1st level, kid-friendly campaign ideas

[zephyrkinetic]

Hi, all.
My wife and I recently decided to introduce our 7-year-old daughter to the wonderful world of D&D. I've got a ton of the 3.x books - and none of the others - so that's what we decided to go with. She loves math anyway, so it's a good fit. I've DM'd more campaigns than I can readily recall, but it's always been with people my age. My wife has played plenty, and also DM'd a few times.

To make scheduling easy, we're only playing with the three of us. My kid is playing an Elven Rogue, and my wife is trying out Sorcerer for the first time (the kid grabbed up her favorite class xD). So, two-player party, with the possibility that I'll have an NPC join them when needed.

We finished our character builds last night, and were planning to play this afternoon/evening. I was going to toss them into the standard rat-infested tavern basement just to get a feel for things, but that old trope is just such a drag. Does anyone have any cool standbys they can lend me?

Thanks, y'all. :D

[the_david]

You might want to invest in the Pathfinder Beginner Box. It's a somewhat simplified version of the d20 rules and should be a good introduction for children. There are no rules for Sorcerers though, so your wife would have to choose one of the other classes available. (Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard.)

[zephyrkinetic]

You might want to invest in the Pathfinder Beginner Box. It's a somewhat simplified version of the d20 rules and should be a good introduction for children. There are no rules for Sorcerers though, so your wife would have to choose one of the other classes available. (Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard.)

Maybe I should be, but I'm really not too worried about the rules at this point. We're sticking to the primary three books for the moment (no fey-touched centaur zombie liches for now), and my wife and I are prepared to help her with any of the whackier math. But she got through character gen just fine, and if she's good with that, I feel like she can handle rolling and adding.

[daremetoidareyo]

A giant has left huge lost puppy posters around the PCs village. PCs hear ranger boasting about how to track it. Cattle rancher has lost 2 cows and a hog last week. The puppy is being used by non-evil animal-friendly goblin miners to haul iron ore and intimidate goblin chiefs into feeding the miners 2 rats a day, (up from 1). Goblin chiefs want puppy gone or killed and have some even raid loot from last spring. Ask enough questions, and PCs find that the miners are more productive now than they ever were.

The "puppy" is a huge templated bear or krenshaw or displaced beast or something large and not typically cuddly.

[Gildedragon]

What's the kid like re. Cartoons or fairytales

A pulpy plot would be good I think.

I assume Kid likes the idea of being sneaky. So getting past a bunch of dumb guards is probably something she'd like.
Getting into a wizard's lair and sabotaging the wizard's doomsday device.

[Waker]

If you introduce an NPC, I'd suggest a Paladin. Someone who can serve as a flanking buddy for your daughter and provide a bit of healing (via wand) outside of combat. Depending on your daughters personality maybe shlock him up and make him a Don Quixote parody, so your daughter can be the smart "sidekick" who's guiding him around.
As for a plot, how about a straightforward macguffin plot? Someone has a magic crown that will let him take over the forest your daughter's character lived in. Or a cursed object put a Prince(ss) into an enchanted sleep and needs to be recovered. Or it could be even simpler and just be motivated by something the character wants, "I heard there is a flying carpet in this abandoned castle!" Perhaps ask your daughter if there is a magic doodad she's like to get her hands on.

[zephyrkinetic]

(I'm having trouble with the quote function on my phone, but here's responses to the last three posts.)

1. The lost puppy idea is gold. I think I'll take this idea as the starter session. I'll probably add that the giant is willing to give a 'small' reward upon the pup's return, and it ends up being something the giant considers small, but is huge to the PCs. Gives them the option of not killing the beast.

Question: is the beast more or less tame, or are the miners somehow restraining it?

2. She likes animals, and mythology, and science, and Teen Titans Go, and Minecraft, and Star Wars. We're a nerdy family, so she is mostly exposed to nerdy things. So far there hasn't been a lot of resistance. :D

I think she'll enjoy sneaking around, yeah. And if she can pull off some mischief, it would probably make for a good time. Dumping a bucket of water on a jerky nobleman, or tying a guard's bootstraps together. Good old fashioned family fun.

3. I was actually thinking of a Dwarven Cleric. I'm just a sucker for dwarves, though.

I was thinking of having them fetch some magical whatsit, actually, but I want to save that for a higher level. Don't need 1st level PCs running around with powerful magical items.

