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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 448959" data-attributes="member: 1645">If I look back at my fond D&D memories from childhood, I can map out my own cognitive development with amazing accuracy.At age six, I could roll the dice my older brother told me to roll. I was happy to kill the same goblin and die to the same carnivorous ape over and over again. Sitting down and reading the Basic D&D rulebook was still out of the question. If someone sat with me and made me read it, I might've been OK.A year later, I was devouring the Player's Handbook and memorizing easy-to-memorize rules (e.g. how many magic items a Paladin could have). Anything abstract was still out of the question, especially long, dense, tracts of text. Tables of magic items and lists of spells were great though.By age eight, I basically knew the rules, and I could DM my friends through simple adventures, often mimicking my older brother and using snippets of his adventures -- the snippets I could understand, I'm sure.By nine or ten, my characters finally stopped all being clones of famous characters I liked: Bilbo, Robin Hood, Arthur, etc. I'd been playing for awhile, but I still had zero grasp of reasonable tactics and no capacity for analyzing a situation, comparing my party's strengths to the enemy's weaknesses, etc. My brother, as DM, would stare at me dumbfounded as my Paladin with a magic sword and a mundane bow would trade arrows with a party of Drow with magic crossbows.So, definitely concern is warranted, but I feel some DM guidance can (a) get around the problem, and (b) teach the kids some critical thinking skills. Ask them what they think their options are, tell them when they have no of defeating the troll, etc.</blockquote>

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