A New RPGer is Born!

[Azgulor]

After several years of looking at Dad's RPGs and wondering what RPGs were all about, we decided he was old enough to dive into the deep end. We made up a character last weekend and this weekend was our first session. It was wildly entertaining & nostalgic for me, but the best part was seeing my kid's reaction.

I knew he was having a ball but you know you've got a RPG fan when he said, not once, but three times "You're right, Dad. This is better than a video game."

The little one got in on the act as well, alternating between helping Dad roll dice and playing with his action figures.

A terriffic day all around! Just wanted to share.

 

[Jack99]

Grats. I hope my kids will react the same way, once they are old enough to play.

 

[nopantsyet]

That's very cool, Azgulor, I'd like to know more about what you did. How old is your boy? What did you run for an adventure? Was it D&D? Did you change or exclude any portion of the rules, etc? My oldest is turning 9 in a few weeks and he and I have been talking about playing, but haven't quite gotten there yet.

 

[Mark]

Huzzah!

 

[evildmguy]

That's great!

And yes, more info! I have nephews I would love to introduce to the game!

edg

 

[Azgulor]

My oldest is 9. Considered starting him earlier but wanted to ensure that he could game for at least an hour (he was going strong at 4 hours in!). We played using the Pathfinder rules.

My son played a human Ranger. The youngest, claiming he wanted to "play a ninja", got to run a human Monk 1/Rogue 1 until the lure of his action figures won out.

Since I was unsure what my oldest's first go-round would be like, I dusted off my old UK5: The Eye of the Serpent from TSR which was designed to be run for a party or a single Ranger, Druid, or Monk. It worked out great! My son's about half-way through.

Materials Used:
Pathfinder RPG - My kid really got into the character creation and quickly picked up the basics
Monster Manual 3.5
Eye of the Serpent module
Hot Pursuit Rules from Tome of Secrets - These worked like a charm. My son loved being chased through a forest while pusued by a Hobgoblin and his three hunting dogs!
I also used Reserve Points from Iron Heroes/Unearthed Arcana to maximize survival chances and compensate for the lack of magical healing.

Obviously, with no spell-using PCs or NPCs, the learning curve stayed pretty low. He quickly caught on to attacks, HP ("you mean it's like your health bar in a video game?"), damage, saves, and skills. It was also a big deal when he got to use a different dice ("cool, I get to use the 10-sided one") which made me smile.

All-in-all, it exceeded my expectations which I felt were pretty high to start. He's already tossing around ideas for his characters backstory, things he wants to do with his loot, etc. I think perhaps the coolest part about it is that he requires little story-motivation other than "it'd be cool to explore that". That's something that's sometimes hard to come by in my normal adults-only campaign.


P.S. In case the "gorgeous book" praise for Pathfinder needed any reinforcement, my little one asked if we can look through the Pathfinder RPG pictures as part of the books-before-bed routine.

 

[darjr]

Yea!

Itn't it cool!

 

[Wombat]

KEEN!

Sounds like you have set the little fellow along the right path!

 

[Is_907]

That's fantastic! My wife and I are planning to start having little ones within the next year, so I'm quite anxious to train them up in the way of having and using a vivid imagination.
Glad to know an early introduction to RPGs can work well!

 

[Voadam]

P.S. In case the "gorgeous book" praise for Pathfinder needed any reinforcement, my little one asked if we can look through the Pathfinder RPG pictures as part of the books-before-bed routine.

I got _A Practical Guide to Monsters_ out of the Library and we've used that a couple of times as the storytime book for my 5 year old. He even once had a dream where he was a Remorhaz, pounced out of an ice tunnel, and ate a bunch of people.