Hello,
I'm going to be running an adventure for younger players (age 8 & 9) and I'm hoping someone can suggest an appropriate pre-built adventure. I'm looking for something fairly straight forward and it would be a bonus if there were opportunities for some slap-stick humour.
Thanks
Geo
I don't know of any that exist. You can make it up. Doesn't have to be complex, just exciting.
Maybe you could re-create a classic party-based RPG game like Final Fantasy. Odds are 8- and 9-year-olds haven't played it and they tended to have some humour and good stories.
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How about we be goblins? It's a short fun adventure where everybody plays as a goblin, and can be ran in about 2-3 hours.
I would recommend Rise of the Runelords if you want to take a long time, and have everything kind of pre-fed to them.
My kids went through Curse of the Crimson Throne at 7 and 10, and had an absolute blast, but really needed my wife's guidance to solve some of the intrigue/political mysteries.
Shattered Star is a complete waste with them.
Rise of the Runelords is so straightforward even kids can manage it, and there are some massively adult-themed areas (the entire Hook Mountain Massacre module, for example), but it's easy to tone those down to be age-appropriate without changing the encounters. Other than the massively adult themes you'll need to filter, RotRL is one of the harder APs, so toning down the encounters so the kids win will be the other big challenge.
Thanks for the suggestions
I'll look at the we be goblins - we played that and it certainly was good for some adult giggles.
I've also played Rise of the Runelords and I think that's just too adult themed for the kids I'm dealing with - even toned down. We're a no T.V. hippy-dippy group so different mothers and my wife (without a doubt) would have it in for me if I tried that one. (The toning down would be humorous: Time Outs of the Saviours....)
The Final Fantasy would probably be a hit with the boys but I don't know anything about that beyond the posters.
Rappan Athuk..
with all seriousness just make something up.
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+1 for the Beginner Box. Also, Crypt of the Everflame is one of the best intro modules I've ever run.
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Another thing is a simple dungeon crawl. Make it simple with very little role playing or see how much they get into the characters. If their eyes start to glaze over, "Move on to Eventually" and find the group in the dungeon. You could even make this a funny game. Make the goblin an NPC and lead the players on. I'm sure you could come up with something to keep their attention. It all depends on on these kids, maybe they like the role playing part.
+1 beginner box or We Be Goblins.
Seriously, we be goblins is silly enough that an 8 or 9 year old should be right at home with it. Drop some of the encounters which would be a little mature (the witch I'm thinking) and let them have gross out fun with the games.
i also suggest we be goblins. just add farting to any mature encounters, i'm sure they will have fun :)
+1 We Be Goblins for slapstick.
Also, starting a good run of Carrion Crown might be a good way to make them wet themselves if they start getting rowdy later.
Thanks again folks.
I appreciate everyone taking the time to respond.
I thought it would be fun for my girls to be Fairy Tale Investigators. In other words they arrive in a small village where a mother is looking for her lost little girl.
The little girl was supposed to go over the river, through the woods and arrive at her granny's house to deliver a basket of goodies. Unfortunately it's getting dark and little red (that's their nickname for her on account of the red cap she always wears) hasn't gotten home yet. That boy Peter was running around all day crying wolf, so there's a suspicion of wolves in the woods.
Taking just about any old fairy tale and adding a few twists and turns could be a lot of fun. Maybe the old woodsman IS the wolf; maybe they find the little girl asleep in a flower patch but now they've got to cross the river and spooky woods by night to deliver granny's basket; maybe granny is locked up in the closet when the party arrives.
That was the way I was thinking of doing it. But I had also planned on getting the beginner box for them and that might have some pre-written adventures in it.
Kingmaker is very kid friendly, just remove the kingdom building part of the game if you think that the kids can't do it. Also, from what I hear, the legacy of fire is also a very PG-13 AP.
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I'd say be careful of Rise of The Runelords, It has some very adult stuff in it.
