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So, my niece asked me to teach her to play Dungeons & Dragons. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it kind of is. At the risk turning this into one of those gushy mommy blogs, I will say that my niece is a pretty cool chick. At an age when most kids get really shitty (12), she still has an imagination and a sense of adventure (my nephew’s a pretty awesome kid too, but this isn’t really about him). She told me she was excited to learn RPGs because then she’ll be a “complete geek.” She’s partly kidding. Partly. I’ve watched geek culture undergo a pretty massive renaissance in the last fifteen years, especially the last five, so maybe it’s cool now. Or, more likely, she saw something on The Big Bang Theory. Yet part of me can’t help but wonder: is this because of me? Am I the cool one? I’m certainly the youngest adult she talks to regularly. Pelor help the normals if the young, hip uncle is the one teaching you D&D in Grandma’s basement.

While I preach the virtues of low expectations and time management, I consider teaching new players kind of a sacred duty. With so many roleplaying games to choose from and so many ways to play them, people think of their first game as “the way these games are played” for a long time. You want to hook them early. With my niece, it goes even farther. Gaming has become such a cornerstone in my life. Most of my friendships and relationships have come about at the table. I started teaching myself D&D when I was eight, using my older cousin’s old books. I would’ve loved to have someone sit down and teach me the true power.

Either she’ll get it or she won’t. Most new players know pretty fast whether they’ll want to continue. Either the role-playing increases their immersion or it doesn’t. Either they enjoy the narrative freedom or they don’t. My niece has the makings of a good player: smart but imaginative; a reader, but not shy. She gets invested in the things she likes (though I hope to keep her away from slash fandoms *shudder*). I just have to make sure to plan a decent game for her.

The Game

So what game should I actually teach her? She may have asked for D&D, but, like most of the populace, she doesn’t realize how wide the RPG umbrella stretches. I use D&D as shorthand for the civilians, just so I can explain what I’m going with my Saturday. In reality, I’ve considered a handful of options:

Fate: I’m really not into Fate Accelerated. I’ve enjoyed Fate Core, but I don’t know it that well. And, honestly, It’s a little nontraditional when she asked me for “Dungeons and Dragons.”

Dungeon World: I don’t know this game that well, but I could pick the rules up in 15 minutes. Still not crunchy enough.

Dungeons and Dragons: The granddaddy of role-playing. I’ve heard awesome things about 5e, but I don’t have it yet. (I know, I know. I’m terrible.) 4e isn’t really my thing, and I don’t have five hours to make a 3.5 character for her. Aside from that, D&D is best as a continuing campaign. Not suitable for one-shots. Pass.

Savage Worlds: Okay, I was going to pick this anyway, since I’m a huge SW fanboy. But let me iterate some specific reasons: Savage Worlds is crunchy enough to show her what D&D combat is like, but simple enough for her to know what all of the numbers on her character sheet mean. Plus, I know the game really well.

Worlds At Your Fingertips

First thing I asked: “What do you want to play?” I told her that we could play though any kind of story she wanted in any genre, which led to “ummm…I’m not really sure.” I didn’t expect her to come up with a campaign idea, but I thought I’d throw it out there. My initial (very cool) plan was to do a post-apocalyptic game of Disney princesses. I’ll revisit that idea one day. But I decided to meet her expectation and do something cliché: a small fantasy adventure.

So what kind of character should she play? I’ve often said that class-based systems are good for new players because they don’t know what they don’t know yet. I don’t want to overwhelm her with options, but I want her to pick her own character, so I elected to give her a few options. I don’t want to offer a warrior or a healer. A warrior won’t have the kind of versatility I want to offer, and a healer really works better in a group. Instead, her three choices were:

A Ranger, with archery, a handful of physical skills, and a couple of nature tricks.

A Thief, with moderate combat skills, thieving skills, and a couple of sneaky tricks (I’ll give her some smoke bombs).

A Wizard’s apprentice, with few skills, but magic spells.

I also elected to give her a sidekick, to give her a couple of slightly more interesting combats:

An apprentice healer.

A retired knight.

A big, shaggy dog.

She chose the thief, which I love. Aside from being a really fun concept, infiltration missions are versatile and easy to write. She also chose the dog, which is cool. I can guarantee she’ll have a positive emotional reaction to a dog character, even if it’s a 28mm miniature.

Getting Ready to Rock

I have a whole laundry list of things that I should include to give her a taste of RPGs, but I’ll narrow it down to a few things. I think the D&D Next developers are really onto something with their three pillars concept. I’m more optimistic about them than Tom is. I want to give her options to interact with her environment, and I want to add a couple of things that are a bit scary, and, of course, I want to add a couple of interesting choices. More to follow on this later, as I actually take her through her first adventure.