Teaching your kids to play D&D

[thullgrim]

I am a father of 4, 3 boys 1 girl (11,10,8[girl],5mon). Anyhow the 2 older boys have expressed interest in playing. my question is do you use a scaled down version of rules? Run straight dungeon hacks for a while? Remember my kids are members of the playstation generation so they don't necessarily view things the way we did when we started out. What size dungeon, right now I am thinking 8-10 rooms with a single theme running throughout the dungeon and a re-occuring villian they will see every 3 or 4 adventures. Do you use pre-gens for a while and then let them create their own characters later? What about skills and such, do you intentionally not use the social type skills? I can run one extra character and my wife will play with them as well I think so we are talking about a 4 character party. I think 8-10 rooms might be to small with 4 characters but then again there is the time/attention span thing to consider as well.

Anyone advice or suggestions are welcome.

Thullgrim

 

[Snoweel]

Unless your kids are complete idiots, use the rules as is.

Firstly, one doesn't need to have exceptional intelligence to understand and use the D&D ruleset - it is a skill that is learned.

It is common knowledge that children learn the basics of anything faster than adults.

So the rules won't be a problem for them.

Secondly, what your children do lack is a broad scope of life experience, and therefore don't have the social reference to appreciate or even understand a lot of the themes you might be accustomed to in your own D&D games.

So you should concentrate on things like combat, exploration and problem-solving, with black and white victory conditions and a lot of action. Dungeoncrawls are perfect for this.

Actually, it should be pretty cool because all the crap that you've seen a thousand times before and become jaded over will be fresh and new for them, and if you're anything like me, being with somebody who experiences something for the first time is like experiencing it for the first time yourself.

As for characters, let them make their own (character creation will be as fun for them as actually playing the game), but steer them toward the classes that don't typically invest many (or any) points in social skills.

And I think the bigger the dungeon the better - just have different themed areas and watch their attention spans grow. Remember that E.G.G. created the Greyhawk dungeons for a group that included his kids, and as long as it has a lot of variety, both in themes and challenges, it doesn't even need to make much sense.

Maybe you should dust off your old Greyhawk stuff?

 

[Hida Bukkorosu]

I think you should go ahead and include some of the social skills as well, and make sure to include at least one encounter that can be talked past, so your kids can see there's more ways to deal with a situation than brute force... best to have them grow up with a firm grasp of the options available instead of spend their formative rping years in a rut of "combat is the only answer to every encounter"...

now, things like going into a lot of detailed backstory, or complex political intrigue, those are things you might want to steer clear of till they're older

 

[Ghostknight]

I've been ruminating on this for awhile, but my kids are still way too young. I have given thought to designing a campaign specificallyfor kids, de-emphasising combat as a solution to all problems and enhancing fun aspects (maybe including a bit of off table action, let them get outside a bit and see the sun - we may be technology and book deprived here in South Africa, at least we have better weather than most )

I would agree that dungeon crawls with themed rooms and a possible recurring vllain every once in a while is the way to go. But don't play them short by the age of fifteen my group played their first campaign oriented around politics medieval style (probably could have done it sooner but no ways were we getting any adult help - this was back in the early 80s and our parents spent their time worrying we were going togo mad ala Mazes and Monsters or turn into devil worshippers and start sacrificing the neighborhood cats). As for starting age,well we started with the old redbox (got the blue box a coupleof months later) and we were age ten. Of course within a few weeks of gettig the expert set we were all twentieth level, but hey, ten year olds are allowed to be munchkins! (You are even the correct size)

 

[S'mon]

I would start with a moderate sized dungeon, 10-15 rooms - the kind of thing that takes a session or so. The PCs should have a good reason for going there - kill the evil wizard who's terrorising the countryside is always good, or find a lost magic item, maybe. I think if using the full d20 ruleset you should maybe use pregen PCs like the Iconics, just because the players could get bored during character generation and you want to give them a fun 'taster' to start. Make sure the PCs are the stars, a single friendly NPC of similar level to them would be ok, but definitely avoid overshadowing them. Maybe a shady NPC Rogue would be a good companion, or a brash Cleric if no one is playing one. For their first PCs I'd recommend Fighters & Sorcerers - Sorcerers are _great_ for new players! Make sure they have useful spells of course. The dungeon should have creatures that are moderately challenging but risk of death should be low if they're at all smart - for 4 PCs keep CRs mostly in the 1/2-1 range, like 1-2 hobgoblins or 2-4 goblins. _Don't use 3e Orcs_!!
The BBEG should be around CR 2-3, maybe a 3rd level NPC Wizard would be good, with a scary 2nd-level spell like Mirror Image or Invisibility, and something nasty like Magic Missile but _not_ Sleep. If you want a recurring villain, have at least 2 BBEGs - not too tough - one who fights to the death, the other who flees like a cowardy custard. If the PCs are really smart though & trap your intended 'recurrer', let them kill him, don't cheat them of the victory.

