Thank Heaven For Little Girls

One of the main problems of having a family of a million daughters (ok, I exaggerate, the number of daughters I currently possess is closer to 500,000 than a million) is that you have to work to get them interested in similar things. It is my belief that females are genetically predisposed to not be interested in "guy-style" fantasy (which is devoid of talking horses or any little magical girl whose primary enemy is a) a baker or b) trying to remove color from the world). Nor do they like roleplaying, strategy games, or action science fiction. These tastes are all learned behaviors in the fairer sex.

Right now the dozen or so regulars on TWG who are girls are planning how they'll object in the forum thread for this article. This is a good thing, as it increases our page hit counts.

Anyway, that seems to be the case. Unless I keep my children constantly inundated with hobbits, Godzilla, or superhero action figures, they quickly revert to using their Han Solo and Princes Leia action figures to play house. Incidentally, Elizabeth (age 7) already writes Star Wars fan fiction, which as a father makes me proud. This fan fiction is inevitably about how the Solo family grows and has babies and goes on vacation and visits Uncle Luke. None of them involve bounty hunters, the Empire, or monsters, which, as a father, makes me weep bitter tears.

The one thing my children will do is play games. Generally these games are "Dora la Exploradora y el Parque de Juego." (I'll pause while you suppress those shivers.) I can't even get them into Cootie. Which is a mixed bag in itself – on the one hand, it's about bugs, and that's cool. On the other, it's about cooties, which is what boys have, and thus it's ultimately about girly things.

On rare occasions we get out Star Wars trivial pursuit. My kids have a surprising broad knowledge of the story elements, considering that my wife won't let them see more than about 20% of the total series (Trash compactor: out; anything with Jabba: out; anything with the Emperor: out; anything with Darth Vader: out; there's more but you get the point). I have managed to get them interested in several of the key battle sequences though: The Battle of Yavin, the Battle of Endor (though this is edited since it cuts to scenes of Darth and Luke and the Emperor), and the Battle of Geonosis. The point is, they can answer a surprisingly large number of these questions. Of course, ask them the names of any actor or any crew member and they're lost. Obscure questions (which make up the bulk of Star Wars trivial pursuit) they generally miss. They get 30 something tries per square, though, so sometimes they win.

The real triumph has been The Marvel Action Board Game, published by Milton Bradley something like a billion years ago. (There's that exaggeration again. The actual figure is actually much closer to a thousand years.) The board is a large grid featuring circular spaces at all the intersections. Segments of either red or black connect the spaces. The rules are simple: a hero figure (Spidey, The Cap, etc) can move two spaces if both segments it travels are red, other wise it may only move one space. Villains (Doc Ock, Galactus) are the opposite: up to two spaces on black, only one on red. If you land on a space where an opponent already stands, that figure is captured. If you reach the far side of the board, you are "crowned," and as long as you stay on your native color, you can move as far as you want. The object is to capture all of the opponent's figures.

My daughters have an approach that is pretty intuitive if you like it: Moving two is always better than one, because two is bigger. Their reaction to the end of the game is likewise predictable: you cry and throw a tantrum if you lose. The worse you get beaten, the worse you scream. This takes an awful lot of the fun out of playing geeky games with them.

I find it's a good introduction though. A little better than something like Othello. It's easier to see one move ahead. Every time they make a move, I make sure to ask them, "What will I do if you move there?"—hoping that one day they will look one move ahead. Then we can move to two moves, and so on. Right now strategies include moving all the figures in turn, or going to meet the opponent's figures. It's an uphill battle, but I haven't given up yet.

Another popular game is one I got at age 18, when I was barely able to start reasserting my nerdliness. I received "The Tick: Hip Deep in Evil Board Game." It's mostly pointless, rolling the die and moving around the board collecting good guy and bad guy tokens. In the corners you get to fight specific nemeses like El Seed or Dinosaur Neil. After about 300 plays (actual figure, closer to a billion) they've got most of these mechanics down, so I've started trying to introduce some of the more complex (if such a word can be applied in this case) mechanics. There's a gambling section at the end where you can either make bank on points, or lose everything you have. There's a random token value system, and there's using Arthur. Right now scoring is primarily "You have more, you win." They just get confused when I try to have them draw the random score sheet and figure out how much each is worth. This feels quite a bit like homework to Elizabeth, and it's beyond Sarah's ken (age 4). Thus, this isn't just an uphill battle, it's fighting a withdrawing action.

At any rate, I am bound and determined to make gamers out of these kids, and equally set on making them like speculative fiction.

I'm having mixed success. Last Christmas Elizabeth asked for Star Wars action figures and a Star Wars playset for Christmas (she is now Daddy's Favorite, and she got everything she wanted). Though Leia and Han are now going to visit Luke in the Millennium Falcon, instead of in a Barbie car, I think this is a step up.

However, Sarah asked for Barbie Princess and the Pauper -- aggravating not just because you have to say "Barbie Princess and the Pauper" when referring to it or you're wrong and not just because they aren't produced anymore so shopping must be done on eBay and not just because about the only thing she doesn't have is the hundred dollar castle (not gonna happen), but also because she asked for nothing else and asked for the same thing for her birthday as well. I have no doubt this will be on wish lists for years to come.

I'm starting to train Rachael now. She's 2 and has recently stopped being scared of my Godzilla (who stands 19 inches tall). She wants to play with my Todd McFarlane dragons. I encourage this, but they usually end up playing the part of Polly Pocket's pet dog.

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Written by SaintEhlers on February 16th, 2006