There is a sad misconception that D&D is a refuge for the socially inept. I would say that is probably born of the fact that, as an intensely socially educative game, it enables people who would otherwise fall out of contact to find a framework. You notice them when they are playing D&D when they would normally have scuttled out of sight. That has to be a good thing, liberating and enabling.

I have written before about D&D for kids but since then a few things have occurred to me that have convinced me that everyone who has smart children should play D&D with them…

Some quick generalisations about smart kids. Full of ideas. Easily bored. Challenged by working with others. Tendency to grandstand and demand attention. Outliers from the herd who are challenged to fit in and have a hard time finding peers.

Take a few typical attributes of D&D and see how they can engage and develop your smart child.

1. It is a team game. When you venture into the catacombs you have an elven wizard (Maria, from your class) at your shoulder, a shaggy barbarian fighter (Joe, who shares your passion for dinosaurs) watching the rear and the stout Dwarven cleric (Luke, Joe’s older brother who is very good at math) struggling along behind. Fellow players immediately have common ground and temporarily many shared goals. People who game together develop friendships.
2. It is a game of the imagination. D&D stimulates and rewards imagination. It presents a living story, a realm of fantasy. Just for once having vivid ideas that do not fit into the day-to-day of school has a payoff. Just for once you can share a world of imagination with others.
3. It is all about problem-solving.  The goblins are attacking and the mysterious rune-encrusted door will not open. Which of the three gems you have found will fit? How can I swing across the chasm without being shredded by the dire bats? Ideas zip across the table and advice and cunning plans are everywhere. I have never yet run a session where someone did not solve the problems I set them in a way I did not expect.
4. It demands cooperation. Anyone that has ever played D&D knows that you need each other just as much as the players in any other team game, but with an added twist: each character is different. So each player has a unique contribution, a specific set of skills an capabilities that will not always be fully in play, but which will certainly at some point be utterly crucial. My son plays a rogue, a slight but light-fingered fellow, skilled at opening locks, defusing deadly traps and avoiding danger. The heavily armoured fighter stands between him and the fangs and claws, but waits (far) behind him while he disables the explosive runes on the the door of the treasure room.
5. It structures communication. D&D has a lot of crucial moments, traps, combat and test of skill in which the whole table of players participates. That means that people have to take turns speaking, listen carefully to what others have said and thing on their feet. It is like being in a meeting with committee rules but without the stifling boredom and frustration. It is highly structured (though chaotic shouting does break out on occasion) and teaches communications skills, brevity and listening. Anyone that does not listen when the dungeon master is speaking may well miss a vital clue, not hear the troll creeping up from behind or the secret door creaking open.
6. It rewards creativity. It is a game in which almost anything is possible. Though there are rules and limits, (jumping off a high place remains a bad idea… unless you can fly of course..), there is always another way to approach a problem, a wierd, out-of-the-box way of solving it. Creativity is rewarded. The problem-solving part demands creativity, but story-making and world-building do too. You need to flesh out an imaginary character. Imagine how she would talk to the local king, or to the butcher who’s wife is a witch. I recently challenged a highly numeric and analytical boy who plays in a game I run to describe what the spell he was casting actually looked like: arrows of fire, luminous serpents? He had to step out of his analytical comfort zone to do it… Similarly, the story-teller at the table often has to concentrate to work out if his character’s glittering shurikens actually hit the target.
7. It is fun. Fun with people who think like you and revel in ideas and cleverness. It is a space in which football, physical coordination and the social pecking order do not count for much, so for the geeky kids it is a heady taste of freedom from conformity.

I have been running a Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 game for my 10-year old son and four of his friends for the last few months. Though they are all geek-kids with video-game experience and lively imaginations, it is, on occasion, very challenging.

For anyone not familiar with the basic concept of Roleplaying games, the idea is that players create characters that have skills and attributes (like strength and dexterity, but also perhaps magical power) which determine how well those characters can do things in an imaginary world (break down the door with your strength, cast a sleep spell upon the guards by expending magical power). As you character has adventures she gains experience, becomes stronger and more skilled: the thief gets better at picking locks and the wizard learns new and more powerful spells.

