From The Mailbag: How Do I Play D&D With My 10 Year Old Daughter?
Posted by Vanir at 11:59 AM
Occasionally, a reader will sneak in and drop an email in our poor, emaciated inbox. In accordance with state inbox cruelty regulations, I am required to elicit a response to this:
Peter Blood writes:
First, Peter, let me inform you that I am totally jealous of your awesome name. For a moment I thought a pirate or sorcerer was emailing us and, with a name like Peter Blood, the person sending the email could not have been under level 18.
Now, getting down to business. I have personal experience playing D&D one-on-one with someone else. I did so all through high school with a friend of mine, and that was the only way I knew how to play the game for years until I found a regular group to play in. I was 13 years old, and the adventures were ridiculous and terrible, and occasionally I get all misty wishing I could have that much fun again.
If you intend to run adventures for your daughter, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get around learning some game mechanics. However, I completely feel your pain on this one. When I run adventures, I feel as if I am going to choke to death on how many things there are to keep track of. Under normal circumstances, you have a couple of options.
Our group has relied on a two-DM system where one person primarily does story and the other handles the nuts and bolts of combat. This leaves the guy who doesn't want to deal with the numbers free to roleplay his fool head off. However, this isn't really a solution for you, because it's just you and your daughter.
This means you need plan B, which is what I do to cope as DM in any size group: rules light, roleplay heavy. By this, I mean you need to learn the barebones of combat and a few other actions -- but a lot of the time you will just make a judgement call or handwave a skill check. Make the game less about the rules, and more about the interactions between your NPCs and your daughter's PC. What do I mean by this? For example: have some orcs capture her PC and make it clear that she's going to get killed if she tries to fight her way out. Play an orc, and make her figure out how to get out of there (either by escaping somehow or talking her way out of the situation).
DMing is difficult, especially at first, but don't get discouraged (and don't forget nobody is expecting you to be perfect right out of the gate!) Everything gets a lot more comfortable after plenty of practice and mistakes. I know our group saw more than a few spectacular disasters when I was running last, but at the end of the night everybody was having fun so it was OK.
You don't have to come up with the dungeon and everything in it on your own, either. Expeditious Retreat Press has a whole bunch of modules designed for one DM and one player titled, oddly enough, 1 on 1 Adventures. I would add that I think these are D&D 3.5e and not the new 4e, but it is somewhere to start (and you'll probably want to avoid this one, for obvious reasons). If your daughter enjoys solving puzzles, you can sprinkle some into your adventures too. Cloud Kingdom games has some awesome books on this topic.
As far as videogames go, there are lots and lots of RPGs out there, but most are single-player. However, if you've got multiple computers, you could go with something from the Neverwinter Nights series or one of its predecessors. With videogame RPGs, though, you're pretty much going to wind up chopping up lots of people and monsters into tiny little pieces to get XP. I'm having a great deal of difficulty thinking of one where that is not the case (unless you're playing Myst or something). If you're looking for nonviolence, my recommendation would be to stick to tabletop adventures where you can be assured of everyone's peaceful demeanor via your omnipotence.
There is one other option that may terrify you, but it's so crazy that it just might work: give your daughter the books, and let her run a game for you. She's older than the age I was when I started getting into this stuff, and I guarantee you it's a great way to spark her creativity. I would keep it super extra rules light though -- perhaps eschewing the D&D rules for a much simpler set you two agree on (combat settled by rock-scissors-paper, for instance).
Hopefully, this was of some help to you, and you both will have a good experience like I did when I was starting out: ridiculous, terrible adventures -- and lots of fun.
Peter Blood writes:
It has been 25 years since I played D&D in college and I still miss it. Now my 10 year old daughter loves fantasy, LOTR, and has read the whole Harry Potter series. I want to play D&D with her but do not know how to start. I am not at a level where I could set up my own dungeon and be a DM. I can't remember all that stuff about how to attack and saving throw stuff.
How can I play D&D with just the two of us?
Is there an online game where the computer is the DM? Is there a video game without much killing?
I am all ears.
First, Peter, let me inform you that I am totally jealous of your awesome name. For a moment I thought a pirate or sorcerer was emailing us and, with a name like Peter Blood, the person sending the email could not have been under level 18.
Now, getting down to business. I have personal experience playing D&D one-on-one with someone else. I did so all through high school with a friend of mine, and that was the only way I knew how to play the game for years until I found a regular group to play in. I was 13 years old, and the adventures were ridiculous and terrible, and occasionally I get all misty wishing I could have that much fun again.
If you intend to run adventures for your daughter, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get around learning some game mechanics. However, I completely feel your pain on this one. When I run adventures, I feel as if I am going to choke to death on how many things there are to keep track of. Under normal circumstances, you have a couple of options.
Our group has relied on a two-DM system where one person primarily does story and the other handles the nuts and bolts of combat. This leaves the guy who doesn't want to deal with the numbers free to roleplay his fool head off. However, this isn't really a solution for you, because it's just you and your daughter.
This means you need plan B, which is what I do to cope as DM in any size group: rules light, roleplay heavy. By this, I mean you need to learn the barebones of combat and a few other actions -- but a lot of the time you will just make a judgement call or handwave a skill check. Make the game less about the rules, and more about the interactions between your NPCs and your daughter's PC. What do I mean by this? For example: have some orcs capture her PC and make it clear that she's going to get killed if she tries to fight her way out. Play an orc, and make her figure out how to get out of there (either by escaping somehow or talking her way out of the situation).
DMing is difficult, especially at first, but don't get discouraged (and don't forget nobody is expecting you to be perfect right out of the gate!) Everything gets a lot more comfortable after plenty of practice and mistakes. I know our group saw more than a few spectacular disasters when I was running last, but at the end of the night everybody was having fun so it was OK.
You don't have to come up with the dungeon and everything in it on your own, either. Expeditious Retreat Press has a whole bunch of modules designed for one DM and one player titled, oddly enough, 1 on 1 Adventures. I would add that I think these are D&D 3.5e and not the new 4e, but it is somewhere to start (and you'll probably want to avoid this one, for obvious reasons). If your daughter enjoys solving puzzles, you can sprinkle some into your adventures too. Cloud Kingdom games has some awesome books on this topic.
As far as videogames go, there are lots and lots of RPGs out there, but most are single-player. However, if you've got multiple computers, you could go with something from the Neverwinter Nights series or one of its predecessors. With videogame RPGs, though, you're pretty much going to wind up chopping up lots of people and monsters into tiny little pieces to get XP. I'm having a great deal of difficulty thinking of one where that is not the case (unless you're playing Myst or something). If you're looking for nonviolence, my recommendation would be to stick to tabletop adventures where you can be assured of everyone's peaceful demeanor via your omnipotence.
There is one other option that may terrify you, but it's so crazy that it just might work: give your daughter the books, and let her run a game for you. She's older than the age I was when I started getting into this stuff, and I guarantee you it's a great way to spark her creativity. I would keep it super extra rules light though -- perhaps eschewing the D&D rules for a much simpler set you two agree on (combat settled by rock-scissors-paper, for instance).
Hopefully, this was of some help to you, and you both will have a good experience like I did when I was starting out: ridiculous, terrible adventures -- and lots of fun.
Labels: DM Advice, roleplay, roleplaying with children, rpgbloggers, Vanir, you tell us
