Ideas for games with younger people

[Napftor]

That is a great idea....playing a squire/assistant for a few games. I mean come on, Poncho and Cisco, Lone Ranger and Tonto, Batman and Robin....I have just gotten inspired, maybe I will do an article for d20weekly about this topic.

Um, didn't you leave out Doug and Hal? Just kidding buddy!

Seriously though, the protege idea for adventures is a great one. I was going to sumbit an article detailing this very same idea to Dragon. That is, until they rejected it...doh! Hal, you're more than welcome to my notes if you decide to do an article.

 

[MEG Hal]

Um, didn't you leave out Doug and Hal? Just kidding buddy!

Seriously though, the protege idea for adventures is a great one. I was going to sumbit an article detailing this very same idea to Dragon. That is, until they rejected it...doh! Hal, you're more than welcome to my notes if you decide to do an article.

Sure e-mail it to me and we can write it together, d20weekly already said they wanted to see it!

 

[mmadsen]

So true. What particularly bothers me is that so many modern books are about terrible monsters that aren't so terrible once you get to know them. In fact, I don't know any modern children's books about terrible monsters who are in fact terrible. It's an amusing twist when the dragon doesn't want to eat people, but it's only amusing if you've already grown up on lots of classic stories of man-eating monsters.

Perhaps I should clarify. My point wasn't that there are no evil villains in children's stories -- although they are getting harder to find -- but rather that so many children's books feature a nice dragon, or a nice vampire, or a nice troll, or whatever.

If you've never encountered Dracula -- the book, one of the many movies, or any of the many knock-offs -- how interesting is a nice vampire? There's no great sense of irony and relief; the only vampire you've ever seen is a nice one.

 

[Napftor]

If you've never encountered Dracula -- the book, on of the many movies, or any of the many knock-offs -- how interesting is a nice vampire? There's no great sense of irony and relief; the only vampire you've ever seen is a nice one.

Indeed. If you asked a group of youngsters who their favorite vampire is, I wonder how many would respond..."Count Chocula!"

*shudders*

 

[mmadsen]

If you asked a group of youngsters who their favorite vampire is, I wonder how many would respond..."Count Chocula!"

I can guarantee that growing up I had far more exposure to Count Chocula and Sesame Street's Count ("One, two, three peanutbutter sandwiches!") than I ever did to Bram Stoker's Dracula or Bela Lugosi's movie Dracula.

And even Halloween decorations aren't scary anymore. How many happy, friendly skeletons, witches, and "Frankensteins" do you see each year? Now how many legitimately scary ones do you see?

 

[mmadsen]

There's another one where you can resuce some dwarves (or they're in the dungeon too, and will join you). We used them for NPCs to help the PCs live longer.

Good idea. They get some help, and they learn that not everyone is an enemy.

But when one of the dwarves died, the other one had to leave (return the body home for burial).

Did they know that ahead of time?

Yeah, the only one that was a no-brainer was Improved Familiar for my daughter.

Hehehe.

She plays a wizard, and they ran across a pseudo-dragon in the first Saltmarsh module....That series also has a good mix of role-playing along with combat (like Sunless Citadel).

They really should do a Return to Saltmarsh module. In fact, they should leverage all their old 1st- and 2nd-edition material -- or, rather, all their good old material.

But the two who had to ask the parents got the go ahead.

Cool. I was curious how the parents might react.

 

[kenjib]

I'm playing a game with a seven year old. She's a bit precocious though and she talks alot & has a vivid imagination.

I didn't even have to do anything really. I pulled out a sheet of blank paper and asked who her character was and where she lived and she spontaneously invented this really convoluted story about her druid living in a cave with wolves and having grown up in a large abandoned castle of gold with her father having died. I worked with her on some ideas but she came up with most of it. We've got an eternal darkness that has engulfed part of the forest, Glimmerwing Pond where fairies glide across the surface of the water by moonlight, a kingdom of dwarves and her dwarven, comic relief friend (she really cracks up at the silly slapstick routines that Burdok pulls off), a mountain that was taken over by a dragon and the surrounding land that turned to monster infested swampland from his poisonous breath, an orc kingdom behind a great wall garrisoned by the dwarves (one of th towers was recently breached). She was first found by her father atop the mountain at the entrace to the dragon's cave.

I was really surprised at how quickly she took to things. She's got better ideas than I do. I barely even have to do anything. I just let her run with things and she likes to write alot of the story herself, so she kind of assumes some of the DM responsibilities. It's not a problem because there aren't any other players. Right now she has descended into a mine taken over by an evil wizard whose skeleton army burnt down a nearby village. It's cliche but she hasn't heard it yet. You really don't have to worry about pulling out old cliches. They work well.

We're pretty loose on the rules. We created her character accurately but I make the stats for NPCs and various DCs and stuff as we go. It's all pretty fudged. Anything goes!

One thing I've noticed is that she always forgets about the spells she has, so I often have to remind her to check her spell list to see if she has anything that might be useful in her current situation.

She really loves it. She's always bugging her mom to bring her over so we can play.

 

[kenjib]

We're pretty loose on the rules. We created her character accurately but I make the stats for NPCs and various DCs and stuff as we go. It's all pretty fudged. Anything goes!

I almost forgot. I should scan in and post the character sheet she made for her friend when he came over to visit with her one time. It's really hilarious. Here's the general gist:

Str +100
Con +34
Dex +4
Int -20
Wis +47
Cha +2

AC: 34
Hit Points: 7

etc...

Yeah...as you can see I don't think you need to worry about teaching them the rules too much. You can handle all of that really loosely and just let them focus on what they want to do and the story and such. I think it's a good exercise anyway to think in terms of what kinds of things you want to do in general and then applying the rules afterwards rather than choosing between several game mechanic options first and foremost. I think that kind of mindset would make for a much better game for adults as well.

 

[mmadsen]

I didn't even have to do anything really. I pulled out a sheet of blank paper and asked who her character was and where she lived and she spontaneously invented this really convoluted story about her druid living in a cave with wolves and having grown up in a large abandoned castle of gold with her father having died....We've got an eternal darkness that has engulfed part of the forest, Glimmerwing Pond where fairies glide across the surface of the water by moonlight, a kingdom of dwarves and her dwarven, comic relief friend (she really cracks up at the silly slapstick routines that Burdok pulls off), a mountain that was taken over by a dragon and the surrounding land that turned to monster infested swampland from his poisonous breath, an orc kingdom behind a great wall garrisoned by the dwarves (one of th towers was recently breached). She was first found by her father atop the mountain at the entrace to the dragon's cave.

That's all great stuff! Thinking back, I don't know if I would've come up with anything that interesting at that age, even with proper prodding. I just wanted to play out King Arthur, or Robin Hood, or the Hobbit, or whatever movie I'd just seen. Maybe I would've mixed them into something interesting.

It's cliche but she hasn't heard it yet. You really don't have to worry about pulling out old cliches. They work well.

Hey, they're cliches for a reason!

 

[mmadsen]

One thing I've noticed is that she always forgets about the spells she has, so I often have to remind her to check her spell list to see if she has anything that might be useful in her current situation.

They can suck up new information at that age, but they still don't think things through like adults. I know I made terrible -- unbelievably terrible -- tactical decisions at that age. Forgetting a useful spell I could use would've been the least of my worries. I probably wouldn't've seen the use for it even after being told which spell to cast.