Hello fellow Dungeon Masters.  Let me start off by apologizing for such a long post.  I am a new DM and have a unique set of players I will be hosting.  I believe explaining our situation is important to get the information I need.  If you are bored easily no need to read on.

I am a 42-year old father of three.  I played D&D as a teenager back in the 90's with version 2 (AD&D?).  I played about three sessions until life got in the way and I was forced not to play anymore.  However, I maintained a love for D&D and basically all types of Role-Playing Games (both pen-and-paper and video games).  I continued reading D&D books and adventures and as I got older would watch D&D sessions on YouTube and play solo with the D&D board games (which I know is not true pen-and-paper D&D, but it was all I had).

My eldest son is 16 now.  I raised him playing games like HeroQuest, the D&D Board games, and others in this genre.  Now in high school he found  other students in to D&D and they formed their own group.  So he is not a beginner at pen-and-paper D&D, but they only completed the one campaign that came with the 5e Starter Set (really, who hasn't played or read Lost Mine of Phandelver?).

My other two kids are twin 10 year olds - a boy and a girl.  I also raised them as board gamers, but our focus up to this point has been less on RPG style games.  Seeing their older brother play D&D with his friends and seeing his books, miniatures, maps, and dice has planted the seed that they want to play, too.

Ok, so he were are.  My goal is to create a playing group with my three kids and hopefully make it fun so they have a life-long passion for D&D as I do.  My first plan to get them in to D&D was to buy the latest D&D board game Dungeon of the Mad Mage.  We will be playing this for the first time this Saturday.  My older son and I have plenty of experience with this gaming system (having most of the previous games in the system), but this will be the first time my two youngest kids are playing a board game such as this.   I know their taste and I am sure this will be a huge success.

After a few quests using the board game my plan is to get them in to playing pen-and-paper D&D.  Our first campaign will be the Lost Mine of Phandelver (LMoP) that comes with the 5e Starter Set.  Now, there are a lot of considerations when it comes to running this campaign with my kids:

1 - My oldest son has already played the campaign and will be a player.
2 - My two younger kids are only 10 and have never played a pen-and-paper RPG.
3 - I have never DM'd before and I only have two or three D&D sessions under my belt...25 years ago.

Some group we have?  But I am determined to make this a fun experience for them all.

I have seen some playing sessions online with experienced DMs and players trying to get through this adventure.  Even the Dungeons and Dragons official YouTube channel had a 4-part video of the first chapter of LMoP with 5 experienced players (well 4, but Roxy did a great job - so 5).  That group barely beat the first chapter and had two deaths prior to the final battle with Blarg (sp?).  If it wasn't for a donation and rezzing Slurpy they probably would have wiped.  So this is where my concern is coming from.  We only have three players, not five, and two of them are ten year olds with no prior experience.  How could we survive and make this fun without just fudging all the roles.

Here is where I need your help.  These are the changes I will be making as we tackle LMoP.  Is this enough, too much, what are your thoughts?  I want to keep it balanced, but making it fun for my ten year old twins is paramount.

Change 1 - No wipes.  In most of the dungeon settings I am going to create a new room not in the adventure book which will act as a jail.  Should the group wipe completely their bodies will be dragged to the jail room, stripped of their gear, and locked up.  I will have them all awaken the following day with half health.  I will also come up with two or three small challenges for them to escape the room and find their equipment.  The campaign itself will basically be on pause until the group find their equipment and escape the room.

Change 2 - A mole in my group. As I mentioned, my eldest son has played this adventure before.  He knows the story, traps, secrets, etc.  I know I should pick a different adventure (maybe the one from the Essentials Kit), but I love LMoP and knowing my kids I feel they will love it, too.  It is a great mix of RP and combat.  My eldest son is going to play blind for the most part and assist his two younger siblings with decision-making and how to properly role-play their characters.  He will allow them to make the final decisions and try not to railroad them in to making the more beneficial choices.  There is really no option here except to play a different adventure, but we are going with LMoP.  My question to existing DMs is if you had an experienced like this before where you have a player that knows the published adventure beforehand?  I guess in this day and age it happens a lot since anyone could pull up a YouTube video or an online .pdf, but what do you guys think?  Anything I should look out for?

