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I'm thinking of picking up the BB for my oldest two kids for Christmas (10 year old girl and 11 year old boy). I'm just curious how many players will be needed for it. Does it assume the standard 4 person party, or is it more open to more/less players? Living in the bible belt, I fear it will be very difficult to convince parents of my kid's friends to come over and play a fantasy RPG.
I ran the beginner box for my wife and roomate. One was a wizard and the other was a rogue. It worked out pretty well with just two PC's, I had to fudge a couple rolls and take out one of the skeletons in the Black Fang adventure, but you shouldn't have to many problems. Hope this helps!
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I'm thinking of picking up the BB for my oldest two kids for Christmas (10 year old girl and 11 year old boy). I'm just curious how many players will be needed for it. Does it assume the standard 4 person party, or is it more open to more/less players? Living in the bible belt, I fear it will be very difficult to convince parents of my kid's friends to come over and play a fantasy RPG.
If you're familiar with fantasy RPGs in general, you can expect the Beginner Box to be about the same. Which is to say that the ideal party size is about 4-5 players plus the GM. Three or six PCs is easily doable. Beyond that range, you need to really tailor your adventures to the party you have.
If you only have two players, be aware of what type of characters they are playing and create opportunities to use those characters' strengths. If you have no Rogue, for example, go very light on traps or give them an obvious way to bypass them (the flaming idol room in the Gamemaster's Guide into adventure is a good example of this). If you have no cleric, make sure to put in lots of opportunities for healing and rest. If there's no wizard, be aware that the PCs will be missing a lot of crowd-control and utility spells. And if there's no fighter, make sure to let the players bypass big, tough monsters, or tone them down a bit.
On the other hand, if you have a Rogue, give them lots of opportunities to be sneaky! If there's a wizard, let them feel awesome and put in magical puzzles and the like that only they can solve. Tailoring the adventure to your players will make sure that they have a good time and aren't frustrated when they don't have the right party mix for what they're trying to accomplish.
Also, be aware that it can be difficult to judge balance for encounters with so few players. For example, if one PC goes down in a fight, the Party has just lost *half* its strength! That makes it much more difficult for the players to "come from behind" and win a tough fight.
Good luck, and have fun!
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With two players, the other thing you could do is give them two characters each. With young players, it's probably best to run a few simple encounters with one character each until they're familiar enough with those characters and the game rules to be able to handle two characters each, but it is an option that won't require you to tone down adventures as written.
Another thing you could do is to start them off as second level characters instead of first, to grant them a little more survivability.
Balancing encounters for different sized groups can be a tricky thing to achieve, so be prepared to drop in an extra potion of cure light wounds for players to find in the dungeon when needed.