General Principles
- Rules-Light: the kids aren't going to read much, except their character sheets and perhaps equipment lists, so the smaller the rule-set, the better
- Short Sessions: due to short attention spans, sessions shouldn't last much longer than an hour
- Standard DnD: I want to use the game to help the kids learn DnD rules, as opposed to choosing a simpler, non-DnD based kids RPG
- Visual Aids: there should be lots of visual aids to orient them geographically, bring the game world to life
- Light Tone: game should be G-rated and occasionally scary(but not too scary!)
- Cultural Context: the kids should be able to relate to the game world. They don't have much exposure to Tolkien, so the game should draw on other more familiar media
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| Books |
Swords and Wizardry
I ended up ordering a copy of Swords and Wizardry, a cleaned-up clone of ODnD. It's a very lightweight version of the rules, at under 150 pages. The one thing that surprised me is that, while Labyrinth Lord uses Race as Class, S&W keeps them separate, though with many limitations. |
| The Party |
In any case, S&W is nice and simple and the kids rolled-up characters, and I helped them fill out their sheet. I limited their their options to keep things simple. So, for instance, I only offered them the 4 basic classes and I had to walk them through picking weapons and armor. I tailored the options I gave to each kid's developmental level, so when my 4 year old insisted on also getting a character, I had him roll the dice and offered him only the most basic of options. I also opted for ascending AC since the rules support both systems and it's a bit more intuitive.
Palace of the Silver Princess
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| Player Prep |
In searching for a module to base the game on, I remembered a B3 Palace of the Silver Princess play-by-post game I played in years ago. It had a light, fairy tale sort of vibe.
The DM modified the starting scenario in a number of ways:
- You start out visitors in a city for some big festival
- You wake up in the morning in your room in the inn. All hell has broken loose- an army of Goblinoids are invading the city. A dragon rider was seen landing at ruler's palace.
- The party fought their way through the streets to the palace, snuck in through the sewer
- The palace was the the dungeon from Silver Princess, except occupied by royalty/servants
- Our first encounter was a kitchen full of angry sentient furniture/silverware. Reminded me of Disney's Beauty and the Beast
I decided to adopt a lot of this for the kids' campaign, though the dungeon itself will still remain in the wilderness, 500 years abandoned. There is a connection between the invasion and the dungeon...
Game World
I had been wondering whether to set the game in the Faerun or perhaps Warren's Deep. Another great thing about Silver Princess is that it comes with a mini-sandbox in the form of a kingdom-map and descriptions of settlements, so that gives me a good basis to build on. Gulluvia will keep it's Amazonian vibe, though a more benign, sympathetic version.
Visual Aids
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| Maps of the Realm and the city of Gulluvia |
Besides the kingdom map, I found an appropriate city map and printed it out to help the kids navigate the city during the invasion. Between S&W and DCC, I have pictures of all the Goblinoids the party is likely to encounter. The kids had fun coloring-in copies of the kingdom map and the dragon-rider illustration prior to the game.
Appendix N
Here are some influences to draw on for world building:
- Munchkin card game
- Fairy Tales
- Tooth Fairy
- Scooby Doo
- Ninja Turtles
- Superheroes
- Octonauts
- Disney Movies
- Where the Wild Things Are
- Mouseguard
- Martial Arts lessons
- Archery lessons
- Family camping trips
- Biblical stories
- Jewish Folklore
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