Young Gamers

[Torx]

I have the opportunity to include a young person (9 yr old boy) in my gaming group and I have natural reservations. He's a very bright, interested, engaging kid with very little annoying features and is not the son of any of the players.

I'm inquiring about your experiences with including young gamers, whether they be your children or otherwise and any advice or cautions you have regarding them.

 

[Salad Shooter]

Just make sure that his parents know where he is, that they know when he'll be home, and make sure to watch your language and stuff. I assume you know the kids parents? If not, you might want to avoid anything that the parents might find unusual, and definately observe the no contact rule...

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

My son is 11, and I've begun running him and one of his friends on games. He's played off and on since he was 7, and often has a better grasp of the rules than the adults do. He gets mad because I won't let them play evil characters, but I'm the dad, so he has to suck it up and get on with it... lol.

They're actually a darned good roleplayers, and it's great to be able to throw monsters at them and actually see them freak out. They get really excited about stuff. The adults have "seen it all", so sometimes that little bit of joy DM's have is lessened.

As long as his parents know and are ok with it, I'd give it a try. Maybe run a "rules lite" game at first, and make it a shorter session than you might normally do, in case he gets fidgety. But I think you'll be surprised at how much fun he will have, and how much a new perspective can bring to the table.

 

[Amendria]

That's absolutely awesome that you guys are helping out younger gamers. It only makes me wish that my parents or other adults I knew as a child roleplayed. Good luck with that!

 

[Xath]

I just DMed my little sister in her first game a few weeks ago. It was the opening adventure for the new Basic Game. Suprisingly enough, she seemed much more interested in the brutal descriptions of kobold murders and the dice rolling, than she was in playing out any rp scenario.

I think it helps if the child in question has a good attention span. Expect a normal 9 year old to be fairly easily distracted during low-involvement parts of the session.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I started playing with my parents' group at 6.

Looking back, I can't fathom how that could have been tolerable, but I'm assured I was never a problem.

A while ago, one of my players brought his 12 year-old son into the group. He was... irritating.

The lesson seems to be that it's not so much the age that matters, as the kid...

-Hyp.

 

[Galethorn]

I've gotten a couple younger friends into gaming; one is the younger brother of another player, and the other is a long time friend, despite our age gap. That said, these are the ages of my players, in ascending order; 13, 14, 16, 17, '18 this month', 18, 18, and 20. I, myself, am 17...but I've got the height, beard, and deep voice of an unusually awkward 22-year-old.

Now, being relatively young myself, I have to think back and see if I can remember being introduced to gaming by older friends...and the answer is no, unless you count my dad, who introduced me to computer games when I was about 6, and got me into fantasy by reading LOTR to me when I was 8. From then on, I was actually the one that introduced gaming to all of my friends that I now game with, except for the 20-year-old, who was a somewhat distant friend who we all got to know a lot better when we 'matured' into tabletop gaming.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

DMing kids can be interesting. As someone else said, they have a lot more wonderment at the new things they meet.

Last weekend I ran a game that included a 7 year old and a 9 year old. It was a long game (8 hours), and they did very well. I didn't have to worry too much about the rules with them, but they followed the story, interacted with the elements of the plot and listened and understood my descriptions.

The father of the 7 year old was also in the game which was good, and the game went off pretty well (and was....interesting... when 4 of the 6 characters and an animal companion were unconscious in the lake of blood while the last two characters tried to defeat the monsters and keep everyone alive).

Be careful with your language, and think a bit about your descriptions first, and you should be fine.

Oh, and remember to play with traditional fairy-tale fantasy elements - the kids know them, so that can be a good introduction.

Duncan

 

[Jeff Wilder]

When I was much younger -- 18, which is half my life ago -- I "taught" a D&D class to kids between 9 and 12. It was part of a program called Horizons Unlimited, and I was -- and remain -- very impressed than in my home state -- Kentucky -- they had the courage to include "Dungeons and Dragons" in a curriculum with other subjects such as "Creative Writing" and "Math Wizardry."

Anyway, it blew me away how enthusiastic those kids were about the game, and how naturally and unselfconsciously they took to actual roleplaying. As I've gotten older, I've given it a lot of thought, and I realized gradually that it wasn't that amazing ... kids that age are still playing cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians, and what is that but roleplaying? The only impact the addition of rules had on those kids was that they no longer spent half their time arguing over whether "Bang, you're dead!" was true or not.

It was a great experience. If it weren't for the raised eyebrows and current climate of extreme pedophilia-phobia, to coin a term, I'd be quite willing to DM a group of kids that age on a weekly basis.

 

[the Jester]

Several years ago, I tutored this kid- I think he was about 11 when we started. His mom lived across the street to me, and when he learned that I played dnd he practically begged me to let him play. "Ask your mom," I said, and she said it was ok; so I reluctantly agreed and we set up a time to teach him the basics.

Come the time, he shows up with his twin brother and best friend...

The twins have long since moved away, but the best friend still plays with us today. All three were vastly entertaining, even though two were whiners and the third was a would-be thug. All my players loved them- and all the rest of them were college aged or older. In short, it was a blast. Some of the best tales of my campaign involve them- ahh, the memories! But I must admit that those games certainly had an... ahem... immature bent to them.

Then again, our games still do...

As to watching your language- hey, I don't want to be corrupting the youth or anything, but COME ON, people, kids starting around age 11 cuss more than anyone this side of a sailor. At least, I did, and so did all the other kids I knew at that age.... Not arguing against treating the youth tenderly, just saying, let's be realistic too. Kids are just learning to get really crude and offensive and they generally like to stretch their wings, so to speak, so in a couple of years I'd kind of expect it from the one you're considering adopting into your group.

I would say that your gaming habits might need to change if you drink a lot or do drugs at the table, though. Ours did.

Preston, Zach, wherever you are- I raise my cup o' dice to you! Game on, my friends! (And yeah, Matt's still getting himself killed and thrown in jail and stuff all the time.)