Help me run a campaign for a bunch of 12 year olds.

ExploderWizard said:

The Keep is civilization. The caves are inhabited by monsters who are hostile to civilization. Those monsters have treasure. Adventurers venture into dangerous places such as the caves in search of treasure. The bulk of adventuring XP comes from finding treasure. Onward!!!!

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I enjoyed this. It is definitely the vibe I get from B2.

That said, the last time I actually ran the module was for a party of two thieves. All the action was in the Keep - I don't think we got to the caves at all. The PCs uncovered the chaos cult working in the Keep, and then tracked it down to superior cultists in Critwall (I had located the Keep in the Shield Lands).

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION]'s posts remind me of Mearls' notorious review of B2. I personally didn't need 50 pages of notes to run the thieves-vs-chaos-cult adventure I've just described - I had my Greyhakw maps, and a name for my dark god (Chemosh) from Dragonlance, but the details I made up as we went along - but it certainly wasn't something I could have done as a new GM straight from the text.

I'll admit I was disappointed when the D&Dnext playtest shipped with the Caves as Chaos as its sample adventure. I would have liked to see something a bit more ambitious.

pemerton said:

I enjoyed this. It is definitely the vibe I get from B2.

That said, the last time I actually ran the module was for a party of two thieves.

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Sometimes I often wonder whether many of the disagreements over DMing styles that I have with you and certain other posters aren't mostly grounded in our differing experiences with party size. From many of your posts, you've often indicated groups of 2-3 players. I think I'll readily agree that when you have just 1-2 players, or even 3, you can run games in an entirely different style than when you have 5-8.

All the action was in the Keep - I don't think we got to the caves at all. The PCs uncovered the chaos cult working in the Keep, and then tracked it down to superior cultists in Critwall (I had located the Keep in the Shield Lands)...it certainly wasn't something I could have done as a new GM straight from the text.

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If you are playing from the text, almost none of the complexity that people like about B2 is actually there.

pemerton said:

(snip) @Celebrim 's posts remind me of Mearls' notorious review of B2. (snip)

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That review is priceless... and rather ironic considering Mike subsequently co-authored two of the worst D&D adventures of all time, Keep on the Shadowfell and Pyramid of Shadows... and punched out Iron Heroes before it was complete and in order to meet a deadline. (And I am not going to touch some of the third party d20/OGL spam he churned out.)

(snip) I'll admit I was disappointed when the D&Dnext playtest shipped with the Caves as Chaos as its sample adventure. I would have liked to see something a bit more ambitious.

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I must admit, I get a lot of mileage out of the Caves of Chaos portion of B2 Keep on the Borderlands but I like to make quite a few story-based changes to make it more coherent. I do think the set-up has potential but it really does need the DM to bring it to life... which rather pads out the original 16-page page count into something much larger and means that you're not longer running or playing the published adventure.

I suppose the fact that the rules were in such a state of flux for a long time meant that there was little chance of a more ambitious offering being served up. In that context, it probably (possibly?) made sense to go the more conservative route.

If you have access to the series steal from "Jackie Chan Adventures" cartoon.

Celebrim said:

Sometimes I often wonder whether many of the disagreements over DMing styles that I have with you and certain other posters aren't mostly grounded in our differing experiences with party size. From many of your posts, you've often indicated groups of 2-3 players. I think I'll readily agree that when you have just 1-2 players, or even 3, you can run games in an entirely different style than when you have 5-8.

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You may have misinterpreted some of my posts.

For the past 6 years I've run for 5. Before that it was 6 or 7 for nearly 20 years (peaking at 8, I think, but not for very long).

Imperialus said:

So I'm going to be starting a lunch hour D&D game for a bunch of my 6th grade students. None of them have played before, they're mostly 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, That said, a fair number of them do enjoy fantasy novels, anime shows and the like.

I'm going to be running Labyrinth Lord without the advanced compendium. I still think that B/X is the best beginner version of D&D and LL captures the simplicity of it very well. It also plays very fast which suits a 40 minute lunchbreak.

I'm going to be running B1 (In Search of the Unknown) followed by B2 (Keep on the Borderlands).

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First off, you win D&D for being willing to do this!

I've run after school gaming groups for up to thirty 6th through 8th graders for the last eight years and it is really, really rewarding. In fact, you know that momentary retro-thrill you get when open a brand new boxed set and just for a few minutes you are 10 years old again? Well that has nothing on gathering a bunch of middle schoolers and watching them freak out the first time they encounter a carrion crawler or similar beastie for which they have no category and no prior knowledge!

I think you've made a great choice for rules and I agree that B/X / Labyrinth Lord is probably the best starting place.

I started my own kids on B1 and B2 as well -- it's just good parenting.

This spring I got to introduce 24 of my 8th grader students to role-playing during the school day in a study hall class, followed by 30 more middle schoolers in July during a two-week summer camp. You can read all about it at http://oldeschoolwizardry.blogspot.com

Some suggestions:

• disallow PC vs PC combat. When it comes up, just say, "Nope, you can't do that" and move on. I'd never do that with adults of course, but the bad blood that it can create within a school group is not worth the headache and out-of-game fallout if someone takes it personally.
• Go heavy on visuals and handouts ... go ahead and provide partial maps and screen shots if possible
• Have the kids recap the action and their objective at the top of each session
• Plan an in-game source for new & replacement characters. Kids will get pulled away by other activities, miss sessions unexpectedly, or invite friends. I use an NPC "base camp"
• Don't be shy about PCs getting killed off for poor or reckless choices. I find that this actually increased player interest and engagement in most cases -- the kids were like, "wow, this is playing for keeps!"
• Plan to start grooming a protege right away. If you hook the kids, a lunch group of six can quickly turn into three times that many. Callers can only get you so far. Start thinking about simple dungeons that a fledgling DM could run for his or her friends (e.g. Dyson's Delve).
• Consider accelerating advancement. In 1981 we only had three channels of TV, so Monopoly, Risk, and a month and a half of D&D to level up all made sense ... these kids? Probably not so much.
• Consider some assistance with the mapping. Carefully counting out squares on graph paper may have been our thing, but that probably won't get you too far today. Think about using dungeon tiles -- a kid can sketch as you lay them out and take them up or drawing the maps for them on a whiteboard / smartboard / etc
• Miniatures really help hold interest (but I acknowledge that there is a theater-of-the-mind tradeoff)

Again, I salute you for taking this on!

Please post or PM updates -- I'm sure that there will be things I can learn from your efforts to help kids Learn the Dungeon.

i bumped this on another website so i thought i would do it here to let imp talk about his successes.

SIGPUP.

Ninjas have kidnapped the President. Are you a bad enough dude to save the President?