My 11 year old son is expressing a bigger interest in RPGs, but the problem is that he doesn't have many players to play with.  Most of us at one point have played more than one character, but when you've only got 2 players, has anyone played 4 PCs in a game?  I'm thinking B/X would be the easiest because it's the most rules lite.  And I'm thinking of presenting it as a squad based experience, rather than a traditional "you control one PC and take his or her role" experience.  I.e., mostly dungeonhack, and less emphasis on the role-playing.

Does anyone know if a squad based B/X approach been done yet?  I'm thinking it might be a way to help introduce him and others into the concept of RPGs, and then it would be an easier transition into the more traditional play, as well as having a larger pool of players.  This way, he can play the game with just one other player (the DM) and get the feel of the various classes and how their roles impact game play, while being able to play a traditional adventure rather than a solo one.


I've created a basic "squad sheet" for him to keep track of all four characters.  Again, BX being rules lite is the best approach for this.

Let him play one character. Just change how many NPCs they encounter.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;614994My 11 year old son is expressing a bigger interest in RPGs, but the problem is that he doesn't have many players to play with.

Any reason why he can't (a) play with your group, or (b) gather some friends and play with them? (ideally both, play with you first then get a group of his own)

When I GM for my daughter, I just add a DMPC and let her make all the decisions on what they do, where they go, what they attack, etc.

When I started role-playing it was me, the GM, and another friend.  When he introduced us to 1e AD&D I played three characters at once (thief, cleric, and monk).  B/X would definitely be an easy game to play a squad of 4 PCs without much trouble for an 11-year-old, I think.

Kick-ass sheet!  I will be using this for my current D&D RC game.

Quote from: The Butcher;615001Any reason why he can't (a) play with your group, or (b) gather some friends and play with them? (ideally both, play with you first then get a group of his own)

Unfortunately I don't get to play as nearly as much as I'd like, and we have adult conversation that isn't appropriate for an 11 year old.  He's been included in the past, but it's very rare.  More often, he'll only find one other person to play with.  In this case, just the two of us  For your second question, there are no other kids in his school that play.  I've never heard of a single one.  Which is depressing to me that an entire school that goes up to 6th grade has no gamers

Have you tried using hirelings and henchmen? Hirelings are pretty obvious as they're a direct NPC, but gives the player some interactive bits organizing them. Henchmen can be lots of fun as they are fully fleshed out NPCs willingly attached to the PCs. Interesting tugs of war can happen with a well fleshed out henchmen; if well detailed they may have a mind of their own.

And think of the fun you can do with morale rules!

I did a lot of 'squad' play growing up.
I did have a few groups, but I lived with a family at school for 7th and 8th grade, and their son and I played a lot of it in between our more normal group games.  

more recently, my wife has done the same thing.

Squad play can be a lot of fun. I've done it many times. But never with as nice a character sheet as you've got!

For a new player it takes some of the pressure off in that losing "a" character doesn't mean you've lost "your only" character. Modern gamers have no familiarity with the concept of permanent death in games - videogames lead them to expect to respawn/reset.

Quote from: amacris;615229Squad play can be a lot of fun. I've done it many times. But never with as nice a character sheet as you've got!

For a new player it takes some of the pressure off in that losing "a" character doesn't mean you've lost "your only" character. Modern gamers have no familiarity with the concept of permanent death in games - videogames lead them to expect to respawn/reset.

That came about in 3e, I think, because when you went from taking 5 minutes to create a character to over an hour, it became an investment of real time, and made having to roll up a new character a much bigger negative impact.

Yes, I'm pretty sure there's a link there, between length of character creation time and degree of mortality.

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