We Be Goblins and Crypt of the Everflame are good choices. I'd also recommend Crown of the Kobold King.
AP's are a bit more difficult. They require a lot of investment of time and often have complex plots and adult issues. I'd avoid them until they are a few years older.
Another source might be PFS modules. I attend a lot of cons and we often have kids and teenagers playing. You don't have to run them with the PFS rules. They are easy, cheap, short and very playable.
As for Legacy of Fire, well I'm a huge fan of this AP and I can't think of any really adult stuff here. If your kids love the Arabian Nights then you can really play that sort of stuff up with this AP. I'd still say you are better off doing shorter term stuff though.
Hope that helps.
Seconding the statting up of movies and such. You don't really need anything all that ornate to get someone new to roleplaying into the game. A couple of by-the-book encounters with rats, bats and goblins, a small pile of coins and one or two well-described minor magic items are usually all it takes. As a starter game for kids, I'd recommend a hand-built movie-, book- or video-game-themed Five Room Dungeon over just about anything that's professionally published. You can fill a whole session with it, your players will automatically know a little about the lore going in, and it's usually faster to prep than modules are. If you have an idea where you're going with it, you can usually have 90% of the necessary detail ready in an hour or so.
If you are working with children, I strongly suggest keeping the number-crunching to a minimum, and giving the party lots of chances to try out weird Bugs Bunny antics (they probably will) and use the magic items they find. I once watched an eight-year old go completely mad with power over a simple ranged touch wand that threw a 1d3 fire bolt when her sorceress said a magic word. Putting in one or two strong but extremely stupid monsters goes over pretty well too, because kids are often keen on outwitting things bigger than them.
And of course don't put in any one single riddle or puzzle that you require them to solve to progress through the main story of the adventure. It's not that kids are dumb, but they are much less likely to play along with railroady stuff than seasoned players might be, so you need to be willing to run a little with their approach to problems.
Beginner's Box. Plus, Adventure a Week is making some kid friendly adventures for it.
@ Mr Big: seconded on the encounter styles. I ran my girls through a couple one-shots already, just to get them the experience of playing "Dad's" game. Goblins, capturing wolves to turn them "evil" (worgs) and using a fairy wand to do so. The PCs then had to rescue the fairy princess.
I lucked out though. My older daughter is VERY smart and enjoys outwitting more than the average kid. I gave them a trap on the way to the dungeon; a catch-net staked down in a clearing. She didn't even miss a beat, throwing rocks and Rays of Frost to set the thing off from a distance.
They got to the dungeon and my younger one saw a wolf in a cage as part of another trap. She wanted to befriend it so before I could say "Animal Handling" she sang me the song her character was singing to it to calm it down. I just gave it to her (Dad's a softie :) ) and in one fell swoop she got a pet wolf AND disarmed the trap all in one.
The "big n stupid" monster thing was a lot of fun. There was a bugbear chef in the kitchen near the wolf trap. My wife the fighter went toe-to-toe w/it but my older one caught sight of the big pot nearby so she used an Unseen Servant to put it on the brute's head. Lights out for Mr Meanie.
A few rooms later they confront the goblin BBEG in his throne room which is like Jabba's Palace w/a grate in the floor to watch the princess get eaten by the "dragon" below. The party runs in, does their thing, but they can't figure how to open the grate, and out comes the beast. My older one asks if Ray of Frost can freeze objects solid. I ask why and she proceeds to give me a junior physics lesson about how her teacher said if you put a glass of water in the fridge the water inside it expands while the glass itself gets brittle. If she can crack the bars of the grate w/her spell they can get through.
I said the power of the spell was too low to do that - daughter crestfallen. So I quickly follow up with "...but it can definitely weaken the metal. With that spell, plus the combined talents of the party, you MIGHT just be able to do it!" D20 roll, I tell them what all the bonuses are and give them a number to hit...they made it by 1. I explained that, if my daughter HADN'T thought so quickly and remembered that thing about freezing metal, they never would've gotten to the princess in time! Cheers all around!
