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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 4465687" data-attributes="member: 44797">Yeah, I'm in my 30s and I've played many sessions with 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14, and 16 year olds.  It's not bad.The girls will want forests, horses, talking animals (think Narnia or Speak With Animals spell), and so on.  My daughter, for example, became a druid and selected all sorts of non-combat nature/animal spells.But you're worried about boys.  The boys want to be Neo in the Matrix, even my 6 year-old son who has never seen the movie.  I created a fighter for him because he wanted to be "big and strong."  However, he was mad that I dared to only give him 1 weapon.  He ended up with daggers in boots, a sword, a mace, a club, and couple other cheap weapons.  He took quick draw so that he could be switching things up all the time.  He didn't care about combat effectiveness -- it was just cool.  But then he started to care when other players were more optimized and stole his spotlight.  It's a balancing act.The boys at 12+ will have role-playing down as a concept.  Younger, probably not.  We had some teen boys who were rogues & stole from the party.  Some of us played in character, as if we didn't know it had happened.  But one kid, about age 10, hadn't understood role-playing yet and was furious about the theft, entering into combat against the characters while everyone else was like, "What?  Why?"So there is a point there where you have to be more delicate.  Kill the character of a 10 year-old, expect tears or thrown pencils and dice.  Kill the character of a 13 year-old, expect him to immediately say, "For my next character concept, I want _____!"It's likely none of them will want to play a cleric.  You should gear your campaign to have lots of potions or other ways to heal.They will expect to be able to get in a lot of heroics.  The younger ones especially will be perturbed with level progression.  I mean, they'll love adding in new feats and such, but they'll not do well with the idea that they are weak and need to gain experience.  This may mean "assisting" them with things like feats -- try to steer them to the ones that will make their fantasies come true.  Make sure somebody is getting Greater Cleave ASAP, so they can do the whole Lord of the Rings take-on-a-mob scene.My groups have loved lots of the adventures posted for free at the WotC site.  In particular, the Calzone Golem adventure was quite well received.  There was one with a poisoned water supply and some kobolds (I think) that was also well received.  You can do the Calzone Golem adventure in one sitting.  The poisoned water adventure can be done in two.  There are perhaps 40 or so adventures there, each fairly short, each with simple, kid-friendly motivation ("Someone in town asks you to look in on the bakers, who have been missing for a few days").</blockquote>

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