D&D for Kids: Frequently Asked Questions

I’m so happy that so many people are interested in D&D for Kids! Here are the answers to a few of the more commonly asked questions. I hope they help!

Designing New Monsters

Creating new monsters is the easiest way to reskin this adventure–and fortunately, it’s pretty simple. The first thing I do when I’m creating monsters is make a couple of spreadsheets to calculate on average how many rounds it would take the players to reduce the monster’s HP to 0. For each monster, I aim for three rounds (especially because sometimes our heroes will be fighting two monsters at once).

By calculating how long, given the miss chances, it should take your party to take out a monster, you should end up automatically balancing high AC with low HP, and low AC with high HP. I try not to make the AC of a monster above 15, because I feel like at that point, the miss chance is too high for it to be fun (likewise, I try not to make an AC of below 10, because then it’s too easy). I also make sure each character hits a monster 80-85% of the time, so that they feel effective—or else, that they have something cool happen on a miss, so they aren’t punished for having a low hit rate.

The fantastic thing about a spreadsheet is that it’s scalable for different numbers of players. It also makes it easier to modify the monsters if you level the characters’ abilities, as the only thing you need to do is make sure  the time it takes to defeat a monster is three rounds.

In general, I’ve found I can keep the same AC/HP match-ups (because they’re effective, and there’s no real reason to mess with them) but that it’s important to change the descriptions and the effects the monsters have, as those are what players latch onto most.

The number one most important thing when creating new monsters is to have them do something interesting, rather than just doing damage. There are four primary ways that I’ve found to do this.

  1. The monster does something cool when you hit them, like the Fire Elemental which, when it takes damage, divides into two medium Fire Elementals, which when damaged, become two small Fire Elementals each, until finally, the resulting four small Fire Elementals can be defeated.
  2. The monster does something cool when they hit you, like the Bulette, a monster than can swallow them whole, after which they can choose to stay in it’s belly to do and take automatic damage, or tickle it to get spat out all slimy.
  3. The monster has a cool movement ability, like the Wind Wyvern, which can spin really fast and fling one hero into another hero, pushing both heroes two squares back.
  4. The monster has an ability that changes the way players act, but allows them to save each other, like the Mycanoid, which has mushroom goo attack which can make a mushroom sprout from a hero’s head, after which they attack whatever hero is closest to them. The effect ends when the heroes successfully remove the mushroom–which has a chance of then sticking on them instead. Of course with these, it’s good if the monster itself can’t hurt the players with anything but the mind-controlling attack to encourage players to help each other.

Things kids don’t tend to like (or adults either for that matter): losing turns or being unable to move. Things kids do tend to like: evocative descriptions! Making something gross, funny, cool, or cute–in their introductory text and in the effects of their powers–really does wonders for your monsters.

How to Handle Just Two Players

There are a couple of options for running the module with just two players.

  1. You could run two characters and play it “DM-less,” by following the monster instructions for attack. That would probably have the fastest play, yet keep some level of interaction, but you’d need to modify the monsters do go down in three rounds for a party-size of two, using the tips above.
  2. You could also both run two characters–and run it DMless, and then you wouldn’t have to adjust the stats at all (I’ve run it with four before and it works just fine).
  3. You could have one person both be the DM and run all the other characters as NPCs, after the player has chosen their favorite to play.

Creating New Adventures Using This System

To reskin this game, all you have to do is design new monsters and write a new page of introductory text. My favorite reskin was a Haunted Slumber Party (designed with Tracy Hurley and run for the Girl Scouts at Gen Con)–including a sleeping bag that liked to zip people up inside of it. But the options are limitless, and if you’re designing an adventure for your own kids, how awesome is it that you could design something specifically for them, based on their favorite things?

You can also expand this into a full game system by adding skills (I’d consider using items on cards that you could give a character who learned the skill, with the rolls for using them on them, like a magnifying glass for “search” or a book on Wilderness Survival for “survival”), and of course, encouraging them to interact with NPCs and their environment.

Options

Some kids don’t like to hurt the monsters because they’re so cute, which is actually pretty awesome. In those cases, I sometimes say the monsters are illusions, or made of snow, or run away when defeated, or that they’re under a magical compulsion to fight you, and that defeating them frees them to be your friends.

In addition, when playing with 3d6, consider changing the critical criteria to rolling higher than 5 on three dice, which makes the likelihood of rolling a critical more inline with the chances of rolling a critical on 1d20 (thank you Nadav!).

But I Want a Full Adventure

Wizards of the Coast doesn’t currently have a full game system for kids (hopefully they will put out an awesome game system for kids sometime in the future!).

However, No Thank You, Evil is an award-winning RPG game and setting that Monte Cook Games made for especially for kids. With the No Thank You, Evil boxed set, you’d have everything you need to run ongoing sessions, and adapt it for different age groups, or even mixed age groups. It’s also heavily adaptable for whatever kind of game you would like to run. Check it out here: http://www.nothankyouevil.com/

Have Another Question? Just Ask!