So in the end they saved the princess, but I never did get the chance to have them advance their characters to level 2 and really reap the benefits of long term gaming. That was over this past summer and we haven't gotten back to it unfortunately. I'm hoping that, by picking up the beginner box we can recapture some of these thrills.
@ Mark Hoover: Yeah. I had a huge goblin barbarian named Mugtukluk guarding a bridge over a deep ravine on the way to the Lost Temple of Gold. With a build the size of a large dwarf, a two-handed spiked club the size of a tree limb, and a brain the size of a walnut. When I put him in, I figured that since my oldest cousin was a ten-year-old boy, he would probably just step up to fight him, his little sister would throw in one or two of her spells to see what they did, and we'd be done with it. Nope.
My two cousins ended up having to cross that bridge four different times, and every time, they conned or tricked him into letting them cross in a different way. I was having the poor dimwit get new orders between every encounter to specifically stop the same trick from working twice, and every time they just ran circles around him regardless. Probably one of the most entertaining sessions I've ever run.
Maybe stay away from an AP to start with. Play something short and sweet. If you want to go with a prepublished, look at
Crypt of Everflame
Master of the Fallen Fortress (PDF is free)
The Godsmouth Heresy
We be Goblins would be a lot of fun with kids. It's a blast with adults!
If you want REALLY short adventures (kids have short attention spans), maybe look at some of the Pathfinder Society scenarios.
Apparently there is a Kids Track in the Beginners Box.
Grab the storyline of any awesome 80s or 90s movie that they are too young to recognize, and push it into a game.
I for one think David LoPan will make a great antagonist for you.
I'd say be careful of Rise of The Runelords, It has some very adult stuff in it.
For added emphasis.
Grab the storyline of any awesome 80s or 90s movie that they are too young to recognize, and push it into a game.
I for one think David LoPan will make a great antagonist for you.
China is HERE, Mr Burton
Nice Knife.
Have you paid your dues Jack? Yes sir, the check is in the mail...(sandwich)
It's all in the reflexes.
...
There were SO many great lines in this movie my mind literally melted down! Thanks!
Ok, so what do you think of this for the first few adventures of a serious campaign with 2 girls, 8 & 10:
1. the party is hired to explore a ruined tower; there's bad guys there. The reason they're hired to explore this tower is the town guild thinks its this specific tower and they need the characters to find out if there's this symbol on the rooftop level.
2. after realizing they have the right tower their contact tells them that buried in a dungeon BENEATH the tower is a fine sword. They are to delve into the dungeon and find the sword. There are more baddies down below.
3. the sword needs to be transported out of town. The baddies from the first two adventures are massing for attack, so the heroes are the only defense for the caravan that will carry the device.
4. having run the gauntlet and gotten away from the bad guys, the party makes it halfway to the sword's final resting place, where they bed down in a town. Here the caravan is robbed and the ransom is the party must go on a mission for the townsfolk. They must help destroy a werewolf who also happens to be the town's mayor.
5. leaving lycanthrope town behind the heroes brave the wilds and the elements, finally getting to the coast where the sword is to be delivered to a museum. While in the coastal city the PCs are hired by the museum to locate a book on an island tomb. The party must act fast; the tomb is about to disappear beneath the waves for another 100 years.
6. The party must now return to their hometown. Their return however finds them driven off the road by inclimate weather. In the forest they meet some fey with a wizard problem and the party is asked for help.
This is where I stopped. I figure after this the girls will be back in their home town and I can ask them what their characters will want to do next. What do you think?
