(Say) Toddler says: Summon the Spectral Dragon!

The kids are more exposed to my DDO habit lately because of Mabar. Usualy I try to turn DDO off before they wake up. Partly because I need the time to instil sentorial values in their malleable toddler minds, but also because I don't like telling my PUG buddies "BRT picking up rasins" "AFK they're not rasins."

So this morning while I was steaming a latte to awaken my wife from her beauty sleep, I was delighted to see my terrible-two year old daughter run to the computer and grab my MMO mouse. On our desk, the Logitech G600 sits exactly her eye height. It's black with twelve laser etched rainbow strobing LED thumb buttons. There's another eight glowing buttons that are too tall for her to see, even on tippy toe.

Lightning fast, she grabbed the mouse in her right hand and slid it back and forth as quickly as she could. She shouted "LOOK PAPA! I! HELP-HELP! ING! YOU!"

My Main, the Level 20 Dwarf Paladin into which I have poured all of my free time into for the last few years, spun wildly in place. I let my other kids play DDO unders strict supervision, usualy swimming a character of their own design with some twink underwater breathing gear, but this terrible-two year old ambush caught me by surprise. Would I be Mordenkainened?

For the last three years I've been scrupulous about locking and binding all my loot, so there's a pretty specific series of steps that it would take to delete my gear. I took a gamble and took the latte to the wife.

A few seconds later, I was back to supervise my "helper." She was content to spin in place so I listened to my 4yo boy explain his drawing of a hyenas ear canals while keeping one eye on her. She got bored and wandered off.

A few miniutes later the Spectral Chamber opened, I put on my headset and warned everyone I'd be deep in the game for a good ten miniutes. I find that it's better for all of us if I have a few miniutes alone to really immerse myself in game. And it's less frusterating for the kids too.

She wandered back and noticed the night gargoyles. "Look! Is scary monster with a dragon wing! On his back!" She's by far my most talkative kid at two, but I've never heard her talk about a dragon's physiology before. So I scooped her up into my lap, I pulled of the headphones cranked up the sound and let her experience DDO.

She loved it! I explained the monsters she saw were "Gargoyles" because they make a gargling sound. But she got them mixed up and made gobbling sounds instead. She does that alot, "apple cider" becomes "apple spider." And in the song the "itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout" she always sings the itchy itchy spider.

She liked the acid cloud (green cloud!) and the dog vanity pet ("I hear a dog say 'woof woof!' I see a dog -- he is hiding in a GREEN cloud! He is funny! Ha ha!) and the iron defender ("He another dog!")

It took her a while to recognise the Spectral Dragon as a dragon. We fought it from the side and it was hard to see it clearly. But then at the very last it teleported in and presented a perfect sillohette. She recognised it and cheered as we vanquished it (which is my mom-safe euphamism for "kill.")

I don't think she'll be like her older siblings who, were happy to sit on my lap and speculate about what the monsters liked to eat when they weren't feasting on adventurers. But I'm glad that I had the chance to play Mabar with her today. It was really fun to see all the connections she was making.

Edit: It was also fun to teach her to say "Summon the Spectral Dragon!" Although when I tried to teach her how to say "Happy Mabar" in a scary voice she just laughed. "Mabar is funny!"