What are you teaching your kids? BD&D or what?

[Emirikol]

My kids are reaching the point where they can role-play and am interested in what you are breaking your kids in on for RPG's.

I'm going to run a couple BD&D games. We played the ruined tower from the 1981 boxed set red book as well as X2 castle amber, but there were obviously some elements best left out

Using a d20 die and a damage die (without modifiers) seems the easiest route and hence the BD&D idea. Kids are around 8 so the math isn't tough..but 4E would be out of the question obviously.

Anybody got some recommendations for BD&D modules to run?

jh

 

[S'mon]

I'm thinking of starting my son on BD&D or LL, he's still a bit young though (22 months). Dragonsfoot has lots of good adventures - The Haunted Keep (expanding Moldvay's sample Tower) and The Endless Tunnels of Enlandin is very good. I think B1 In Search of the Unknown should work well; its design makes it very easy to modify the threat level.

B10 Night's Dark Terror (download from rpgnow) is very good but may be a bit complex for a novice. It has a strong plot but avoids railroading.

 

[Storminator]

I started my 9 yr old on a solo 4e campaign. He's loving it, tho we don't get to play as often as we'd like.

PS

 

[Theron]

When my son was seven, we played some Castles & Crusades with his mom sitting in. Since then, most of our tabletop gaming has been the old FASERIP Marvel Super-Heroes game. Next time we play fantasy, I'll probably run 4e for him.

 

[Castellan]

I'll second B10, Night's Dark Terror. It's one of my all-time favorites.

 

[Drowbane]

I started my niece out on 3.5 when she was 12, and now she is DMing it at 14. I plan on buying her new 3.5 Core Rule books asap.

 

[Raven Crowking]

RCFG. My two older kids are actively involved in playtesting/development.

My two-year-old isn't playing yet.


RC

 

[Kask]

I taught my kids D&D 2nd Ed when they were young & then we went to 3.0 when it came out. If I was doing it today it would be C&C.

 

[Rel]

My daughter started with the roleplaying very young. The basic idea of "pretend" comes naturally to kids and we used to do these sort of "LARP" type adventures (I've posted a thread with pics here at ENW) starting when she was around 3.

Her first experience with anything similar to a tabletop RPG was with the Descent boardgame. Although the game is meant to be played competitively with the "Overlord" vs. the Heroes, it is easily adapted to cooperative play. It has an extremely elegant dice mechanic that indicates whether an attack hit, its range, how much damage it did and whether there were any "special effects" all in one roll of the dice. Not only was this pretty easy for her to grasp but her mother and I both noticed how the counting and adding improved her math skills. I highly recommend this as a starter game for young kids.

Her first time playing a RPG that was designed as such was Savage Worlds Lowlife. I owe this all to Pepster, one of the guys who attends the NC Game Days who runs EXCELLENT Savage Worlds games. The setting is silly and fun and was another great stepping stone for her.

She has gone on to design her own RPG ("Game in a Jar") that is pretty impressive considering that she is 7. It is based on the Redhurst Academy book, which is fairly derivitive of Harry Potter. She's run her first adventure for various people at the NC Game Day and DC Game Day and I think it was very successful.

She has also played a few sessions of 4e and enjoyed that but we don't have an ongoing game right now. But she does sit in on the first hour or so of the 4e game I'm running for my regular group and seems very interested in how that is unfolding.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I started my older children on Basic D&D. I gave my son a copy of the Mentzer Basic Set (Elmore cover art), and he put some hard use on it by the time he was ready for the expert set. At that point, I decided to give him a hardcover Labyrinth Lord, instead. He's been using that to run his own stuff.

My eldest children also play OD&D with me, sometimes.