The reason there's a "sweet spot" in the current game is that it's the approximate range of levels where, purely by coincidence, the math of the system actually works. In those levels, PCs don't drop after one hit, and they don't take a dozen hits to wear down. In those levels, characters miss monsters occasionally, but less than half the time, and monsters miss characters only slightly more often. It's pure chance, really, but it means the game is fun. Outside of those levels, the math doesn't work that way, and the game stops being fun.

In Fourth Edition, we've totally revamped the math behind the system, and that's a big part of the way that we've extended the sweet spot across the whole level range.

• Nat, age 8, played "Sir Aralon (Lord of Fear)" -- a lawful good human fighter
• Zack, age 6, played "Sir Hittr" -- a lawful good human magic user
• Truman, age 7, played "Sir Dragonair" -- a neutral good dwarf fighter
• Milo, age 7, played "Eodred" -- a neutral good elven magic user
• Keary (Nat and Zack's dad) played "Ralf" -- a lawful good human cleric

bluegargantua

A British naval captain boards a French warship (this being the Napoleonic era) and discovers a dragon's egg in the hold. This does not surprise him. In his reality, dragons are in common use by the military; popular breeds include Winchesters and Regal Coppers. But dragons bond at birth, and when the egg hatches at sea, our hero, Captain Laurence, must become the dragon's rider--which distresses him, since, as everyone knows, "no woman of sense and character would deliberately engage her affections on an aviator." Laurence's induction into the strange, insular world of 19th century dragon riders and his unfolding relationship with his highly intelligent mount, Temeraire, make enthralling reading--it's like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon's Christopher Paolini.

• "Sisterhood is powerful: women-oriented gaming communities" by Andrea Rubenstein

• "D&D for Girls?"

• The latest issue of The Escapist has an article by Erin Hoffman, "Holding Out for a Heroine" about female avatars in video games, which was given a hopefully-ironic cover image of exactly the sort of thing the article complains about.
• Ami Angelwings' "I am not a plot device" on the
• Also, Heroine Next Door's posts, "I'm just a (gamer) girl, and that's all you'll let me be." (inspired by someone's "Hot Gamer Chick Gallery") and "But sexism is normal in RPGs!"

• Ellie played Lidda, a female halfling thief, one of the standard Basic Set sheets.
• Bobbie played Alhandra, a female human ranger that I had mocked up.
• Devon played Mialee, a female elven wizard whose sheet Ellie had copied from somewhere.
• Sherry played Aramil, a male elven sorcerer, one of the standard Basic Set sheets.
• Julia played Naull, a human female wizard, a copied sheet.
• Sydney played Tordek, a male dwarven fighter, a copied sheet.
• Jake played Eberk, a male dwarven cleric from the Basic Set.

• Having only four characters is really limiting, especially given that only one is the token female (the halfling rogue Lidda). Probably not coincidentally, Ellie as birthday girl got dibs on Lidda as her character.
• The dungeon scenario in the Basic Set was really empty and dull. Having a mission and an opponent were vital.
• Magic items should be really special and powerful. In particular, the players of wizard and sorcerer characters seemed a bit underwhelmed by their magic, so I really wanted their detect magic and read magic to have solid payoff.

The Haunted Mansion

        I helped run this D&D event in the ConQuest "young persons" room, which had its own track of events. This was my first time running events for purely kids at a convention, though I'd run a few at home. There were several kids I knew there: my son Milo (age 6), and two friends' kids: Zelly (age 7) and Ellen (age 10). I got to the room later than I thought, and wasn't quite ready to start a game. However, it turned out that Scott Bagley was running a D&D game and had an excess of players. To help out, I ran an improvised adventure for a group of five kids -- including Ellen, Milo, and Zelly along with Anthony (who I'd guess was 11) and Nick (who I'd guess was around 9).

        At Scott's suggestion, we had two tables. The first had his Dwarven Forge dungeon set. The second we set up with a big battlemat, and two model ships that he had. I would start out with the ships and play out their approach to the island of the haunted mansion, then halfway through we would switch tables. Scott's players would escape the mansion, while my players would arrive.

