|
Post by machfront on Apr 25, 2015 4:11:39 GMT -6
The Tiny Princess is 8 years old. She loves the LotR and Hobbit films. She loved the old animated versions. She digs Harry Potter. She thinks Willow and Krull and Dragonslayer are awesome. Reading JRR's stuff is beyond her at this point but checks them out of the school library to impress Dad I think. I gave her some of my D&D Endless Quest books and she's begun to enjoy them. She had a ton of fun as I read aloud the first Fighting Fantasy book (Deathtrap Dungeon) while she made the decisions and tracked the character stuff on the character sheet. Since she was at least six she's thought that Talisman and DungeonQuest and Heroica are wonderful, though Talisman is by far her fave and sometimes has even played it alone. It's time, I think. Time for the 'real thing'. But what? I'm considering S&W:WB. I'm a seasoned DM and though I'd like to run Zenopus's Tower from Holmes I need something much simpler and more straightforward in terms of rooms/mapping. I can't go super-little-kid-cliche because she'd roll her eyes. (Her 'review' of the film Cujo was that it was "Really....sort of boring.". She thought "Alien" was neat and interesting and she loved "Aliens" (especially Vazquez). She's also a fan of "Arachnophobia" and the Tremors series. Her enjoying D&D will likely not be a stumbling block. Finding the right balance and adventure with a proper mix of stuff that will, within a breath, 'say' DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, will be. I welcome suggestions (note also that even with seasoned players and so forth, I'm not a fan and usually lousy with dungeon stuff though I know in this case a bit of that is 'necessary')... Give unto me a good, even mix of simple base town, nearby goblin or bandit camp and some decent wild-ass fantasy, full-force "D&D" elements. The caves or tombs should be something that's six to eight rooms, short and simple halls, etc. I've looked over the wonderful one-page dungeons I have but many of them are still too complex for her (and me, too to be brutally and embarrassingly honest)... She hurt her knee being a tomboy daredevil on her bike and it's also going to be a rather rainy weekend in these parts so Sat. is going to be a 'just right' kind of time. So not only do I need a suggestion now, I'll also need something I can glance over and go. Tall order, I realize but I'm confident someone(s) here can guide and deliver. Thanks, guys!
|
|
|
Post by kenmeister on Apr 25, 2015 6:05:23 GMT -6
You can do the mapping for her as she goes along, you know, perhaps under the guise of an npc porter if you feel the need for realism. Given that, I think you can go with any of the easier starters that I can personally vouch for: TSR B1 In Search of the Unknown B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (orange or green) B4 Lost City the Holmes Sample dungeon N4 Treasure Hunt (I prefer to start with 1st level characters, not 0-level) U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (first part)
Judges Guild Illhedrin Book Trial By Fire
OSR Ruins of Ramat Sanctuary Ruin
Note that even an "easier" adventure like Holmes Sample may have the first encounter be with ghouls, so it's not that easy. Harder starters are B2, B5, T1, N1
|
|
|
Post by kesher on Apr 25, 2015 8:27:12 GMT -6
Saltmarsh is not at all bad idea...
|
|
|
Post by machfront on Apr 27, 2015 0:57:26 GMT -6
So the weekend didn't pan out the way I'd hoped. First there was much house-work stuff to be done and The Girl needs a new car so there was stuff concerning that. We ended up spending a bit too much time with some 'new' video games (since, to us, XBOX 360 is new). Sunday was a beautiful day so we all dressed up and when to Georgia Renaissance Festival (something we do multiple times a year, every year).
So, I have some more time to plan. This coming weekend The Girl is going out of town with friends to a concert so it will be just myself and The Tiny Princess.
I've no real problem with the suggestions thus far but honestly they're too complex even for me. I don't particularly like the sample adventure in the Labyrinth Lord core rule book but I may use it as a template and do some re-coloring. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for (though with a decent base town/city and a smidge of wild in between). I'll have to run some searches over a handful of forums for 'adventures for beginning kids' or some such. I just hoped someone here could give me a 'turn key' solution. I know you guys know your typical dungeon stuff far better than I do (I've always been more into loose wilderness and city stuff.). I'll give another once-over to the few items in the suggestions I have access to already. Surely I can at least pull some inspiration from some of them...
|
|
Koren n'Rhys
Level 6 Magician
Got your mirrorshades?
