Games Logs

Rampart lies on the common-room couch with an ice pack pressed above one tusk, the bruise beneath it already gone deep purple-black. Someone has draped a blanket over him that doesn't quite reach his feet. Alternate KFC finds him there. "Looks like somebody had an adventure," she says, and her tone tries for light and lands somewhere else entirely. "I didn't want to bother you, hon," Rampart says. "I tried sparring with Diro instead. It didn't work out." A beat. "It was two

So your kid came home talking about goblins, twenty-sided dice, and someone named "the DM" — and now you're wondering what exactly you're in for. Welcome, Traveler! You're in the right place. Consider this your parent-friendly field guide to Dungeons & Dragons for the 9–13 crowd: what it is, why it's genuinely good for growing brains, and how to get your young adventurer to their first game.

arvalis, Sir Billy the Cockatrice, Deviant Art, 2014. "Which door leads us to Maladomini?" demands Vali. leaving malbolge The first golem does not speak. It simply raises one iron hand and points — a slow, deliberate gesture toward the door on the right — and that is enough. After their twenty minutes of argument, the answer arrives without ceremony. In unpacking the guards' declarations, the party determines it is the first guard who has never lied. The second has: it claime

The dungeon beneath Witherbloom Tower smells of damp stone and, now, brimstone. Orestes the horned devil has left his post — the room where he keeps this timeline's Hexmates — and is standing in the corridor. He was drawn there by the sound of Alistir murmuring to a shambling mound. This is his second student interloper of the evening, and somewhere behind a door that is almost certainly not thick enough, two nearly identical sets of Hexmates are listening to him fume.

Orbart is difficult to miss: a minotaur, seven feet and eight inches of dense muscle, sharpened horn and quiet reserve, wearing a chainmail shirt with a slight hood and boots that have given way at the toe. He carries an amulet bearing a strange symbol, which he uses to channel his magic, and he has his own moral code, arrived at independent of his god. He has been in Vallaki for two months, renting a room from a widow who would not have him if extreme old age had not dimmed

In a vault-ceilinged room, the shambling mound shuffles toward the Hexmates beneath Witherbloom Tower, smelling of wet soil and rot. Massive, its vines and branches are held together with some sort of mucus, and they appear just at the edge of decay, suspended by magic rather than nature. Fungi grow in clusters along the upper ridge of what might be called its head and shoulders, some of them faintly luminescent, throwing pale light across the room in uneven patches. Gaping m

wasana jaigunta, kariyat, DepositPhoto 571766420, 2022 Where everyone is At the moment in question, where everyone is in the Cave of Lost Things takes some explaining. The party is distributed across its tunnels in a way that suggests it might be either a tactical decision or a catastrophic loss of group cohesion. It is the second of these choices. ⚔ In the main tunnel, the cloaker is dead. Freda, a ranger, views this as an opportunity, and draws a dagger from her belt. She

What is left of the taproom of the Hag’s Arm has seen better decades. Kiki flings a Web spell into the churning mass of devils still stan

The librarian — cheerful, oblivious, and armed with an enormous key — locks the doors to the restricted section of the Biblioplex without a

The sled journey done, the comrades stretch after the long ride. An absence of strenuous activity in the bitterly cold environment of Stygia has left them stiff. If not exactly rested, then they are at least not exhausted. The party unpack themselves to stand at the mouth of the Cave of Lost Things. The opening gapes, dark and foul smelling. In the doorway stands a sentient Yeti guardian, easily 9 feet tall, leaning on his halberd. The helm he wears upon his head seems more p

The Amber Temple settles into quiet. The flame skull that had been harassing Rakthe withdraws, vanishing into the darkness, and the oppressive silence of the temple reasserts itself. Vilnius is dead. His mummified remains lie near the entrance to the chamber — skin tight and leathery over the bones beneath, pocked and discolored from whatever illness had been eating him long before his final moments. He crumbles wherever he is touched, fragments of him dropping to the marble

Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) offer incredible opportunities for children to develop creativity, problem-solving skills, social collaboration, and storytelling abilities—all while having tremendous fun. But finding the right game can be challenging, especially if you are looking to introduce very young players to TTRPGs.