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Infinitum 3D
United States
Washington
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Hi! I have an 8 year old son who is really interested in D&D. I've been playing for over 30 years so I'd like to run a game for him. Unfortunately, all of the adventures I have (from Dungeon Magazine, TSR modules, and even my own homebrew) are extremely violent. I have an idea for a Festival with Skill Contests like archery, wrestling, whack-a-gnome, etc, but are there any real adventure modules out there that don't involve combat? I just don't want him to have nightmares of Goblins and Werewolves attacking him. Any suggestions?
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Taylor Liss
United States
Quincy
Massachusetts
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You might be interested in Monster Slayers: The Heroes of Hesiod
Its designed for kids ages 6 and up. The whole PDF is available for free here:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/MS_HeroesHesiod.pdf
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My first thought would be the adventures in the series Challenge of Champions. As far as I remember, there is hardly any combat, if at all.
Hope you and your son enjoy the game!
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Freelance Police
United States
Palo Alto
California
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Take a look at several low-level RPG adventures. You might find one that emphasizes non-combat solutions to problems. Offhand, "pick up and deliver", investigation, and mystery crime solving are adventures that don't rely upon combat. "Pick up and deliver" is especially amusing if the PCs have to escort a petulant princess who doesn't want to obey her father's demands to marry someone she doesn't know.
Also, see the "Big List of RPG Plots" freebie. Mebbe you'll have some ideas there.
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Cracky McCracken
United States
Ohio
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i think your festival idea is great!!! Go with it. Have a mischevious halfling try to pick the players's pockets and stuff like that.
HS1: The Slaying Stone is a low level D&D4e adventure that a DM with your imagination could tone down to be action packed and suspensful, but not overly violent. It has some strange people to deal with, a goblin town that the characters must sneak into and search, and ultimately, a showdown with a fairly nutty dragon that the players must should talk to instead of fight.
Hammerfast: A Dwarven Outpost Adventure Site has a library that's haunted by a ghost who keeps rearanging and hiding all the books (which in turn is driving the head librarian crazy, my wife loves this one). The players could have to try to talk to the ghost because they need to find a particular tome.
The Dungeons & Dragons world is a dangerous place, but sometimes, danger only needs to be percieved to be an effective story telling device. The players could have to cross an ancient, rickety looking bridge over a chasm to escape from a tribe of goblins. They can't tell if the bridge will hold thier weight (but in fact, it's quite strong)
oh yeah, Welcome aboard!
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Maurice Tousignant
Canada
Windsor
Ontario
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My first thought is that if you don't want violent combat then you should find a game other then D&D. D&D is based on combat, advancement is tied to combat, treasure it tied to combat, pretty much everything is combat oriented. I would suggest finding a different system to try out. I know there are quite a few games created specifically for kids.
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Dave Bernazzani (@rpggeek)
United States
Plainville
Massachusetts
I wish to provide legendary service to the RPG community to help grow our hobby and enrich the lives of gamers everywhere.
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Another suggestion is to create your own adventure and let your son steer things a bit to see where he wants to take it (curbing as needed). RPGs are often at their most fun when the creation is shared and there is no reason you need to stick to a published adventure. If you buy an adventure, you can sanitize it as needed - making living creatures into stone golems or other mechanical constructs. But a small homebrew adventure involving diplomacy and investigation and maybe a short combat encounter or two with "less scary" (or at least more abstract) critters might work great.
-Dave
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Sandy Petersen
United States
Rockwall
Texas
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When I was asked to run a roleplaying game for some little kids, here is what I did:
1) I didn't worry about stats (but maybe your son would like rolling up his character).
2) I didn't have any combat. It was just telling a story that they could participate in.
3) my plot - their teacher was kidnapped from the playground by a bear. The kids had to track down the bear to his cave and then talk or trick him into releasing the teacher. (The bear could talk, of course.)
I had a plan that the reason the bear took the teacher was so his cubs could learn math, but it didn't matter, as the kids didn't try to understand the bear's motivations. They just used a combination of wheedling and guilting. In the end one of the kids ran by the cave entrance with a big jar of honey and when the bear chased him, the other kids ran into the cave and released the teacher. The end.
This kind of fairy-talish plot I think works well for young kids. For instance, they could find a door to Narnia in their closet. Skip the combat stuff and just have them find Aslan and bring him back to power.
Or a REALLY good source for non-combat fun adventures is The Wizard of Oz - anything by L. Frank Baum, really. He once wrote a story where a little girl opened a trunk in her attic and found it was full of mustachioed Italian bandits who immediately began roaming the house at night and pilfering small objects. The whole plot was how could she trick the bandits back into the trunk. See how fun that would be for a young kid?
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Aaron Potter
United States
Riverside
California
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May I suggest an adventure which really helped my kids (7 and 11) get started?:
http://tower.newcenturycomputers.net/modules.html
From the Dragonsfoot forums. They're very bullish on introducing kids to the genre.
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