Trollbabe: a seven-yr-old GMs
Eero Tuovinen:
What you have here seems pretty natural to me, actually. Most seven year olds I've played with have been solidly in a make-believe stage of play anyway, so it's perfectly natural for them to play a roleplaying game in the same way they play when they play with dolls or action figures. And that play, on the other hand, is quite clearly basic exploration that is foremost concerned with getting the fiction to stay together - there is little room for other concerns. This is why children's play and negotiation of play looks like it does: they're trying hard to preserve fictional integrity, which can be difficult if you have other people in the game messing it up. And when it comes down to it, a child can easily be entertained by the basic exploration: it's challenging enough for them. Sort of developmentally enforced simulationism, one might say.
It's interesting to play rpgs with young children, as they're capable of listening to you tell a story and they're capable of telling a story themselves, but interaction is still largely over their heads. The way I'm trying to solve this sort of thing in my whole-family rpg Eleanor's Dream is to enforce decision points in the rules as multiple-choice situations. That removes a lot of the uncertainty about who's driving the fiction and who's not.
Lance D. Allen:
I'm not Arturo, but I think I ken what he's getting at.
What it seems like is that maybe she's running you through the adventure she wants to experience herself. She presents "choices" to you, but to her mind, there's only one obvious clear choice. If you were running this anime mermaid tale and she were the player, these are the choices she'd have made herself.
So it's by and large wish-fulfillment. I don't think (though I haven't any clue about this one way or the other) that she doesn't enjoy the game you're running. She just wants to live this story more, and because she can't make you present the choices she wants to make as a player (because that's not how being a player works) she's using the power inherent in the GM position to present them to you. She just doesn't perceive that there's any other interesting, viable, effective option than the one she would choose. I don't think she probably has it all pre-planned in her head. She's making it up as she goes along, presenting the choice, with the best option already in her mind as she presents it, then she goes from there.
droog:
I think she does have it more or less preplanned. She has, each time and to the best of my knowledge, followed the plot and characters of one of her short films. Once she actually launched into a Harry Potter beginning, realised she couldn't sustain it, and asked if it was okay to start again. She sees only one option because that was how the film went.
Eero, I think your assessment is correct from her angle; i.e. she mainly concerned with reproducing her source material. But we definitely produced interactive narrativist play when I GMed, simply by following the rules and procedures.
Callan S.:
But why do you follow the rules, Jeff? I'm guessing its because you don't just want to follow them for their own sake, but because they are a means to an end of examining characters your daughter develops (which to be honest, is also learning about her, through her characters, I would say). That desire comes first - following rules is just following that desire, by using tools that meet it. Or am I way off? Or even just wording it badly?
Taking it I'm not way off, she doesn't have this same desire, so she definately isn't looking around for any rules that meet such a desire, let alone actually putting the effort into learning them*.
I'm an example of that, atleast in a gamist sense. I have alot of trouble reading rules that aren't about getting toward some sort of win - without being able to frame an individual rule into the context of winning, it all becomes a hodge poge. That's because my initial desire is about some level of competition (though I have nar leanings, just not as developed). That initial desire is vital.
What's REALLY interesting is how you note she can do interactive nar with you, but not the other way around. This is partly why I question the big model in terms of where that big 'creative agenda' arrow starts. Given the contrast of when she GM'ed against when you GM'ed, when you GM'ed that narrativist arrow clearly started soley with you, outside of social contract. Of course it then traveled on into social contract and all the rest - I'm only trying to give evidence of it starting even earlier than currently mapped in common knowledge.
And ANOTHER thing that seems really interesting to me is that you have given evidence of how she can enjoy nar (she enjoyed the games of TB with you as GM, right?) but not be able to do it herself. That's really interesting if you map it to the teen and even adult gaming levels - how many gamers are capable of enjoying nar, but can't actually run it? They associate game X with great gaming. But they lack the desire to explore character themselves, even though they can enjoy it when someone who does have that character examination desire runs a game (exactly like in your own examples). I'm even thinking of various threads of questions for a particular nar system, where people just seem to try really, really hard to 'get' the rules, but their only real desire is to play these rules, rather than use the rules as only a means to an end of character examination/moral examination.
* If you wanted to prompt thought on the matter, have you asked her if she finds other peoples made up characters interesting? For example, Harry Potter was made up by some other person(a stranger to her, even). Daddy is another person - what sort of characters would Daddy make up (someone who's special to her)? (I'm not phrasing that too intimately, am I?)
Arturo G.:
There are very nice points arising here.
I mainly agree with Eero.
Wolfen, I don't think she is not enjoying the original game that droog was GM'ing for her. Choices and fair consequences are surely appealing her. But she also wants to reproduce other types of fiction she is watching in media.
When she tries to GM the game she is probably not presenting real choices because she is still playing, not GM'ing. She is reproducing and experimenting the story as if she would be playing, exploring the fiction. But at the same time making her father a participant of her story/game, which is nice.
I don't have any idea of how difficult or easy is to show/teach children how to build on other ideas in a structured way (like the game rules). But I'm really interested on hearing about how it works for droog.
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