Photo: hans s' on Flickr
How do help your kid take that step from geek-wannabe to fully fledged geek?
I’ve been trying for a while now to come up with something to get my stepson more involved with role-playing as the occasional game seems to spark an interest but never manages to hold his attention for long. The trouble being he wants to create the world around him rather than wander through someone else’s vision. During March, I toiled over a few campaign settings I’d been writing when the opportunity came up to take part in a collaborative world build. This project, I thought, would be perfect for him
A little background I suppose is needed. About 9 months ago the RPG Bloggers Network was born from the minds of a few of the more successful RPG bloggers out there. Spawned from that community was a monthly blogging carnival which changes hosts with every round. Whilst discussing subjects for future carnivals two bloggers came up with very similar ideas and so the RPG Bloggers Campaign Setting was born. Basically several members claimed hexes on a pre-drawn map whilst a few others worked off the grid with the idea of tying the whole project together many months down the line.
I grabbed a bunch of islands near the centre of the map and after a few suggestions for taking our home country/state as a starting point I settled on basing my country on the sea kingdoms of the Celts. At the insistence of my stepson however we’ve also included the Vikings in there. Apparently they were far cooler as they were scarier and had better helmets. At least I think it was his idea.
The one thing I really love about this project is that we are both learning so much from it and we have only just started. I’ve always been a history buff and pride myself on having at least a working knowledge of my country’s history but the further we dig into our past the more amazing stories we find. From the ship designs improved upon from Viking times to the religious outpost on Sceilig Mhichíl there is always something new to learn. And to think we’ve only just started outlining the country! With a bit of luck we’ll be attending the Largs Viking Festival being held later in the year as well.
So what started from an attempt to bring more enjoyment to the roleplaying experience for my stepson has ended up being the start of a long journey to find out the history of our nation with a little bit of gaming on the side.
[This article was originally posted on May 7, 2009.]
