage, they moved on, only to be met by a contingent of 8 zombies armed with cleaver-like axes. After the first round of combat, all of the party was greiviously injured and they hadn’t managed to kill a single zombie. They fought on valiantly however…

Next session we get to make new characters. We had a talk about tacticly what had been done poorly, what assumptions had been made incorrectly, and we had a long talk about Sara making her new character less of a jerk. We also discussed that maybe we’re going to do a few mini-encounters/adventures BEFORE they tackle the caves of chaos again, since they’re pretty brutal. Of course that was the way “old-school” dnd WAS, but there’s no reason we can’t tweak things a bit.

For your wife and daughters, however, let me drop you a link to a book review that might serve you well:
http://geeksdreamgirl.com/2008/02/19/book-review-confessions-of-a-part-time-sorceress/

I have a young woman who regularly attends my Friday night 4e campaign and she has a great time – but I also have 3 daughters who will almost certainly never “get” their father’s hobby.

My wife doesn’t either (and believe me I’ve tried) – too much hairspray, too much Lifetime television, too much Grey’s Anatomy, too much “girly” girl. All 3 of the little ones are just like their mother. Not their fault, they just all came out that way.

As much as D&D (or any sort of tabletop “indie” rpg type game) is still considered “weird”, “odd”, or “dorky” by mainstream cultural standards it still is pretty much a “guy” type activity.

Swords, monsters, exploration, gold, glory etc. Most girls don’t respond to those sorts of motivators.

But don’t take my word for it…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tovznQvqVok

As to kids, I found that a simple skirmish game with a mission (escort the messenger through the deadly woods) introduces a lot of the concepts without the wide open space that the freer-form RPGs allow. They WILL personify even simple premade characters, and I’ll repeat my valuable lesson – “When your daughter’s character gets killed in battle, it doesn’t really die, it just has to go to the bathroom.”

I used both D&D minis & The fantasy Trip to do this, both times with great success.

As to kids, I found that a simple skirmish game with a mission (escort the messenger through the deadly woods) introduces a lot of the concepts without the wide open space that the freer-form RPGs allow. They WILL personify even simple premade characters, and I’ll repeat my valuable lesson – “When your daughter’s character gets killed in battle, it doesn’t really die, it just has to go to the bathroom.”

I used both D&D minis & The fantasy Trip to do this, both times with great success.

http://www.amazon.com/Once-upon-Time-Storytelling-Card/dp/1887801006

Thus, something with less/no narrative control is better, in my mind, because it eliminates that contention. The onus of finding something that everyone will enjoy doesn’t fall on her. And ultimately, that’s what may have made DnD so great for everyone back then. We didn’t HAVE to come to the kind of consensus that we do with more narrative games. That burden fell on the game itself.

At least, I’m wondering if that’s a part of it.

That said, a lot of “indie” games do seem to focus on things like narrative control and collaborative storytelling.

I think that a significant portion of the gaming community is quick to forget and at the same time quick to criticize. Red box D&D was not a bad game for its time, and it is simple and fun to play. Comparing it to today’s choices is like comparing Frogger, Pitfall, or tons of other classic video games to Halo. The comparison is going to emphasize the differences, in which case Halo is obviously vastly superior. Yet the comparison is incomplete without consideration for the time at which classic video games came out. Frogger and Pitfall, hell – Pong for that matter, had never been done before and were incredibly new and fresh concepts for their time. Halo one can argue is just another first person shooter done with better technology, and it is not as groundbreaking in concept as earlier video games were.

So I say that gamers do forget how much fun those early RPGs were. They weren’t flawed, the rules weren’t broken, they were what they were. They are only “broken” when compared to more sophisticated systems available today.

BTW – Notice how people still talk about those old D&D games to this day? How many new and “better” RPGs are released every year only to fade away into obscurity within a year’s time? I’m not saying that all new RPGs are bad, just that we should keep in mind that some old RPGs still have strong followings of fans. That means that those games must have done something right, and we should recognize and respect that.

Good luck with D&D with your daughter. I was a little older when I started, but not that much. You’ll have to let us know if the additional constraints [the very clear rules] help. Does she have similar focus/distraction issues in board games?

That said, you’re probably going to find that you’re going to have shared narrative control playing with a child no matter what you do, and that’s good.