Gaming Families

MerakSpielman · Oct 8, 2003

My son's almost 2. He loves playing "dice." He grabs the die, holds hit over his head, shaking his fist, and carefully sets it down on the table. He knows some of his numbers, but usually says a random number followed by a "Yay!!" and hand clapping.

As a matter of fact, "die" was probably one of his first 20 words. After all, they MUST be really fun to play with if daddy and mommy play with them so much. He's even caught on that the "best" die is the d20 since that's what we roll most often.

Make sure you know your little ones propensity for sticking things in his/her mouth before you let 'em play with dice. My son tends not to stick random things in his mouth, but some kids will sample everything and anything.

Gnarlo · Oct 8, 2003

My son is 22, and unfortunately, I didn't get together with his mom until he was already 11, so he was already obsessed with sports and stuff at that age and wasn't interested.

Gave it the good ol' college try though.

My two youngest brothers (12 and 14 years younger than me) are regular members of my gaming group and bring whichever girl they happen to be with at the time to the games in an attempt to convert them. Yes, I have proudly molded them into my own image.... (rubs hands and cackles gleefully...)

Same thing we do every night, Pinky...

Hypersmurf · Oct 8, 2003

My parents gamed either Friday or Saturday nights, once a week, from as-long-as-I-can-remember until we shifted cities when I was 10. They'd take my sister and I along... we'd sit up and listen until we got tired, and then crash behind a sofa or something (sessions generally ran 6 or 7pm 'til 1 or 2am).

Being able to sleep in a brightly-lit room full of noisy gamers is a useful life-skill, by the way.

I was about 6 when my mother ran me through my first solo adventure (a heavily-modified Palace of the Silver Princess), and not long after that, I started playing with my parents' group.

Now, twenty or so years later, I'm DMing for my parents, and one of the other player's 12-year-old son recently joined the group. And sometimes I think "Ouch... how could they stand playing with a six-year-old?"

But my parents assure me that I was never a burden... I suppose I have to believe them

I pretty much had the 1E Core Rules memorised back then... I could quote the casting time in segments and the duration of most spells in the PHB...

I can only be grateful to the others in the group, who must (whatever my parents might say now

) have had serious misgivings about letting a little kid join in, and did it anyway...

-Hyp.

Southern Oracle · Oct 9, 2003

Mrs Shadowlight said:
I picked HeroQuest up at a garage sale this summer for 2 bucks. I'm going to have to try it with my five year old and see how he does. The box says ages 10-adult. Do you think a 5 year old could handle it?

I picked up HeroQuest for 50 cents!

My five-year-old had no trouble learning the rules, although she can't read very well yet and has no strategy when it comes to selecting which spell to cast. As the barbarian or the dwarf, though, she's great!

Mrs Shadowlight said:
That is the cutest thing I've ever heard. And definitely not a choking hazard. Has Daddy started the Pavlovian training of cheering and giving her treats whenever she rolls a 20?

Yes, I cheer every time she rolls an 18, 19, or 20, thereby reinforcing the "threat" and "crit" ranges.

Nine Hands · Oct 9, 2003

I have 3 boys and 1 girl.

All three boys have played in RPGs. My youngest son is really into the Pokemon Adventure Game and does not mind me running the same set of adventures over and over. It's pretty cute. My older boys (11 and 16) play D&D, GURPS, Warhammer, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other stuff.

Since my daughter is only 2 and a half, she does not play RPGs yet, but she does like to roll dice

Silver Moon · Oct 9, 2003

Two girls and a boy, ages 5 to 10. We've just begun a solo campaign for my oldest. She has two playing characters, and there are several NPC's, all children ages 9 to 15. My 5 year old wants to play one of the NPC's, a lizardman boy named Rex. I plan to give my daughter her first PHB for Christmas, as well as Oriental Adventures (she's into Karate, and loves all things oriental).

Wicht · Oct 9, 2003

I have four kids, the oldest two (both boys) are ages 7 and 6. I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons with the both of them for around a year now. I have not changed any rules, though I do remind them occassionally about their abilities and keep the plot elements simple for them. I have already bought the both of them dice and after a few month's haitus we are starting a new campaign with just them (me DMing and they the two players) and another one with some teenage boys in which my sons will be participants (that one is taking longer to get off the ground).

I started them on Pokemon adventure about three years ago and then graduated them up to the Dungeons and Dragons adventure box set. They picked up the concept fairly quickly and so I have not held them back.

Buttercup · Oct 9, 2003

Wicht! I've missed your story hour so much! I guess that game disbanded, eh? Please say you'll do a story hour for the one you are running for the boys? I just loved the exploits of Col and Joz (or whatever they were called), and I long to hear the end of that story.

Wicht · Oct 9, 2003

Buttercup said:
Wicht! I've missed your story hour so much! I guess that game disbanded, eh? Please say you'll do a story hour for the one you are running for the boys? I just loved the exploits of Col and Joz (or whatever they were called), and I long to hear the end of that story.

You are right, my last game disbanded right about 1 game after the last story entry so I don't know how the story ended myself

I have been majorly bummed over it too because I had worked so hard on my uber-villain (an awakened ex-familiar who had sold its feline soul to the God of Death and had both wizard and cleric levels. The kicker was it was going to return as a vampiric cat after being slain the first time - it would have been pretty nasty)

As for a new story hour, I was going to do my other game (it has six players total) but its been slow getting to the second adventure. So I might go ahead and type one up for my boys' new adventures and then if the other one gets going do it too.

xipetotec · Sep 2, 2010

Mrs Shadowlight said:
So when Joshua Dyal announced the birth of his little Logan (congrats again by the way) I noticed a lot of people out there had kids.

My question is, how many of you play with them and how old were they when you first introduced them to the game? (I figure at least old enough to not choke on dice/stick them up their noses)

Did you modify the rules?

It's funny, but I STARTED playing/DMing BECAUSE of them

. I mean I'd dabbled in school, but hardly ever played at all. A couple of months ago, my youngest was turning 12, I was looking for something that the whole family could play that we would enjoy. ( it also helps that my oldest had played 3.5 in grade 9 and my youngest has very high acting/roleplaying tendencies ), so I started by suggesting we play D&D. That actually expanded to three games so far. We have D&D going, Star Wars RPG and Call of Cthulhu ( we are also a horror film family ).... Ages? Boy 12, girl 15, boy 17 and DW 34 and myself 36.