Posted: Wednesday May 29th, 2013
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When we went to the cabin a couple of weeks ago, I took HeroQuest with me. I figured theKid was old enough to give it a shot. He developed a minor obsession with it. When we got home, I gave him some extra pieces, some dice, and let him use two Dragon Strike game boards my pay Richard sent me a while back. The result is that theKid has developed his own rules for playing the game with the pieces he has.
His grand mother likens it to CalvinBall. But really once he sets a rule it stays fairly well set. The things that change, like Hero Quest, are the goals of the game and how the rooms change. He applies definition to the pieces as he needs them to be redefined to fit his idea of what the new quest is. It's straight forward and a bit blunt. But it's a decent, if a bit derivative, system made fantastic when you consider it was designed by a 5 year old.
And as far as "crushing it" goes, we routinely hear the things we say at the game table echo back to us from two rooms away, suddenly made part of whatever play theKid is partaking in. Every now and then we hear untoward language. But we're not overly keen on censoring it. Rather we explain what we can and make it pretty clear when such words are appropriate.
Of course, I say that, and he just went stomping through the house happily singing a "shit, shit, shit" song. **whistles**
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