Gaming with Kids: DM in Training

It has been a while since I last posted an update on my forays into gaming with my boys (currently 5 and 3). Given that we've been playing quite a bit of something that resembles Dungeons & Dragons, I thought I'd bring you up to speed on my attempts to raise the next generation of gamer geeks.

In an ideal world, I'd like to sit down with my boys, crack open the old Moldvay rules, help them roll up characters, and start a real (age-appropriate) campaign with classic D&D adventurers. It would be even better if I could have the campaign grow with the boys, sort of like a table-top version the nanotech "Illustrated Primer" from Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I fantasize about starting with adventures featuring my boys playing precocious children, limiting deadly violence, and learning life lessons as they go. Eventually, the content of adventures would change to reflect their maturity and we'd finally wind up with unmodified old school modules by the time we hit the tween years.

We're a long way off from that fantasy right now. But we're still having fun.

First off, I should say that my boys are enthusiastic gamers. Almost every single day, I get asked if we can play Dungeons & Dragons. The fact that we don't play more than once a week or so is mostly due to the amount of house-dad stuff I need to do when I get home from work to make up for my wife's grad school crunch. It also has something to do with my boy's still maturing concept of what it actually means to play D&D.

The boys are really too young to pick up on the structured play aspect. And perhaps most frustrating for me is the fact that they still need very concrete representations of in-game characters and locations. I swear I should just go out and buy the new D&D Essentials, because we're almost playing in that style right now. We must play on professional-grade battle mats (such as those that came with Keep on the Shadowfell). And we must use Lego mini-figs or pre-painted D&D miniatures for every PC, NPC, or monster or in the game. This is especially hard, since my entire miniature collection can fit into a large coffee can. There's only so much variety available...

Another issue is that my boys are still learning the GM-Player dynamic. The indie-gamer in me smiles at their ability to "contribute" to the narrative, but the OSR grognard in me is pulling my hair out at not being able to run a traditional dungeon crawl without my sons (especially my oldest) constantly telling me how things should happen. Of course, I do not want to dampen their enthusiasm, so I smile and find a way to accommodate all their "requests". But I'm looking forward to the day when traditional D&D really clicks for them.

So in that respect, we made real progress in our last few session. My oldest son loves the idea of being a Dungeon Master and I totally encourage this. The great thing about it is that from that side of the screen, he is starting to realize what it means to be a DM. As a player, I would clearly lay out my actions and ask him to arbitrate the results. "I do such and such. Do I succeed? Should a roll dice? What do the bad guys do in response?" I'm hoping that telling me when I fail will make him learn to expect the same thing when I resume DM duties.

As for rules... well, we're about as simple as can be. For any action, the player and DM roll dice (d20's as of late). The winner achieves some kind of success. I tried to introduce real rules and they largely fell flat. I get the sense that we're almost ready for B/X, but not quite.