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My 11yo daughter has asked about playing D & D as she's a fan of The Big Bang Theory.
I used to play (not often) many many moons ago and I can't actually remember a massive amount of it....
So what's the best beginners into to D & D?
Have seen this on Amazon:
Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set (Dungeons & Dragons Starter Kit): Fantasy Roleplaying Game Starter Set https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/0786965592/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_4N2DSMPS378DQW5YHRMW
Thanks
Looks good to me, one of the later versions (so rules light).
Still have my AD&D Paladin sheet upstairs in the "left over from childhood" box.
Yes that's a good starter set, very similar to the pale blue box set from the 80s. People usually progress to the individual books like Player's Handbook which in my day was called Advanced D&D, these books are about £30 a pop. All the pdfs of these are to be found where you might expect to if swashbuckling inlets are your thing. Critical Role on Youtube is super popular to watch others on campaigns.
Still got all my character figures and their stat sheets upstairs, along with a variety of monsters, particularly dragons. There’s a Jabberwocky in among them as well.
These days the figures are mostly plastic, but there are some really cool and beautifully made metal characters around.
I ought to get them out and display them sometime.
’Call Of Cthulhu’ is a fun game, don’t get too attached to your character, its going to die horribly before the end!
The multi-faceted Ones and the elder gods don’t take prisoners.
If you've played before you'll know it's a lot harder than it looks!
There was a website called orcpub that you could use to make characters but it died and was replaced by dungeonmastersvault.com my kids could spend ages on there making up characters.
I bought a roll of lining paper and drew the scenes out as we went along, this coupled with lego figures seemed to work well for my lot anyway and I'm rubbish at drawing
Theres also some really basic random adventure generators which can be quite good.
Dungeon masters guild is a good site and has some free adventures that are pretty good and worth a look at when you have a spare few hours! We started a mini series of adventures with A chance encounter these will provide maps and everything you need
My wife bought a starter kit. We tried to sit down to it but I just don't get it.
My two daughters have become big fans of D&D over the last 6 months. They have both learnt by joining in online sessions run by a guy called Lord Foxley. It's pretty inexpensive and my two girls have loved it! He runs starter sessions for various age groups. His website is here: https://www.lordfoxley.co.uk/
Not to knowledgeable on the details as my wife has organised it all for them.
There’s a D&D app my 11 year old uses for lots of stuff. He started with the Essentials kit but has got more monster books and things since then. Seems to spend more time reading about it and writing campaigns than ever playing it!
Get into a group that knows what they are doing, usually local gaming shops (of the table top variety) would be my first port of call.
I'd say if she's totally new to it the more basic set is probably better
Its a board game and a roleplay
https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products-board-card-games/dd-adventure-begins
These books are also really good for kids
https://dnd.wizards.com/products/fiction/newyounger-readers-novels/young-adventurers-collection explains all the creatures, but without rules or stats
There's also the Ashardalon/ravenloft/drizzt board games which come with a ton of minifigures and dungeon tiles
Great set to practice minifig painting on
If you want a cheap fun quick set of adventures the Stranger Things set is the game the kids play in the TV show, very simple & fun adventures and nothing to do with the actual TV show
Thanks all - greatly appreciated.
I'll check out a couple of the websites.
When I used to play with my mate his Gran was the Dungeon Master and had come up with all the adventures. She used to draw out the adventure on a big plastic sheet with chinagraph pencils.
My mate spent hours collecting and painting the figures.
I haven't touched D@D since my teens, but I remember that it was hard work both designing coherent campaigns and having the skill to deliver them as a DM, because the rules can be overwhelmingly complex for a newbie, so I'd probably recommend a ready-made campaign/board game to start off.
If you are anywhere near Bournemouth in 10 days time you could visit the annual Beachead event and join one of the One-Shot RPG games that are designed to get people playing;
Some are sold out, but there are lots of slots left
but I remember that it was hard work both designing coherent campaigns and having the skill to deliver them as a DM, because the rules can be overwhelmingly complex for a newbie, so I’d probably recommend a ready-made campaign/board game to start off.
