How did you teach your kid to play D&D?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, I have a little infant proto-geek of my own now, and I've picked up the two Practical Guides from WotC, gotten him WoW onesies from Jinx.com and am basically preparing him for a life as my own in-house D&D group. (His mother, although skeptical, has been won over by tales of how D&D helped my vocabulary and reading, and will be participating as well, when the time comes.)

The question, though, is how one actually gets a kid playing D&D. What age did you do it at? Did you strip down the D&D rules? What sorts of adventures did you go on? What D&D elements did your kid respond to best? Which were a turn-off -- or worse yet, scared the kid in a not-good way?

I'd love to hear from parents who've done this over the years.

 

[DonTadow]

Back when I had a stepson, we got him interested by first introducing him to fantasy. We read him Tolkien at night. We took him to the places we went, game shops, conventions. We played very 'board game" style rules with him, he was 8. So he understood winning and losing, good and bad. To win the bad guy must be captured. Kept the math simple. If his character had a skill he added his level and a bonus. It worked out well. He's about 12 now and he still has a heavy interst in fantasy.

 

[kenobi65]

Our niece had been Pokemon (or, at least, collecting the cards) for some time, and her mother and grandmother had been reading her the early Harry Potter books. When we had her visiting us for the weekend in 2001 (she was 9 at the time), I picked up the D&D Introductory Game (or whatever they were calling the 3E boxed set back then), and we played it with her. She picked it up fairly quickly, and graduated to "real" D&D pretty soon thereafter. We play with her several times a year (she's 15 now, and still more than willing to be a geek with us).

 

[Patlin]

My two kids are currently 3 and 6, and they see us play every week or two and are interested in playing. The six year old can handle the concept of roleplaying if I take all the rules out, but isn't quite ready for anything more detailed. She likes to help Mom roll the dice, though.

The three year old (much like Elan from OOTS) has an unspoken motto of "I'm participating!" He want to be in on what everyone else is doing, even though he doesn't really understand what that is. He's very consistent on what kind of character he wants to play, though... Spiderman!

I figure I'll see what develops over time.

 

[dmccoy1693]

My daughter's 4 (almost 5). When she turns 6, I plan on testing out Faery's Tale with her. Let you know in a little over a year. In the meantime, I'm telling her bedtimestories that involve fantasy, female main characters, and most especially Dragons. I'm getting her a plush Dragon for Christmas. Hopefully, by the time she's 10, she'll be fully ready for life in the bigtime RPGs.

 

[bento]

I'm still trying to teach my wife (of 14 years) how to play!

With my kids (7 & 10) I'm not pushing it at all. My older daughter is really into Pokemon and Animal Crossing for the DS. My son loves DDMs and plays Star Wars minis and Attactix with dad, but doesn't have the patience for RPGs yet. When the family sits down to play games we gravitate to boardgames or cards.

 

[Joël of the FoS]

My kids started at age 7 and 8. They chose what kind of class they wanted to do, and to make things simple, I made them a caracter sheet, level 1. The only thing they had to do was put the name.

Combat were extremely simplified. At their initiative, they threw a d20, and if they got to 13, they hit. Sometimes, when the monster was tougher, they had to reach 16. With the years passing, I added more rules, one at a time.

We used battle mats and figurine so they quickly saw where they were, and where were the monsters.

Expect weird and funny things not in the book like "I don't want to fight him: I put my pillow sheet over his head and run"

At the start, the adventures were often of the fairytale kind "save the princess", "find the thief who stole all the prince's candies", "big evil black cavalier coming to attack the castle", etc. Then I introduced them to a soft version of Ravenloft (The Created, the Odiare adventure, with its Pinnochio spinoff, is a great one for kids to use their brain).

It was a lot of fun. Now they are 13 and 15, and my son is still playing.

Joël

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

When they were little, I read to my kids every night (and still do, for the littlest ones). As they got older, that interested them in fantasy. Of course, they also saw me playing D&D, and saw the dice, the books, and the miniatures.

When the time was right, I ran a game for my oldest son, using the Rules Cyclopedia. After the game, which he loved, I gave him a copy of the Menzter Basic set (the red box with the Elmore artwork), which is the best "learn the game" set for kids out of ALL the editions. A few days later, he came up to me and hugged me and told me thank you. He ran a game for me and my wife, he runs games for his sister and his cousins, and he's continued to play in games I run, too.

I now have two of my kids (my eldest son and my eldest daughter), a niece, and a nephew all playing in my games (sometimes with adults, sometimes with just the kids). Good times.

 

[DM_Jeff]

My daughters have grown up dealing with the adult's game nights. They'd listen in with the other kiddies during various parts of the sessions and got the basics down from that.

Three years ago, at ages 7 and 11, I started them on D&D Minis. I'd give them two or three low-powered cards each and teach them the basics.

At ages 8 and 12 I started them with mini 1-hour games using the D&D basic set for 3.5

Earlier this year, at ages 10 and 14, they created their own PCs from scratch (with assistance) and I am running them through a monthly session (with Mom) of Keep on the Borderlands I redid to 3.5, and they love it.

So my method was one of slowly edging them into it instead of a sudden session or learning influx.

-DM Jeff

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I started my son at 7 on the B/X basic set with Keep on the Borderlands. We're preparing to start a group with some of his friends (all 9 now) and I intend on using the upcoming Castles & Crusades basic set. If this gets delayed I may run them using Labrynth Lord from Goblinoid Games which really captures the B/X sets feel fantastically (and it's free).