Written by Luke Hart
There you are. Your kid is holding a D&D book in outstretched hands, begging you to run a game for them. They have a small sack slung over one shoulder filled with multi-colored dice, and their enthusiasm is overflowing.
But where exactly do you begin? I mean, the player’s handbook is hundreds of pages long. Is your 6-year-old going to remember all those rules? Are you going to be able to explain them all in a way that they will understand? Will they sit still in a chair to listen to you explain just one page of rules?
Today, we’re going over how to run D&D and other tabletop RPGs for young children. If you’re looking for an age range that the advice in this video pertains to, I would say that we’re talking about children under 10 years old. Once a child is about 10, you can pretty much just run standard D&D for them, but before then, there are some special considerations to take into account.
Watch or listen to this article by clicking the video below.
What to Expect from Young Players
The first thing you should expect from younger players is a limited attention span. I was in a game once where the game master had his son of about six years old playing with us. Let me tell you, that kid had his butt in the chair for maybe 5 minutes max before he raced off to do something else in the house. His dad would call him back whenever he needed to roll the dice. That was about the limit of his personal attention span, but everyone varies, of course.
I think it’s safe to say that young children can only be expected to sit still in a tabletop role-playing game for perhaps an hour or two.
You’ll also find the kids tend to want a beginning, middle, and end in one game session. Cliffhanger endings are great for adults but not for small children. They want completion.
Young children are also very focused on the “play” aspects of the game. That is, they want to use the “toys” of the game. They want to roll dice. If you use miniatures, they want to move them around and will likely knock them into each other to show they’re attacking. If you give them props, they will want to use them. Things that are tactile and apply to the action of the game are great, though kids like handouts as well.
Kids like action, but action isn’t always what you think.
First, children act in extremes, but not always in the same extremes. For instance, some kids want to murder everything they encounter, while other kids may want to make friends with everything. I know that when I was running D&D for my daughter, she wanted to talk to everything, and she really didn’t like combat that much.
In many cases, I think what is more entertaining early on in a dead game will probably become the norm. If your kids get more laughs out of murdering everything, they’ll continue to murder everything. But if they have more fun making friends or collecting pets, they’ll continue doing that.
Oh, and kids love loot. Be prepared to give them lots of it.
However, here’s the thing: children do not like to lose. Adults can get over character death or even a TPK, but it could cause kids to not want to play the game anymore. I suggest challenging the children in the game but not putting them in a position where they feel like they can’t win. Otherwise, they’re likely to lose interest or just quit outright.
Of course, during play, and especially as the kid grows older, you will want to introduce the concept of loss and subsequent perseverance. Everyone needs to learn to overcome setbacks in life and to persevere in the face of defeat, and a D&D game can teach that lesson. I would just be careful with the timing.
Adventures
Adventures should be age-appropriate and focus on things that motivate kids. If you’re running the game for your own kid, you should have a good idea of the different things that interest them. As mentioned before, keep your adventures short.
Kids have massive imaginations and will not be bound by the classic tropes of fantasy. So, be prepared to go big and outside the box.
The following shows are great for understanding the kinds of adventures that will appeal to young children.
- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The first couple of seasons of this series actually feel like they were born from somebody’s D&D game.
- Dragon Tales. In this show, kids and dragons adventure together. That seems pretty appropriate.
- Hilda. Here, a fearless girl travels in a world of elves and giants.
- Adventure Time. A boy and his dog adventure in a magical land. This show will prepare you for the chaos of children in a tabletop role-playing game.
- Duck Tales. Both the classic show and the reboot are all about kids going on adventures.
- And then nearly anything from Studio Ghibli for the more bizarre: Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke (for older kids), and Spirited Away.
Do note that children are less likely to be motivated by goals like seeking an ancient treasure and more motivated by things like rescuing the kidnapped unicorn. Also, children don’t necessarily understand the value of money, but they certainly understand the value of things. Therefore, chocolate coins, cute companions, and a magic sword are better rewards than silver and gold.
