Your kid overhears your D&D game, sees it played in Stranger Things, or comes home all excited that their friend has told them about this awesome new game… and they ask you if they can play D&D too!

Now what? Whether you’re looking for a how to guide, D&D suggestions, D&D alternatives, or just some general advice on what to expect, check out here for a quick guide on where to start from the ENnie awarded TTRPGkids site and the author of “Making a Tabletop RPG for YOUR Particular Kid”!

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Figure out how your kid want to play D&D
Figure out how you want to play D&D (or something else) with your kid
How to run D&D (and other TTRPGs) for kids
Kid-friendly D&D, all-ages TTRPGs, and other resources

Figure out how your kid wants to play D&D

Before we get into a lot of the tips on how to run a game, you first want to establish exactly what your kid is asking for before planning out a whole campaign and looping the rest of the family into the plan.

Ask your kid if they want to play with the family… or if they want to run a game for their friends… or if they want to join a group at school that already has a facilitator… or if they don’t know yet.

This is going to inform where you go next.

If they want you running a game for them, you have your work cut out for you, and I’ve got a ton of tips below!

If they want to GM, check out my article here on “Encouraging Your Kid to GM or Guide a TTRPG”.

And if they want to join a group of peers, I recommend that you start reaching out to your local libraries, a school club, or an online D&D facilitator to help them find a group of kids to play with. Make sure to field the group you’re joining and watch for them to establish clear ground rules and transparency to guardians so your kid will be safe in the group.

Figure out how YOU want to play D&D (or something else) with your kid

Next, your comfort level with the material that your kid engages with is also a massive factor in choosing how to proceed.

Depending on your interactions with D&D and what you know about your particular kid (i.e. their reading/math skills, attention span, and interests), figure out if you are OK with them playing D&D, and adjust if necessary.

When we started playing TTRPGs (tabletop role playing games) with our kid, he heard us talking about D&D and wanted to play, but he was also a bit young for some of the complexity and themes that came with the game. Because of this, we choose other TTRPGs that felt like D&D or have run D&D adventures that were made specifically for young kids. When we played these adventures, we used a parsed down version of D&D 5e made by Family Fantasy RPG because that’s what we were comfortable with and knew he could handle.

And that was OK.

If you are excited about running D&D, are OK with the system, and you know your kid is up for it, go ahead and try out D&D!

If you’re concerned about running core D&D material or system complexity or want to support indie creators but your kid’s heart is set specifically on D&D, there is a whole bunch of indie content specifically tailored for kids (I made a list of indie D&D 5e for kids games here) that you could use!

If you want to run something besides D&D, have an honest and clear conversation with your kid about why you’re suggesting a different (but still really cool) game and ask if they’ll try it out with you. If they’re receptive to it, there are hundreds of other tabletop RPGs to pick from (another list full of all-ages TTRPGs to help out)!

How to run D&D (and other TTRPGs) for kids

This entire website (400+ articles) is entirely focused on tabletop RPGs for kids. What I have below are some basic steps or recommendations for those searching for advice on D&D and where you can find other articles on the site that do a deep dive into certain topics.

Get on the same page

Like the part above where you needed to ask your kid how they wanted to play D&D so you could establish the correct mode for running or finding a game for them… we want to do that when planning a game too.

Ask your kid if they want a classic D&D medieval fantasy game or if they want a sci-fi story, like Star Trek… or if they want an adventure closer to what you’d find in Spidey Amazing Friends. This tells you generally how to plan your story.

Next, you want to establish some safety tools. These help to make sure you aren’t going to include something particularly triggering your adventure that might cause undue stress or turn your kid off to future game sessions AND provides you with a clear way to establish ground rules, like stopping the game by raising your hand if things get too rowdy.

For more info on getting on the same page, check out the following articles:

Include your players in the process

Once you’ve established some safety tools, figured out your genre, and know the system you want to try out, you’ll want to either find a pre-made adventure to run or make up an adventure to play with your kids!

In a lot of D&D and other TTRPG games with grown-ups, the GM or story guider does a lot of the leg work in creating the plot, characters, maps, encounters, and more so that everything is a surprise to their players and they can weave complex plots into the story that leave everyone wondering what’s next!

