How I Played D&D With My Toddler
How early can kids play DND? With a little bit of modification, as soon as they can communicate! Here’s how some of the Dungeon Masters at Young Dragonslayers play with their toddlers.
For players of all ages, there are a ton of benefits to Dungeons & Dragons (and games like it). But this is even more true for young players, who are in a prime stage to learn social emotional learning skills. Unfortunately, not all kids are ready to play D&D proper. They may be afraid of the dark or monsters. They may have a hard time sharing the spotlight, taking turns, and tolerating failure. They may not have the cognitive or mathematical skills to grasp the rules and make meaningful decisions in the game. My toddler, for one, doesn’t have the alphabet all the way down; there’s no way they could read a D&D character sheet! But, with some clever modifications, I was able to get them in a game. Here’s how I did it, with help from fellow Young Dragonslayers Dungeon Master and writer of TTRPGkids Steph Campbell.
How To Play D&D With Little Kids
Little kids are already great at pretend play – throw in a toddler DND dice and a little bit of clever instruction, and they’re ready to go!
As we’ve seen, young kids have some limitations when it comes to D&D: they just don’t have the social, emotional, or cognitive skills to meaningfully engage with the gameplay. But on the other hand, they have D&D superpowers that adults can only dream of. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve explained D&D to adults (turns out “What do you do?” has a complicated answer if you’re a professional Dungeon Master) and been met with totally blank stares. But when I explain the game to a child, it clicks immediately. Kids are masters of playing pretend. They come up with wild ideas, cool characters, and zany situations at the drop of a hat, leaving me scrambling to keep up whether I’m on the playground or behind the DM screen! In truth, they may be better at roleplaying games than us old folk with our dice collections and fancy books. When Steph’s child was two, they began merging the worlds of pretend-play with games. “We started out with simple storytelling exercises where I would ask him questions about the character and adventure,and then we progressed into actual game systems,” said Steph in a TTRPGkids article about how tabletop RPGs have helped them and their child. Over the course of playing these games, says Steph, their child has had a ton of fun and developed curiosity, but the two of them have developed a stronger bond. “I have gotten so much closer to my son through playing tabletop RPGs, and he’s made it clear that he feels more connected too," said Steph (How TTRPGs have helped).
Making A Kids Version Of D&D
StoryGuider started as a DND kids game for a Pre-K classroom
After introducing these storytelling exercises to their child, Steph began to see the many benefits of playing games like these with kids. They started the TTRPGkids web site to share experiences, resources, and tips, and they created their own tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) for toddlers: StoryGuider. It was first developed as a way to help a pre-K teacher who was struggling to get their students to engage with the social-emotional-learning portions of the curriculum. Since then, it’s also been used as practice for early readers playing on their own, and, as was the case with me, parents playing with their children. “There’s no dice mechanics or rules to get stuck on – it is just you and your child telling a story together. You are the storyteller and explain what happens. However, unlike just reading a book, you ask your child questions about what the main character should do next,” said Steph (Introducing TTRPGs).
This was perfect for my child (who, for safety’s sake, will be referred to as Tiny Dragon and whose adorable face I will not be sharing with the internet). The rules Tiny Dragon knows are limited to “don’t touch that” “be gentle with the kitty” and “we share with friends.” There’s no way they’d be able to grasp the rules of a roleplaying game, no matter how simple. And they can just barely recognize an 8; they have no idea whether it’s bigger or smaller than 4 or what you get when you subtract 2. So I picked up StoryGuider, starting with Sandy’s Friendship Feast, an adventure about Sandy the Dragon preparing a special dinner for their friends.
Use Variety In Your D&D Kids Game
Adding different activities is one of the best pieces of advice for how to play DND with toddlers
Tiny Dragon’s attention span lasts about as long as a reading of Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom, so I knew that a lengthy story wasn’t the move for them. To increase the amount of time they’d stay engaged with the session, I knew I would have to break things up with a variety of activities. This is a key lesson I’ve learned when working with kids. When I built the elementary curriculum for my church’s Sunday School, we’d pull in at least 4 different kinds of activities (reading a story, doing a craft, playing a game, saying a prayer, etc) to keep the kids from running in circles around the room when we were trying to tell them about Noah’s Ark. When I got to play Venture Society with some kids at Origins Game Fair, the GM had us put down our dice and pretend to be characters at a dojo by karate-chopping crayons in half.
This is one of Steph’s biggest suggestions when putting together a game for young players. “If their interest starts to wane, let them draw a picture of the treasure map or castle from the story so they have something else to focus on for a little bit,” said Steph, “Let your kid pretend to chase the squirrel that stole their sandwich, command the boat (the couch), or yell at the king that the ogre was just trying to help. This helps get the wiggles out and is great that they are getting immersive with the role play.” (Introducing TTRPGs). Lucky for me, the Sandy’s Friendship Feast adventure was packed with different kinds of activities that helped keep Tiny Dragon engaged. There were coloring pages. There were crafts. There were minigames. My little one went from coloring salad ingredients to helping Sandy vacuum the dining room to and picking out dishes for Sandy’s friends – without a single break to go throw a ball or bang on a xylophone!