If I were doing it, I'd probably go Keep on the Borderlands style. I'd start them at the keep. I'd draw an evocative little regional map with some different terrain and locations marked on it. Each location would have a short rumour or two to go with it and then assume the PCs have the map. Show it to the kids and let them pick which place grabbed them the most to go visit. Each location is a mini dungeon or encounter area that can be played through fairly quickly, so in a single session they can likely explore one location on the map. You might have one or two that are a little bigger. Some could be rumoured to be more dangerous, but potentially offer higher rewards, allowing for some interesting decision making.
I did this when I ran a game for a group of grade #3 students at my school and they really liked having the sandbox. They had some heated debates about whether to deal with bandits in the woods, hunt down the black dragon in the swamp, explore the abandoned silver mine for the dwarves or go to mage tower hill, but in the end they would arrive at a decision and loved that they could choose where to explore.
@ PH: I asked my older one specifically if she'd rather that I gave her a map of things to pick from with some info on each, or if she wanted a person to give her missions to go on. "Missions..." she muttered, "I have enough to think about at school. I don't want to have to make decisions at home too."
She's 10 and she's already fried. I can't WAIT til middile school!
That's interesting that she said that. It makes your job easier, as you don't need to plan for as many different possibilities. Of course if she's tired from school and doesn't want to do any thinking D&D might not be her game.
True, very true. On the off chance she changes her mind (my girls = VERY fickle) I am making an overland map with some key locales. Here's how this campaign came about:
As an exercise I statted up a town, called Inderwick. To tie it into a magical wild growth backstory in my homebrew I added the wrinkle that 1/5th of the town has been swallowed up and ruined in the forest. Subsequently that section of town = ruin for adventure/megadungeon.
Lydia (my oldest) came along and asked me why I had a map w/some forest and a town, so I explained. She got interested in PF for the first time since the summer.
I have expanded said map. It now includes the Beldam Bogs ("Dad, you can't say 'Dam'"), the Glumwood Forest, and the town of Inderwick with it's forest-induced megadungeon, the Gnarl. I am thinking I'll also include a distant mage's tower and perhaps a monster lair called Blackfurnace Caves.
Hmm, Pathfinder Society's Master of the Fallen Fortress could work although some elements could be changed. (A certain undead encounter could be altered or perhaps replaced.)
Ironically a combo of that and the PFS First Steps: Dungeon Delve is where I get my first 2 adventures.
I ended up running the Totentanz module from an old Dungeon magazine. Just had to strip it down a little to make it playable with the Beginner's Box.
It took a couple of sessions to get through with what ultimately ended up being 2 9 year old boys, and 3 girls aged 9, 8 and 6.
It worked well in that it had some mysterious goings on, opportunity for humourous skeleton antics and a female noble person to rescue. It also included the skeletons dancing through the streets at night which resulted in about 20 minutes of different children demonstrating the dances that they envisioned the skeletons performing.
Mark,
I like your story arc for the girls. Do they get to use the sword or just transport it?
There are few sites that are fan sites that convert Chronicles of Naria to D20.
I like Mark's approach as well.
Tweaking a favorite movie always works.
I'm actually toying with modifying the final steps of the adventure arc. The PCs are supposed to deliver the sword to a coastal settlement; the reason is because of a special power it has to RAISE the secret tomb from the waters of the sea.
So the heroes will get a chance to use the sword in that they will use it to raise the tomb. I'm thinking a puzzle challenge for that, but I'm wondering if that breaks the cardinal sin of hingeing all progress on figuring out the puzzle.
Also, do you think that this change would be too hard for an 8 and 10 year old?
I'll drop hints about the use of the sword along their hero's journey; multi-symbol dials on the hilt the girls can manipulate, a rumor about the sword actually being a map of sorts to some ancient treasure, and the same symbols on the dials seen on ruins amid the countryside, perhaps w/some minor effect along the way.
What do you think?
Mark,
It depends on your kids and their puzzle skills. You could try some puzzles outside the game, beforehand, and see how they do. The other option is to make it a reverse sword in the stone type activation where they get some underwater adventuring to put the sword in the stone and raise the temple.