For some kids, this can work really well, but for many kids, mine included, they can sometimes be more engaged when involved in the process. This doesn’t mean that you need to give away ALL of your secrets, but you can get them involved in the world so they feel invested in it and they have ownership.

Let them help make maps like the World of Corde family does for their games or ask them questions about the scene (i.e. what’s strange about the trees in the goblin forest) like the Almost Bedtime Theater Podcast team does. Small bits of engagement up front hooks them similarly to those complex plots you’d use with grown-up players, helps kids practice for becoming storytellers, themselves, and takes some of the world-building load off of your shoulders.

Keep your game manageable

As you look at all the cool suggestions and ideas you have for your story, remember to also keep the game manageable. You don’t need to do everything all at once.

D&D or D&D-like epic quests can sometimes grow and grow and grow into massive campaigns and may have a lot of details to track with character creation and encounter mechanics.

Especially for the first few games, it’s OK to use parsed down mechanics, and to start out with a one-shot to get your bearings. This gives everyone (you and your kids) a chance to learn about the game and get a feel for what everyone can handle without diving into a full commitment.

Decision paralysis or seeking “the perfect setup” is also a common roadblock for parents and facilitators who are thinking about starting to play D&D and other TTRPGs with their kids. Don’t get hung up on trying to create a huge fully developed sandbox world; just start by running a tester game and break down that first barrier for everyone.

Set yourself up for success by keeping the first game manageable for both you and your players.

For more on this, check out my article on the “good enough” game session.

Set your own expectations

As you get ready to start your first game, check your own expectations for what you want from this first game session.

Like with the previous recommendation, keep this manageable.

For me, a good game session is one where we end with everyone eventually wanting to do another session in the future.

This can sometimes mean that we end the game early to be picked up again next time because kiddo has the fidgets and needs to run, we take a step back mid-game to explain or adjust a mechanic that we’re having a really hard time working with, or we go on a whacky sidequest from my child’s wonderful imagination the whole time and never hit any of the loosely prepared content that we came to the table with.

These are variations on events that can come up at a game table with grown-ups, but they tend to be much more prevalent when playing with youth because they’re still developing their social skills, emotional regulation capabilities, and more. Kids can also be way more creative in both where they take the story and the problem-solving ideas they come up with.

If you go in expecting some chaos and just aim for a fun game, you’re probably going to be a lot more satisfied with the experience and your players will pick up on that too.

Focus on fun + flexibility

And that is a good segway into making sure that you have a strong focus on fun!

The main reason your kid wants to play D&D is because they want to have fun with it, whether that comes from the game itself or from hanging out with people they care about.

So focus on the fun.

If the adventure isn’t clicking with your players or they’re struggling with the mechanics, be flexible. It can be OK to adjust parts of the game to keep it fun.

To help gauge this, ask your players how they’re doing if you notice the mood shift or at the end of every session. See if they have feedback and ask them what could make the game more interesting or engaging. Then, listen to them and see what you can do to help them out.

Adding more of the adventure elements that they like or working with them to adjust things that they aren’t enjoying can help make your games easier to run while also showing your players that they value their input and their wellbeing.

Give yourself some grace

Lastly, give yourself time to learn.

Given the right experience, intuition, and player capacity for picking up a new game, you can sometimes get a homerun on the first session. However, if you don’t (because, keep in mind, you and your players are still learning), that’s OK.

Usually the first session or two will involve a few bumps in the road as you are trying to see what your kids can handle and want from the game and while your kids are trying to learn new rules and get used to the idea of role-playing a character.

After those first few sessions, it also usually gets a lot easier very quickly, so don’t get discouraged if it’s not perfect!

Let yourself learn, and try again, using what you’ve learned, to make the next session a little bit easier for everyone. Like learning to GM for grown ups, learning to GM for kids is a skill, and it is well worth learning and being able to give the gift of tabletop RPGs to your kids!

Kid-friendly D&D, all-ages TTRPGs, and other resources

I hope this article helped to give you a good summary of what’s different about running D&D for kids versus for grown ups and where to start with your journey!

For more info, I recommend that you check out:

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My kid wants to play D&D – now what?