D&D 5E New DM Looking for tips hoping to run starter set with kids 9-12

[Kobold Stew]

I ran several sessions with play test materials and boys 10-13, and I'm planning on doing the starter set the same way. It worked really well, and they were able to stay focused. I prefer to ask the players leading questions when necessary directly (rather than have an NPC do so for me), but what's most important is that the atmosphere at the table is fun.

Have a space that's comfortable, where everyone has a seat. Give them blank paper so they can draw their characters if they want. (really important!). Make sure they've got fun drinks. Try to keep things moving by shifting focus from one character to the next often (more often than you think is needed).

My last game with kids I bought everyone a set of polyhedrals -- if nothing else, they were going to have some dice to keep in their room, as a souvenir.

In game, let them go wild. Kids (well, my kid and his friends) haven't had much experience talking back to adults, taking big risks, etc. The game gives them that opportunity, and sometime it's hard for them to swallow.

I ran a game once where two boys were going to clear an island of some bandits (they'd been told) just offshore from a fishing village. It was going to be two encounters. So they rowed out to the island in a borrowed boat, and then were afraid to leave the boat. ("The old man said we had to return it to him tonight!" my son's friend insisted. "What if someone takes it?"). Seriously, this kid was so straight laced that he thought he wouldn't be able to meet the bandits because he'd have to guard the boat while my son his friend went off adventuring. [As I type this, i realize this session may be the source of my referring not to use NPCs to give advice!] Anyways, eventually they found the bandits, and they were actually orcs! (Yes, that was the reveal, and it made the kids happy. There's no need to overthink things here, I feel.)

In my view, you get to model the experience for them -- and it's the experience that will make them want to come back, not how many monsters they actually kill. Seriously, you can get away with a two room dungeon, and the kids will have fun, as long as the focus is on their enjoyment and their engagement with the fictional world. You also get to model role-play for them -- how to speak to strangers, when it's appropriate to draw your dagger, and so forth. All fun.

Hope this helps.

 

[amerigoV]

Run them through Tomb of Horrors - they may as well learn it the right way (plus the entertainment value for you has to be off the charts).

 

[Tormyr]

Run them through Tomb of Horrors - they may as well learn it the right way (plus the entertainment value for you has to be off the charts).

Or Mines of Madness. Lost a PC in the first five minutes.

 

[Bawylie]

1.) keep the experience at the forefront and the system to the rear.
2.) frame everything. All challenges should be reasonably clear as to what's expected, what's at stake, what's a threat, etc. take the time to describe these things so they come alive in the imagination. (For my kids' group, we recently fought a dragon in the sea. I pre-loaded threats by describing how it cut through the water, how the lashing tail split a boat apart, how it's jaws were strong enough to rip apart a shark, etc, what it was guarding, etc).
3.) invite them to describe kills, action, spells, etc "What's that look like?"
4.) rarely say no. Never, if possible.

 

[SigmaOne]

One thing to watch out for is that it only comes with five pregenerated characters, so you may need to create an additional character if you end up with six kids. The free PDF should be coming out at the same time, so hopefully this will be easy to do. Additionally, you may want to make a tweak to enemy difficulty here and there for balance.

 

[Cybit]

Ran the Starter Set as a test for a group of 10-12 year olds and they really enjoyed it. If you have any specific questions feel free to PM me; but don't be afraid to let zany stuff happen (like acme anvils) and don't be afraid to reskin characters (the wizard ended up as a Titan from Titanfall) to fit what they want. They are not generally concerned about things being balanced as much as being able to play what they want, so if you tell them that "sure, you can play the Predator, but I have to make sure everyone has equal amounts of fun", they tend to be OK with it far more than actual adults are.

 

[Tormyr]

(like acme anvils)

Awesome

 

[GSHamster]

1. Keep things obvious and straightforward.

2. Let them be heroic.

3. Say Yes to their ideas. Let all their ideas have a chance of success, and let the dice determine success/failure.

 

[Marius Delphus]

Don't sweat the small stuff.

1. The rules are small stuff.
2. The adventure content is small stuff.
3. The fun factor is not small stuff.

 

[Texicles]

like acme anvils

Reminds me of my first D&D experience. I was somewhere in the 10-12 bracket. My friends and I were at Boy Scout summer camp, finished one of our merit badge classes in a couple days and had 3 more days where we had to show back up to that class. Lucky for us, that merit badge counselor was a younger guy with his 2e books handy.

On our third day of playing, one of the kids didn't show up so rather than try to run the kids' PC, the DM says "[PC Name I can't remember] fell into a plot hole and died." Now that I'm older, that's amusing by itself, but when he said it, I misheard, thinking he said "pot hole."

For nearly 2 decades, the image of someone falling to their doom in a cartoonish pot hole has stuck with me, and never ceased to elicit a grin.

TL;DR - Zany is good.