If you are interested in board game sessions in French or English, around 
Hanoi, do not hesitate to contact-us! Let's learn through play!
Attack galleons loaded with gold to accumulate the biggest treasure.
We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw
2025/12/21
Heads up, today we tried role-playing. :)
Role-playing is no small thing; it's an activity that can change your life. Every geek I know had a life before RPGs and a life after RPGs.
The problem is, it's a game based on imagination. You have a pencil, paper, dice, and an interactive story. The Game Master has to describe, narrate, and play the characters you meet. See the problem? My Vietnamese is terrible, and the boys' French isn't advanced enough to follow the complex description of a gloomy forest. :)
So I prepared everything: all the location descriptions, all the character dialogues, in Vietnamese translated by Google (They had a good laugh at some of the inaccurate translations).
And I explicitly asked them, with a note in Vietnamese, not to stray from the scenario, otherwise we'd be forced to manage with broken French. It's a shame, because the whole point of role-playing games is precisely to be able to do whatever you want, even through unforeseen means. So, this was a limited version of the game.
I had planned a short story, with each character having a personal—secret—backstory in Vietnamese, to give them depth from the start and motivate some of their decisions (Xoai had to flee the city because he was wanted, for example).
The story involved sending them to rescue a princess kidnapped by an evil necromancer.
The first step of assembling the team (uniting them around the quest's objective) went very well (it must be said that they all had strong motivations for accepting).
The second step, which involved preparing (Xoai had to buy a weapon he had lost, they needed to buy food for the journey, etc.), almost went smoothly. Almost. But Kiet got it into his head to ask the king for money to cover the preparation costs, instead of paying out of his own pocket. So he tried to bribe the palace guards to let him in with four bronze coins, the equivalent of 8,000 VND. Yes, you read that right: he tried to bribe a royal guard with 8,000 VND, then tried again with 20,000. Guaranteed failure; he almost ended up in jail. So he started stealing from people at the market. Nguyen had plenty of money, but as expected, he refused to participate. Then they tried to scrape together a few coins by haggling over every little item. In short, we almost spent the entire two-hour game in the starting town, just preparing for the adventure.
In fact, it would make a good introductory scenario for the role-playing game: "The Hellish Preparation," with all the imaginable problems.
They finally left and decided to go through the Ruins instead of cutting through the forest. Nguyen was playing the role of the sorcerer, a key role since he possesses special powers useful in many situations. I gave him a secret note telling him that the place was very dangerous, infested with ghosts. Since Nguyen wasn't particularly involved, he said nothing, and the group camped there, in the middle of a ghost nest. They took repeated damage; they obviously tried to fight back, but they didn't have the equipment or skills to defeat ethereal creatures immune to physical damage. They spent several turns trying to hit them, to no avail, and I even made them take a turn of inaction because of how long they were taking to think. I felt sorry for them and asked them what they would do in such a situation. Yes, because "fleeing" was unthinkable, but they faced the facts.
They eventually arrived at the necromancer's lair, cautiously searched the empty space, and finally stumbled upon the owner, who was peacefully drinking his morning tea. Naturally, their first instinct was to strike. They talked later. They searched the rest of the dungeon and found the princess, whom they rescued. The necromancer regained consciousness, but Long instinctively knocked him unconscious again.
They returned home and collected their reward.
The idea was that the necromancer was actually a nice guy who studied old books, and the princess was a runaway who enjoyed being rescued by heroes. The necromancer would have gladly given the princess to the adventurers, along with a hot meal, but I really didn't have time to develop that aspect. :)
They told me they really enjoyed the game, but I don't think we'll be able to play again. All the text in Vietnamese translation requires way too much preparation. Usually, I jot down a few ideas about a location, a character's motivations, and then develop them if the adventurers encounter them, but this time, we needed a text for every location.
I gave them a set of dice (from D4 to D100) for Christmas. :)
I'm not sure they'll need them anytime soon, but dice are important; every human being should own a set, as a human right.
Role-playing is no small thing; it's an activity that can change your life. Every geek I know had a life before RPGs and a life after RPGs.
The problem is, it's a game based on imagination. You have a pencil, paper, dice, and an interactive story. The Game Master has to describe, narrate, and play the characters you meet. See the problem? My Vietnamese is terrible, and the boys' French isn't advanced enough to follow the complex description of a gloomy forest. :)
So I prepared everything: all the location descriptions, all the character dialogues, in Vietnamese translated by Google (They had a good laugh at some of the inaccurate translations).
And I explicitly asked them, with a note in Vietnamese, not to stray from the scenario, otherwise we'd be forced to manage with broken French. It's a shame, because the whole point of role-playing games is precisely to be able to do whatever you want, even through unforeseen means. So, this was a limited version of the game.
I had planned a short story, with each character having a personal—secret—backstory in Vietnamese, to give them depth from the start and motivate some of their decisions (Xoai had to flee the city because he was wanted, for example).
The story involved sending them to rescue a princess kidnapped by an evil necromancer.
The first step of assembling the team (uniting them around the quest's objective) went very well (it must be said that they all had strong motivations for accepting).
The second step, which involved preparing (Xoai had to buy a weapon he had lost, they needed to buy food for the journey, etc.), almost went smoothly. Almost. But Kiet got it into his head to ask the king for money to cover the preparation costs, instead of paying out of his own pocket. So he tried to bribe the palace guards to let him in with four bronze coins, the equivalent of 8,000 VND. Yes, you read that right: he tried to bribe a royal guard with 8,000 VND, then tried again with 20,000. Guaranteed failure; he almost ended up in jail. So he started stealing from people at the market. Nguyen had plenty of money, but as expected, he refused to participate. Then they tried to scrape together a few coins by haggling over every little item. In short, we almost spent the entire two-hour game in the starting town, just preparing for the adventure.
In fact, it would make a good introductory scenario for the role-playing game: "The Hellish Preparation," with all the imaginable problems.
They finally left and decided to go through the Ruins instead of cutting through the forest. Nguyen was playing the role of the sorcerer, a key role since he possesses special powers useful in many situations. I gave him a secret note telling him that the place was very dangerous, infested with ghosts. Since Nguyen wasn't particularly involved, he said nothing, and the group camped there, in the middle of a ghost nest. They took repeated damage; they obviously tried to fight back, but they didn't have the equipment or skills to defeat ethereal creatures immune to physical damage. They spent several turns trying to hit them, to no avail, and I even made them take a turn of inaction because of how long they were taking to think. I felt sorry for them and asked them what they would do in such a situation. Yes, because "fleeing" was unthinkable, but they faced the facts.
They eventually arrived at the necromancer's lair, cautiously searched the empty space, and finally stumbled upon the owner, who was peacefully drinking his morning tea. Naturally, their first instinct was to strike. They talked later. They searched the rest of the dungeon and found the princess, whom they rescued. The necromancer regained consciousness, but Long instinctively knocked him unconscious again.
They returned home and collected their reward.
The idea was that the necromancer was actually a nice guy who studied old books, and the princess was a runaway who enjoyed being rescued by heroes. The necromancer would have gladly given the princess to the adventurers, along with a hot meal, but I really didn't have time to develop that aspect. :)
They told me they really enjoyed the game, but I don't think we'll be able to play again. All the text in Vietnamese translation requires way too much preparation. Usually, I jot down a few ideas about a location, a character's motivations, and then develop them if the adventurers encounter them, but this time, we needed a text for every location.
I gave them a set of dice (from D4 to D100) for Christmas. :)
I'm not sure they'll need them anytime soon, but dice are important; every human being should own a set, as a human right.