Posts: 355
|
Post by Koren n'Rhys on Apr 27, 2015 9:20:44 GMT -6
I'd agree the TSR & JG stuff is probably more complex than you were thinking, but if you're also looking at one-pagers being too much, and don't like any of the example /starter dungeons either, well... you might just need to buck up and write your own.
Ruins of Ramat is pretty good, if you haven't actually looked at it yet. How about some of the stuff on DF? There's one called the Haunted Tower, I think it was, geared at kids.
|
|
|
Post by Fearghus on Apr 27, 2015 10:45:37 GMT -6
My kids are 6 and 7 (daughter will be 8 in May). They got excited one day and really wanted to play D&D with me since I had recently run a session for my nephews. When I say we played D&D, all I mean is that they rolled up six stats and made up a name. They both played elves. To them an elf is something in the north pole that works with Santa (this game was near Christmas). There was no exploration of spells or magic in the typical D&D sense.
Anyway, with their short attention spans I kept it really simple. The chief toy over-seer wanted to know why Fitz was missing. He was supposed to have brought up a couple of cans of blue paint an hour ago. Thankfully my children have over-active imaginations. They are both scared of the dark and will not go into the basement alone (hell, they won't go upstairs to take a bath alone). My daughter took charge of her and her brother to find flashlights, get to the basement and search it, find the spider that wrapped up Fitz, and then got some cookies and milk to trade for Fitz. They then told the overseer that the spider in the basement was being mean. There was a brief few sentences exchanged about asking for things you want and negotiating instead of taking what you want.
Total play time from character creation to finish was about 30 minutes. Nothing died. They never inquired about weapons or attempted violence. There is a certain innocence I could not bring myself to pollute just yet. They'll figure out the violence part on their own soon enough.
I understand my scenario is dumb-down for what you are attempting. My intent for sharing is to encourage you to tailor something to her interests at whatever point you play.
|
|
|
Post by kesher on Apr 27, 2015 12:52:40 GMT -6
Fearghus makes some good points! Giving her a quest/purpose is a great idea. "A [thing that she likes] has disappeared/was stolen from [place she'd think was cool], and [someone she'd think was cool] wants to you find out what happened/get it back." I did this with the Twins a couple of years ago, using the excellent Dagger rules: Garg the Ogre stole the Elf Queen's magic bird, because he wanted to eat it. Go rescue it!
|
|
|
Post by Zenopus on Apr 27, 2015 13:46:23 GMT -6
I'm a seasoned DM and though I'd like to run Zenopus's Tower from Holmes I need something much simpler and more straightforward in terms of rooms/mapping. I'd suggest giving her character a map of the dungeon. A few rooms could be missing to give her a chance to do some simple mapping. Alternately, try something along the 5-room dungeon concept: Or, I have a 'micro-dungeon' called Monster Mountain here with 7 encounters. The map is made of Lego Heroica (perhaps you could recreate it with yours). Many of the rooms have items to get past obstacles in other rooms so there's some problem-solving involved. I've been meaning to make a 1-page dungeon pdf out of it.
|
|
|
Post by buttmonkey on Apr 27, 2015 15:38:14 GMT -6
I shudder to suggest this, but you might consider The Beacon at Enon Tor. It's from an old White Dwarf issue. I've linked to a C&C conversion. It should be easy to convert it back to a straight D&D system.
The adventure takes place in a 13 room tower, so it's not a huge location to master. I've always found Beacon to be incredibly bland, but for a first adventure it might do just fine.
|
|
|
Post by machfront on Apr 28, 2015 0:28:37 GMT -6
Feargus and kesher, thanks so much for your thoughts and insight. That's particularly helpful. I should think more about her and consider doing some work myself. Having said that... Zenopus and buttmonkey, thanks also for these choices. The Five Room Dungeon concept should help me roll my own. Monster Mountain and the Beacon at Enon Tor look like fun.
|
|
Koren n'Rhys
Level 6 Magician
Got your mirrorshades?
