I currently DM a campaign with my son, who's running a red dragonborn Rogue. We followed the steps for character creation. He even decided that he wanted his character to have a background and a small backstory. When it came time to adventure, rather than use Hit Points for Monsters, I translated Hit Dice as the number of hits required to vanquish that particular foe. I have a few more home-brew rules on how to manage that, but I was wondering what you guys do when DMing a game for someone too young to manage all the game rules, especially kids who play video games.
I like the simplified HP method. When I ran games for my younger brother (age 8) and his friends we did a HP system similar to Legend of Zelda where I just converted the numerical value into Hearts (6 HP = 1 Heart & 3 HP = 1/2 Heart). Any amount of damage from an attack only dealt 1/2 Heart damage (unless it was a critical, then it dealt a full Heart!). Eventually we made tokens to represent these so the players had to hand over their heart pieces to me whenever they took damage. We all thought it was fun.
Also, I entirely removed skills and proficiency bonus from the character sheets. The only modifiers came from the core ability scores. I think this made it easier for all of us to keep track of which numbers to look at and add when the dice were rolled. If you do this, remember to do it for the monsters and enemies as well.
One of the players was a sorcerer, so I gave her different colored glass beads to keep track of any spells she cast. If she cast a 1st level spell, I'd ask her to give me a blue bead (to represent one of her spent 1st level spell slots). I think this made it easier to keep track. This was so effective, I do it with my regular friend group now as well.
I like the simplified HP method. When I ran games for my younger brother (age 8) and his friends we did a HP system similar to Legend of Zelda where I just converted the numerical value into Hearts (6 HP = 1 Heart & 3 HP = 1/2 Heart). Any amount of damage from an attack only dealt 1/2 Heart damage (unless it was a critical, then it dealt a full Heart!). Eventually we made tokens to represent these so the players had to hand over their heart pieces to me whenever they took damage. We all thought it was fun.
Also, I entirely removed skills and proficiency bonus from the character sheets. The only modifiers came from the core ability scores. I think this made it easier for all of us to keep track of which numbers to look at and add when the dice were rolled. If you do this, remember to do it for the monsters and enemies as well.
One of the players was a sorcerer, so I gave her different colored glass beads to keep track of any spells she cast. If she cast a 1st level spell, I'd ask her to give me a blue bead (to represent one of her spent 1st level spell slots). I think this made it easier to keep track. This was so effective, I do it with my regular friend group now as well.
This is fantastic! I forgot about the Heart Meter. It's a simple and effective way to help kids manage their character's supplies. And I'm stealing -- er, borrowing, yeah borrowing ;) -- your bead idea. That's such an easy way to keep track of spells. Thanks!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I currently DM a campaign with my son, who's running a red dragonborn Rogue. We followed the steps for character creation. He even decided that he wanted his character to have a background and a small backstory. When it came time to adventure, rather than use Hit Points for Monsters, I translated Hit Dice as the number of hits required to vanquish that particular foe. I have a few more home-brew rules on how to manage that, but I was wondering what you guys do when DMing a game for someone too young to manage all the game rules, especially kids who play video games.
I like the simplified HP method. When I ran games for my younger brother (age 8) and his friends we did a HP system similar to Legend of Zelda where I just converted the numerical value into Hearts (6 HP = 1 Heart & 3 HP = 1/2 Heart). Any amount of damage from an attack only dealt 1/2 Heart damage (unless it was a critical, then it dealt a full Heart!). Eventually we made tokens to represent these so the players had to hand over their heart pieces to me whenever they took damage. We all thought it was fun.
Also, I entirely removed skills and proficiency bonus from the character sheets. The only modifiers came from the core ability scores. I think this made it easier for all of us to keep track of which numbers to look at and add when the dice were rolled. If you do this, remember to do it for the monsters and enemies as well.
One of the players was a sorcerer, so I gave her different colored glass beads to keep track of any spells she cast. If she cast a 1st level spell, I'd ask her to give me a blue bead (to represent one of her spent 1st level spell slots). I think this made it easier to keep track. This was so effective, I do it with my regular friend group now as well.