GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Three kids 10 and under
System: Dungeons & Dragons 4E

We picked up the Dragon Tree campaign with the funeral of Nadaar. The girls told me me a couple cool things about the world. First, that the king’s advisor “Andraste”, who was an Eladrin Wizard was very old, very wise, and a good person. This meant by default that the king’s son (the prince) was a real jerk.

The also told me that fallen heroes are sent off on a barge on Disappearing Lake, where they, no surprise here, disappear.

A quest

We opened with the king in mourning (all dressed in white) and Naddar’s body being prepared (his armor cleaned, his sword placed on him, and his body preserved for the journey to Disappearing Lake).

While this was taking place Andraste summoned the heroes an asked that they accompany Naddar to the lake. She mentioned that he was trying to set the dragons free and that there were people who did not want that to happen. She talked about the darker times, but it seemed the kids weren’t very interested, so we quickly moved the conflict…

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Three kids 10 and under
System: Dungeons & Dragons 4E

My daughter and her friend have been asking me for a while to play Dungeons & Dragons. Not TSoY, not Dungeon World, not Burning Wheel or Mouse Guard. Dungeon & Dragons. Like Ron years ago, I lost to the cultural icon of D&D.

We stated by talking a little about Dungeons & Dragons as a game. A little about the setting (fantasy setting, magic, dragons, etc) and then a talk about what kinds of things they wanted to do. What I got from the three of them was: Explore dungeons, Solve mysteries, and train dragons. I told them that D&D is built on fighting monsters, so a lot of the game would be trying to achieve those ends and enemies trying to stop them. They were pretty down with that.

I wanted to build the world around locations and events, so I pulled out a blank piece of paper, write down dungeons, mysteries and dragons on it and then told them to start drawing major landmarks and naming them.