Siskoid doles out GameMaster advice in this special “column” episode, focusing on how to start gaming. How do you get your kids involved in the hobby? How do you massage expectations based on your new group’s past experiences? And how do you make playing small or low-level parties exciting?
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Credits: Community’s “Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”, starring Jonathan Banks, Alison Brie, Danny Pudi, and Joel McHale; the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon’s “Day of the Dungeon Master”, starring Don Most and Sidney Miller; and “The Poseidon Adventure Main Title” by John Williams.
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I’ve started playing with my 13 year old nephew. His mother and I were thinking he started showing signs he might be interested in D&D so we bought him the new PHB for Xmas and I’ve been reading through it as well to learn the rules a bit more since I’ve played many systems for decades now but never D&D.
Your tips on playing with kids were all really good. All the adaptations I’ve had to make for his age were what you said:
-be more open minded to the PC doing things he shouldn’t be able to;
-make sure you explore aspects of the game he enjoys (in our case, it was “ressource gathering” and item shopping….Minecraft kid :’D )
-even though he’s really good in math, he thinks the crunching is boring. He fudges his dice all the time just to make it simple haha;
-He also always wants to knock opponents unconscious rather than killing them. Even the multi-murderous giant spider was spared….possibly living to kill more travellers later on.
“Playing what they want” and “avoiding crunch” was a challenge in our case because what he wanted was specifically D&D. I’m guessing that is a common problem. For now we circumvent it by splitting chargen and leveling into separate mini sessions of focusing on 1-2 choices and by fudging rolls when he’s getting bored with them. I’m sure an opportunity will present itself one day where where he’ll be open to other systems and genres.