Posts: 355
|
Post by Koren n'Rhys on Apr 29, 2015 12:27:46 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by machfront on May 2, 2015 1:24:33 GMT -6
So, to distract her from wanting extra TV time I segued into creating her character. Earlier today and yesterday I had 'quizzed' her on the types of characters (classes, duh). I mentioned Talisman and it's characters, told her and briefly described to her the 'core four' and the races. She excitedly exclaimed a desire for a warrior. An elven warrior. Like... really excitedly. As in, throwing herself about as if she had a sword and shooting goblins with her imaginary bow and arrows. I'm so proud! Thinking I might need to use B/X due to my intimate familiarity and other sundry reasons, I asked if she would prefer an elf who could fight pretty good and also cast spells or an elf who could not cast spells at all but was better at fighting and she still wanted a pure elf fighter. (I always pretty much assume and view that true and pure race-as-class is wholly a B/X and BECMI thing, since it's less than trivial to ignore words like "the elf is a combination of fighter and magic-user". If there's no "Elf XP progression table" then race is separate from class for me and thus I can ignore it and continue with the notion than any race can be any class. I'm wild and crazy like that.) The first real D&D book I ever had put into my hands and that same book used by my buddy as DM to run the first real D&D game I ever experienced was Holmes...so I'd love to share nearly the same experience. So, while I'd love to use Holmes I'm going with Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox for ease of reference and due to the fact that I want the simpler spell list, the smaller numbers in bonuses and hit points and so on as well as the majority of monsters having a single d6 attack. I'll likely keep a copy of Holmes to share space as reference, just so it's part of it...because...c'mon...Holmes, man! A few days ago I buried myself in my various pdfs and actual books, many OSR... I came out of the pile holding tightly to R. Lawrence Blake's wonderful little beginner adventures written for Labyrinth Lord back in '09: The Courtyard of Gerald Red and the super-cool The Fabled Curse of the Brigand Crypt. I'll be using the former with an overly-excited look towards the latter for later. .....latter for later. Hm. Anyway! I allowed 4d6 drop lowest, arrange as desired and she rolled quite well. ST 17, INT 10, WIS 9, DEX 17, CON 14, CHA 12 (I'm using a B/X sheet, the more recent one, by Dyson Logos because she thought it was the most "Awesome!" out of the score that I showed her. ) We used an online Sindarin elven name generator (which she wasted much time with) to come up with an appropriate name. Humorously, the name is "Minion" which apparently means "first son". We both loved it. Minion was ready to equip himself but the Evil Queen That Which Decides on Bedtime Tyranny proclaimed it was time to call it a night, so he'll have to wait until later when he's ready to brave the twisted and chaotic wilds... ...of the BORDERLANDS! Wwhhaattt? Hell, yes. How can I not? The Borderlands are awesome. I'll take that. Thanks. *yoink!* Not the Keep though. Too complicated for me. Even after decades of GMing. Not the marvelous Caves of Chaos. Trying to imagine keeping track of that map and all that stuff going on there makes me feel like my brain is being twisted and squeezed out of all water like a rag. Nope. It'll be the base of the town of Limpwater. (this is where you laugh) Yeah. Great name. No idea why it popped into my head. The haunted and ruined 'courtyard' of the twisted Gerald Red is only a days travel through the nearby blighted wood and the only slightly safer grasslands that the dark ruin sits hard by. Adventure and danger awaits!
|
|
idrahil
Level 6 Magician
The Lighter The Rules, The Better The Game!
Posts: 398
|
Post by idrahil on May 2, 2015 19:11:02 GMT -6
A few days ago I buried myself in my various pdfs and actual books, many OSR... I came out of the pile holding tightly to R. Lawrence Blake's wonderful little beginner adventures written for Labyrinth Lord back in '09: The Courtyard of Gerald Red and the super-cool The Fabled Curse of the Brigand Crypt. I'll be using the former with an overly-excited look towards the latter for later. .....latter for later. Hm. Anyway! So, I googled these and found that they are available (along with 3 other adventures) for free on Lulu! They also exist on the same map as "Larm" from Brave Halfling. That's quite a little sandbox.
|
|
|
Post by rredmond on May 11, 2015 12:16:16 GMT -6
I dig R. Lawrence Blake's stuff for my little girls. And I second The Illhedrin Book recommendation. We have to restart that one, but it was exciting for my girls when they started that one. Easy enough to find a PDF of it, I'm not so sure about an actual real live copy though. Enjoy!!! --Ron--
|
|