Dungeons & Dragons with my nephews

[Jumbie]

My twin nephew just turned 5, so I decided to try my hand at running an RPG with them, despite me having no actual experience with RPGs. I basically made up my own simplified system using found items (Risk soldiers, Monopoly houses, downloaded drawings of wolves etc) but created a pretty traditional style game with dice and maps and hit counters and miniatures and a quest.

 

After 3 nights, they seemed to be getting the hang of how their weapons and items are supposed to be used (rope for climbing down holes, bows for distance attacks, etc). They rescued some stranded fishermen from some giant ants and as a reward the fishermen gave them some fish.

 

Raw fish.

 

My expectation was that I'd guide them into roasting the fish on an open fire using a spit. So I said to them, "Do you have any pots you can cook your fish in?" They look at their item collection and say, "No," but then the twin playing the warrior says, "We can cook it in my shield!"

 

Which floored me, because I had not considered the possibility and it seemed so blinking obvious as a solution.

 

I don't know if people in D&D ever do that specific thing, cooking in shields or helmets, but in retrospect it seems like it might be common.

 

For me as a novice though, this was a Eureka moment where I could tell that my nephews had understood the spirit of the game completely.

 

I'm wrapping up the quest next week, on night 4. It was only supposed to be a quick one night thing to play with the idea, but the ad-hoc system works well and the storytelling is enjoyable for me and my nephews. They do a lot of gasping and cheering at surprise attacks, victory etc.

 

I'm thinking I'll review what worked and what didn't and come up with a more robust system so we can do more adventuring on a larger scale.