My grandson visited today. He turned three in September and has discovered the raw, joyful thrill of endorphins for himself ... which is to say that he's learning he can run full-on into things face first without actually hurting himself. This has built up slowly where it comes to cushy furniture and the 30-inch rubber workout ball that drifts into different parts of the apartment, but today it was my thigh — which I had to turn in his direction lest he, um, "unmanned" me.
Smashing face first into my thigh and bouncing back, then stumbling and falling to the floor, was instantly the best game in the world. So he jumped up and did it again, with the same spinning, tumbling result. Laughing, giggling, he rose and ran straight at it time after time, while I stood there, not hurt, letting him slam his whole strength at me over and over, about two dozen times. I saw no reason to stop him. He was having so much fun.
Then he backed off way across the room to get a really good run, 20 feet or so, stumbled on the way but absolutely ready to hit me as hard as he could — but I scooped him up and spun him around and let him go, to trip over his feet and fall on the floor, laughing and laughing and laughing ...
As I said, he's three. It's not the same with every child, but as children's understanding of the world increases, and especially the limitations of their bodies, their sense of self and capability changes. They want to test their physical limits; and if that's managed and not discouraged, so that actually hurting themselves too soon can be prevented, it potentially leads to a growth in confidence and curiosity.
He climbed up on the ottoman by the sofa today and I watched him tense himself like a cat to make the two foot jump from one to the other. It was obvious he knew what he was doing and that he grasped the meaning of it. A year ago, napping on that couch, he rolled over and fell headlong onto the floor, scaring the bejeezus out of himself (though he wasn't really hurt). Today he leaped, easily made the distance, crashed into the sofa cushions and went wild with laughter.
Then, before I could stop him, he leaped back to the ottoman. Not good; just beyond the ottoman is the coffee table, and if he'd crashed into that ... well, let us say it's not made of cushions. Still, he gripped the ottoman like a cat when he landed and saved himself. He has two cats at home. He's plainly been watching them.
Now, today's subject is "fear." Couple days ago I posted a cruel and angry rant about saving throws for death, which perhaps was unkind ... not that I really care. The metric is essentially designed to assauge a weak sort of person against the severity of having to lose a fictional character in a game, so much that even knowledge of spells that bring back the dead aren't sufficient to ease the terrible suffering of such fragile sops. These are not people willing to make a leap to a light piece of furniture that might tip over and smash them into something hard enough to give a few bruises. I explained this consequence to my grandson (who knows if he understood me) and asked that he only leap from the ottoman to the sofa. This was in no way dangerous, as I was right there, the sofa is deep and has lots of cushions, and anyway, endorphins.
He didn't do it the wrong way a second time; but he might when I'm not there. When I think of the things I did when my parents weren't there ...
I don't want to applaud him, or even encourage him. But I definitely don't want to punish him, because part of growing up is learning to judge oneself against one's fear. He was evidently proud of himself; he shone a look at me that said, "Wow, did you just see that?" I probably smiled. What kind of monster would a person have to be not to smile at that moment? But I didn't say "good boy" or "do it again."
I'll encourage a player to be brave. They're not three, are they? And somewhere along the line, they've talked themselves out of daring a consequence, even a very mild one, so that they'll stand back in my game and fear getting in and mixing it up. I had a case of that happen a month ago, where I encouraged a player who lacked the magic weapon he needed to hit the gargoyle, to run in anyway. "If nothing else, you'll take damage that someone in the fight with a magic weapon won't have to take."
The reader may doubt this, but the player reasoned this out and took me up on this. He's new to the game, and although he'd already been in two fights, his character Torvik wasn't getting anywhere because my system is based on taking damage to get experience. Holding back, not fighting up front, trying to hurl his club or fist-sized rocks and missing (a fist-sized rock does as much as a dagger, but it flies badly), Torvik wasn't getting anywhere. So he waded in with the gargoyle that he couldn't hit. Whereupon the gargoyle 20ed him and he took 16 damage. Which, thanks to negative hit point rules, he survived.
And at the end of this fight, he went up a level.
We might say, he jumped for the ottoman and didn't fall over.
Friday's running, four days ago, Torvik hurried up to get straight into the fight (he rolled maximum for his 2nd level hit points) ... only to get blasted by a 7 damage burning hands spell seconds after he'd arrived. So he got bruised a bit. Still, he's got the equation in his head now, so that he's excited about taking damage and getting a chance to actually fight.
Somewhere, that little boy inside Torvik's player is slamming into God's thigh and laughing.
I know it may sound silly to many to make a metaphor out of this, but it's tremendously human for a small boy to act this way ... just as it sets up so many opportunities for scared, fearful parents to stop the boy from running into their thigh, or daring to make that two foot leap, or doing anything really, because something might happen. I don't need to go down the road of explaining where this "something" leads to. Certainly not to good D&D players.
Anyone who may happen to enter my D&D world certainly won't be held to some standard of toxic masculine risk-taking. They'd die pretty quickly that way. But if the game can provide a basis upon which an adult can engage in an activity involves some level of risk or emotional damage, which might make them a little more daring, and thus able and willing to test their intellectual and psychological limits, then I'd hope they'd acquire an increased confidence3, curiosity and desire for novelty and excitement.
This could only be a good thing.
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