Help me run a campaign for a bunch of 12 year olds.

[Imperialus]

So I'm going to be starting a lunch hour D&D game for a bunch of my 6th grade students. None of them have played before, they're mostly 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, That said, a fair number of them do enjoy fantasy novels, anime shows and the like.

I'm going to be running Labyrinth Lord without the advanced compendium. I still think that B/X is the best beginner version of D&D and LL captures the simplicity of it very well. It also plays very fast which suits a 40 minute lunchbreak.

I'm going to be running B1 (In Search of the Unknown) followed by B2 (Keep on the Borderlands). What will get them going up there is that they are lifelong friends who are traveling north towards the keep to seek service as mercenaries. They will also have a map reportedly showing the location of Quasqueton which is on the way. I'll start them out in a village along the foothills of the mountains that the keep is in, add in some rumors, and let them just explore.

B1 is inhabited by a tribe of Kobolds, and is heavily, though not terribly lethally trapped. The idea is to get them used to the idea of taking their time when exploring, being careful, and watching out for tricks. The combat itself is meant to be fairly easy though.

So, does anyone have advice for running D&D with young kids. I know some of you have played with your own kids, but this is new and strange territory for me.

 

[darrell_uk]

#1 Do not stick slavishly to the rules.

#2 Expect the unexpected.

 

[Celebrim]

Yes. Twelve year olds from a gaming perspective are fundamentally adults or soon will be; they are no longer 'young kids'. While you should avoid for obvious reasons the sort of things that are erroneously called 'adult content', and probably should use comic book code because of the school setting, 12 year olds are just another table of players and should be treated with that dignity. If anything, they are likely to be better RPers, to take ethical questions more seriously, and to strive harder to live up to being heroes than adult players are - particularly if you nudge them in that direction. They will be goofy, giggly, and unfocused at times, but so are my adult players. They are intelligent and creative; they only lack experience. You have to show them how to play and open them up to the possibilities just like any new player. You don't have to treat them like children.

Personally, I think its a waste to led them on something as immature as B1 and B2, but your call. I don't know your players or their talents.

Try to have fun. If you aren't having fun, they won't either. Remember that role-playing is among other things therapy, so take that responcibility seriously. Help the shy ones come out of their shells. Help the assertive ones learn to play together and share. The great thing about doing this with kids is that they'll actually do it, where as with adults they are usually afraid to learn.

 

[Halivar]

• The standard tropes that we have grown jaded against are probably a treasure trove of material for these kids.
• You don't have to be an awesome storyteller. 12-year-old's have amazing imaginations. The lamest plot, related with the poorest skill, will still take incredible life in their heads.
• Kids and newbies alike have a great tolerance for handwaving. They don't care about the rules yet. If only all players were thus.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Remembering back to when I played those adventures as a kid of around that age.....


Nothing can prepare you.

 

[Celebrim]

• Kids and newbies alike have a great tolerance for handwaving. They don't care about the rules yet. If only all players were thus.

• 
  
  I also prefer playing with new players. By the time I get my hands on most experienced players, they've got an enormous number of bad habits. They are no longer interested in their characters except as game peices, or in the challenge except as something to win. They've become adept at the metagame without becoming adept at the game. They've got tons of baggage from past relationships, often most of them bad and they are seeing you through those lens.
  
  I was watching a webcast where the experienced player talked about how as a kid he employed wishes to more noble and less selfish reasons than he did as an adult.
  
  I'm not surprised. Kids understand that play is important.

 

[Imperialus]

Yes. Twelve year olds from a gaming perspective are fundamentally adults or soon will be; they are no longer 'young kids'. While you should avoid for obvious reasons the sort of things that are erroneously called 'adult content', and probably should use comic book code because of the school setting, 12 year olds are just another table of players and should be treated with that dignity.

The only major change I plan on doing rules wise is to make it significantly more difficult for them to die. They will be 'knocked out' until they hit -10 HP and if they do happen to die they will have much easier access to raise dead than I would normally ever use. Other than that the game will likely end up being a bit more monty haulish, than typical, but with a focus on making the various magic bits they find interesting rather than purely mechanical.

Personally, I think its a waste to led them on something as immature as B1 and B2, but your call. I don't know your players or their talents.

