DnD For the Kids

I'm a nerd... an absolute geek. I spend my man-chore time listening, not to music, but to podcasts about D&D , Wheel of Time , and being a better DM (okay so also D&D). I discovered Dragon Talk , the official D&D podcast in March, and the first episode that I listened to had Maude Garrett on as a guest. LIFE CHANGING. Okay, so I use hyperbole like punctuation, but this was the very first thing I applied to D&D with kids. Maude Garrett is the creator of Geek Bomb and Fungeons & Flagons (a D&D inspired improv show that is not for kids). Her approach to character creation is absolutely inspired! I borrowed (stole) directly from this in my session zero for my first group. I actually made the questions into a Google Form and posted it on Discord (not ideal, but we were all in quarantine). Ideally, I would interview each kid as a part of my "session zero" (actually a combination of mini sessions -- more on this later) Here are the questions I asked:...

Hi! I'm Clint. I'm a teacher, a dad, and a gamer with strong roots in old school D&D. My first experience was running the old black box for my mom and her friends. I played Second Edition AD&D throughout high school and college, moving to 3.5 during my first few years of teaching. After many years and many iterations (and a long hiatus while I went through a painful divorce and custody battle and spent a lot of time playing MMORPGs... and was incidentally saved from the pain that was 4th edition), I've come back to D&D. This time though, I'm running the game for my kids and their friends!  The Famous / Infamous Black Box I set up another website to house the resources and game stuff we're doing, called " The East York Rollers " with a mission to provide family friendly D&D sessions for kids to play with mentors either online or live in York, PA. Unfortunately "we" are not an open organization. We do not have the resources to vet m...