Introducing RPGs To The Next Generation
Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. Please leave any comments there.
While I haven’t been blessed with children yet, I have been given four wonderful nephews, the oldest of which just turned 12 years old. I have been waiting for this day for quite a while now, and with the blowing of the candles (so to speak) the time has arrived for me to play a part of being the most awesome uncle that I have been preparing for all my life: with the arrival of his 12th birthday, I am now introducing my nephew to tabletop roleplaying games.
Why now? I think it’s just the simple fact that it was when I was 12 that I was introduced to roleplaying games during the 7th grade; I was able to grasp the concepts of the game perfectly well by that point, so I can reasonable assume that my nephew, who I believe to be smarter at his age than I was at that time, will do so as well. He’s grown playing videogames that emulate and in some cases are influenced/descended from D&D, so I think that by now he’ll be able to put all those strands together into one thread and see how it all comes together. Lastly, that’s the recommended age on the box and hey, why not trust it?
After making the decision that it was time to begin the indoctrination, I went to Amazon.com and ordered him the new D&D Starter Set aka. the new Red Box. Why did I choose this boxed set above any other introductory product, especially considering how I’ve gone gaga over the Dragon Age RPG? Surprisingly (even to myself, I discovered), I went through a whole thought process to reach this decision.
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