Short Story

[Velensk]

I think this might amuse some of the people on this forum and I am bored so I thought I might share it.

Yesterday there was a kid (about 12 years old) at school who needed a place to stay after school because his partents would be home late and they did not trust him to keep out of trouble on his own. My younger brother knew him and he ended up here. It quickly became clear to me and the rest of my siblings that keeping him ammused would be a problem. He had the strange attitude that he ought to be good at everything he tries on the first try, and that if he was not, it was obviously not worth doing. Since most of the games my family plays are stratagy orientated and that did not seem to be what he was good at we where having trouble.

Anyway when we got down to olny an hour and 15 minutes left he became interested in trying a computer game. Since my brother wanted to play with him we had to find a multi player game. The olny 2 games we had that qualified were Battle for Wesnoth and Starcraft. Between the two I figured the easier to teach was BfW because it was turn based and had simple mechanics (starcrafts mechanics are also simple but in a diffrent way)

Anyway he had a certain amount of enthusiasm (as he had for most of his previouse activities that he quickly lost intrest in). He imediately wanted to be the undead because I told him that undead were things like ghosts skelotons and zombies. He immediatly drew some conclusions: I.E. He thought that they would be unbeatable because you could not kill them. His kept telling me that you could not kill ghosts dispite me telling him that in this game they could be killed. Eventualy I just let him play the undead to let him find out that it is indeed possible to have them be killed. javascript:emoticon(':roll:')

The match was set up so that it would be my brother and him vs 2 comps (we gave him some extra gold). Now my brother is not as good as I, however he can fairly easily handle an AI and the hope was that between the extra gold and my brothers help the kid would be able to handle the other one. First I explaned the base how to move what some of the numbers mean and all. He clearly did not realy understand but he knew enough to try to play. He wanted to get lots of ghosts and WCs. My brother talked him into getting a skeloton and a dark adept as well as the ghosts and walking corpses.

I was away doinging something else when there was suddenly lots of noise coming from the computer area. Apperently he found out that it was indeed possible for his ghosts to die. I arived and explained (yet again) that it is possible for ghosts to die it is just hard to kill them. He said they were easy to kill they had less HP which he knew from other games was how hard a unit was to kill. I explained that in wesnoth how hard a unit was to kill was represented by more than just HP and I pulled up a ghosts discription and showed him some of the ghosts resistances.

After me showing him that he glared at me as though I was a traitor and said "YOU MADE ME PLAY A GAME WITH MATH IN IT!!".
Sometimes I wonder how these people manage to survive. javascript:emoticon(':roll:')

[Konrad II]

Whoa... Impressive. That was nearly "shameful" for me, I started Wesnoth at 11-12 years old XD.
Very nice story though

[zookeeper]

Sometimes I wonder how these people manage to survive.

I'm mostly hoping that they won't. I think the odds, fortunately, are slightly against them.

[Tomsik]

Tell him that all his games are based on math.

[VS]

Unless he doesn't play them on computer or console, of course. How hard would it be to make some simple game with oscilloscope, hmm...

[Taurus]

Made him play a game with math in it LOL! That's the best!

[Dave]

Though perhaps somewhat amusing, I think many children of that age have similar views about anything involving "math".

Frankly with the way that math is typically taught in elementary school, I can't say I blame them for their inhibitions.

Certainly I would expect only a few percent of children in this age group to actually enjoy Wesnoth. (Though I wouldn't expect more than perhaps 10% of people in any age group to enjoy Wesnoth...)

David

[Sapient]

maybe someone should write a "no math mod" where ghosts are invincible then?

[Velensk]

I think that my ideas of games that kids that age (thinking about it he must have been younger than he looks because my brother is olny 10) is probably a little screwy because of my family enviorment. My brother as I mentioned is 10 and can beat the wesnoth AI with realative ease. My sisters although they don't enjoy this type of game are also good at the sort of thinking it entails. I think that next time I have to do anything like this I'm going to try starcraft because although there is just as much math, it appears to be less abstract.

[Glowing Fish]

I have to admit, although I of course have used math all my life, and sometimes like it, that I have learned a great deal about statistics from playing Wesnoth. I mean, before I could have figured out quickly enough how 7/10th *3 broke down, but now I know it more or less automatically.

[F8 Binds...]

LOL.

What I tend to do in a situation like that is do a 2v2 against him, (me+AI, others) and absolutely kick his @$$. I agree with dave, out of 7 friends I introduced into Wesnoth, only 1 was still playing after a week. (the_same_n3t is his name.)

[irrevenant]

Though perhaps somewhat amusing, I think many children of that age have similar views about anything involving "math".
Frankly with the way that math is typically taught in elementary school, I can't say I blame them for their inhibitions.

Agreed. I think(/hope) 'Numb3rs' is helping a bit in this regard.

The trouble is they make kids swot through all the boring stuff that they need in order to do the really cool stuff, without giving them any idea why they're doing it.

All it would take is a few "and building on this math allows you to analyse fingerprints" and kids would be a lot more interested.

[Konrad II]

Though perhaps somewhat amusing, I think many children of that age have similar views about anything involving "math".
Frankly with the way that math is typically taught in elementary school, I can't say I blame them for their inhibitions.

Agreed. I think(/hope) 'Numb3rs' is helping a bit in this regard.

The trouble is they make kids swot through all the boring stuff that they need in order to do the really cool stuff, without giving them any idea why they're doing it.

All it would take is a few "and building on this math allows you to analyse fingerprints" and kids would be a lot more interested.

That's true... Most children of this age wonder what the heck maths are for and ask their teacher, who basically answer them a rude answer in the face.

[Taurus]

Teachers teaching - or not teaching math properly in schools? Maby, maby not, but in this case it just sounded to me like this kid was being a brat!