This strategy not only helps keep littles engaged in the game, but with other activities they might normally reject. “Once you and your child are comfortable with the role playing part of the game, consider adding in some other teaching elements to help them learn colors, counting, ABC’s, etc,” said Steph, “Because it is integrated into play and not just memorization exercises or straight educational activities, it has been way easier to get my kid to practice some of these educational bits and actually remember them!” (Introducing TTRPGs).
DMing For Kids: Our Tips
Props are an essential element of a DND kids campaign
Once you have a game or story set to go for your little one, you can apply a lot of the same principles that work with older children. Much like with the tweens at teens at Young Dragonslayers, I found that showing up pumped to play really helped engage Tiny Dragon and that being willing to pivot was essential in keeping things moving (We skipped decorating the house with leaves, took a long detour picking out colors for the salad ingredients, and called our special dinner to a close before the last guest could arrive as their attention fluctuated.).
I also took another piece of Steph’s advice to heart: using props! “Use their toys to represent characters, build a pillow fort castle, or let them dress up,” said Steph, “This also helps emphasize that this is fun play-time and makes it special, particularly if you do it with them.” (Introducing TTRPGs). We happened to have a dragon plushie that resembled Sandy, so I grabbed it, along with two more beloved plushies to swap in for NPCs. Using the vacuum and dishes were already written into the adventure, so I was good to go there. But I had one more prop that I just had to include. The day before the game, Tiny Dragon and I went to Barnes & Noble to pick up a giant foam toddler D&D dice. They loved this thing. I would have them throw it every time the story reached a “what’s going to happen next” moment and (in a classic DM move), would confidently announce whatever thing was going to happen anyway (“It’s a 12! Sandy decides to make a salad.” “It’s a 5! Looks like Sandy is feeling overwhelmed.” “It’s a 17! Their friend comes to the door.”). It made everything feel more like a game, which was particularly fun for Tiny Dragon, who’s seen their parents throwing these little polyhedrons around since they were a newborn.
But my favorite moment with a prop came when Sandy the dragon got overwhelmed with how loud the vacuum was and how much there was to do. When I told my little one how Sandy felt, they grabbed the Sandy plushie and gave it a big hug, and my heart promptly melted. This showcases my personal favorite part of introducing TTRPGs to my (and any!) child: social-emotional learning. “[TTRPGS are] a safe place for kids to work out techniques for handling hard points in life,” said Steph, “If I notice my kid is getting particularly frustrated with his blocks not working or is shoving his crayons down the air vent and getting upset when they are gone, I integrate parts of that into our next game and teach him coping strategies while he’s calm and having fun during play.” (How TTRPGs have helped). With games like this, kids don’t have to wait until they’re old enough to read dice to be able to reap the benefits of roleplaying games!
What Age Is Appropriate for D&D For Kids?
This kids version of DND is perfect for toddlers, Pre-K, and Kindergarten aged kids!
No matter how old your child may be, if they can communicate, they can play TTRPGs – and have fun doing it! If you don’t believe me, take it from the source. “I like the games because they’re fun and I get to pick what Spider-Man or like a cat does so other kids might like it too. Even if they don’t pick Spider-Man or The Kitty of Socks, they can still have fun with other characters,” said Steph’s child, aged 5, in an adorable interview they conducted in 2023. And there are plenty of options for every age. The “Sandy the Dragon” StoryGuider adventures are geared towards the younger end of the 2-7 range, but the other StoryGuider adventures slowly get more sophisticated. As you go, they include complex activities (like spot-the-difference puzzles), introduce more imaginative elements (like space travel and magic), and incorporate choose-your-own-adventure style choices (with branching dialogue options for each) that help ease young children into the structure of roleplaying games.
As children get to be around 5 or 6, there are more TTRPG options for them. We recommend Venture Society, the SEL-focused game built by educators and therapists, The Fae Team, an animal-heist game good for planning and problem solving, and No, Thank You, Evil! a highly-customizable game with scalable difficulty built for family play. Once your young players are in late elementary school, they may enjoy games like Avatar Legends, a game of self-discovery and exploration set in the world of the Avatar shows, Animon Story, a Pokemon-inspired story about the bonds between kids and monsters, and the Inspirisles trilogy, a sign-language-learning RPG (that I actually got to cover for this blog). By the time they get to middle school, they’ll be able to play games like Kids on Bikes, a highly collaborative game about strange adventures in small towns, Girl By Moonlight, a magical-girl game about self-actualization and relationships, and, of course, D&D. If your little gamer is ready to dive into the world of Dungeons & Dragons, Young Dragonslayers is a great way to do it. Professional Dungeon Masters, like myself and Steph, run games of D&D online every single week. Each group is matched up based on their play style, support needs, age, personality, and schedule, setting them up for success as they build friendships and grow their emotional intelligence with the power of roleplaying. Learn more about our games below, or, if you have the youngest of young dragonslayers, check out StoryGuider to show them what the world of roleplaying games is all about!