        In general, it was rough running a game for a different age range of kids. I started them out on a ship approaching the island when they were attacked by a pirate ship full of skeletons. It was a straight combat, but made fun and colorful by all the pirate trappings. They got along together but it was definitely a strain. Ellen and Anthony plotted together the best strategies and creative tricks for getting past the pirates. They then landed and started up the path when they saw lizard creatures lead by a dragon surrounding them. On the pirate ship, Milo had cast "Animal Friendship" and gotten a monstrous rat as a friend. Through the rest of the game, he was very attached to the rat and got really upset at anyone messing with it. Ellen and the older boy came up with the idea of just buying the dragon off, because their characters (pregens supplied by Scott) had tens of thousands of gold pieces. I made it a little difficult in negotiations, but went with it since they liked it. We then switched tables and started on the dungeon.

        So sifting through the miniatures which I had, I improvised some encounters. They got past a door trap, into a room full of pools. I had a burning skeleton approach them and tell them he was cursed, doomed by the monster that lives beyond, and asked for their help. He told them about a tentacled monster. In the fight past the pools, they used a lot of ingenuity to avoid pools and get at the monster. I particularly liked Ellen & Anthony's casting Water Walking to avoid being dragged under. Unfortunately, Milo misunderstood this and got really mad at Anthony, thinking he was doing something bad to the rat and pinched him -- which was terribly because Anthony was trying to be nice. We got through that room, fought a souped-up Taer, and then wrapped up.

        This was hard for me. While I do well with kids in general, I didn't have a lot of experience. Ellen was disappointed with my lack of preparation, I could tell. The real tough one was trying to keep the 6 and 7 year olds working with the 10 and 11 year olds. I think I did pretty well, but I look forward to doing better next time. Points that I think of:

• The group dynamic problem was tough. Basically, I think I need a stronger turn structure of some sort -- where each player has a real chance in the spotlight rather than just an action.
• I did avoid the bloodthirsty kill-and-loot that's common in these games. It's important to frame it as opportunity rather than a restriction. So, the cursed skeleton asked for their help but there was no attitude of having to do the right thing.
• The spell lists were an enormous time sink. It was paralyzing to the pacing for Ellen and Anthony to sift through their long list of spells.

Faery's Tale

        With Polaris cancelled, I had a little more time to prepare for my second young persons game. I had been debating running either John Wick's Cat or Faery's Tale, and I went with the latter in part due to support. There were two introductory modules: a "Jack in the Beanstalk" in the core book, and a downloadable module "Tournament of the Fey". Neither of these appealed to me, so I mostly improvised. I wasn't on the schedule, but I talked to the kid's room organizer that morning. I added the game to the schedule posted on a whiteboard at the door, put up the Faery's Tale poster beside it, and put out a sign-up sheet. Besides my son Milo and his friend Zelly, I got three players. We went through character creation -- I gave the book to the older kids to pick their qualities, while the younger kids filled out a character sheet from the pregenerated characters. The players and their characters were:

• Zelly played a pregenerated character -- a pixie named Willow, whom she renamed Sandy two-thirds of the way through.
• Milo played the pregenerated character -- a sprite named Flynn who flew about on his bumblebee companion.
• An older boy Erik (age 10 or 11) created a pixie character named Zimble, who had a sidekick of a miniature ice dragon named "Frosty".
• Erik's younger sister Kate (age maybe 8 or so) played a pre-generated character Gimlock, except that she substituted out his "Seer" gift for "Sidekick" and also took a miniature dragon -- a flame dragon named "Flame".
• Nick (maybe 9?) created a brownie named Elfrica, who lived in a ruined castle. The details here took a lot of negotiation. I explained that brownies lived with humans, and had household magic which meant magic affecting human artifacts. It seemed like he wasn't quite sure what he wanted, and we went around in circles a bit.

        With the miniature dragons established as Gimlock and Zimble's sidekicks, I decided that the adventure was going to be about saving a full-size dragon from a group of rough dragon hunters. This was, of course, a deliberate dig at D&D. They found the camp of the dragon hunters, and then the others distracted them by talking the horses and letting them go to run around -- while Elfrica invisibly stole all their arrows. The dogs and the horses were both mistreated by the group, and they helped them by getting them some nice food. There was also a family (two parents and a young son) who tended the supply train, and I noted that after the horses got loose, one of the dragon hunters went and slapped the kid for not having tied them right.

        I should note about the system. Nick was the type to narrate a lot about what was happening, which annoyed Kate in particular, who insisted that he couldn't just say whatever he liked. Here the system was of use, in that I explained that Nick could narrate but that he had to pay with Essence Points. I had brought a bunch of crystals which I handed out as Essence Points -- and I gave them out, for example, to Kate and Eric when they helped out the dogs and horses.

