Shadowslayer
Explorer
Howdy all, been a while but I see the community is just as thriving as it ever was! Back into D&D after a couple year hiatus and have just picked up the 4e stuff. Its all a little new to me but for the most part I like what they've done with the game.
My 12 yr old stepson recently got into my toybox and discovered all my minis, books and battlemats, and has expressed some interest in D&D. Of course, he's a kid weaned on console games and I'm sort of afraid D&D might be a little too much of a drain on his attention span. Has anyone had any experience playing 4e with kids? Are there certain parts that give some kids trouble? Should I look at streamlining or de-emphasizing some of it?
One of the things that gives me slight pause is the "one rule-many exceptions" thing. Playing with adults who get it isn't a problem, but I'm afraid (for example) that with each variety of goblin or kobold and the at-wills and the encounter powers they all have, that it will look too much like I'm just randomly pulling special monster abilities out of a hat...or am I worrying too much about that? I can tell them that its sometimes the DMs job to make stuff like that up, but I alo want to foster the idea that I'm playing fair with them.
I used to play with my nephew when he was about the same age, and the one part that he had a problem getting his head around was that the DM was essentially the guy that held all the cards. I recall stressing over and over that I wasn't his "opponent" per se...but he never quite bought into it. I remember even after explaining it, a number of times he still furrowed his eyebrow with suspicion and said "I think you just made that up" (I don't know if that was just him, his age, or if it was that he just didn't grasp the idea of an RPG. )
Any thoughts on this, or about playing with kids in general?
My 12 yr old stepson recently got into my toybox and discovered all my minis, books and battlemats, and has expressed some interest in D&D. Of course, he's a kid weaned on console games and I'm sort of afraid D&D might be a little too much of a drain on his attention span. Has anyone had any experience playing 4e with kids? Are there certain parts that give some kids trouble? Should I look at streamlining or de-emphasizing some of it?
One of the things that gives me slight pause is the "one rule-many exceptions" thing. Playing with adults who get it isn't a problem, but I'm afraid (for example) that with each variety of goblin or kobold and the at-wills and the encounter powers they all have, that it will look too much like I'm just randomly pulling special monster abilities out of a hat...or am I worrying too much about that? I can tell them that its sometimes the DMs job to make stuff like that up, but I alo want to foster the idea that I'm playing fair with them.
I used to play with my nephew when he was about the same age, and the one part that he had a problem getting his head around was that the DM was essentially the guy that held all the cards. I recall stressing over and over that I wasn't his "opponent" per se...but he never quite bought into it. I remember even after explaining it, a number of times he still furrowed his eyebrow with suspicion and said "I think you just made that up" (I don't know if that was just him, his age, or if it was that he just didn't grasp the idea of an RPG. )
Any thoughts on this, or about playing with kids in general?