Run your first tabletop game for your kids this Saturday

The first goblin I ever put in front of my kids died of natural causes. Not stabbed. Adopted. My seven-year-old asked if she could give it half her sandwich, rolled a die because I couldn't think of a reason not to, got a high number, and named it Kevin. Kevin came along for the next four sessions. Kevin got a little wooden sword. I had prepped a fight and got a pet.

That's the job. You're not writing a novel and reading it aloud. You're setting up a situation, asking "what do you do," and then being honest about what happens next.

Pick a game that fits the kid, not your nostalgia

If your kids are six to nine, don't start with the Player's Handbook. Fifth edition D&D is a fine game and the hardcover runs about fifty bucks new, but character creation alone will eat a full evening and a six-year-old can't track a spell slot.

For young kids, use something short. Hero Kids is a few dollars as a PDF and was built for ages four to ten — characters fit on one card, combat runs on a grid with tokens, and a session takes half an hour. Mausritter is free to download as a PDF and puts the players in the role of mice with sewing-needle swords, which sells itself to anybody under twelve. Dungeon World works well if your kids are ten and up and you'd rather talk than look things up.

Ten and older with patience? Sure, run 5e. Just build their characters for them ahead of time and hand over finished sheets. Let them pick the name, the species, and one thing their character is scared of. That's plenty of ownership.

The trade-off with the light systems is real: they run out of road. A twelve-year-old who's been playing for a year will want more buttons to press, and Hero Kids doesn't have them. That's a good problem. Upgrade when they ask.

Prep less than you think, but prep the right three things

Write three index cards. That's it.

• Card one: the problem. Somebody's missing, something got stolen, something is coming out of the woods at night. One sentence.
• Card two: three places. The farm, the mill, the cave. Each gets two details, one of them weird. The mill wheel turns when there's no water.
• Card three: names and numbers. Six names you can grab on demand, and the stats for two monsters.

You won't use half of it. Kids go sideways immediately, and the moment you start steering them back to your planned path, they can feel it. The prep isn't a script, it's ammunition.

What goes wrong at minute twelve is always the same thing. They do something you didn't consider, you freeze, and the energy drops. The fix is to say "roll a die, high is good," decide what the number means, and keep moving. Nobody at the table is auditing you.

Time limits are a feature

Forty-five minutes for kids under nine. Ninety for ten and up, with a break in the middle for something to drink. End while they still want more. A session that ends with "already?" gets you a session next week. A session that runs two hours and dissolves into somebody lying under the table is a session you'll have to rebuild from.

Set it at the same time each week if you can. Sunday after dinner, table cleared, phone in another room. The ritual does more work than the rules do.

The four moves that make you a good referee

Say yes, then ask for a roll. Can I climb the bookshelf? Yes. Roll. Can I talk to the horse? Yes, and the horse is rude. The instinct to protect your plot is the enemy. Your plot isn't that good.

Only roll when failure is interesting. If the kid says "I search the desk," and there's nothing dangerous about searching the desk, they find what's in the desk. Rolling for everything teaches them the game is a slot machine.

Describe with two senses. Not "you enter the cave." You enter the cave, it smells like wet pennies, and water is dripping somewhere behind you. Kids build the picture faster than adults do. Give them material.

Let them fail forward. A missed lock pick shouldn't end the adventure. It should snap the pick, or wake the dog. Dead ends are the fastest way to kill a night.

Siblings, and the kid who wants to set everything on fire

Two kids with a three-year age gap is the hardest table you'll ever run. The older one solves everything first and the younger one goes quiet.

Fix it structurally, not with lectures. Go around the table in order and ask each kid directly what their character does. Give the younger one a unique tool the older one doesn't have — a whistle only animals hear, a lantern that shows lies. Then write in a problem that can only be solved with it.

The arsonist is also solvable. Some kids show up wanting to attack every single thing, and that's not a character flaw, it's an eight-year-old testing the walls of the sandbox. Let consequences do the teaching. Burn down the barn, and the farmer who was going to give you the map is now standing in the ashes. Don't scold. Just play the world straight and let them watch it react.

The one thing I'd do differently from my first run: I let one kid roll for another kid's character because she was faster with the math. Took three weeks to undo that. Everybody rolls their own dice, every time, even slowly.

The stories you choose are yours to choose

Nothing about this hobby requires grimness. You're picking the tone, and you can pick one that matches your house. Mine runs on courage, mercy, and keeping your word — the paladin who spares somebody, the promise made to a stranger at the crossroads that turns out to matter four sessions later. Kids notice. They start making those choices without being asked, because in the fiction they get to test what it feels like.

You also get to see them think. Watching a nine-year-old realize she can lie to a guard, then decide not to, and then explain why, is worth more than anything a screen is going to hand you on a Sunday night.

What to buy, honestly

A set of seven polyhedral dice runs around ten dollars, and buy one set per kid in a different color or you'll spend the whole night sorting. A notebook. A pencil. A free PDF.

That's the whole startup cost. The miniatures, the terrain, the foam castle walls, the dice tower somebody 3D printed — all of it is fun and none of it is required. I'd skip it until session ten. If they're still asking on session ten, build the castle.

Kevin the goblin, for the record, eventually took an arrow for my daughter's character and got a funeral with a real eulogy. Nine minutes long. I wasn't allowed to speak.