I'm not sure I'd describe the B series as immature. Probably because I'm fairly firmly planted in the OSR, but I appreciate the freedom that the B modules offer both me as a DM and the players.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure I'd describe the B series as immature. Probably because I'm fairly firmly planted in the OSR, but I appreciate the freedom that the B modules offer both me as a DM and the players.

Well, I agree that it offers the DM a lot of freedom, but only because it doesn't offer the DM much of anything. You've got your work cut out for you to run B2 even within the structure it pretends to. In it's favor, I enjoyed it as a kid myself, but I think only because I'd never seen anything else.

But, as I've said in other thread:

But, to be honest, even when I was 10 I had certain problems with KoTB as a structure for an adventure:

a) Why were we going to the Caves of Chaos anyway?
b) The denizens of the Caves of Chaos represent no real threat to the Keep, which is vastly more powerful and secure than they are. So what's the urgency or need?
c) What are the goals of anyone living in the Caves of Chaos? It can't be to attack the Keep; they are making literally no preparations. No catapolts. No ladders. No real army to speak of. No direction in that regard. What are they even bother spying for anyway?
d) Why if they hate each other so much, don't they just leave? There seems to be nothing forcing them to stay there? What profit do these supposedly intelligent tribes see in staying right next to their hated enemies? What's so great about this as living accomodations anyway?
e) What's off the map and what does it mean? Where is this place? Is there a King? What's over the Border and the Border of what?

As a 10 year old I simply had no way of filling in those questions. I just didn't have the skills. But they did frustrate the heck out of me as I was observing myself running the game. When I came back to the game at 17, I tried to fill in all those questions. Now that I'm 40, I see even more problems and am critical of what I did at 17 as well.

Add to that if you read the text Gygax knows that this is a highly incomplete adventure. Again, quoting myself:

which is why it tells the novice DM, "In fact, before they have finished all the adventure areas of this module, it is likely you will have to add your own separate maps to the setting... You must build the towns and terrain which surround it. You must shape the societies, create the kingdoms, and populate the countryside with men and monsters." Basically Gygax is saying, "Guess what. Get started, but you need to put in hours of work on your own before this is really going to work well." When I first encountered this module as a kid, I had no ability to do that well. The text tells the would be DM to first draw floor plans for all the buildings in the Keep! I hadn't a clue how to do that much less create a network of villages and other encounter around the Keep, and so forth. Yet, I wonder, just whether other DMs figured that out as quickly and competently as Gygax was assuming. I get the impression Gygax's notion that the DM will rapidly grow the setting and the caves and environs and flesh out everything isn't necessarily the usual way that KotB is run. I think modern adventure designers have realized that the general competence that Gygax was assuming just doesn't exist, or certainly doesn't exist without far greater cultivation than the early modules were providing.

What KotB gives you is so thin its hardly even worth anything. No one has a name even. The module is intended to be incorporated organicly into a larger setting with villages that the keep is protecting, a lord the castallan is serving, merchants travellign to and fro, and probably a chaotic cult with far reaching tentacles and diabolical plans. Only within that frame work does the module even make sense in its own right and offer real oppurtunities for play.

 

[Imperialus]

Now I think I get what you're saying, and why I don't see it as an issue.

I'll be running them through 'my' B2. I've run the keep a few times now, in fact it's shown up in several of my games and it has grown in detail and complexity as I've done so. I'm drawing on probably 50+ pages of notes that flesh things out significantly. There is an 'evil empire' on the far side of the pass, the monsters inhabiting the caves are its forward scouts. It's a setting that I know well, and has grown far beyond the 30 odd pages that make up the actual module.

 

[diaglo]

i tend to ask them what they want to play.
treat them like you treat all the other players. if b/c of age they don't know something. you as an adult can think of a better way to explain it. you were 12 at one time.

example. 12 year old: i want to run over there and attack the goblin with my sword.
DM: you are going to run 240 yards uphill in full plate and swing your sword?
12 year old: yeah.
DM: (this is the part where you don't have to explain physics, force of gravity, bodies in motion, blah blah blah) you say: you charge across the field of battle, as the slope gets more difficult you grit your teeth and surge on with all your might you swing for the goblins feet to make him fall to your level. roll to hit.