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Hello Creative Paizo Mambers,
I am starting a group of youngin's off on their first Pathfinder adventure. These kids range from 9-12 years old and are new to the game. I am looking to compile a set of kid-friendly encounters for the group. I understand the combat is a part of the game but want to balance that with encounters that can be solved non-violently also. I'd like ideas ranging from adventures to just encounters. Thanks in advance for your help.
1. The "Overflow Archives" seemed like a good kid friendly adventure
2. (Stolen from an adventure long forgotten) Help a cart driver recollect his lost cargo of soon-to-be familiars (hawks, mouse, toad, snakes)etc. Kids can use their knowledge of the animals to help find them.
3. Rescue the trapped miners.
4. Rescue villagers from a burning building.
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Well, let's throw out a few combat possibilities, shall we?
5. Dinosaurs. Just...dinosaurs. You can have them be friendly, or have a T-Rex try and eat them. Any way you look at it, it's pretty kid-friendly.
6. Robots and other Constructs. If you want a combat encounter with no blood or moral repercussions, mindless constructs are great for that.
7. Vermin. Specifically, giant insects, spiders, scorpions, and the like. Or swarms. Creepy, but in way that's gonna make most kids go 'Eeew!' rather than be upset.
8. People-eating monsters. As much as this sounds bad, as long as you don't get too gruesome with it, it should be fine. Think the Trolls in the Hobbit, or the Witch in Hansel and Gretel, or the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Trolls, Ogres, Hags, and Werewolves are just some examples, though. The point is that the creature is clearly bad and its motivations are simple and easy to understand.
Now, onto some more non-combat stuff:
9. They are asked or hired to find someone's lost kid. He or she went wandering in the forest and got lost. You can have them be captured by something, if you like. Or just very thoroughly lost.
10. Have them wind up negotiating between two groups of people, neither bad, but with conflicting interests. The loggers who want to cut trees from a forest and the creatures who live in the trees for instance. Should test their problem solving skills to come up with a compromise.
11. Someone has fallen under a curse! They must find a way to break it. This could involve a quest of some sort, a puzzle, confronting the person who cast it, or all of the above.
13. Festival with games and contests.
14. Someone's chickens are going missing. They are asked to find out what's taking them. Could be a simple animal (wolf, fox, etc) could be a druid who just REALLY LIKES chickens for some reason.
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15. With the right group of kids, the We Be Goblins module.
16. "Goblinz dun stoled mah pig!"
You have to to track down a group of goblins raided a royal farm that raised sin seekers (small flying pigs that cause everyone to take penalties on lie skills and has some anti lie SLAs; so small, possibly cute, and with a clear 'why should I care?'). So it is up to you to track down those goblins before 'Lamathsu Eve', a large feast for the goblin tribes. Maybe have multiple sin seekers that have to be saved- preferably found as butcher knife point or hanging over a large pot.
Afterwards, there can be a follow up where you escort the sin seeker to the king as part of a trial. You can then go into political stuff if you wnat. Obviously quite a bit easier when you have an anti lie mascot.
Another advantage of this quest line is that the pig could be used as a familiar. Maybe bend the rules a little to let them get it for free.
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17. Similar to robots/constructs, undead also make excellent opponents.
A town under assault by mindless skeletons and zombies from a nearby (but long-abandoned) graveyard is a classic trope - but don't be afraid to use what experienced players would consider cliche! Part of the beauty of new players is that the classics are often new to them.
A ghoul necromancer makes a ghastly (pun intended) final villain for the heroes to face off against.
18. While we're talking about utilizing tropes - a barfight breaks out!
This is an excellent opportunity to break out the rules for combat maneuvers and nonlethal attacks as angry patrons grapple, drag, bull rush, and steal from the party. Make it fun! Let the players be creative: another beautiful thing about new players is they haven't been conditioned to play "optimally" yet - expect things like, "I dive behind the bar and start throwing bottles," or, "Is there a chandelier? I want to drop it on them!"
19. D&D is full of weird and silly monsters. Let loose and show your new players early on that some encounters require out-of-the-box thinking and that there's more to watch out for than monsters that threaten hit point damage.
Capricious fey that hit a player with a particularly debilitating (and hilarious!) Bestow Curse (all in good fun, of course - they'll remove it if the player is a good sport about it,) the party's first encounter with a Rust Monster, and many more offer unique and unusual encounters.
20. Treasure in and of itself can be quite an encounter for new players. Basic magical items aren't likely to be too exciting for new players (despite veterans recognizing their frequent superiority.) Take advantage of that while you still can. Figurines of Wondrous Power will be treasured, a Portable Hole will be cherished; specific/unique magic arms & armor are worth far more to a new player. I remember one of my first magical items back in 1E was an Arrow of Direction - I found creative reasons to try and use it as much as I could.
21. One of my favorite 3.x adventures (I'm sure it's still around on the internet somewhere, but I've no idea where it might be) involved an archmage's apprentice breaking into her master's private study while she was away, unwittingly getting her hands on a massive stash of cursed objects, putting on a ring of contrariness by mistake, and then wreaking havoc. It'd be an excellent adventure for new players (while also introducing the concept and lesson of cursed items.)
