der_kluge
Adventurer
A friend of mine had reached out recently to see if I'd be willing to GM a game for his two daughters, who are 10 and 11 (I think). My friend also reached out to some of his connections, and found a mom with two boys who were also dying to play some D&D, who were (I think) 9 and 11. I also asked my youngest daughter if she wanted to join in - to an enthusiastic "Yes". She's 13.
For the game, we tried to keep it simple - we used pre-gens, and I wanted to keep it around 2 hours, since I didn't know what kind of attention spans I'd be dealing with.
I set the game in a city I've used before for my previous campaign. So, I'm already familiar with the city, and gave them a brief description of the surroundings and the city itself, and then (of course), put them in a tavern. I wanted them to try out a little role-play to encourage them to try to meet one another. The 9 year old playing a barbarian decided he immediately wanted to murder people in the tavern. I had to convince him that wasn't a good idea. Under normal circumstance, I might let someone do that (and then have town guards return the favor). But I tried to keep this on the straight and narrow.
While in the tavern, the PCs hear talk of the chandler (candle-maker) having their honey and wax stolen by someone. That was strange enough to investigate, so off they went. Finding the candle-maker, they discover them in the back sobbing. Three of the party decided to go investigate the beehives in the backyard, and they discover some moaning and groaning near a group of trees not far away. The candle-making couple inform the others that some creature "possibly a demon" with horns on its head, and cloven feet came in and convinced them to give it all of their honey and beeswax (which he then ate!).
The others find the creature easily. It's covered in honey, and sticky all over - and its belly is distended - and it's moaning about things like "I shouldn't have eaten all that honey". The barbarian decides that he wants to just immediately kill the creature. Which, I was quick to rephrase as "murder" - "So, you're saying you want to murder this creature?". The party decides that taking him back to the village is the best course of action, and after the barbarian hoists him over his shoulder, the Satyr plays his pipes, charming 3 people. A small inter-party fight then ensues, but once some damage is done, new saves are made, and people come to their senses. The Satyr is taken back to town, where it's placed into the stockades.
"We want our reward!", one player asked. "Who promised you a reward? No one promised you a reward.", I grinned. While they were talking about how much money they should be getting for solving this problem, the Satyr motions one of them over and tells them that his home in the woods had suddenly turned "gloomy" and that's why he left. Otherwise, he'd be content just living where he was.
So, yea, I had to help them a bit with that seed, since just capturing the Satyr wasn't the whole quest. There's more! Off they go to the woods once again, where they encounter a ghost! Fortunately, this ghost didn't attack them (and didn't fear them, or age them - thankfully). Instead, it told them that it "can't sleep." They didn't quite clue in that the ghost didn't really know anything about what might have happened after they'd died. But eventually they clue in that there's a graveyard nearby, and so they go investigating. There, the barbarian (I rolled randomly) stumbles into an ankheg lair! Epic battle ensues, the ankheg is defeated, unconscious party members are revived, and eventually the party receives a reward from the candle-maker for helping them with their problem.
Fun was had by all.
Some thoughts - D&D does have a pretty decent learning curve - lots of spells, and skills, and words kids aren't familiar with, but they seemed to grasp the gist of it pretty well.
Role-playing is awkward and embarrassing, so none of them really wanted to do much of that. Most of them preferred to talk about their characters actions in the 3rd person. I didn't push them into it.
A couple of them kept wanting to pick-pocket other players in order to steal their money (including the druid!). Despite this, no one actually played the rogue, which was quite surprising. One of them even wanted to pick-pocket the towns guard!
For the game, we tried to keep it simple - we used pre-gens, and I wanted to keep it around 2 hours, since I didn't know what kind of attention spans I'd be dealing with.
I set the game in a city I've used before for my previous campaign. So, I'm already familiar with the city, and gave them a brief description of the surroundings and the city itself, and then (of course), put them in a tavern. I wanted them to try out a little role-play to encourage them to try to meet one another. The 9 year old playing a barbarian decided he immediately wanted to murder people in the tavern. I had to convince him that wasn't a good idea. Under normal circumstance, I might let someone do that (and then have town guards return the favor). But I tried to keep this on the straight and narrow.
While in the tavern, the PCs hear talk of the chandler (candle-maker) having their honey and wax stolen by someone. That was strange enough to investigate, so off they went. Finding the candle-maker, they discover them in the back sobbing. Three of the party decided to go investigate the beehives in the backyard, and they discover some moaning and groaning near a group of trees not far away. The candle-making couple inform the others that some creature "possibly a demon" with horns on its head, and cloven feet came in and convinced them to give it all of their honey and beeswax (which he then ate!).
The others find the creature easily. It's covered in honey, and sticky all over - and its belly is distended - and it's moaning about things like "I shouldn't have eaten all that honey". The barbarian decides that he wants to just immediately kill the creature. Which, I was quick to rephrase as "murder" - "So, you're saying you want to murder this creature?". The party decides that taking him back to the village is the best course of action, and after the barbarian hoists him over his shoulder, the Satyr plays his pipes, charming 3 people. A small inter-party fight then ensues, but once some damage is done, new saves are made, and people come to their senses. The Satyr is taken back to town, where it's placed into the stockades.
"We want our reward!", one player asked. "Who promised you a reward? No one promised you a reward.", I grinned. While they were talking about how much money they should be getting for solving this problem, the Satyr motions one of them over and tells them that his home in the woods had suddenly turned "gloomy" and that's why he left. Otherwise, he'd be content just living where he was.
So, yea, I had to help them a bit with that seed, since just capturing the Satyr wasn't the whole quest. There's more! Off they go to the woods once again, where they encounter a ghost! Fortunately, this ghost didn't attack them (and didn't fear them, or age them - thankfully). Instead, it told them that it "can't sleep." They didn't quite clue in that the ghost didn't really know anything about what might have happened after they'd died. But eventually they clue in that there's a graveyard nearby, and so they go investigating. There, the barbarian (I rolled randomly) stumbles into an ankheg lair! Epic battle ensues, the ankheg is defeated, unconscious party members are revived, and eventually the party receives a reward from the candle-maker for helping them with their problem.
Fun was had by all.
Some thoughts - D&D does have a pretty decent learning curve - lots of spells, and skills, and words kids aren't familiar with, but they seemed to grasp the gist of it pretty well.
Role-playing is awkward and embarrassing, so none of them really wanted to do much of that. Most of them preferred to talk about their characters actions in the 3rd person. I didn't push them into it.
A couple of them kept wanting to pick-pocket other players in order to steal their money (including the druid!). Despite this, no one actually played the rogue, which was quite surprising. One of them even wanted to pick-pocket the towns guard!
