I’ve started running a weekly game for my daughter (S), her cousin (T), and a friend of S’s from school (L). T is absolutely over the moon for Dragon Heresy, the 5e-derived, Viking-themed game that was my third Kickstarter. That project was smaller than I’d have wanted. I had written something like 800 pages worth of material, the full three-book run from level 1-20 with The Book of Heroes (player book), the Book of Deeds (GM book, setting), and The Book of Foes (monsters).

It did what I asked it to do (made the goal, even a huge offset print run). It’s a fun system and has some real flavor (setting wise) and some worked-through mechanics that I think help with narrative-rules harmony (wounds vs vigor, shield rules, a few other things that add some tactical choices to combat).

Regardless, T likes it, S wanted to game with me, and we needed more players, and recruited L. We play online via Google Meet for now. More on that later.

We’ll probably try and add one or two more folks to buff up the party size, but these may wind up being NPCs. More on that later too.

We’ve played two sessions, and I’ve learned some things.

Online: Convenient but Hard

Online gaming is nothing new to me. I’ve been doing it for years. My system of choice is GURPS and Powered by GURPS, and owing to the relatively small number of folks who play that game, I mostly play with dedicated online groups. Many are writers, or oddly enough, in IT in one way or another. So there’s no lack of imagination and tech savvy to make that go.

That being said, running an online game for young folks – or at least these young folks – is real work.

Attention span is limited. Side conversations take over the microphone if they’re spoken (only one screen is primary) and when they happen on chat, they tend to be the young people posting random streams of emoji.

So keeping the kids on track requires something in front of them all the time game-wise. This is easier, in my experience, with a face-to-face group. Distance and Covid quarantine make that harder.

Lesson Learned: Be ready to be a parent as well as a GM. Especially when the more boisterous try and tell you the rules you wrote, or shout over someone else’s turn, or . . . “Please let [player] speak while they are taking their own turn. Yes you. Quiet until they’re done.” is a common and needed refrain.

Second Lesson: These kids are cooped the hell up in quarantine land. Don’t expect or demand a focused session. If you get in an hour of good gaming in a two hour session…be glad.

Be Prepared? That’s for Scouts

The kids have to be guided through character generation. If you don’t, you’re liable to get characters that are interesting but probably don’t fit the setting. Because whatever guidance is given, they want to bring in their special homebrew they saw on YouTube or Twitch. Also, if as an adult you don’t guide them, you may not get a character at all. We have spent at least half of the time making or re-making characters for the players, as they either don’t have them at the time, forgot to make them, or . . . you get it.

Lesson Learned: This is going to require 1-1 time with each player to ensure that the characters are interesting, mix well with their own group, and have enough “cool useful abilities” that the two wizards aren’t coming up with things that they can’t do. “I want to use Mage Hand to strangle someone!” Ensure the kids have a damage spell they can always use (I have never seen a better case for damaging cantrips than my two sessions with this group). Ensure the healing niche is filled, even if that means plentiful potions or a hireling or NPC cleric.

Humans? Bah.

This isn’t unique to 10-year-olds, but if you have an a la carte menu of unusual and cool races, like dragonborn, tieflings, aasimar, tieflings, half-ogres, dragonborn, tieflings, tieflings, or did I mention dragonborn? you’re going to get a party consisting of those playable types. I like playing human characters; the synergy you get (especially in single-attribute or dual-attribute dominant systems) from picking a race that boosts the desired traits of a desired character class is just too much to pass up. Even point-build GURPS has this a bit, since the “racial disadvantages” that come along with the package tend not to count against disad maxima. Without that rate-limiting disincentive…all wizards are apparently elves, all barbarians are half-ogres, etc.

That’s not necessarily a problem. It makes sense even in-game that the “adventuring” profession will attract those suited to it. And if 90% of the population of Fantasy Game World are farmers with an oddly anachronistic outlook on life, that other 10% of heroes, city-dwellers, or “other” humanoids really become your recruitment pool.

In any case, both boys are playing dragonborn (a fighter and a wizard); my daughter a tiefling wizard. She would definitely have played a tabaxi if she knew they existed because OMG LIKE TOTALLY I WANNA PLAY A KITTY.

Lesson learned here is be prepared for the adventuring party to look nothing like you might expect. In fact, don’t have any expectations going in. Better that way.

SQUIRREL!

This one was my fault. I am running them through an improv and unscripted sandbox consisting of setting places and regions and challenges I’ve worked out through my Powered by GURPS “Nordlond” setting, the fairly well-received version of the Dragon Heresy setting that now has one setting book (Citadel at Nordvorn), three pure adventures (Hall of Judgment, Dragons of Rosgarth, and Forest’s End), a ‘nifty races’ supplement (Nordlondr Folk, which *does* have cat-people, totally-not-tieflings, totally-not-dragonborn, and many others), and Hand of Asgard, which sort of does for Powered by GURPS clerics (and to a lesser extent, Holy Warriors) what divine domains do for them in 5e/Dragon Heresy. Plus my grappling book.

Even so…they came to Akkerisborg by ship, and then stared at me. “What now?” It’s a big city, you tell me?

Yeah, no. I wound up having them hired to guard a logging party, and then threw a scouting group of lizard-folk at them. Except I misjudged the challenge rating, and wow, these guys are hard vs three first-level characters, two of whom were wizards. I almost killed my daughter, and only the worst combo of truly bad rolls for the lizard-folk and horrid tactics made up for it. They KO’d all four, and then limped back to the city with a warning to the wall wardens that the lizard folk tribes were scouting close to Audreyn’s Wall.

Next time, I intend to throw them in an actual dungeon, rather than just an improv thing. I may even borrow from Peter Dell’Orto’s book and have them stumble across a megadungeon, because nothing focuses the mind like a hole full of treasure.

The lesson here is ensure that the group has stuff to do. The best thing for this crowd is to offer several discrete choices. You can either (a) escort the logging crew, (b) go raiding on a ship, or (c) venture to the X on this conveniently found map and go get loot.

In fact, that’s what I’m likely going to do next game. The players will stumble across a party of three conveniently dead adventurers, one of whom has a map or a journal that basically says “wow. We went into the cleft tree and then came out inside this grand underground city. We brought out some fine gems and Olaf obtained a magical mace. This ruin is clearly loaded with goodies, and we must go back!”

That ought to get their attention. And keep it.

Parting Shot

One of the things I got to realize afresh on this one was that my Dragon Heresy game really is fun to run, and it’s fun to play. The 5e-derived nature of it means that barriers to entry are low, and there’re usually folks that have played. The added rules make for some tense situations, and “you rolled really well, went right past the guy’s vigor, and hit him for wounds…oh, he’s KO’d!” happened twice in the players’ favor, which turned an (oops, the GM miscalculated) ugly and potentially TPK encounter into a lucky win, which also gives the three a nice boost to reputation.

But next time, I’ll come more prepared as well. Maps, maybe Roll20 or one of the other nice VTTs out there, even if it’s open on only my screen and I’m sharing.

I’ll forbid the kids from turning on the auto close-captioning, since that’s just a ticket for them to utter random strings of gibberish to see if the program can keep up.

I’ll make sure *I* have copies of each character sheet for reference

I will still be squashing “look, squirrel!” digressions, and ruthlessly preventing some of the players (the boys, one in particular) from talking over, well, everyone else. Including me. That’s just good polite socialization.

But next time, they’ll discover that there are many holes in the ground, filled with yummy loot, and that should help quite a bit.

More later…but I do not intend to stop, and as I practice more, and train in the group, hopefully things go more smoothly.