One person takes on the role of “Game Master” (GM), creates the adventure and helps the players by

• Describing the things they encounter (“you push aside the vines and find a dark passageway leading into the heart of the forgotten temple”)
• Working out the effect of their actions (“your spell causes the giant spider to flee”, “you failed to pick the lock, a tiny poisoned dart shoots out at you”, “your search uncovers mysterious symbol carved into the wood of the door”, “your strengh is insufficient to lift the sarcophagus lid”).
• Looking after the story (“If they search the temple they will have to defeat five giant spiders, but may find a crucial amulet”, “The amulet gives the crucial answers which will lead them to the hidden cultists in Persia”)

Running a roleplaying game is pretty complex and many Roleplaying systems have reams of rules designed to help the GM deal with moving around the world: how much can a strong barbarian carry and still fight off monsters or sneak past a guard, far can people travel in a day etc etc. Getting to grips with all these rules can  be a real chore and get in the way of the fun, storytelling aspect if you focus on it too much, but I did want the support and consistency a system provides, so we are running “Dungeons and Dragons”. D&D is the Microsoft of roleplaying: not everyone’s perfect system, but ubiquitous and standard. It is easy to find other players who can play D&D.

I started the group of 10-year-olds when my son wanted a Dungeons and Dragons birthday party. Marjolein made Dutch versions of character sheets from the Basic Game and they set off to explore the underground dungeon of the evil dragon Tussenmaug. His friends had a very good time and we have been carrying on the adventure every few weeks ever since. Today they got to the culmination of the current adventure and killed Tussenmaug, who had been planning to enslave the town.  When the beast finally died (having given them a tough fight) they jumped to their feet and cheered. That, of course, made my day. There were some great moments during the adventure: everyone holding their breath while the thief delicately disarmed the trapped door, trying to set the greasy hair of the harpy on fire.

I have been gradually increasing the complexity of the rules as we go on, drip feeding the more complicated stuff as it became relevant. My advice to anyone running a game for kids is to prepare thoroughly. We used a lot of stuff from the Basic Game set of D&D, simplified rules, nice maps etc. I also made cool backstories for each of them, including “hooks” to hang new stories on, reasons for them to be together  and simple keywords to spark roleplaying (arrogant, careful, generous etc).  In the adventure I tried to make sure that everyone played a vital role: the cleric turned back undead, the fighter slew the dragon and the thief disarmed deadly traps.

Given that keeping a group of ten-year-olds sitting around a table for any length of time is difficult had plenty of munchies  and regular run-around-outside breaks. I was firm about taking turns and not shouting: the best way of doing that was to keep the action moving and speak quietly. Every time I said “something’s happening…” they concentrated and listened, because it might well be a horde of orcs coming round the corner or knifes flying out of the wall…

I am just on the point of moving them over to 4.0, largely because it will simplifiy some of the mechanics.

Having read that Peter Drukker was a major influence for aspects of GTD and having come across more Drukker-isms in the work of Steven Covey I decided a while ago to read “The Effective Executive” for myself. It is now forty years old and not in the least bit out of date. His examples refer to, now historical, figures but the situations he describes and the advice he provides is still cutting edge. I regularly see yet another “new insight” pop up in management and effectiveness forums that sends me off to my battered paperback copy to find the half-page he devoted to make precisely that point, forty year ago.

That is not to degrade the thinking of now. Mr Drucker is just a very, very hard act to follow and there is much valuable work to be done in getting those insights actually implemented in current behaviours and with recent technology. The latest case of this phenomenon is working from your strengths. The premise is simple and, for me, convincing: people spend much too much time trying to eliminate weaknesses when they should be leveraging their strengths. The “fully rounded” person who can handle every aspect of the job with ease is a myth. If someone looks like that they are almost certainly under-challenged. I have some strong and some weak suits. I use some behaviours, including GTD, to compensate for the weaknesses and put my coaching, facilitating and analytical skills into play at every opportunity. I cannot do everything well, but I can certainly arrange my situation so that everything is well done.