Starting D&D With The Kids
My niece and nephew have never played Role Playing Games and the only sort of games they have ever played are the “There can only be one!” winner types... board, video or card games is what they know and only competition was fostered, nothing cooperative. My husband and I decided to start introducing them to RPG with classic D&D first... winning is working together towards a common goal and surviving... the more made up paper people living to adventure again is “winning.” D&D requires cooperation, doing math (pretty basic but enough to challenge them to start to learn book keeping and budgeting skills), playing in a medieval background with laws and sensibilities different than they are used too (crash coarse in History in a very roundabout way), dealing with concepts like Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, learning to think before they threaten guards or complain about unfair social conditions, or take actions on the dodgy side, discovering guilds, orders, churches and such have power. Learning how to observe, pay attention, ask questions, follow rules of the classes, learn new vocabulary, remember “guns”, “telephones” etc don’t exist and pretend to be distinct characters sometimes different genders or races. All new things that help the imagination, social skills and mind grow.
The party of 3 Clerics (human), 2 Dwarves, 1 Hobbit, 1 Elf, and 2 Magic-Users (human) is currently exploring the Keep on the Borderlands while their players learn how to first Role Play, use abilities, make allies, contacts, learn to stay in formations or declare order and get orientated to the Medieval based Fantasy setting. So far they have learned not to upset guards, humans are racist and sexist a bit, managed to not get waylaid by thieves yet, the only Common language they all know is Common, living is expensive and sticking together is better than going alone... they have finally made it to the Tavern after interacting with several inhabitants of the Keep.
The adults are trying out adding more 3D elements to our games. We have been learning all sorts of new modeling, and crafting skills. We will get better at transitions and using floor tiles. We are not doing the grid system but will be using measuring sticks and other tactical war gaming tools to help determine range and how far someone can travel. The reasons for this is we want the kids to start to develop spacial awareness, practice using measuring devices (they honestly don’t understand common measurements), and prevent hex spaces obscuring realism in choices being made. We always used a few “props” but now we are going in for bigger scene creation versus the bare bones approach. This might not look like much but this is the most props we have ever used in one session of gaming and many are in build. The Keep will gradually be fleshed out into a huge build.
I also started teaching the kids to paint minis... this should help with their fine muscle control as it should start to develop hand muscles and eye hand coordination. In addition painting and model building requires a logical progression of steps, a plan, patience and understanding your art/craft mediums... this will help build logic and engineering skills. Not to mention clean up, safety, and even reading instructions is required. All great skills to develop.
Great day that day. Been 20 years since I DM’ed.
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