Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons

by Shelly Mazzanoble

  “You want me to go into the living room? With a full glass of wine? I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  “Mommy!”

  Next Des was pointing from me to Ruby and then making little shoo motions with the back of her hand.

  Her boss must be on some kind of tirade because it looks like she’s trying to tell me to get in there and calm her kids down. Ha! That’s crazy talk. What does she think I am? Super Nanny?

  “Get in there and calm them down,” Des hissed at me.

  Huh. I was right.

  She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Please? I’ve got a small crisis here. I’ll be done in a minute.”

  “Um, okay. I guess.”

  Maybe I could call Judy and ask her how to quiet a screaming three-year-old.

  “Hey, you guys,” I said in a voice so sweet I’m giving myself a brain freeze. “You want to maybe stop crying and, um, take naps or something?”

  Ruby responded by screeching even louder. My goodness, that kid has pipes.

  “Oh, please don’t do that. Your mommy is on the phone and I don’t want her to think I’m hurting you.”

  Little red-faced Ruby pointed at Gabe and sobbed harder. Gabe stared at Ruby with a look that read partially contrite and somewhat disdainful.

  I sat near Ruby. Should I touch her? Offer a hug? Or would that backfire and bring back painful memories of getting clobbered in the face by an inflatable Wolverine? I’ve seen enough movies starring Valerie Bertinelli to know this is a distinct possibility.

  “I have a big brother, too, you know,” I told her. “Sometimes he would hit me, sometimes by accident, and I would cry my face off. Kind of like you.”

  Ruby sniveled at the thought. “You can cry your face off?”

  “Sure,” I said, believing this will encourage her to stop crying. “If you cry hard enough or long enough it will just melt right off.”

  “No, I don’t wanna cry off my face!”

  Oops. Might have had the opposite effect here. Man, kids are gullible.

  Des poked her head out of the office again.

  “It’s all good,” I shouted. “Nothing to see here!”

  “Ruby, it’s okay. You can’t really cry your face off. That will never happen.”

  “You lied?” she asked, looking more traumatized than she did back when she believed her face was in danger of disappearing.

  “Not lied,” I said. “I was kidding. There’s a difference.” Why do I have explain this? Doesn’t Dora teach them anything?

  “Did your brother ever poop on you?” Gabe wanted to know.

  “Nope, he didn’t, thank you very much.”

  This set Gabe off again and I think I saw the beginning of a smile on Ruby’s face.

  “What did he do to you?” she asked between sobs.

  “Well, he would sometimes sneak up and then tickle me until I called ‘uncle!’ ” With that I lunged at Gabe’s belly and started tickling him, having no idea if this was appropriate behavior or not. Ruby thought so as she gleefully joined in.

  When Gabe had had enough, he yelled uncle and we helped him stand up.

  Des joined us, looking more frantic than when she was trying to get me to care for her kids using gestures and finger pointing.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, looking like she’s about to cry. “My boss needs me to run a report right now. It’s really important, otherwise I’d say it could wait until Monday. Would you give me a half hour to do it? You could just hang out here with the kids?”

  She said this last part the same way I’d say to someone, “Maybe you could use this disposable razor to cut off your right arm and proceed to whip yourself across the face with it?”

  “Me? Hang with the kids?”

  “For a half hour. Maybe forty-five minutes? Okay, an hour tops!”

  Wow. I think I’ll take the use-my-right-arm-to-beat-myself-in-the-face option, please. “Is there a neighbor who could come over? I’m willing to pay.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shutting her office door. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

  Clearly she was in a bind and felt bad. This wasn’t how either of us planned to spend our Friday afternoon. Besides, I see her kids maybe once a year. Is it really the worst thing to actually get to know them?

  “There’s markers and construction paper in the cabinet under the television,” Des shouted from the other side of the door. “And feel free to put in a movie! A kids’ movie, please!”

  Gabe and Ruby were quiet. They stopped all movement and looked at me. The quiet they exhibited unsettled me. The calm before the storm. The stillness of the water before the shark attacks. The showdown in a western movie where the hero meets the bad guy. We are face to face (to face) in our stance, guns twirling at our hips, waiting for the other person to make a move.

