Kids and RPG Stories

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I was playing a short session of D&D with C (my 11-year-old son) playing a Dwarf Warpriest and his brother Z (7) playing a Dwarf Slayer (plus their two NPC companions a Dragonborn Knight and an Eladrin Mage). Z decided he was unhappy with C's leadership (go figure).

Z: I'll go by myself!

C: You shouldn't do that. You don't have good magic skills.

Z: So?

C: And you don't have good range attacks!

Z: Yeah I do! I have a long sword!

I laughed twice at this. Once upon the first silliness of the misunderstanding. And second when I realized that his dwarf might actually say that, trusting the blade over missile weapons.

Any other fun kid stories?

 

[olshanski]

I tried playing a few times with my 5 and 7 year old, and I found that I needed an adult player to help guide them when they were just "not getting it". Also, when they first learned to play, they had trouble grasping that the DM is the "moderator"... they wanted to describe the results of their own actions.

For example, I was running "N1 - Treasure Hunt", an adventure that starts with the players getting shipwrecked on an island during a storm. The 5 year old says "I start digging in the sand and I find buried treasure!"

Now that the kids are older, 7 and 9, and they usually have an aunt playing with them, it is a lot of fun and things go very smoothly. They do seem to have a murder-hobo streak, which makes me wonder how much of it is in the game, and how much is human nature.

 

[Nytmare]

When my son was... 6? Maybe 7. His Link clone bravely faced off against his arch nemesis "Gannon-dor". After he won the battle and stood over his vanquished foe I asked him if there was anything he wanted to say. He immediately became shame-faced and looked down at the table and with perfectly practiced repentance said, "I'm sorry Gannon-dor. I didn't mean to hit you. Can we still be friends?"

 

[Tallifer]

I am currently and intermittently (as classwork allows) running a Dungeons & Dragons game for my thirteen year old English students in Korea. (Full details at my Hippolyte blog on the Wizards of the Coast site.)

Thus far the most amusing thing has been their character conceits: a panda who chucks bamboo, a sun-character and a moon-character who are rivals, a puffling with a sword for a hand, and a boy who can ride or shoot a flying cannon.

 

[The Red King]

When my son was 8 and playing an Elven fighter, there was some role playing going on about taking an unfriendly NPC to torture to get info out of them. My 8 year old wanted to fight something. I told him there were only trees. He said "I'll go out side and attack some trees!" The NPC was allowed to see him go nuts on some trees and was told that this was his warm up before he came to "ask some hard questions."

Worked well for the party.