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It’s funny that Tuck chose this week to wax poetic regarding role-playing games, as it’s a rather momentous week for the geek parents out there (and folks who know geek parents). This week is when the seeds of the gamer geek may first be sown by a parent wanting to instill a love of the tabletop in their youngster. This, is “Teach Your Kids To Game Week.”

The event, started by the folks behind DriveThruRPG.com, is intended to start instilling a love of classic gaming – the kind you do on a tabletop, with boards, miniatures, dice, pencils and paper, and not using a digital medium – in the next generation. Since the Geeks With Issues are all about spreading our love of geekdom to the world, and since many of them are in fact parents, this event is exactly the sort of thing that we’d like to share and promote.

As the first of our “Geekviews” series, the format of this post is likely to be a bit different than your usual GwI opinion post. This story is going to be an evolving post, in this case collection of ideas deriving from the Geeks on how you can get kids (and even adults who don’t realize they’re kids) involved in RPGs, and spread this beloved tradition. Each of the Geeks who would like to be featured will have their say, and leave future discussion to you.

But enough introduction – let’s see what the Geeks have to say:

TUCK
Seeing as I have two kids who are two young to game at the moment, I figure that I’ll focus in on some basic tools to help teach gaming. The first I’ll recommend is one of the most basic – dice. Despite the young ages of my spawn, I’m going to spend a part of this week having them handle dice, roll them, and tell me the numbers they see show up. The wonder attached with accurately identifying the number of the dice will hopefully start memories which I may then develop into actual gaming experiences in the future. And while I don’t have a set of these, I would recommend them to anyone with younger kids – they’re cuddly, and it’s really hard to choke on a d20 the size of a softball.
Another tool which I spotted online today, and look forward to sharing with my kids, is a throwback to classic AD&D – image and PDF copies of the “Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album.” As a geek, I would never recommend allowing kids to touch an unblemished copy of this original classic, but through the magic of digital distribution you can have your kids enjoy coloring their adventures again and again. If you can hang onto the pictures for long enough, you can use them as a touchstone to start a gaming conversation, and perhaps open the door to their first real game.
Of course, when that day comes, you’ll need a game to play. Again, I’m going to fall back on my old friend D&D (4th Edition this time, a current version you can find at your local book store) as a tool to start teaching the game. One of the greatest complaints that elder gamers have with D&D 4 – that the game is excessively simplified – makes it a perfect introductory tool to gaming for younglings. A quick search of the web for ways to play D&D with kids found me some excellent tips on how to make a game work, some awesome homemade character sheets created with kids in mind, and even an official Wizards of the Coast adventure tailored for younger players. Of course, there are plenty of games keyed specifically for kids (Fuzzy Heroes looks like the coolest to me), but I think that it never hurts to start with a work that derives from the game that started it all.

Of course…the Geekmaster goes into long and dull detail as to things you could do with young gamers. I’ll give him credit that he does give plenty of information to help getting players started early.

JENNIE-JEN
Seeing as Ben is too young, I’m going to focus on Christopher. I’d like to try doing something unstructured with him, since I don’t think he’s ready for the rules of a game yet. I’m going to start telling him a story, and then give him piece of info so he can tell me the rest of the story from there. It will allow him to be creative without the weight of a full game. I hope allowing him to use his imagination this way will be a great way to start him on the path towards a real game.

Concise, age-appropriate, and creative. A nice way to allow a much younger gamer to have a chance to experience the feeling of a RPG, without the structure.

MATT
I’m a fan of the storytelling game ‘Once Upon A Time,’ though I admit I haven’t played it much with my kids recently…I’ll have to remedy that soon. More later…

So True Believers – the Geeks have weighed in with their thoughts. What say you?