After a lot of debate, I decided to introduce my two oldest kids to Dungeons and Dragons recently. While we have played Hero Kids in the past with success, the additional rules of D&D felt like the right step for the oldest, but I was unsure for my 5 year old. As they say, “You never know unless you try”, so I decided to go for it. To my surprise and joy, it went really well.

Keeping Their Attention

Normally you start a D&D campaign with a session 0 to learn what the various players are looking for. When you are working with kids that have never played anything like this, session 0 doesn’t really find all the necessary information. What I learned very quickly was I needed to adapt and adapt quickly. The 5 year old was not a fan of role play, instead his pure focus was on “roll play”. To keep him interested, I had to find some reason for the dice to roll even if he didn’t need it to change the story. This included letting him tell me what his character would be doing during the long conversations like doing flips and letting him roll for how successful that was. While the older son was having a blast coming up with what to say or ask of the various characters in the world.

Gaming Tendencies

A humorous tendency of the oldest was the desire to collect whatever quest he could. Having played some video games, he has learned the efficient way of playing is to collect every quest and knock them all out at once. Explaining that the world is vast and some quests might lead them away from the town they are in and returning might not be high priority or even possible in the short term made him have to sit down and debate what he wanted to do. For example, there was a group of merchants looking for a group of adventurers to travel with them as body guards and a group of farmers having problems with their livestock disappearing. Knowing that the merchants might wait a bit before leaving, but leaving meant the farmers would still have their problem.

Difficulty Is Okay

In our first session, I was afraid to make the encounters too difficult. This led to me making the encounters too easy for them. This back-fired on me because instead of them being challenged, they steam rolled the dungeon that I had set up for them. The next time, I tried to bring more challenges that required them to think more. Having them choose how to stealthily enter the area instead of just charging forward. This made it feel more difficult and made the successes feel more earned.

Be Okay Giving Guidance

Encourage ideas, but also don’t be afraid to give some guidance. Giving someone an open-ended prompt can be overwhelming. Having a list of some possible paths forward can give a kick off that they can build on.There is a balance that you have to hit to not be railroady, but that will vary by your group.

Be Prepared For Anything

We can’t always predict what direction things will go. Be prepared because what you planned can change quickly. The kids are smart and something that you didn’t think about might drive them. You might see something is obvious, but they might have a reason it isn’t. For me, I thought getting information from a group of goblins would be obvious, but they pointed out that there is no way that the goblins would help since they had fought some of them to free the livestock. I had to quickly pivot because what I figured would be the next session’s task became the main focus for the current session.

Be Patient

Patience is key. They are learning to play a new and complex game. Watch their responses to things. Are they getting lost a lot? Maybe it is time to pivot or to adjust some rules to simplify it. If they are having trouble keeping track of something, utilize the other adults or setup trackers that you can use. At the end of the day, you are trying to teach them and that has to be at their pace.

Remember To Have Fun

A very important reminder is to have fun. The kids might have different ideas, and you might have to adjust what you are doing, but this is also really great family time. Those think on your toes moments give you insight into what you enjoy. When you end a session and they look at you upset or ask when we can play again, you know that you are doing something right. Hearing them ask when we can play again, reminds you that they look forward to that time together.

Just Do It

Ultimately, the biggest learning was to just do it. I was so worried that it would be too hard for them or not something that they enjoyed, that I put it off for a while. Once I finally let them try it, we all had a blast. It has quickly become one of the most requested past times and it feels great. Getting to exercise all of our imaginations as a family and doing it shut away from electronics or other distractions makes for a lot of fun memories.

Warning

I will leave this on a word of warning though. Be prepared to build lots of stories and quests because they will want to play nonstop.