Geek: Story Hours

One of my favorite RPG sites is ENWorld (linked in the sidebar). The initial draw for me were the story hours. Story hours are narrations of a game session of D&D. There are different styles people use, from very transparent (noting who rolled what, how many hit points someone has, etc.) to novelistic (focusing more on the story of the game than the mechanics used to produce it). My DM has been writing up a story hour of our Modern games - read it here.

(Side note: D&D is at heart a fantasy game consisting of dragons, knights, trolls, elves and all that stuff you saw in the Lord of the Rings movies. There are extensions of the same system, though. One is called d20 Modern and allows for gaming in a modern setting with guns, cars and such. Our group skips about a bit, but we've been running a Modern game for a year and a half or so.)

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this entry is not to show off my geekiness, but to give a wonderful example of how role playing can be used as a teaching tool. One of the members of ENWorld has been taking his three year old daughter on adventures through the house and back yard. He gets her imagination going, works on her memorization and counting skills, improves her probelm solving and probably best of all spends quality time with her creating memories. He's written up a story hour about the adventures they have (including the cutest pictures you'll see today) and gives tips on how to do the same with your kids. Hopefully in a few years I'll get to do this too. Go read the Adventures in Mommyville.