Also, don’t forget that you can use adventures to teach children while they play. Math skills are obvious, but decision-making, discourse, moral choices, and environmental values are the sorts of things that children usually don’t learn from books. Tabletop role-playing games are experiential, which is a great learning tool for children.
Practical Advice
The first bit of practical advice I can give you is that children will need help, at least in the beginning. The first and most obvious form of help a child will likely need is with their character sheet. And at the minimum, they’ll need help creating their character. However, you might be best served to just create it for them. Obviously, ask them what they would like to play and perhaps list the different classes, what they can do, and the different races in the game.
Then, they’ll need help learning and remembering the rules. It will also be important to explain why the rules work the way they do since children will want to understand this. We know this because they constantly ask us why.
Next, give children clear goals. Do not be ambiguous or vague.
Decision-making is another area where you will need to provide guidance. Children may get stuck in a decision-making rut or not fully understand the scope of possibilities available to them. There is nothing wrong with laying out a range of things they could do and explaining the benefits and drawbacks of the various options. You should not tell them what to do; instead, I recommend giving them suggestions and then allowing them to make the final decision.
Adults often complain about railroading or linear adventures, but children need rails, or the game will fall into chaos quickly. I suppose this isn’t a bad thing if you’re really good at improvising and following the kids where their imaginations want to go. However, kids are chaos, and you need to be prepared for that if you let them off the rails.
Is D&D the Best System for Young Players?
The short and long answer is no. D&D or other rule-heavy, complex tabletop role-playing games designed for adults are not ideal for children under 10. Instead, I recommend picking up game systems that are specifically designed for younger players. I have also developed my own basic 2D6 system that would work very well for kids.
First, let’s go over the four game systems I recommend for young players.
- Hero Kids – This ENNIE award-winning game system is an Adamantine Best Seller on DriveThruRPG. It is probably the most popular game out there for small children.
- Amazing Tales – This system is a little more complex than Hero Kids, but it also has supplements available for homeschooling and special needs children.
- No Thank You, Evil! - This ENNIE and Origins award-winning game lets children play any character they can imagine.
- rpgKids – This is one of the oldest RPGs made just for kids and is available on DriveThruRPG. It’s a simple system for fantasy RPGs and is made to play entire adventures in just an hour or two.
My Basic 2d6 System
I designed a super basic 2D6 system with rules so lightweight that you could teach them to a kid in under 15 minutes. Here’s how it works.
First, you make your character sheet on an index card. You are an elven wizard named Trixie. You like fire, and you have a jar filled with eyeballs. All characters have 3 hit points. That’s it—character creation done.
Anytime Trixie attempts to do anything in the game, you roll 2D6.
A result of 1 to 3 is a failure, 4 to 9 is a success, and 10 to 12 is a great success. You’ll notice that because of the way math works with 2D6 the majority of the time players will succeed. Only rarely will they fail at something.
Let’s say Trixie is in combat against a group of six goblins. She can declare that she throws a ball of fire at them. She rolls 2D6, and the result is a 7. That is an ordinary success, so one of the goblins is defeated.
Then Trixie calls down fire from the heavens. She rolls a 3, which is a failure. The flames miss the goblins who swarm around her and attack. Trixie loses one hit point.
Finally, Trixie causes fire to leap out from her body in all directions. She rolls an 11, which is a great success. This defeats all of the remaining goblins.
Let’s say Trixie is walking down the hallway and decides to use her jar of eyeballs to magically see into a room. If she rolls a failure, it doesn’t work. If she rolls a success, she can see into the room. If she rolls a great success, she sees into the room and learns another bit of important information.
It’s pretty much as simple as that. A player can declare almost anything they would like to do, and a roll of 2D6 determines what happens. You will notice that the game master doesn’t roll any dice in this game system. The player does all the dice rolling.
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