A starter post for my current D&D game.
I use the term D&D loosely here. The game we are playing is what I've dubbed D&D Dad edition. My players are a group of 2x5 year olds and 1x7 year old girls, my daughters and their cousin. The ages of my current group of players combined equal my age/2 (minus a couple). So yeah, this is a tricky game to do. But I promise you, it is one of the best games I've ever done in my 7 combined years of DMing for 5 different player groups.
For my daughters entire lives, I've constantly played co-storytelling games with them. I would try to think of a little plot, and ask them what they would do. When you are playing D&D with a 4yo, there is no "player characters" because they don't even know who they are yet. It is a fascinating thing to watch a 4yo ignite their own imaginations and tell you the things they see in their minds. Their imaginations are wild and unrestricted and very innocent.
In the past couple months, I've been getting more serious about their game. It started off as simple as possible, roll a d20 to do anything, and we'll worry about hit points and all that jazz later. I wanted to get the elements of storytelling down. This is also why I call it D&D Dad Edition, we use a d20 and the rest of my games are 100% DM fiat, at this point. No XP. No gold really. Shiny new wands and magical wings yes.
But as we've played more and more, I've added different kinds of attacks they can do. We've incorporated d6 damage dice, and we've incorporated hitpoints. (But no dying. Fainting instead. We are playing Pokemon rules here.) and we've even incorporated saving throws vs status effects. So the game has been evolving into a more and more recognizable game with base rules.
As I've been having a ton of fun and thinking more and more about the storylines they will be doing, I thought it was high time I get myself some better D&D swag. We play using miniatures (because lets face it pure imagination tabletop is incredibly difficult for some adults let alone young kiddos) and I wanted us to have some really awesome scenery. So I got the WizKids Warlock Tiles Dungeon Sets I and II as well as the Dungeon Expansion set.
Warlock Tiles, a review.
These tiles are absolutely gorgeous, first and foremost. These are some of the best pre-painted terrain pieces I've ever seen. Very solid plastics, the pieces themselves have a lot of heft, and could probably take a lot of rough play. I don't know why anyone would play roughly with this, but hey, these tiles are very robust, painted, varnished and protected.
The tiles are segmented into 1in squares for standard miniatures play. These would work well for a multitude of miniatures gaming, from tabletop wargaming to tabletop pencil and paper. Even for modelers and collectors, this is a beautiful modular set that you can configure however you like for display.
I would note a few cons. First, these are expensive sets. I understand the reasons, the plastics are solid, heavy, everything painted and varnished, very high quality. But you will be paying for it. So this might not be good for someone just getting into a miniatures hobby, you might want to wait a bit before investing this much into terrain. I've played D&D for a long time, and even years ago I remember looking at Dwarven Forge modular tiles for purchasing, but I never did. So it was high time for me to get something like this. Your gaming experience might be different.
Another con (which they seemed to have fixed) would be the clips that come in the Dungeon Tiles I kit. The clips are made out of incredibly hard plastic and are difficult for even me to push together without breaking them. I'm a big dude so if it is hard for me it is going to be impossible for someone not as strong. The clips that came in the Dungeon Tiles II kit however, are made out of a softer more flexible plastic that even my 5yo could snap together. So if you do get just the single Dungeon Tiles I kit with only the hard clips in it, I would strongly suggest buying another bag of the blue Warlock Clips themselves for ease of use.
Another cool addition to my D&D Swag is the Dungeons & Drawings creature compendium. The illustrations are incredibly bright and vibrant. The descriptions are very imaginative, filled with monster lore for each of their monsters. A lot of the monsters in this book are variations of standard D&D monsters, with some direct comparisons to well known monsters like the basilisk pictured above.
This book would be great for player groups wanting a bit more visual flair, outside of their miniatures. The flavortext in this book is wonderful for DMs to use in their games. There is a slight con though, but this con doesn't apply to most player groups. More than a few of these monsters are very gruesome, floating severed heads with their entrails dangling under them. Yeah, you could say not very suitable for a younger audience, and with my players being 5 and 7 year olds, I really have to read through the lore before I read it out loud.
D&D is a way to really grow a young creatives imagination.
Co-storytelling is an amazing way to spark the imagination of young creative types. Building stories in eachothers minds, with everyone mentally thinking about what's going on in the game world is not only fun, but a way to exercise some important elements in the mind. I really do think it is somewhat educational in a way; even if they are using quick wits to figure out a challenge for their D&D characters, they are still using their quick wits as a person. So a combination of mental creative exercises combined with my long term love of storytelling in general is why I think this is such a great thing for young creative minds.
Having more D&D swag is just icing on the cake. Let me know in the comments if you would like me to start chronologically documenting their adventures here. Would be really fun to bake their adventures into HIVE.
If you enjoyed this post, please check out my latest album below!
| # | Track | Length | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cryptonomeconomics | 3:11 | Crypto-Groove |
| 2 | Flyover Soul | 5:57 | Flytuned Chipstep |
| 3 | Minimal | 3:28 | Dreamscape |
| 4 | In The Minds Of Those Around You | 4:54 | Electro Breakline |
| 5 | Mercenary | 6:22 | Aggrostep |
| 6 | Quadtone | 2:44 | Synth Quartet |
| 7 | Moot Trio | 4:40 | Post Industrial |
| 8 | Endgame | 4:44 | VGM Bosstime |
| 9 | Crisis | 5:22 | Arppegiod Chipestra |