  “So,” I said.

  “So,” they said.

  “Who wants to watch a movie?”

  Gabe shook his head. “Nah. We’ve seen movies.”

  “No movie!” Ruby screamed in agreement.

  I rustled through the kitchen cabinets. “How about an all-natural peanut butter sandwich with some sugar-free, organic jelly? On gluten-free bread, of course. Yum, yum, doesn’t that sound good?”

  “Gross,” said Gabe.

  “Ew!” Ruby bellowed.

  “Okay, how about we draw some pictures.”

  Again Gabe vetoed my suggestion. “I drew pictures yesterday in school.”

  “Me, too!” Ruby said.

  Gabe pushed her. “No, you didn’t! You don’t go to school!”

  Getting called out like that set Ruby off again. She wailed like a Midwest siren during tornado season. Obviously I couldn’t let Des be bothered by this commotion. I’m an adult with two generally well-behaved kids I outweigh by at least sixty pounds. I could handle this.

  “Okay, okay. Let’s play a game!” I said, trying to make those four words sound like the most awesome idea ever to pass through their budding eardrums. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”

  I hoped they wouldn’t be turned off by the creepy, singsong, reeking-of-panic, psychotic manner in which I was talking to them. Why do people take on such weird vocal inflections when talking to kids? Other people do this, right?

  The potential game was interesting enough to Ruby to get her to stop screaming but not enough to stop the waterworks and runny nose. I handed her a tissue.

  “You might want to take care of that,” I said, pointing to her nasal area. Seriously, bubbling kid snot gives me an immediate gag reflex.

  “How about charades?” I jumped up and started pantomiming something that could be a combination of jazz hands and “girl being held up by chorus members from West Side Story.”

  “No!”

  “Hide and Seek?”

  Whether you play D&D with your kids or raise your future kids with the same attention to detail and compassion as you would your PC, D&D can be as much a positive influence on kids as Vitamin C, a good night’s sleep, and Big Bird. Why? Because kids love to pretend, as evidenced by my Nemesis 1 and Nemesis 2. (I’m going to pretend Tyler thought I was The Joker and he was doing our fellow patrons of Gorditos a favor by attacking me because otherwise I can’t bear the thought of living in the same zip code with that goon.) And kids love fantasy. You probably did, too, when you were growing up. But what do I know? I work in Marketing. And … I’ve never conducted any studies off any coast of anywhere and kids don’t even like me. But you would trust a librarian, right? And I know plenty of librarians who will back me up.

  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several librarians as part of my job. Every year, Wizards packs up the Old English Bookshop-themed booth and deposits it on the floor of the American Librarian Association. Let me tell you, librarians are some of the nicest people on the planet. (And OMG, they sure like the wine!) I feel really bad for how poorly I treated Miss Roach, my elementary school librarian. Miss Roach, if you’re
reading this, I’m sorry. I was loud and obnoxious and I made fun of your name and your weird haircut and your slouchy bathrobe-like cardigans. The thought of you traipsing through the Anaheim Convention Center with your Vera Bradley satchel full of books and pamphlets and stickers all geared toward making me a lifelong reader makes me feel rather guilty. I do love reading, and if you want to take the credit for it, that’s cool. (Never learned to spell, though. You don’t have to take credit for that.) Anyway, these librarians, maybe even Miss Roach, will agree—kids love reading about magic and dragons and mysterious worlds. They eat up ettin, devour doppelgangers, and strive to become sorcerers. And when they find one book that interests them, they want more books just like it. Guess what? D&D has all that and lots more like reading, writing, math, social and analytical skills, and cooperation, just to name a few. What better way to teach kids all of the above, then, when they don’t know they’re learning?

  “No!”

  I was about to suggest we do what I did at about their age and find a nice little daytime drama on television when I heard Judy’s voice.

  I would have loved it if you and your brother played D&D.

  “Er … how about Dungeons & Dragons?” I asked.

  “What’s that?” Gabe asked.

