My experiments on creating a D&D 4e game he could participate on was really driven by him. He was at EndGame’s last Anniversary party where some short two hour 4e demos were being run by members of the RPGA and he was allowed to sit in on one. For a 5 year old to sit patiently for two hours and play just about anything blew me away. After that, I knew I had something to work with.

So, why 4e? The discrete “encounters” in the game make for a very comfortably timed session for someone young. I know I could do the same things with any number of different systems out there, and skin it with a fantasy theme… but why? The grid and painted plastic figures I can easily acquire for D&D make my own personal barrier to entry in terms of set-up time almost non-existent. He also really gets the idea of a board-game, which is what combat in 4e looks like to someone so little. Having defined squares, and a defined way to move gives him a chance to really visualize what is happening in the game not only through the story we tell, but through looking at the table.

So why not just play Heroscape or something, you may ask…?  Well, keep readin’.

When bringing a very young child into your D&D game there are a few things to consider. First and foremost is:

Don’t shove the rules down their throat. Let’s step back and look at this from another way. Have you ever gone to a game store to get a demo on something from someone who certainly knows how to play the game, but doesn’t necessarily know how to show others how to play? Generally, the best way to approach anything like this is to step your “demo-ee” into the game. Play cards up on the table that would normally be blind. Discuss movement of a miniature before, during, and after you move it around the board. Most importantly, you don’t treat it as if you were playing a game to win, you play to educate.

That’s how your D&D game is going to be for an awful long time if you include a small child. Almost every week that we play, he retains some part of the rules we teach him. After a couple months, he is really starting to get the movement on the grid, albeit in his own fashion. It’s incredibly interesting to watch a 5 year old’s “play brain” cross over into the formula and structure that is an RPG.

In many ways, he is “playing” with us, just as he would play with his friends at school. He moves his figure on the grid making sound effects, and telling a story as he does it. Through his “play”, he is giving us great role-play. In a very serious fight, he moved his Dwarven Fighter, “Hitterman”, across the grid right into a barrel. The fight had gone slightly south for him, so it was time in his mind to ditch and run. HORRIBLE for the rest of the party… but a truly glorious RP moment.

That leads us to the next point:

Roll with the punches when playing with small kids. Role-playing their fun is such a good way to get them engaged. When Hitterman went for the barrel, we all role-played around it. I as the GM, modified my approach from the baddies to give the rest of the party a bit of a chance to reform around the loss of the Main Tank.

There have been many other situations where the boy has patiently waited through a whole round of initiative, then needs to do something big to get it out of his system. Maybe that’s a double move to then attack; just let it go.

This ties right back into bending the rules a bit. Yeah, I know how combat works in 4e… but to keep him engaged, he occasionally gets a re-roll or a second attack. It’s just about fun, but again… we make him talk about what he is doing, as Hitterman would say it.

As we have afforded him a few “do-overs” he has really started to see when he is getting that kind of pass. He has even turned it down in the last session or so knowing “he missed.” He role-plays that now too. He role-plays his challenges. “Hey you! I am gonna hit you with my axe!” And, the target is marked…that kind of thing.

As we have played even more, we are now beginning to move off the grid.  Each and every session we have with the boy starts as an encounter, for all the reasons I have listed above. As we have gotten a few more sessions under our belts, before we fight, we do a little talking between the PCs, or the PCs and the baddies. We are slowly starting to swing the sessions away from pure “Combat RP”, to “RP AND Combat RP.” It’s subtle, and I am not sure he knows what we are doing yet, but it is giving him the chance to start telling Hitterman’s story a little more.

On his end, it’s basic, but I feel like we are giving him the tools to progress as he matures through time. As we play even more we won’t start the game on the grid, we’ll start just talking, like I do when my “adults game” happens. But that is still a little ways off.

4e has a fantastic tool kit under the hood for you to get your kids and their friends playing RPGs. It’s a concept many of us grew up with, and learned on our own through brute force and a lot of trial and error. If you are my age, you were SUPER lucky to have a kid a couple grades up who knew the rules and was willing to let you “play with the older kids.” You were WAY lucky to have had a parent who was a gamer and introduced you to Red Box, White Box, or even Chainmail.

We as geek parents have such a fricking awesome chance to show our kids the hobby we love so much. The tools that are available to us are just fantastic… and with a little time and patience, we can help them slay as many Dragons as they care to.