Roleplaying With Children

[Odhanan]

My partner in RL is a teacher, and I have been working with children for summer activities in the past, using RPGs, years ago. Now I am thinking of introducing more children to our hobby (through school activities, with the help of the parents, and so on and so forth).

I've searched for some information through the internet, and found some useful advice and even a community via Sam Chupp's website.

Do you have any experience playing with children ? What are the most important things to consider ? Some differences with the "classic roleplaying with pals" to consider ?
Do you have any ressource, web or otherwise, that would be useful for my project at DMing with children ?

Please share your experiences. Thanks !

 

[Rystil Arden]

My partner in RL is a teacher, and I have been working with children for summer activities in the past, using RPGs, years ago. Now I am thinking of introducing more children to our hobby (through school activities, with the help of the parents, and so on and so forth).

I've searched for some information through the internet, and found some useful advice and even a community via Sam Chupp's website.

Do you have any experience playing with children ? What are the most important things to consider ? Some differences with the "classic roleplaying with pals" to consider ?
Do you have any ressource, web or otherwise, that would be useful for my project at DMing with children ?

Please share your experiences. Thanks !

Try http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=188

Its a back-issue of Johnn Four's excellent newsletter whose theme is "Five Tips For Roleplaying With Younger Children." I've also done some limited roleplaying with younger children, but it hasn't seem to work for me unless I treated them the same as everyone else (they often like to think they know everything), so I can't really offer any of my own advice. Hope the link helps though.

 

[Odhanan]

Hey thanks a bunch, pard!

I will keep digging. If any of you out there finds or knows something that would be of any interest for this topic, please don't hesitate to post!

Odh

 

[Rel]

I have some experience in this area having put together many "adventures" for my 3 year old daughter. A link to these can be found in my .sig - The Adventures of Samantha the Red.

 

[Whimsical]

Don't introduce them to the real power until they are 18 or older. Or at least get a note from their parents to get their OK if you are going to teach them mind bondage spells.

 

[Captain NeMo]

Hehe, that link always brings a smile to my face. Or is it an angry twitch? I can never tell...

Obviously BoVD is out, as is BoED probably. The only advise I can think of is to take it slowly, don't force complex storylines down their throat and help them when they make their first characters. My first (and current) DM had to explain char creation to me for my first campaign, and even the abbillity scores seemed confusing at first. The rest of the PHB is terrifying to try and digest on your own. Well, it was for me, anyway.

 

[Odhanan]

There's a group of potential players. 11 years old, they are all huge fans of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

What I plan to do is wait for Episode III - Revenge of the Sith to come out. Then, I'll introduce them to a Lite Star Wars d20 (read: Star Wars d20 simplified with the Basic Set of D&D3.5 as a model) with minis and so on.

The first adventure would use some iconographic moments of the movies. The plot would be straightforward like (just an example): "pick up this guy, XX, in this star system for the Alliance. The system being presently invaded by the Empire. PCs arrive and find that XX has been captured and is held in a base. Go in the base, save the guy, leave the system."

 

[Captain NeMo]

Sounds like a good plan.

 

[Steverooo]

Somewhere on here is a thread entitled something like "An Experience Teaching D&D", from last November... It's about a Thanksgiving game a friend of mine ran, with his two kids, two teenage relatives, and me as the old grog-less-nard... I don't know that you can actually LEARN anything from that, but it might be worth looking up, if you have the Search function...

...Or maybe not!

Here it is: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=109700