The Villian of These Stories – the Auther

A little about the Brent.

I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since the early 1990’s. I don’t remember who or how I was introduced to it but it was the basic set with “The Keep on the Borderlands” (1981) adventure.

I remember combing through the contents of the module and making plans with friends We actually ran it most as a coop DM team than as one person playing the DM. We’d just Roll to see if our characters were affected by traps and roll for monsters on their turn attacking our PC’s.

A few years ago I was able to share my passion for the game with a few kids with ages ranging from 10 to 16. Their parents were amazed that their anti-anything teen boys showed interest in doing something social, with lots of reading. I found a few things I’d like to share:

The younger kids (10-13) didn’t have the patience to sit still for more than 2 hours and was more interested in the action (traversing situations, killing the enemy). It helped to get them to grab snacks and to have a break every 2 hours, where she could literally run around the building. The dice rolling with math was good as well but made me realize how much math was eliminated with 5th Edition.

The teen boy’s I found I needed to keep engaged with descriptions and engagement. And at times they were happy with being railroaded down a story path.

The teen girl’s liked stories and building adventures. We played a game of empire building that I somewhat converted from someones 3.5 homebrew, and she loved that! Exploring an area, dealing with the situations of newly explored land, then making kingdom level decisions of what to do within with their meager resources. I actually found this the best for everyone as it offered the most engagement for everyone involved.