Tolrendor DM's Blog

It seems to be Kid’s week out there…

Having just posted re the article on the D&D website, I discovered another one on Kobold Quarterly!

Definitely inspired me to make time for a session with the kids at the weekend! It’s been a little while since we’ve managed to play, given the busy lives we all seem to lead, but it was a blast!

I ran a skill challenge I had prepared around purchasing horses, something my pony-mad daughter had been wanting to do ‘in-game’ all the way from their first adventure. It went pretty well, and got some good role-playing going – and there was great delight when after the bartering was done, I pulled out their new horse minis from Stuffer Shack to give them!

Awesome Horse Minis from Stuffer Shack

The best bit is that they only had enough gold to buy riding ponies for the party, but what they really want is warhorses – especially my daughter’s Eladrin beastmaster ranger, who has discovered that the horse dealer has a ‘Fey bloodline warhorse’ for sale – but she can’t afford it! So now they’re rushing round Fallcrest looking for adventure rumours, so they can get out there, smack some orcs, and come back with enough treasure to afford more horses – talk about easy motivation!!

Then they stumbled upon a River Rats mugging in Low-town and pitched in to help (got to cater to my son’s appetite: “it isn’t a D&D session unless there’s at least one battle!”). This was their first ‘non-dungeon’ fight, and it was quite classic afterwards:

DM Dad: “So, what next then?”

Kids: “We go back to the Silver Unicorn for dinner. I hope there’s roast pork tonight!”

DM Dad: “What, so you just leave the bodies there then?”

Kids: “Yes! Oh, I suppose the guards might come along and think we’re murderers …”

I’m loving it 🙂

There’s a great article posted on the Dungeons and Dragons website today, from the new column entitled D&D Kids. It’s not a D&D Insider article either, so check it out!

Very humourously written, and there were some definite resonances with my experiences playing 4E with my two children. I’ve called out a few excerpts here:

If a player is going against the group try to talk sense into him before letting the others gang up on him.

I’ve had this situation a few times where one of the kids was adamant on a course of action, even though the other thought it was a mad idea. To resolve this, I normally go into character with one the NPCs in the party, trying to help them converge on a combined course of action, or just as the DM act as a sounding board for the possible flaws and complications that might come from it. Arguments at the game table certainly spoil the fun, so it’s in your interests to allay them quickly 🙂

You’ll know you’re doing your job right when they jump from their seats to describe what their heroes do, demonstrating each brutal slash with their pens and rolled character sheets.

My son does this quite often, especially when there’s been a bad miss (natural 1) or a critical – its hysterical! Hopefully it also means I’m doing my job!

Kids love gore. They love hearing how their hammers crush their enemies’ skulls, sending brains and bone shards flying in all directions.

Haven’t really tried this … but on reflection it certainly matches some of the talk they (well ok, my son…) produces when he’s playing games with his Action men, or his Ben 10 Aliens, or his toy soldiers, or … why not his D&D character!

Cool battle tiles and a boxful of miniatures will be extremely well met.

The first dungeon I ran the kids through was a home-brew, and seeing as I am an extremely keen cartographer, I designed and printed out scale maps using Campaign Cartographer 3, and their character minis could ‘walk’ through them. One section of the kobold lair, which came just after a massive battle in the  ‘feasting hall’ I didn’t print out, as to me it was just a small area to explore (e.g. kitchen, sleeping chambers) before moving on to the next important area. Did I get stick for that! They almost wouldn’t go that way!! I tried to describe it well, but in the end I had to sketch it out …

Lesson learned: For kids, visuals are cool … and important!

Getting kids out of a city is almost as difficult as getting them to eat spinach. 

Interesting comparison! My children are currently in their first real town (Fallcrest of course…), so we’ll see. Certainly sounds like it might be true, if the first session is anything to go by – a whole session role-playing their entry to town, finding an inn, eating dinner, looking for a place to buy horses. Great role-playing – it was probably my most enjoyable session as a DM for them, even though there was no combat, or other action.

My daughter has a whole agenda here – mainly around her desire to spend the party’s treasure on horses (which she loves and rides in real life)! To cater for this, I’ve put together a whole skill challenge around this, which I’ll probably share on the blog at some point.

Still, if I continue with the no combat theme in town, it certainly won’t be long before my son is desperate to leave!