 

[Ghostknight]

I would start with a moderate sized dungeon, 10-15 rooms - the kind of thing that takes a session or so. The PCs should have a good reason for going there - kill the evil wizard who's terrorising the countryside is always good, or find a lost magic item, maybe. I think if using the full d20 ruleset you should maybe use pregen PCs like the Iconics, just because the players could get bored during character generation and you want to give them a fun 'taster' to start. Make sure the PCs are the stars, a single friendly NPC of similar level to them would be ok, but definitely avoid overshadowing them. Maybe a shady NPC Rogue would be a good companion, or a brash Cleric if no one is playing one. For their first PCs I'd recommend Fighters & Sorcerers - Sorcerers are _great_ for new players! Make sure they have useful spells of course. The dungeon should have creatures that are moderately challenging but risk of death should be low if they're at all smart - for 4 PCs keep CRs mostly in the 1/2-1 range, like 1-2 hobgoblins or 2-4 goblins. _Don't use 3e Orcs_!!
The BBEG should be around CR 2-3, maybe a 3rd level NPC Wizard would be good, with a scary 2nd-level spell like Mirror Image or Invisibility, and something nasty like Magic Missile but _not_ Sleep. If you want a recurring villain, have at least 2 BBEGs - not too tough - one who fights to the death, the other who flees like a cowardy custard. If the PCs are really smart though & trap your intended 'recurrer', let them kill him, don't cheat them of the victory.

I agree with you on most points, but disgree on that of character creation. When we started playing on Basic D&D we moved to AD&D about nine months later (probably would have been sooner but the books weren't available locally). The main drive to change - LACK of options when creating characters. We loved the idea of an elf who wasn't automatically a mage/fighter hybrid and halflings who weren't automatically thief clones. Don't sell young kids short, they are very inventive, imaginative and love experimenting. Maybe pregens for the first game to introduce them to the rules etc, but I would move to them generating their own characters in a short period of time.

 

[S'mon]

I agree with you on most points, but disgree on that of character creation. When we started playing on Basic D&D we moved to AD&D about nine months later (probably would have been sooner but the books weren't available locally). The main drive to change - LACK of options when creating characters. We loved the idea of an elf who wasn't automatically a mage/fighter hybrid and halflings who weren't automatically thief clones. Don't sell young kids short, they are very inventive, imaginative and love experimenting. Maybe pregens for the first game to introduce them to the rules etc, but I would move to them generating their own characters in a short period of time.

Hi - I don't think we're in disagreement, I meant use pregens to get them quickly into the game, since 3e character generation can take so long, of course if the players want to they should be able to create their own PCs, either at the start or later on. Maybe give them the option of which they'd prefer? I know when I played an Exalted game, we spent half the night creating our PCs and it was tedious as hell. OTOH the same fellow player who hated that Exalted game had loved making up his first ever D&D PC, a Sorcerer, when he'd never RP'd before in his life.

 

[Ghostknight]

Hi - I don't think we're in disagreement, I meant use pregens to get them quickly into the game, since 3e character generation can take so long, of course if the players want to they should be able to create their own PCs, either at the start or later on. Maybe give them the option of which they'd prefer? I know when I played an Exalted game, we spent half the night creating our PCs and it was tedious as hell. OTOH the same fellow player who hated that Exalted game had loved making up his first ever D&D PC, a Sorcerer, when he'd never RP'd before in his life.

Ok, we're in agreement I would initially keep things to the core books. Bringing in the extra books makes character generation more complex, time consuming and, yep, tedious. Particularly if people aren't familiar with the books and a huge amount of time looking through te book for info and clarification. (I think the feats in BoED are great, but I did need to go look at where things fitted in re the paragons and what the paragins stood for!)

Cheers

 

[S'mon]

Yes, I'd agree that sticking with the PHB to start with is the way to go, it has more than enough options for anyone.

 

[Garmorn]

When my daughter started around that age we where using 2e options. She was able to create a nice 1st level character and enjoyed the proccess. Key point was that she told me what she wanted, then I gave her suggestions on what would work.

Let them create their own. Just don't execpt optiomized characters and every thing will work.

Let them talk to NPC to find out about something evil that they can handle and the allow them to find helpful npc along the way. This will alow them to interact with the world, develope skills and scope beyond the basic hack'slash that they might or might not learn to like. It also give you a way to give them guidance if things are not going well.

By the way if they are watching or paying attention to your normal gaming you might be suprised just how much they already know.

We allowd my daughter to join the main group as soon as she showed that she had the basic rules down pat. Now we are doing the same with another of our group's youngone.