The past three Saturdays I have run a fantasy adventure game for five rambunctious kids, ages 9 to 11, one of whom is my son (aka, the Ringleader). Now I hear there is a player advice blogwagon, and I took over this ongoing 5e game with three basic ground rules for my young players:
- Be kind to all.
- Try not to talk over each other, or me.
- Share the spotlight.
To which was quickly added a fourth rule (after Someone (hereafter, the Grandstander) decided to argue with me over the price of a room in Greyhawk by looking it up in the 2024 DMG).
- Do not look up anything in rulebooks unless the DM asks to you to do so.
Running a complicated game like 5e for five kids is challenging. This group is something else. We have:
- the Ringleader (always starting shit with other players),
- the Grandstander (always wants to talk, NOW),
- the Walking Chaos Monkey (their character sheet is a rolled club to hit the world with)
- The Sitting Chaos Monkey (their character sheet is a foreign country)
- The 'Good' Kid (who likes PvP).
And I quickly decided the only way I was going to survive (and avoid insanity) was to KEEP. IT. MOVING. So enemies die at the DM's whim, in cinematic fashion, and the encounters must ALL be interactive, fun, AND entertaining (with pictures!). A DM for kids like these has to be one-part storyteller, one-part camp counselor, one-part traffic cop, and one-part clown.
My original idea was to turn the game over to a kid DM after a two-shot. So far, we have completed 1/2 of that short two-shot after three sessions (six hours), so hopefully by December? But I cannot complain, I have learned so much about how to be a player from these kids.
Here's what I have learned so far, lessons for being a great fantasy adventure game player:
- Do not slide under the table if you are bored.
- Do not wrestle with other players under the table.
- Do not loudly yell, "This is boring!" mid-DM description (thank you Ringleader, that was three sentences).
- Do not use rubber bands to shoot sharpened pencils hard enough that they stick in the DM's shoe.
- Do not chase each other around the game table, talking so loudly no one can play.
- Do not chase other players holding very sharp pencils to pretend stab them.
- Do not threaten to kill/steal from other players in game.
- Out of game, do not steal other players dice and character sheets (thank you Ringleader, sit down).
- Do not tell other players to shut up and then talk for 1d4 minutes.
- Do not do #9 every five minutes.
- Do not ask the same question every five minutes.
- Do not ask the same question every five minutes.
- He really doesn't know the answer you are seeking, honest.
- Great, you rolled a 15 on Insight: he really doesn't know.
- No, I am not going to tell you either, out of game. No, I won't tell you his monster manual stats or name, either.
- Do not cast area-effect spells at other PCs and accidentally kill them.
- If not you do kill other PCs by accident, think about apologizing.
- If you die, handle it Walking Chaos Monkey style, with a big grin.
- Learn what a d20 looks like, and where on your character sheet ANYTHING is. Start with hit points.
- Do bring a sense of wonder at strange places, a wellspring of joy at rolling well, an endless decanter of creative ideas, a spirit of camaraderie when your friend saves the day, and a desire to have fun with your buddies in a fantasy world, no matter what happens to your character there.
We can't all be as simultaneously awesome and trying as a pack of over-sugared elementary schoolers, but to be honest? I would take these kids over a boring, combat-simulating adult group any day.
In three sessions, they have blown up an inn, a dungeon, and their druid, gone shopping (thank you JP Coovert!) with gusto, befriended a dragon-squirrel, enlarged said dragon-squirrel to attack enemies, and asked a poor dungeon-dwelling floating skull WAY too many questions.
It's never boring...unless the DM is talking too much.
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