Troll Lord Games

My son just turned 6 on Friday and had been expressing an interest in our gaming when we played. So, today I sat down with my old D&D Red Box and gave it a whirl to see how he'd do.

I figured he might be to young to enjoy the game so didn't expect a whole lot. I gave him a character sheet and we discussed a few things prior to me walking him through the solo introduction. He filled out his character sheet and when I asked him what he was going to name his fighter he decided on Mathayus (he just watched The Scorpion King yesterday).

Started out pretty good with the encounter with the goblin and the snake, he was growing a bit frustrated with the snake however as he kept missing. When he did kill the snake though he was pretty excited, had to do a victory lap around the house and tell my wife he killed the snake.

His meeting with Aleena is what impressed me though. Upon coming across her:

Me: Hello, my name is Aleena.

Him (without prodding): Hey, I'm Mathayus.

Me: You look hurt.

Him nodding: Yeah, I was fighting a snake and it bit me.

I was proud. He seemed to understand the concept of RP pretty well.

The adventure went well and afterwards I asked him if he had fun. He told me he did and asked if tomorrow we could play again and try to find Bargle.

Yes. Yes we can.

Yep. I love the fact that my current gaming group is my wife and 3 kids. Excellent play, excellent family time, on so many levels.

I really have come to treasure the fact that my kids will have happy memories with their mom and dad, and playing D&D.

AWESOME! TOTALLY AWESOME!

I haven't had a chance to play with my kids in a few weeks, but the youngest one also gets super excited at succeeding in whatever. I still don't know where he got the name for his dwaf...

COWBOY JONES?

Totall cool! Congrats.

Jynx wrote:
I still don't know where he got the name for his dwarf...

COWBOY JONES?

Hah! My son is a major wrestling fanatic so I was expecting the name to be Undertaker, The Great Khali, Stone Cold, Triple H or something similar.

He's wanting to use miniatures in the game as well. I might bust out the battle map for his next trip into the caves.

I'm still completely enjoying the hell out of this. It's kind of funny too looking at his character sheet...
Dungeon Master: Daddy

Heh, that's awesome. I can't wait to start my son on gaming. He's just getting ready to turn 3 and loves to break out my Marvel FASERIP basic set and "play". He loves to move the counters around the city map and roll the dice.

DD,

congratulations!

It is so nice to introduce kids to rpgs. I did the same with my small brother when he was 8. We started with Red Box Mentzer, too, and he wanted to play a Thief. He did a really nice job, and was extremely lucky too: as a first level thief he killed an ogre hand to hand!
He consistently played in-character, insisting that he wanted to find out where his family was (I told him that his family was poor, and that he was taken as slave by a marauding group of orcs). He enjoyed rpging going into taverns and eating with halflings. Nice, nice time

That's awsome, DD.

R-
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The Book of the Mind

Hmmm. Maybe it's time to get my boy into it... He's seven. He's shown interest, but the group I play with is all adults. Maybe it's time to run a little "Lone Shot" game with just him.

I'll have to think about this a bit...
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StealthSuitStanley wrote:
Hmmm. Maybe it's time to get my boy into it... He's seven. He's shown interest, but the group I play with is all adults. Maybe it's time to run a little "Lone Shot" game with just him.

I'll have to think about this a bit...

I wont be having my boy at the table with my regular group, as I don't want to force that on them. But, looks like me, the wife and him will be having games for his benefit as long as he remains interested.

I hope my daughters take to it that quickly.
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Isn't that what kids are for? Taking out the garbage, washing the dishes and playing RPGs when the group is busy? LOL j.k.

Seriously that is awesome. I hope that I have a similiar experience when I have kids. Come to think about it, if I had a dad like me I'd just die with all the RPG, console, computer gamage and my love for cars.
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DangerDwarf wrote:
My son just turned 6 on Friday and had been expressing an interest in our gaming when we played. So, today I sat down with my old D&D Red Box and gave it a whirl to see how he'd do.

*snip*

Yes. Yes we can.

Hey that's really tremendous, DD!
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"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes:" - Macbeth

Julian Grimm wrote:
I hope my daughters take to it that quickly.

I genuinely expected this to just be a temporary time kill, as he was home from school sick today. I didn't expect him to actually pick up on it so quick and enjoy it as much as he did. I'm hoping he'll continue to enjoy it and wish to keep playing.

Afterwards he kept asking me about the minatures, wanting to use them since he is "learning to play good."

I got on-line with him and went to Noble Knight to let him pick out a miniature to order for his character. He's pretty excited.

DangerDwarf wrote:
I genuinely expected this to just be a temporary time kill, as he was home from school sick today. I didn't expect him to actually pick up on it so quick and enjoy it as much as he did. I'm hoping he'll continue to enjoy it and wish to keep playing.

Afterwards he kept asking me about the minatures, wanting to use them since he is "learning to play good."

I got on-line with him and went to Noble Knight to let him pick out a miniature to order for his character. He's pretty excited.

That is cool. That is a fond memory for me too, with my kids of course.

Get this. My 11 year old has gotten into running his lands "right", so we have been using Magical Medievel Society: Western Europe and Gary's World Builder and NAtion Builder books to work out how much his lands make him and how much he has to develop and improve upon what he has and to recruit enough soldiers to defend his lands, etc...

Plus he kept telling his older brother and sister how fun it was to do, so now they have sat down with me and are getting into this almost as much as their little brother.

I figured if my kids were ever going to get into these kinds of details about their characters it would be the oldest one. Nope. The youngest got them started on it.

Its been fun to do this, plus educational to my kids because I often used real life examples about managing lands, recruiting people, etc... and they "never realized" what it took to make the world "work".

Lots of fun ahead.

3 years to go... 3 years to go... 3 years to go...

My daughters are only 3 and 1.. but im looking forward to play with them... if they want to of course!

My wife is dying to play again.. but we barely have enough time alone as it is.. and when there in bed.. we're just too tired..

Sounds great!

I hope my girl will get into it but I have years & years as she is do to pop any day now.....
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Well, its still going good. Next time we play, he's headed to some keep located on the borderlands with a cleric played by my wife and an elven NPC. They have heard rumors that Bargle is hiding out in a place called the Caves of Chaos and they are out to bring him to justice for Aleena's murder.

DangerDwarf wrote:
Well, its still going good. Next time we play, he's headed to some keep located on the borderlands with a cleric played by my wife and an elven NPC. They have heard rumors that Bargle is hiding out in a place called the Caves of Chaos and they are out to bring him to justice for Aleena's murder.

Awesome!

Treebore wrote:
Awesome!

Yeah, we're having a good time with this. Sure, we're avoiding various complexities to ensure he can keep up with it at his age, but its a blast. Using miniatures and a battle mat are helping him visualize things a lot easier, he is only 6 after all and having a "game board" helps him out.

He currently has me shopping around for another miniature. He was going through mine last night and was disappointed that I didn't have one that he felt looked like Bargle.

Also, on a miniature related note. When he was looking for a miniature to represent his character I was of course showing him several that I thought were cool. He turned down all of them. He finally found what he was looking for though, a fighter carrying a lantern. His reason? Methayus has a lantern so he can see in the dungeons.

I just found it amusing that of all the things to focus on....

a lantern.

Heh.

Chello!

Yeah, kids surprise you like that...I was never so proud and chagrined as when my daughter (age at the time) took out Lareth single-handedly with bow shots in ToEE (we were playing HM at the time and she was a single-c;assed elf fighter specialized in bow--level 3!!!).

Poor Lareth never go a spell off...7 arrow shots later...DEAD!!!

lol

Tony