        After this, they went to see the dragon, and found that he had been poisoned by the dragon hunters -- who had dumped some toxin into the nearby stream. I said that they could cure it, but they needed a sample of the poison to brew the antidote. Now, at this point I think Nick said that he wanted to have run across the poison before, and could get a sample from the stream which was poisoned. I charged Essence for this. However, this was pushing it -- it seemed that if they paid enough Essence they could do anything. But they brewed up a potion with the sample and cured the dragon.

        The last bit was dealing with the dragon's attack. So, playing the dragon, he said that he was going to eat the horses first so that the people could ride away to escape. The kids naturally cried out at this, and got the dragon to agree not to hurt the horses or the family with the supply wagon if they would first make sure that the horses escaped. So they slipped in, sabataged further the dragon hunter's equipment, and let the horses loose. I then narrated briefly how the dragon attacked the dragon hunters, stopping only at the last minute to leave the wagoneer's family alone. They then got a Boon (one of FT's reward systems) from the dragon.

        I was rather proud of this, mainly because it was an adventure that had a lot of action -- but it was all about helping people, and none of the PCs ever attacked anyone. It was a bit of a tough sell in the first place getting Erik and Kate sold on this, but it went well. Milo and Zelly were difficult to engage, but still liked it.

The question now is whether to start fresh, knowing what I know now, or to head back into the Eberron campaign and try bringing all the players' material front and center. I do agree with Bill and the Glyph in that D&D and D20 doesn't 100% support player input in terms of system (Eberron's like Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance, just a setting using D&D style rules). I still messed up in this game, and take full brunt of the fault, and I don't want to point fingers at a system, but it would help if there was something to support and encourage player input built right in.

• The PCs are the most powerful and respected of all the survivors. They will be the leaders of their little world of survivors. No kings, high priests, or anyone over them to give them orders.
• The interaction and handling of NPCs will be important, which the PCs have dominance over. (The players will have a certain degree of control over NPCs, as I mentioned in an earlier post.)
• The PCs will be well-informed. I plan on giving the PCs an accurate map of the dungeon(s) by some in-game excuse. First of all, I've never liked the laborious process of players drawing out their own map based on verbal GM description. Moreover, information is power. If they know where they're going, they have greater control of pacing and events.

• It uses the core of the D&D mythology.
• It is a wonderful reversal. As majestic winged creatures, dragons take over the surface world, and humans are forced into dungeon lairs. It so clearly reverses the game.
• Dragons are very well-tested, well-developed, and varied foes within the D20 system. I can tailor encounters with the enemy carefully.

I'm pretty strongly convinced that D&D isn't for you, no matter how far you drift it.

You talk about a "thicker layer of characterization as opposed to raw hard-core beat-the-monsters." You're not going to get that out of D&D without considerable rules changes, and then you're not playing D&D. You're playing John Kim D20 and it will have to be wildly different than the core rules before it makes you happy.

D&D's support for characterization is limited to racial stereotype, class-based stereotype, and alignment. You want more support than that.

Now, the level treadmill seems to be in the way, too. How much do you care about characters leveling up? It's going to be very hard to make 3E into a game that doesn't push players to Step On Up. They'll spend a lot of energy min-maxing classes and skills and feats. They'll spend a lot of energy earning XP so they can level up. They'll spend a lot of energy during play figuring out the most clever tactic during combat. If they have combat abilities and feats, they'll angle their adventures so they can use them often.

• Food, shelter, and other basic needs are what is bartered for in trade -- no one gives the slightest thought to gold.
• The PCs will be part of a small band or clan of survivors who depend on each other, adding a social dimension.
• Ruins and dungeons now become havens to hide in from the sweeps of abominations. i.e. The PCs may explore out a dungeon with an eye for a place to live. The GM may also hand some city or other modules to the players as places known to them -- where the module shows the pre-apocalypse state of the place, and the PCs may survey the destruction.
• The abominations are near-mindless instruments of destructions who destroy anything not like them -- orcs and goblins just as much as humans and elves. Thus, the different races are thrown together with a common enemy.

• One is class. In the post-apocalyptic breakdown of society, specialized roles break down -- this makes some sense and is part of the post-apocalyptic genre. Everyone has to help gather food, and everyone must fight to defend the band. So to push the breakdown idea further, I might tear down the class system to a point system of abilities. This might make it easier to have monsters as PCs.
• Perhaps I should also modify magic in some way? On reflection, I lean against this. It would be more interesting for the players to struggle with how to use the existing spell list, say, to help their band survive. Now "Create Food and Water" becomes a vital spell choice, for example.