Ideas for games with younger people

[merc]

My 6 year old sister has recently became interested in looking through my game books with me. She will get interested in a picture and ask me about it, and I'll explain what the picture is of. She really seems to love this, especially when looking at magic items. I've explained the concepts of the game to her, but not the actual rules. She's asked me about running a game for her, and I think that would be a neat idea.

I've never ran anything before, but I'm interested in running a little story for her. I'm having trouble thinking up an idea for it though. She's a very intelligent 6 year old, and she can memorize amazing amounts of information like only people that age can, but I'm sure she'll have a little trouble problem solving if it isn't very simple (at least until she gets the hang of playing). I also don't want to run a dungeon crawl or anything where she just kills things to get treasure.

Does anyone have ideas for a simple story/adventure that a younger child can work out and understand (and that's not too violent)? Is there any resources for this kind of thing that I can be pointed to? I really think this can be a great opportunity for her if she finds she enjoys playing.

 

[HellHound]

Honestly, for children that young, I recommend a VERY loose approach to the rules.

I would recommend picking up a game that uses the Tri-Stat system (from Guardians of Order) or something along those lines, or just try straight interactive storytelling.

We bought the Sailor Moon game for our daughter when she was 6. She thought it was neat, but didn't actually start RolePlaying with us until Dungeons and Dragons, at 9.

 

[evil_rmf]

Try to pick up some of the old DnD choose-your-path adventure paperback books. You could read them to her and let her make the choice. They can be had for about $2 each on ebay, or often in lots of 3-5, and at used bookstores.

Other than that, I really don't know. I seem to remeber seeing some games with wizards and dragons for kids 5+ at one of the major toy stores, but names escape me right now.

I'd leave the "real" rpg gaming, even with a simple system, until she was 8-10, depending on maturity. Scratch that. When she has the attention span and understands cause and effect, she's probably ready for a mechanics-lite game. If she plays dress up and pretends, she has the role-playing part down.

Good, luck, hope you have fun with it!

 

[CRG]

You can always mimic stories from popular children's literature.

- Wizard school - she's part of a secret school of witches and wizards in training
- Shapchangers - The animorph genre
- Animals characters - Anything with talking, anthropromorphic beasties - the mouse /monestary thing (Redwall maybe?), NiMH, etc.

 

[merc]

You can always mimic stories from popular children's literature.

- Wizard school - she's part of a secret school of witches and wizards in training
- Shapchangers - The animorph genre
- Animals characters - Anything with talking, anthropromorphic beasties - the mouse /monestary thing (Redwall maybe?), NiMH, etc.

I think that the mimicing stories might be a good idea for her, especially the wizard school with a story like Harry Potter. Good adventure, strong evil character, but not much killing, and complicated enough so that she won't be bored. Thanks for the idea.

She wants to play the actual game, and I think that she's ready to start learning the actual rules. She talked me into buying her a d20 of her own, and she'd know if I was trying to not let her use it

As for her being too young, I really don't think you'd know she was only six if you met her and she wasn't so short She's got quite the attention span if she's into something (she really likes playing long games of Age of Empires) and she's been using the computer on her own for two years. It's just my first instinct in getting someone familiar with the rules would be to make characters and fight with them to get a feel about how different classes and stats and the more mechanics-wise things reflect on a character. I don't know if that's a good way to start her off though.

 

[mmadsen]

This topic has come up before, most recently in D&D for very young kids. Take a look, and tell us what you think!

 

[mmadsen]

Does anyone have ideas for a simple story/adventure that a younger child can work out and understand (and that's not too violent)?

When I was six, and my brother was teaching me to play, I just kept replaying the same "adventure"; I walked into the first room, killed the goblin, walked into the second room, and died to the carnivorous ape. Over, and over, and over again.

At that age, the mere mechanics of the game were fascinating. I don't think I really wanted to explore my options; I just wanted to roll the dice and see what would happen this time.

 

[mmadsen]

Does anyone have ideas for a simple story/adventure that a younger child can work out and understand (and that's not too violent)?

If you don't mind mindless violence, you can just string a bunch of easy fighting encounters, one after the other. That kept me entertained at that age.

If you want to go in the opposite direction, think up a series of monsters with mildly clever ways to get past them -- simple puzzles. Then make sure she can always run away and come back to try again.

 

[Maldur]

slightly ot, but still has some relevancy

I played in a awesome game of pendragon. The 9 year old son of one of the other players played my squire. So I could teach him to be a knight, and help him with the rules. It turned out I had to keep his character out of trouble, except when we were in a dangerous situation ( he was a perfect squire handing new lances etc), and after two sessions he knew the rules better than the GM.

btw: never play chess witha 9 year old kid! (and Im not a bad chess player)

 

[Uller]

Re: Re: Ideas for games with younger people

At that age, the mere mechanics of the game were fascinating. I don't think I really wanted to explore my options; I just wanted to roll the dice and see what would happen this time.

Yeah, but all children are different. Perhaps as a child, you were the mechanical/logical sort? My son (4) is like that. He's always been into building, stacking and figuring things out. My daughter (she's almost one) seems very different. She has almost no interest in mechanical things. Stick a stuffed animal or the like in front of her and she goes nuts. So some kids might like the mechanics of the game while others are more interested in playing out a story (kind of like early power-gamers vs role-players ).

Anyway...go with a familiar story or fairy tale (of course real fairy tales tend to be very violent, but they could work very well with D&D). Try to set things up so that she "wins" not through violence, but through wits. If she comes up with some hair-brained idea about how to solve a problem let it work (like by convincing the troll to eat her older/bigger brother or slaying the giant by making him fall into a pit so you can bonk him on the head with a pick axe or going to pick turnips an hour before the dire wolf comes to your house or whatever).