1:53 am. A rainbow of colors streams down the side of my wall as my CPU’s RGB strips light up the dark room. I’m scrolling endlessly through Reddit and DriveThruRPG for what I believe MUST exist somewhere on the internet - an RPG for children.
It seems so simple. Surely it’s out there... right?
For a while, I’ve been dreaming about the day I get my boys around the table with my D&D books and minis to run their first game. But that’s at least six years away, and I can’t wait that long! Why limit myself to a product that’s only useful half a decade from now, when I could find a system that fits their age today?
In the meantime, I started obsessively planning board games for when my son would be older, researching vocabulary levels, and making a list; a gaming roadmap, if you will.
I would start stacking the HABA games from the age of 2. Then, at 4, I’ll run some simple puzzle games like Sequence and Dobble. Then, when he gets to 6, that’s when things truly start ramping up. The Western board game industry is littered with games for 6 and up, likely because kids start reading at that age. After that, it’s all about complexity. My First Scythe and Marvel United at 8, and then by 10, he’d be well versed enough to do some real heavy lifting. We're talking Spirit Island, Root, and Andromeda's Edge. That’s when we jump into D&D.
Of course, while one side of me started to lay out their future roadmap like some twisted version of an Asian mom mapping out schools for their kids, the other side of me just wanted them to play with me, and ONLY if they wanted to. I’m not opposed to buying a game they want, trying it, and tossing it away when they find out it sucks. As long as they're experiencing new things.
Best case scenario: they bring games to school, and their friends think they’re cool. Worst case scenario: they get shunned and end up socially awkward like me. I remember bringing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Quidditch Card Game and playing it with my friends every recess. I also remember setting up Risk at the back of the classroom at the age of 10 and no one wanted to play a simple military war game with me.
Right now, though, I’m in a good spot. Kids naturally want to play with their parents, whether it’s pretend dinosaurs or running from wall to wall. My older son always asks about my board game collection, and it brings me so much joy to talk about it. “These are big-boy games,” I tell him. “It says ‘14+’ here, which means you’ll need to be five years old, then six, seven, eight, all the way to fourteen! We’ll play those games that say ‘3+’ now. And papa promises: when you’re older and still want to play with me, I’ll play with you every day.”
My Thoughts On Play
I strongly believe that many soft skills come from playing games. Learning to accept failure and building grit from punishing games like Dark Souls and Ninja Gaiden, to reasoning and critical thinking skills from Phoenix Wright, to something as simple as precise hand-eye coordination with Halo or Call of Duty. There is the joy of creative freedom in Minecraft or Animal Crossing, and let’s not forget the wide spectrum of narrative games like Detroit: Become Human or the variety of Telltale Games. And these skills are not developed in isolation, either. Cyberpunk 2077 is a narrative-driven, first-person shooter with side quests that players need their smarts to solve.
Games, especially well-designed ones, provide a safe space to learn real-life lessons. Because they’re forms of play, they inspire improvement and challenge personal limits without feeling like chores or lectures.
Game Genres and How They Excel
I think there's also something to be said about the medium of the game and how that translates to our experience with it.
Video Games excel at immersion and character identification. This is where we disassociate ourselves during the time we play a video game and experience the world through the lens of the video game character we’re playing. The medium is visual and auditory like movies or tv, lending itself to these sorts of experiences.
VR Games, which should be considered a subset of Video Games, break down the character-player barrier even further and enter the territory of embodiment. A person who has not experienced VR will never understand the feeling of true height and danger in Richie's Plank Experience, or the terror of zombies running at your face.
Board Games stand out in terms of rules and the abstract. They rely on a social contract: players collectively agree to follow arbitrary rules to share a unique experience using sheets of paper and pieces of plastic. If I fail the roll, Mr. Fox gets to move 3 steps. I don’t want him to move, but he must! The rules say so! And because board games are played in close proximity, with other people, the social contract aspect of it becomes very prevalent.
Honestly, born before the millennia, it's a little crazy that we have to define that some forms of play involve PHYSICALLY playing with other people. Yes, we have to. The internet started the slow death of physical interaction. Everything is played in front of a screen. It is convenient, accessible, and much more sterile.
Of course, we have physical interactions with other humans during our day. Kids in school, adults in the office, seniors with the center nurses... but none of the regular interactions we have with other humans involve an artificial space that is solely created for competition or cooperation, within an arbitrary boundary set by someone else... wait, sounds like Physical Ed. But you get my point, moving on.
Tabletop Roleplaying Games excel in imagination and social interaction. I think primarily why I want to venture into this. For as long as humans existed, storytelling existed. Axioms, lessons, and paradigms, are all taught and shared through the act of verbally constructing a fictional world and narrative. The greatest evidence of this is the Bible. Year after year, it continues to be the best-selling book of the year.
There is still a further distinction between stories and TTRPGs: the narrative is neither planned nor scripted. It's much closer to improvisation, with each player a listener and active participant in crafting and creating this unfolding story. Player agency arises from empathizing with your character and living their world, facing the challenges they do, and making choices for them.
Imagine if our great stories came from D&D sessions...
Sam: Aragorn's nowhere in sight. We can't face the Nazgûl head-on. We're just Halflings!
Frodo: We've nowhere else to go. We have to fight. I ready my weapon.
DM: Silently, from every direction, Nazgûl step out towards you. You feel a chill as you stare into the inky blackness of their faceless hoods. They raise their swords. You're in the open. What do you do?
Frodo: I need to go away. I put on the Ring and gain Greater Invisibility.
DM: Ah, unbeknownst to you, the Ring, a cursed object, doesn't make you invisible. It sends you to an Astral Mirror Plane, the Wraithworld. In this world, you see remnants of the Nazgûl's human selves, which are tied to their wraiths in the Ethereal Plane. Surprised, they see you as well. One tries to grab the ring from you. Give me a contested STR roll.
Frodo: I succeed.
DM: Angry, the wraith rears back and stabs you. Morgul Blade Crits for... 38 Necrotic Damage.
Frodo: Shit, guys, I'm downed. I need to start rolling Death Saves.
Aragorn (who just returned from getting a soda from the kitchen): What's happening? Are we in trouble? I'll grab a torch and swing wildly. What's the roll for torch? NAT 20 BITCHES!
So while this was obviously a part of Lord of the Rings, I would argue that mechanically, it's a sequence of events that would very likely happen any regular D&D session. The narrative drawn from the consequence of mechanics interacting with one another is something players do all the time. We embellish and draw out scenes in our minds of what's happening in the game. We live the life of our characters as they lived.
TTRPGs are also such a great framework for experimenting with morals and values in a safe space. Because anything can happen, and anyone can do anything "without consequence", players in a TTRPG are free to explore morally gray choices they wouldn't otherwise in real life. Playing out the consequences of our actions tend to have more value than theorizing about it, especially when the stakes, though purely imaginative, are imposed so seriously by the players. Should they report a thief stealing to feed his family? Accept bribes from corrupt officials? Sacrifice themselves for the group or flee to save their own lives? The consequences, while imaginary, often feel real thanks to good Game Masters who reflect actions realistically in-game.
But at its core, TTRPGs are about communication. We learn to communicate with our peers. We learn to share ideas, negotiate, barter, argue, and coerce other players, real or fictional. We learn to find our voice. The center of all relationships is communication, and this is something no other medium can replicate as well as TTRPGs.
This is the impetus behind my desire to create a TTRPG system for young children: to provide a framework for imaginative play where kids can learn to communicate and grow in confidence. There’s nothing more powerful for a growing child than finding their voice.
That's all I got today.
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