Guest post by: DiceRealms
Tabletop board games and Role-Playing Games (RPG) should be an important part of your home, especially if you have children. Do you find yourself or you children spending hours playing video games or watching television? Board games are making a comeback. New games are coming out weekly or monthly on Kickstarter as well as new rule sets for tabletop RPG. Whether you’re looking for a self-contained game like a board game or you’re looking for the sprawling adventures of an RPG. They all bring something to your table, so to speak. They give you bonding time with your family obviously, but what else do they offer in other positive benefits? Communication is a key part of life and learning effect ways to do so is important.
With a tabletop RPG you can really focus on certain aspects of the social spectrum. Most RPGs have game master (GM) of sorts who is refereeing the players but also the GM is kind of like the director of a play. The player are the actors who are playing the various characters. Which is really what Role-playing is about; transforming yourself into this character. Between narrating what you are doing and the roll of the dice the play can determine their characters fate. Now as a parent you can use the Role of a GM not just to tell the kids a story to play through but to give the moral and social dilemmas to work through. So not only do you and your children have this bonding time to do something fun together as a family, you can use this game to teach morals and ethics, as well as problem solving skills. When the GM forces the group of an adventure to face conflicts, they can be tailored to require a group effort to complete or fail as group. This builds teamwork skills, as well as communication and problem-solving skills, to overcome this one obstacle.
Game play also serves as a sneaky way to teach mathematics. Most games require counting and number recognition. Recognition of the number on the dice rolled plus any modifiers your character might have. The obstacles or encounters can range from a deadly trap to talking your way into the royal court. The possibilities are infinite. There are as many different scenarios or stories as you can dream up. All for the price of some paper, pen or pencil, a book or two, and hand full of dice. With the limitless possible of where the adventure could take you, it is well worth the price. The important part of it is that you can now have a fun evening or afternoon with your children while also teaching them life lessons. I think the most important aspect of it is bonding with your children. If you are unsure where to start your first role-playing table top game I would suggest starting with an older version of Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5 or even Fate Core both of which you can find a free PDF with a quick search online. There is a new version of 5th edition Dungeon and Dragon that is easier to play, but with the free PDF you can start your adventure with just the cost of dice.
Have any of you played these kinds of games before? Do you think this has inspired you to start playing a longer game with your family?
Our Off Grid Journey 
I got a few from Kickstarter and we enjoy most of them. Only one didn’t make the cut.
I would love to do Dungeons and Dragons but it takes way too much preparation time and I think they are too young for it.
Hopefully soon, but getting the books can get expensive.
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Well my wife and I have 5 children ranging from 7-17, and most of them started playing Dungeons and Dragons around the age of 4. Granted I simplified it for them. I pre-made characters so all they had to do was pick one. The characters were simplified as well. For example; Ranger had bow, sword and animal companion. Paladin/holy knight had sword, shield and could heal people. Wizard had staff and spell book with handful of spells. That’s the thing about Role-playing games the rules are flexible if they stay constant through out the game its fine. As your kids get older or gain a better grasp of the game start adding rules in. Dungeon and Dragons has been out so long you can get free pdfs of the rule books with out a problem. At the bottom I linked the 3 core books for D&D for you. So, no need to run out and by the books now. But the question is do you have Polyhedral Dice Set that consist of 7 dice D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20, %dice. You can find them on amazon or any game store for cheap. Depends on what you want to spend. All you need from there is pen and Paper. My kids liked to have a map to play on. I would draw the map on paper and have them help me color them. We drew whole cities and used glass beads as characters and used red beads as enemies to start with. Now let’s say you don’t have the money for the dice, but I am sure you have regular D6 or six-sided dice. There are D&D hacks out there for converting it to d6. Now as far as prep time need for each game. That depend on how in depth you want it to be. I spend more time being indecisive about what kind of adventure I want to run than actual putting it down on paper. Most of it just overview a paragraph or so. NPC names and bullet points about them. I pick 3 or 4 monsters and one big boss. If you have a projector or can cast your laptop to the TV I can make things even easier for you. The point is don’t let not having the books stop you. Just play and if you don’t know a rule just make it up on the fly and make a note about it and look up how to do it later.
Dungeon and Dragons 3.5
Players handbook:
Click to access Indexed%20Player%20Handbook%20v3.5.pdf
Dungeon Master Guide:
Click to access Dungeon_Master’s_Guide.pdf
Monster Manual:
Click to access DnD%20v3.5%20-%20Monster%20Manual.pdf
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Our family loves cooperative board games like Pandemic and Flashpoint. I think that the cooperative games are awesome for when your kids a just learning to play games. Instead of trying to beat each other you work together to beat the game. We’ve never done RPGs as a family but my husband wants to start doing them.
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I am sure that my husband has a lot of tips to get you started.
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