Having spent too many hours in the 80s DMing all sorts of RPGs - I was sooooo cool! - I can both agree with this. If you stick to RPG rules, then yes, they can be onerous and overcomplicated. As you get more experience though, you shake a dice a lot, look as if you know what you're doing, and concentrate on letting the story flow, and the rules become less important. (It helped that I mainly ran Bushido campaigns, and I was the only one who had that game, so the setting was entirely in my head, although based on feudal Japan.) We grew out of both D&D and AD&D fairly early in our teens, I seem to remember, each of my group finding games that they preferred.
Thanks all.
Have ordered the starter pack and downloaded the official rule book (all 180 pages of it....) so have some light reading to do lol.
I did a bit of D&D in my early teens, but our group found it a bit 'generic'. Got into it via Warhammer Fantasy battle with a few friends.
We played alot more MERP, Mechwarrior and Paranoia.
These days, It seems D&D is a slightly different thing.
As has been said, if you are the GM/DM then use the rules to make an intersting story - don't be bound by them. Make some of your dice rolls hidden from the players and roll the dice even when there is no need to...adds to the feeling that something might be lurking in the shadows!
Last thing young kids want is for their favourite character to die or lose their favourite weapon etc because you rolled a 1...
D&D is quite rules-heavy, I can recommend something more like Mausritter https://mausritter.com for beginners/kids or just people who don't want to play the classic D&D warrior/monk/dragon/orc thing. It emphasises storytelling and improvising over hard rules, has minimal dice rolling, and actions are a lot less terminal to the players!
All 48 pages of the rulebook is available as a PDF, and it has a sample adventure that I played with our kids in a few hours.
The Lost mines of Phandelver starter kit is a pretty decent way to get into D&D. The hardest thing to get right is whoever is controlling the game and it's narrative (the DM/dungeon master) it can make or break a game depending on how up tight they are with the rules. Lost mines is a relatively short adventure of maybe three or four sessions. It has all the premade character sheets and shortened players guide rule book and some decent prompts in the adventure book itself to get you going.
Another game which plays fairly well and can be appealing to younger members of the family is Mice and Mystics, its board based with some nicely illustrated game tiles and has (yes you guessed it, knights who've been turned into mice.) They get to fight cockroaches,rats and the big baddie a cat. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124708/mice-and-mystics
We played alot more MERP, Mechwarrior and Paranoia.
Paranoia was great with the right group of people who 'got' the humour. Less so with people who expected normal rules and roleplaying.
We finished a marathon 24 hour role playing session with Me and My Shadow MarkIV for Paranoia when I was 18 or so - great times.
Yeah. Definitely had to be the right group! We had some awful sessions with some, and some stupendous, brilliant sessions with others.
Definitely had to be the right group!
This.
I once tried to run... I think it was called "Toons," it was a cartoon-based RPG. It was supposed to be run for laughs; you had stuff like cartoon laws of physics where gravity doesn't apply until you notice it, bombs are black balls with 'bomb' written on them and turn things charred. Players are basically indestructible and 'die' every other scene. I thought it'd be a riot but they just didn't get it, it went down like a cayote tied to an anvil.
As for the OP,
This probably isn't what you want to hear, but the best way to learn is playing with a group who already has an experienced DM. Leaning to GM/DM well from scratch is hard. Though if you've played before I guess you've got an idea.
Who's playing, just you and her?
Agreed about Paranoia - we had some great games of it. Toons, less so. I seem to remember that K spent the evening thinking it was immensely funny to shag the lion over and over. I can't remember what role the lion played in this game, or why he thought it was so funny. We didn't play Toons with him very often after that. 😀
The RPG market is vast, but D&D is the dominant game by a wide margin. If your daughter wants to play D&D specifically then I reckon that starter set is probably as good a place to start as any.
There are almost certainly better games (and better games for whatever age she is) out there, but the two challenges with that are working out what the most suitable game is amongst all the options, and the fact that it may be that D&D specifically is what she wants to play, as that's what she's seen on the Big Bang Theory (or Critical Role, or whatever).
As for the many challenges of DMing, at least many RPGs, including D&D, are well supplied with campaign and adventure supplements. If the GM doesn't have the time or inclination to weave a campaign entirely themselves then these can be a big help.