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Teen RPG
Well, today has been interesting.
My daughter turns 14 next weekend and she just told me that for her party she wants to host a D&D game.
When she was younger I used to host D&D and HackMaster games that she would crash. She never showed much interest in doing anything other than stealing dice but now she is older...
I have nearly every version of D&D since the blue book up to the "basic set" of 4th edition, among other RPGs. What I am wondering is which version would be best for her to being with.
I am partial to the 1981 Basic D&D set (Moldvay) as it is very easy to learn and play.
Suggestions?
My daughter turns 14 next weekend and she just told me that for her party she wants to host a D&D game.
When she was younger I used to host D&D and HackMaster games that she would crash. She never showed much interest in doing anything other than stealing dice but now she is older...
I have nearly every version of D&D since the blue book up to the "basic set" of 4th edition, among other RPGs. What I am wondering is which version would be best for her to being with.
I am partial to the 1981 Basic D&D set (Moldvay) as it is very easy to learn and play.
Suggestions?
Comments
Basic makes it easy on the DM, as you can just say "what do you want to do" and pretty much any result is a single dice roll away (if you need to roll dice at all). The only downside is that Basic is deadly as hell and is played best as a resource managing war game on a small scale by pedantic paranoid accountants.
Maybe just go light on the combat (end the night with a saving-throw vs. death
If you're going heavier on the RP, any edition can work. And if they don't demand "D&D" specifically, there are better games for a one-shot. There's also the cleaned up rules of some "retro-clones" of the old basic games and such that make things slightly more legible like wanting to roll high instead of low to hit things and such. I apparently have Labyrinth Lord, Castles and Crusades (more of a 1e clone), and Adventurer Conqueror King (not quite as much of a clone but similar enough).
OD&D 1974 is also pretty good for first times. It's even more bare bones.
That said, you could also try the 4e basic set if kids are expecting a tactical skirmish game.
It is very easy to get someone interested in the idea of Rifts as it is basically a (mechanically unsound and broken) "who'd win in a fight" engine where everything has rules (or at least resemble something close enough that you could use them as "counts-as").
Not everyone is interested in roguish fantasy men stealing treasure from dragons, but Rifts, by default, has SOMETHING a geek will be interested in and can be slotted in with anything else. "I like Ninja Turtles", "I like Wizards", "I like Batman", "I like Robotech" pretty much describes every Rifts player group ever.
You need to be invested in the idea of role playing to really get frustrated with Palladium, at which point you move onto a system that works.
RIfts is a gateway rpg.
Daughter is excited to play again even though her thief was captured by goblins. For some reason they ignored my warnings about how the caves are dark and they lacked torches.
/obligatory
Need to work on that with her.
The short version: Decide on a genre you're interested in playing with. Have everyone write down how old their character is and what their name is. List some 'positive' thing they are known for. List some 'negative' thing that can cause problems for them, and a person that was affected by it. Now you have some relationships and miniaturized BITs to mine for situation. Work out an interesting conflict to play using everyone's characters. The GM should ask some questions and write down five skills for each character.
Explain the rules now - you're going to be rolling a bunch of dice, and you want to roll 4+. If you do something covered by the skills on your sheet, you roll 5 dice. Otherwise, you roll 4 dice. If you get help from someone, they can give you an extra die. You have a black chip which you can use that to reroll sixes for more successes. You have two red chips, which you can use to add more dice before you roll.
I played it one-on-one with no prep, with someone who had never played a roleplaying game before in their life. They grokked it immediately and the game was more satisfying than any 'light' system I've ever used.