The World of Myth Magazine

My children have only played D&D twice and already their passion for dice rolling & role-playing is burning brighter than a light spell. My son Dan (aged 11) is playing Aragorn the Orc while my daughter Mandy (aged 9) is playing Selena the elf.

As the Dungeon Master, I'm only having half the fun my children are, as I can only provide half the fun of D&D. Having only a fighter and an elf, Sword & Sorcery is the most Dan and Mandy can accomplish in the game. I could never post a hobgoblin sentry on the corner of every corridor in a hobgoblin fort, as move silently and backstab is unavailable to my players. An adventure set in a catacomb crawling with ghouls would be suicidal, as none of the players can turn undead. Forget the Big Boss battle at the end of each dungeon level, as Dan and Mandy have no cure wound spells to heal massive damage.

What's missing from my campaign is Stealth & Divinity. What my campaign needs are two more players to play a cleric and a thief. So, I asked my two nephews, Zak, and Jeremy, if they would be interested in playing in my D&D campaign.

As far as my nephews are concerned, there is only one game to rule them all, and that one game is the video game. Ever since a control pad could fit comfortably into their chubby toddler hands, my nephews have helped Mario rescue Princess Peach, or Crash Bandicoot smash up boxes. Dungeons & Dragons? What the hell is that? According to my nephews, it must be a board game as the name alone reminded them of Snakes & Ladders.

The real reason- the only reason –my nephews had agreed to play was because D&D will be an excuse to get them out of the house and away from their parents. Heck. I'm just pleased to have two new faces at my gaming table. But who will play the thief? Who will play the cleric?

When playing his X-box, Zak (aged 13) is button mashing X, Y & B to run, jump or fight his way through Assassin's Creed, Fable or Skyrim. Zak is all about sneaking up on the enemy and stabbing them in the back. Or, if that was too risky, he would sniper shot them from a safe distance. It is this gaming style that makes Zak the perfect candidate for the thief class in D&D.

I offered the cleric class to Jeremy (aged 10). But how will I explain the Cleric archetype to someone who regards the fantasy genre as an airy-fairy waste of time? I have no idea. I tried finding an example of the cleric in the Fast & Furious movies that Jeremy enjoys. No such luck as all the characters in that franchise are chaotic neutral. They do whatever they want, whenever they want. I guess the D&D equivalent to Fast & Furious might be barbarians driving fast cars.

To explain the cleric- to have Jeremy truly understand -I will have to use, as an example, the closest thing we have to a cleric in reality.

"Well …um …a cleric is …"

"Yes?"

"You see Jeremy …ah . . ."

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, it's like this. You'll be playing a priest."

"What? Will I have to perform wedding ceremonies?"

"Um …well. Oh! A cleric can heal diseases and injuries. How cool is that?"

"I'm playing JESUS? You said I was a priest."

I give my nephew a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"If any of the other players give you grief, refuse to heal them."

The next game session, no time was wasted on introducing two new characters to the game narrative or explaining why the new players and the old players would want to team up together. Aragorn the orc, and Selena the elf encounter Hudson the thief and Bobby the cleric and they be like:

"Yo. Wazzup?"

"Chillin' bruh."

"Wanna hang?"

"Yah, Bruh."

"Sweet."

Just like that, the heroes of my campaign have gone from a dynamic duo, like Ratchet & Clank, to team awesome like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. All of the Big Four were now represented in my game: Sword & Sorcery, Stealth & Divinity. Any obstacle I could imagine, the player characters now had the tools and the talent to overcome it. As the campaign progresses, and the Big Four level up, I can throw at them every monster the game has to offer, confident they will survive.

Thirty minutes into the game session, I noticed how quickly Zak was adapting to the game mechanics- no not adapting, he understood all of it, as if he had been playing D&D his whole life. Then I understood why. Ever since he could mash buttons on a control pad, Zak has been playing D&D- he just wasn't aware of it. That's because the concept of hit points and levelling up, featured in every adventure game on a PC or gaming console, was inspired by D&D. Without D&D there would be no World of Warcraft.

An hour into the game session, I felt the tight clamp of fear every time Zak asked me if his thief, Hudson, could do this or that. Yes, I was afraid, very afraid, knowing that Zak had come to the realization that, while D&D and Warcraft share a lot in common, the one major difference between the two is that the gameplay of D&D has none of the restrictions or limitations that Warcraft has.

Go to any shop in Warcraft and you have two choices when interacting with the shop keeper: buy or sell stuff from your inventory- because they are the only two choices programmed into Warcraft.

When fighting a fire breathing dragon at Riverwood, always use the front porch of a wooden building as a shield to deflect blasts of dragon fire. The wooden buildings are your friends; they will always protect you- because wooden buildings were never programmed to burn.

All those years, playing all those Xbox games with their limited programming and now here was Zak, playing yet another Adventure RPG, only this time the tools for gameplay were different. The TV screen is the Dungeon Master describing the world and its inhabitants to his players. The gaming console is the core rule books and the polyhedral dice. The zeros and ones, that make up the code written into an Xbox game, is the creativity the players express while playing D&D, their imaginations endlessly building, shaping, and defining the campaign world.

A constellation of joy sparkled in Zak's eyes. Anything that he can imagine, Hudson could do in the game. The only thing stopping Hudson was bad dice rolls or common sense. Yet, with enough level up power and magic, even common sense could be broken. Zak's grin stretched from ear to ear. Oh, the fun he will have.

I hide behind my Dungeon Master screen, my face burning up as I struggled to breath. Am I having a panic attack? Why, yes, I am. By inviting Generation X(box) into my game, my campaign world and every NPC who calls it home were all doomed- as in doomed with a capital D.