  “It’s a game about make-believe,” I said. “You two are mighty heroes with magical powers and weapons on a quest where you’ll encounter all sorts of treasure and adventure and the occasional bad guy.”

  “Yeah for treasure!” Ruby cheered.

  “Yeah for weapons!” Gabe cheered. “I want to be Wolverine!”

  “I’m Cinderella!”

  Gabe rolled his eyes. “Cinderella isn’t a hero! She’s a dumb old princess!”

  I saw Ruby’s lip begin to quiver so I jumped in.

  “She can be Cinderella! Or better yet, she can be a magical princess wizard. Would you like that, Ruby?”

  She beamed. “Yes!”

  “And you, Gabe, can be a brave human fighter. That sounds fun, right?” He is the same guy who keeps smacking his sister in the face with a shmoo, after all.

  “Yeah!”

  I had them both cheering at this point.

  “Oh, okay, let’s bust out the Doritos and Mountain Dew!” I shouted, knowing full well if Des heard this she’d probably smack me upside the head with an inflatable punching bag. Offering her kids Doritos and full-sugar soda is like suggesting we walk down to the Kwik Fill and score ourselves some black tar heroin.

  We went in search of every board game they owned that uses dice. Good thing I happen to have a d20 in my purse. (Who doesn’t?)

  I excused myself to find the second computer in the house—the one the kids use to play alphabet bingo and take math quizzes for fun. I download a copy of Heroes of Hesiod—a kid-friendly adventure R&D created for the sole purpose of giving babysitters something to do with kids on Dora overload. And teach them the principles of D&D. I printed out a copy of the adventure and all the necessary accoutrements. I worked on my character voices in Gabe and Ruby’s Jack-and-Jill bathroom. Chub-byfeet I’m not, but I can do a pretty good Count Chocula.

  Next, I somehow managed to convince Gabe and Ruby that celery and peanut butter is just as good as Doritos. The raisins they insisted on dotting the peanut butter with will work for the monster hit points.

  After cutting out the tokens that will represent the monsters and the heroes I suggested we look over their character sheets. I was already losing Ruby, who was much more interested in putting the character tokens in her mouth than on the playmat.

  “Maybe Ruby should play the monster,” I suggested, while retrieving the slobbery tokens with about forty-nine pounds of paper towels. “Monsters eat the players, too.”

  “Ew,” Gabe said. “I don’t want to get eaten by a monster!”

  “Exactly,” I told him. “That’s the whole point of the game. Try not to get eaten by the monsters.”

  Ruby stopped chewing on the tokens long enough to look at me with big, watery eyes.

  “I don’t wanna get eaten,” she whimpered.

  “You won’t,” I said. “But even if you do, nothing happens. You just live in the monster’s belly until someone tickles it and lets you out.”

  “Like throw up?” Gabe asked.

  “Um, kind of. But not that gross. More like a big sneeze.”

  That made them giggle.

  “I wanna get in the monster’s belly!” Gabe declared, making me think he and Bart would have a great time playing D&D together.

  “So guys, here’s the deal. You are friends who are in training to be monster hunters. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

  “I wanna be a robot!” Gabe exclaimed.

  “Me, too!” said Ruby.

  “Well, today we’re going to be monster hunters, okay?” These kids are too young to bully me. “A princess wizard and a big boy human fighter.”

  “Why?” they asked.

  Good lord. Why must kids ask so many questions? Here’s one: whose dumb idea was this?

  “Because I said so.” Hey, look at that! I do have some motherly instincts!

  Technically we’re short two people, but we solved that problem with me playing the DM and a hero and letting one of Ruby’s “babies” round out the party. I laid out the playmat and the character tokens and explained a little bit about each one. Ruby immediately put the shaman in her mouth.

  “Remind me to tell your mom to get you some fiber supplements or something.”

  Gabe practiced his “fighting” by popping his little sister in the bicep.

  “Yay!” he exclaimed. “I’m a fighter!”

  “You’re not that kind of fighter. You’re a fighter for good things. And your sister is on your team. You’re supposed to work together.”

