DM for Your Toddler

by Dawn

I was pretty happy when a memory popped up on my “You have memories!” on Facebook recently. Attached to the post, were the rules and an article about role-playing with preschoolers.  I had printed out the rules at one point, but of course lost them. I also couldn’t remember where I had seen them originally! One of the hazards of so much information being available, and accessing that information from so many different devices!

I know what you’re picturing. You’ve prepared for the session all week. Minis are on the battle mat, you’ve got the tiles for the cave system carefully stacked so that you can lay out the caves as they explore. Everyone at the table has a bowl of chips and soda next to them. The session begins and within 2 minutes, Gamer Junior has double dipped in everyone’s bowls, 2 sodas have washed away the road leading to the caves, and there are tears as Gamer Junior wants to use the blue dice, not the green dice, and that is HER mini!!! I must be out of my mind to say, “Role playing with your preschooler is a great idea!”

Like anything we do with our kids, we need to remember things need to be at their level. The rules, well guidelines, in this article give a good starting place. No, it’s not quite as amazing to rescue Thomas the Tank from the sneaky Barbie and Friends as it is to explore the depths of Castle Ravenloft, wondering and hoping Strahd will make an appearance, but which one is going to make your preschooler want to play? Yes, it’s a lot of fun to cast bull strength, have the cleric toss out a bless, the bard start a bardic chant, and use your Strength Bow of Flame with multi-shot to take out the Naga, despite the partial concealment and having to make a will save. That kind of math and strategy may be just a bit out of reach of your child. 

So these rules give you a reasonable option. You’re still going to be making decisions as to the best way to approach someone holed up in a fortification, try and convince someone to sneak you in the back way, and resolve the mission. They might not be your idea of a great mission, but if you stop worrying about it not being your setting, and get in to theirs, you’ll find yourself cackling in glee as Fairytale Dress up Barbie sneaks around to hold Percy at sword point, forcing Thomas to choose between leaving James behind in Malibu Barbies clutches or letting Fairy Tale Dress Up Barbie get a free attack on Percy! The horror felt when Soft Bunny crushes Optimus Prime! The retelling of tales of action and adventure that your preschooler participated in will leave you with a smile.

That smile is the point of the whole thing. You just spent an hour or two teaching your child how to play a game you love, on terms that child understood. Keep playing with them, keep talking with them, keep spending that time with them. 

Here’s the link to the article:

http://gygaxmagazine.com/selected-content/dming-for-your-toddler/

Wait! What about dice? Those small dice can be difficult to grab with small fingers! Never fear, we have you covered! You can pick up a set of these flexible foam dice at our store!

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Playing More Advanced Games with Younger Children

by Gino

If you play games, and you’ve got kids, you’ve probably played games with your kids. We all know Candyland, and if you’re a gamer, you dread playing this game with your kids, but you play it anyway. That’s good. Your kids deserve your time. But, if you want to get out of the traditional, mundane kids games, there are a host of options out there. Visit your friendly local game store, and you’ll find some good options. HABA and Blue Orange Games are two great publishers of kid’s games. But, what I’m going to talk about today are more advanced games that kids can play. Playing before their time, as it were. I’m only going to talk about four games, but the strategies can be applied to many other games. 

Dungeon from Wizards of the Coast is the first game I want to tell you about. It’s recommended for ages 8 and up. In Dungeon, you’re a hero; a rogue, fighter, cleric, or wizard, and you enter the dungeon, moving from room to room slaying monsters and collecting treasure. Different heroes have different strengths and weaknesses, and different win amounts. The primary game mechanic is rolling dice to see if you defeat the monster. So, as soon as kids are learning adding and comparing numbers, they can play. The younger kids will need some help with the strategy of not going too deep in the dungeon with a character designed for the upper levels, and they probably don’t want to play a wizard. A few of the magic items will need to be explained and they’ll need help with, but the basic mechanic is adding a pair of dice and comparing to a target number. 

Also recommended for ages 8 and up is Iello’s King of Tokyo. In this game, you take on the role of a monster smashing Tokyo! What fun! As with Dungeon, the primary mechanic is rolling dice. Unlike Dungeon, the dice sides will represent different things, rather than adding numbers. You collect glory, attack your opponents, or gather energy to buy cards. The hard part of this game is reading and understanding the cards. So, this part of the game requires a certain level of reading ability, or patient adults willing to read and explain the cards to the younger than recommended player. One thing that you can do to make this a little easier, is to go through ahead of time and remove the most complex cards. This won’t have too profound of an effect on the game. Adding these cards back in later makes it seem like an expansion to the game.

Cooperative games are a really good to play with kids. Since you’re working together, you can give them as much help as needed.  Star Trek: 5 Year Mission by Mayfair Games is one of these. It’s recommended 10 and up. As an officer of the Starship: Enterprise, you’re trying to resolve missions.  The primary game mechanic is matching dice to missions. Color and number matter. Some of the strategy is hard for the younger ones, and special abilities get forgotten. In this game, different conditions come up that make it harder. Timed missions where you only have 2 minutes to resolve a mission is one. Kids tend to play slower, so this becomes more of a challenge. Communication failures can be really difficult. When this condition comes up, nobody can talk to anybody else until the mission is resolved or failed. Again, this just makes the game that much more challenging when playing with younger, inexperienced players. 

One of the most scalable games is Carcassonne by Z-Man Games, previously from Rio Grande Games. Rio Grande recommended it for 13 and up, but my son started playing at the age of 6, minus a few rules. Carcassonne is a tile laying game. You draw a tile and lay it on the field, matching it’s sides to those that it’s adjacent to. So walls, roads, fields, etc. all have to match up to those next to it. Sounds simple, right? The strategy comes in placing your followers out on the map. You put thieves on the road, knights in the castle, monks in the abbey, or farmers in the field. This isn’t too bad, except for the farmers. We don’t use the farmers with our son because they are really tough to strategize, figure out how best to play them and how to finally score them. Farmers are the most complex part of the game. We also don’t use the doubling rules. Certain tiles and/or conditions count as 2 instead of 1. It’s much easier to calculate and see what’s happening without these rules. So, even though it was suggested for 13 and up, it’s very scalable down to a much younger age. Now that Z-Man Games has it, they've changed the recommended age to 7+. Looking at the rules, the farmers are now a "supplemental" rule, and not part of the regular play rules. So, apparently they've seen this as a way to make the game more playable for a younger player.

So, if you’re tired of Candyland, and those other games with kid themes, think about introducing your kids to a more advanced game. There are certain things you need to keep in mind as you pick a game to try. The game needs to be scalable; you have to be able to play someone younger. The primary mechanic can’t be too complex. The strategy can’t be too complex or require too much planning that a younger person isn’t ready for. Cooperative games can alleviate some of this, but not all. If the strategy can’t be understood by the child, they won’t really enjoy the game all that much. Choose a game that doesn't take too long to play. Most kids won't be ready for a 4-hour game. Try to keep it under 45 minutes.  This is worth trying, because if you are more interested, you’ll more willing to play with your kids longer. Your kids want to play games with you, so everybody wins! 

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