Mystara for Kids
by Tom Bulls EyeIn the past, I've alluded to the campaign that I'm organizing for my kid and his three cousins (aged 10-14), and I just wanted to give an update and share some of my experiences of keeping kids this age hooked on the game.
Background
The campaign is Mystara based but set in time 10 years after the week without magic of WoTI; where, as an outcome, the Week without Magic, caused a cataclysm for Mystara.
The disappearance of magic in my campaign caused Mystara to implode as without magic to sustain a hollow world, Mystara collapsed under the laws of gravity.
The immortals, (well actually only some) intervened and by using the Create Heavenly Body spell detailed in WoTI, and sacrificing PP's, the intervening immortals managed to create numerous small asteroids out of Mystara, and most life was saved. The asteroids are now circulating a common center of gravity as small planetarian spheres.
No entropic immortal intervened, however. Rather Thanatos used the implosion of Mystara to provide all sentient beings on Mystara with a vision of the petty quibblings of the two rival fractions of immortals (Ring of Fire/Fellowship of Star) that let to Mystara's implosion, exposing the rival fractions implication in and blame for the catastrophe, causing a Master Stroke against most of the immortals from the other spheres active on Mystara.
At the same time, the implicated immortals (having spent nearly all of their immortal strength on saving Mystara's peoples from their own immortal folly), are in no position to help their followers with priestly spells, so belief has withered rapidly from Mystara (together with magic, as Mystara's magical field has weakened with Mystara's destruction).
Entropic immortals, however, are having a field day... All these corpses and only so little time, what shall we do but animate them.
Why all these changes
If you ask why all these changes... well, the kids are 10,11, 12, and 14 and I don't want them hack-slashing through sentient beings but mindless undead are fine.
Also, I have all these fine published modules of Mystara and Dragonlance that don't fit together in time and space, so I'll just destroy time and space, and the theme fits, and because the grand heroic masterplan is for them to become saviors of Mystara by reconnecting the puzzles and recreate Mystara to its former glory (eventually).
And, they are not yet ready to come out to play in an open sandbox environment. Like this, they stay within a small geographical region, i.e. on their specific asteroid.
Experiences and lessons learned
The rules system is BASIC (red box-version) but I'm always ready to skip a rule, in order to maintain the pace of the game.
The most important lesson I've learned so far is to be prepared, like in really well prepared.
Kids of that age do not have the patience for sitting around listening to you reading from the textbox (or as in this case, ad-lib translating from English to Danish), so information has to be brief and to the point and must maintain a good pace of progress within the module.
I learned that the hard way the first weekend we were playing, where we were trying out the cave system detailed in the Red Box. No one playing in a Mystara campaign for their first time should not experience Aleena and Bargle (or so I thought). Because, I was doing it by the book, and soon the game came apart as the boys couldn't maintain interest. So we abandoned the caves before Bargle had made his entrance.
With that lesson learned, our next gaming session was "Sword and Shield" (Thunder Rift) and it went much better. No maps to draw, only gaming, exploration, and not too long intervals between fights.
We typically play a module over a weekend in 2-3 short sessions of 2 hours, which is fine with the boys. We (my wife and I) arrange the sessions as a sleepover with sessions Saturday afternoon and evening and one on Sunday before everybody is picked up by their parents, and needless to say, the boys insist on computer gaming time together as well, so we accommodate for that as well.
Characters and players
Since it is their first go at Dungeons & Dragons, and consequently never have studied the rules, and since they have no background knowledge of Mystara, I try to design the play to introduce them to the various gaming concepts, one step at at time.
Also, I go light on the world description, beyond what is absolutely necessary. The boys anyway take world building along the lines of: “OK, we’re stuck on an asteroid? Cool, where are the monsters?” No thing introduced, they haven’t already experienced in Fortnite or some other computer game of their choosing.
I decided from the beginning, that I didn’t want them to role play any characters, keeping peace between siblings can be challenging enough without the additional stress of made up characters interfering.
So instead I had blackballs scoop up the boys individually on Earth and dump them in-game in Lake Mistamere. They woke up later, having been rescued from drowning by fishermen, in the dormitary of the church in Treshold. After a restitution period, giving a cleric time to explain where they were, and answer some of their questions, they were kicked out from church property and told to go make a living for themselves, and “Oh, btw… The Adventurers Guild on Fogor Isle can always use some fresh recruits.”
So, off they went to Fogor Isle to become adventurers.
When they rolled out their character stats, we did the quick “2d6 + 6 and everybody is a fighter with 1d4 + 4 hp + con, now gear up”-version. That way, no one was stuck with lousy stats, but with enough of difference in the stats that the boys felt, that their character was unique.
Their first gear was standard issue Adventurers Guild eqipment. A sword, a shield, leather armor, a spear, etc.
“Eh… Uncle, what about bandages?” - “Bandages?” - “Yeah… we can’t go into a dungeoun without bandages. Where do we get them?”
And not wanting to admit that I’ve gone into way too many dungeons without ever considering having bandages with me, a skill and an item was introduced. Priest can make bandages, heals +1 and a character can wear up to 3 a day.