  Ruby got all watery eyed again and I tossed a handful of tissues in her direction as a preemptive strike. I don’t do poop or snot. “How about you play a barbarian princess,” I suggested. “Then you can be a big, tough girl, too.”

  Sold! I played the wizard and Ruby’s baby played the rogue. I started the story about the gang being sent to monster-hunting training grounds and left to fend for themselves as various monsters are sprung from their cages.

  “Scawee monsters?” Ruby asked. “Or monsters that want to play with us?”

  “Umm, no,” I said. “Not really.” What kind of Dungeon Master would I be if I encouraged these kids to beat up monsters who want to play with them? “They’re scary to most people, but not to you! You’re big, strong adventurers! And this is your test. You have to defeat the monsters with your special powers.”

  Ruby chomped away on the barbarian. Gabe asked me where the robots were.

  “Let’s keep playing and maybe we’ll find one, okay?”

  They put their tokens on the playmat. Ruby’s was covered in spit.

  Partial to beholders, I brought one out of his cage onto the playmat. It moved three squares toward my wizard so I could show them what to do on a turn.

  “Can you count how many squares away from the wizard this monster is?” I asked Ruby and Gabe. Not being a kid person, I was sincerely asking. I had no idea if kids can count at their ages.

  “Three,” Gabe answered, all duh, what a stupid adult you are.

  “Well, unfortunately for the wizard, this monster’s evil eyestalk can hit any creature within six squares. Looks like that’ll hit. Who wants to roll the die to see what the effect will be?”

  Rolling dice is apparently a highly sought-after kid activity because both Ruby and Gabe practically fell over themselves trying to get to the d20.

  “Okay, okay, you can roll to see who gets to roll for the effect.” More rolling of dice equals more fun, right?

  Ruby won and rolled a six, evil eye, which meant the beholder switches places with the hero. Now he was standing adjacent to Gabe’s fighter.

  “Uh-oh!” he said. “The monster’s next to me!” To illustrate the danger this presented, Gabe tried to strangle his sister.


  “And all of his eyeballs are staring right at you!” I made big buggy eyes at him. “You need both hands free to block your face!”

  He giggled, which made Ruby giggle, which in turn made me giggle.

  Ruby’s baby got to go next, but given she doesn’t have fingers, Ruby rolled for her.

  “Now remember,” I said, “You want to attack the monster.” Just in case she had any ideas about retaliating on her brother. “And you can move six squares. I’m sure Gabe will help you count.”

  “One, two, three, four, five, and six!” Ruby was overjoyed at her ability to count to six. I’m quite impressed myself, not sure if this is normal for a kid her age or if I’ve just inadvertently discovered her hidden genius. But she can’t read, so maybe “genius-in-training” is more like it. It’s pure luck that she moves her rogue to a flanking position with her brother.

  “That’s really good!” I told her. “Now if you hit, you’ll do two points of damage instead of just one.”

  I handed her the die, which she promptly whacked against the glass table.

  “What was that?” Des yelled from her office. “Everything okay?”

  “Mommy, I killed a bad man!” Ruby responded.

  “Not really, Des,” I called after. “We’re just playing!”

  “What number is that?” I asked Ruby, directing her attention back to the battle.

  “Eleven?” she asked, not entirely confident with her competence in double digits.

  “That’s right!” I squealed. Honestly, I have no idea if this normal or if I’m unleashing a beautiful mind. Regardless, I was happy to be in such close proximity to a kid who wasn’t punching, crying, or running me over with a Big Wheel. Then again, there’s still time.

  “You hit the monster!” I announced. “You do two points of damage.” I slid two raisins across the table to her, one of which her brother plopped in his mouth. Ruby was so delighted by hitting the monster, she didn’t notice.

  Next it should have been Ruby’s turn but seeing as though she just rolled for her baby and I could sense Gabe’s impatience, I let him go next.

  Although Gabe is a much more advanced reader, I still had to help him read what was on his character sheet. I explained that because he’s standing right next to the monster he can just reach out and cleave him.