Change 3 - An NPC to join them on their adventure.  I am thinking that Gundren (sp?) at the beginning of the adventure when he hires the PCs to escort his wagon to Phandalin will also tell them there is a condition.  His young nephew / niece must also accompany them.  My three kids will be playing tanks and damage dealers, so we lack a healer.  I would make the nephew / niece a cleric and either have myself play this NPC or have my oldest son play two characters.  I am against my older son playing the character because I want him to focus only on his character to allow him to fully embrace his role.  He will already have enough on his plate trying not to make decisions  based on his prior knowledge of the adventure and making sure two 10 years olds are understanding this new type of game.  However I know a DM, especially a new DM, can easily take advantage of playing a character like this because it could lead me to making the character more powerful than the PCs or using the NPC as a tool to inadvertently make the PCs do what I want them to.  My thought was that I would play the NPC and his flaw would be that he is extremely introverted.  This will keep his speaking and decision making aspect of the character to a minimum and really just be there as healing support and the occasional damage.  My only plan to use this NPC to railroad my PCs with is at the goblin ambush at the very beginning of the campaign to nudge them to choose the Cragmaw Cave option rather than going to Phandalin before the Cragmaw Cave.  I really feel they will have more fun going to combat first then an entire town of NPCs where they will be forced to roleplay for the first time.  I believe they could find that a bit boring without first experiencing some combat and light role-playing in the cave initially.  The NPC could be so worried about his uncle being captured by goblins  that he can play on the other PCs' good nature to do the right thing (put his uncle's well being above going right to Phandalin to collect 10 gold pieces each).  After this one encounter I will just play the NPC with really no input on decision making at all for the rest of the campaign.  Then at the end of it all (after chapter 4) he will say his goodbyes.

Change 4 - Lower the difficulty.  I plan on using this calculator to lower the difficulty of the entire campaign from 4 to 5 players to 3 (even using the fourth NPC I described above):
http://haluz.org/lmop/index.php

So what do you think?  I know I really do not have a choice for line item #2, but how about #1, #3, and #4?  Should I apply them all?  Will it make it too easy?  I still plan on punishing the players with permanent death if they do something just terribly stupid, but I want them to have a fun first time as they are pretty young and I want them to have an enjoyable first experience role-playing without the stress of always making sure they are making the right decisions and permanent deaths.

If you are still reading this, wow, thank you for your time and any constructive feedback you could give me.

After thought - I will also be using miniatures for all of the encounters and printed maps on card stock to keep everything visual for our first campaign.  I think this will help ease the transition from board game to pen-and-paper.

I think your plans are all pretty good.

A thought on mini's:  if the family is heavily into board games, you can lose sight of the RP and get caught on the "you can move this far on the battle map".  My personal preference is that doing that a lot slows down combat and makes it dry.  People get away from exciting actions and get into less exciting "I did the thing, now it's done".  So I would use the mini's for the more confusing "let's clear up who's where" rather than hard and fast "You can get this far on your turn because that's 3 inches."

The plan for dealing with wipes is perfect.  Personally I would just start to fudge my dice rolls behind the screen rather than go that route but that's my DM style.

As for the Mole, the word suggests that he's working against the party.  Bad plan if that's the case.  If the older is there to "coach" that's a good plan (with a bad word) and you're all set.  In fact that would probably help you if he's on board that this play through is more for the twins than himself.

PC-NPC's (that is NPCs that tag along and take actions like PC's, also called "DM Characters") are often problematic in games especially with newer DM's.  My advice if you want to have a voice with the party is to have that NPC tag along but not let them do anything consequential in combat or RP.  I like to have my NPC's "assist" in combat and grant people advantage on attacks rather than getting into the fight themselves.  It helps me keep the pressure on the actual PC's (who are there for the game itself) and not let the NPC's ever take away the player's thunder.  I'm running Ravenloft next weekend and when Ireena insists on joining the party, her main role will be to act as a distractor/ assister in combat, not to actually do her own fighting.

Thank you so much Rorlins.  This is the feedback I was hoping for and I will definitely be incorporating it.  Really looking forward to get this going.  I will let you know how it goes.