[Gildedragon]

Star Wars fan?
Retrieving or sabotaging a doomsday device is a good thing. Quest to get to the location of the device, make sure to get there when lich is out. And you get a recurring villain for later

[zephyrkinetic]

The doomsday device is a good hook, honestly. And it'll give us plenty of plot for a few levels. I wonder if I can work a hint of that into the session tonight....

[Zaq]

If you really think that 1st level is where it's at, I'd throw in some kind of houseruled HP cushion. Even if you're not gunning for blood, 1st level 3.5 characters are super fragile (and especially an elf Rogue—d6 HD and a CON penalty? Yeah, that's a bad combination), and while you know your daughter better than I do, I would imagine that many 7-year-olds would get discouraged if they could just get easily ganked through more or less no fault of their own. (Especially in a game like D&D, where you've got to spend a long time learning the rules—even with Mom and/or Dad doing the heavy lifting—and making a new character and otherwise setting up, compared to a video game or something where you just respawn or start over without a lot of effort on the part of the player.)

I repeat, you don't have to necessarily be throwing in overly powerful monsters (we all know about the Monster Manual's falchion-wielding "CR 1/2" orcs doing an average of 9 damage on a hit or 18 on a crit, which they get 15% of the time) or intentionally going hard to get that kind of outcome, either. With unmodified rules, a level 1 elf Rogue will have what, maybe 7 HP (buying a 14 CON that's reduced to 12)? 8 if we're being generous? Two goblins wielding morningstars doing 1d6 + 0 damage each have a nontrivial chance of reducing our elf friend to 0 HP or lower. If we don't heal to full between encounters or if there happen to be more enemies present, there's a good chance that your daughter's character will end up dead or dying, just because 1st level is ridiculously lethal and swingy. (And while I'm sure she's a very smart kid if you feel confident that she can learn the game, inexperience can lead to less-than-optimal tactical decisions, at least early on.)

So yeah. If you can keep her focused on the game, I think that's absolutely fantastic that you're teaching her how to play. But I'd implement some kind of mechanic to make things not to ridiculously lethal. Ten bonus HP for being a hero, maybe, or adding your CON score (not mod) to your starting HP (which, to be fair, is nearly identical to ten bonus HP). That's not enough that she'll be invincible, but it's enough that she'll have a chance to see "hmm, my HP is going down, so I need to either end the combat, remove the threat, heal up, or otherwise take care of this" without immediately hitting "well, now I'm at 0 HP, so I don't get to play until someone else finishes the combat for me."

[zephyrkinetic]

Yeah, you're not wrong. I think she had exactly 7 HP, and the Sorc's was even worse. Like. 4. Yeesh.

So, yeah, I'll come up with something. I was thinking about making sure they had a health potion or two available - maybe even letting her "steal" a couple from some secret benefactor's belt pouch.

Or I'll just fudge the goblins' attack rolls as needed. XD

Edit: y'know, maybe I'll do 1st level HP the same as 1st level skill points. Double max HD + 2x Con Mod at 1st level doesn't strike me as breaking anything.

[Elkad]

If you really think that 1st level is where it's at, I'd throw in some kind of houseruled HP cushion. Even if you're not gunning for blood, 1st level 3.5 characters are super fragile...


That's easy enough to manage with smart monster selection.

Kobold Miners using light hammers do 1d3. Good enough.

I do that for adult newbies on L1s. Not to that extent, but I tend to keep my orcs at 1d6/x2 or so.

Fudge rolls, not rules. A 7yr old is perfectly capable of remembering her first character had 30hp, and now her second one inexplicably only has 8.

And a potion of Lesser Vigor or something boosts survivability quite well at that damage output, and adds even more (easy) math to do.

[zephyrkinetic]

I was just going over monsters to line out what I'll use, and I was thinking that kobolds were the way to go. I think I'll switch the lost puppy for a kitty, and have them come across a Dragonne. They can speak Draconic, so can Kobolds, and that just so happens to be the bonus language my daughter chose. So, fun times.

Good call on the potion too, though. Auto-healing is a helpful gimmick.

[flappeercraft]

So you like star wars, she likes Minecraft, etc. Why don't you make it a planar travel setting? Refluff the planes and monsters and make them sort of similar to those things. Like maybe an alternate material plane where Monk/Sorcerers/Enlightened fists are Jedi. Maybe a refluffed elemental plane of earth could be minecraft and such things. Another idea is a refluffed tarrasque could be a Zillo beast.

If she likes mythology maybe an alternate earth where the typical Greek heroes never existed and she has to take their places and make events go as they were supposed to.