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20. The party is in town/in a big dungeon/on the rode. Suddenly there is a group of EVIL TWINS THAT ARE SORTA SIMILAR BUT NOT REALLY.
This (while also being hilarious) can lead to some good memorable adventures if you make it a centerpiece (As the later chapters of this make clear.) However you choose to play it it can be fun.
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PFS Scenario Murder's Mark. There's a LOT of talking to be done in town, but it may be a little too investigative for 9-12 year olds. Again, if they like Sherlock Holmes..and all that detective stuff, they might like it.
Funnily enough, I had a group who was trying to talk their way through Master of Fallen Fortress, right until the Trogs invited them for dinner - the menu? A certain human...
24. An animated piñata dragon. It acts like a dragon, but when it is "killed," it breaks open and spills candy! (Stolen from Dexter's Lab)
25. A library or mansion or fancy club with lots of animal heads on the walls. Some of the animal heads are traps with breath weapons: winter wolf head, gorgon head, dragon heads, hellhounds, etc.
26. Puzzle-like encounters.
26a. Turn the statues to face doors to open them.
26b. Match sigils to unlock treasure chests.
26c. Rubik's cube or similar "Real World" practical puzzles.
27. Encounters with cursed magic items.
28. [spoiler=Spoiler from Rise of the Rune Lords] Fight against your evil twins/evil mirror images--with the evil versions controlled by the good version's player AGAINST the other PCs. But try to avoid hurt feelings, etc.
29. Oozes, slimes, and jellies.
30. Mazes.
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32. Teach a goblin how to hop properly so it can transform into a HOPGOBLIN!!!!!
33. A map to buried pirate's treasure, found on a tropical island. Pirates attack the ship they take, leaving them shipwrecked on that island, where they find kobold tribes, ent coconut trees, quicksand traps, jungle mazes, and a climactic battle with undead pirates guarding their treasure.
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34. PFS Scenario Consortium Compact (Yes, you're trying to stop a drug deal, but that's good, right?) Lots of teamwork and clever problem solving that cannot be beat!
35. PFS Scenario Assault on the Kingdom of Impossible -- A wonderfully clever scenario where the characters are TRYING to get ambushed to stop bandits.
36. PFS Scenario Twisted Circle -- A suspicious small town! A holy plant! All sorts of good stuff especially for nature-oriented kids worried about the environment.
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5. Dinosaurs. Just...dinosaurs. You can have them be friendly, or have a T-Rex try and eat them. Any way you look at it, it's pretty kid-friendly.
Yeah, I have 3 girls and they love dinosaurs. For an added bonus, add in a poop reference. Maybe after encountering dinosaurs they have to search through a huge manure pile to find a magic ring. Trust me, dinosaurs + poop jokes means they will love it. If you want to, have various NPCs talk in really funny high or low pitched voices.
Ewoks and Wookiees.
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The nice thing about running a game for young players is that you can play all of the stereotypical tropes and/or obvious plot twists completely straight: They probably haven't encountered them yet!
38. A moustache-twirling villainous landlord (think Snidley Whiplash) is trying to evict an orphanage. Thieves have stolen the rent, and the kind-hearted operator of the orphanage needs the PCs to recover the stolen money and deliver it to the landlord before the rent is due. (The PCs learn that the landlord hired the thieves as a pretext to evict the orphans.)
39. Misguided fey are terrorizing a village with their practical jokes. The PCs learn that the fey don't actually mean any harm, and have to convince the fey that the villagers don't find the jokes funny and to find a more appropriate outlet for the fey's desire for fun.
40. Hunters are stalking a unicorn in the nearby woods, and the unicorn comes to the PCs for help.
41. The ghost of a man killed along the road beseeches the PCs to retrieve a special object from the bottom of a well to his still-living (and much older) beloved so he can move on to the afterlife. But his killer wants the past to stay buried, and will stop at nothing to prevent the PCs' success.
I GM for my kids, two eleven year olds. I grab any adventure from Paizo or third party and just cut out the sexy stuff (because it's awkward for them) and the most gruesome bits, like torture or human sacrifice.
Don't sugar coat the game too much - they can sniff pandering from a mile away, and hate it.
Also, no demons, devils, or any mentions of hell, etc - you really don't want your kids mentioning to their friends at school how they "played a game with demons" on the weekend.
Also, no demons, devils, or any mentions of hell, etc - you really don't want your kids mentioning to their friends at school how they "played a game with demons" on the weekend.
Could always go with - and I'm being completely serious, here - the 2E solution of renaming them Tanar'ri and Baatezu.
The Abyss is still fine, and you can use the proper names of the Nine Hells - Avernus, Cocytus, etc - and still utilize those planes in some capacity.
If you need evil outsiders Rakshasa and Oni are always a thing, and most kids and moral guardians don't know what those are.
And really as long as you leave out the explicit stuff kids can handle a little darkness in their stories. Hell some of my nostalgic games feature betrayal, lynching, demon possession, and the protagonist considering suicide presented in a kid friendly manner!