Tween D&D at Wheaton Public Library

I have been a youth dungeon master for 4.5 years. Leading D&D sessions for kids as young as 6 years old. With youth you need to adapt the game to simplify character sheets, ease up on the rules and add a lot of silliness.

 

One of my missions when I started at Wheaton Public Library, was to start a Tween D&D program. First, we decided to start with one-shot adventures, rather than a continuous campaign as we introduced the program. I also wanted a hook, one that could easily put all the players together with a mission and together as a group. In the official D&D there is a great library called Candlekeep with an entire adventure book based off of books at the library. I used this as my springboard for the creation of Vellumspine Library and the Agents of Vellumspine.

 

Vellumspine has archives that houses books, spellbooks, tomes, histories, diaries, scrolls, maps, and even artifacts. It actively works on adding to the collection in the areas of history, arcana (magic) and science. As well as, researching the books that it has acquired. The Agents of Vellumspine have the jobs of 1) protecting the library from evils trying to steal from the archives, 2) going on assignments to collect items for the collection and 3) being sent on missions to investigate clues found in the books to lost artifacts.

 

Once I had a great base for the adventure I needed to find some really great character sheets with a fun layout, reduced info to read and cool art. For kids new to D&D I want to use pregens (pre-generatered) characters. On etsy.com you can find a variety character sheets. However, I loved the art and fun ability names of these free sheets that I found made by James Stowe. Who wouldn’t want to be a necromancer with a pet zombie kitty or a barbarian with a belly flop attack! Stowe is a cartoonist that made these 12 characters for his child’s 8th birthday. He no longer updates the blog and the sheets were designed with the 4th edition rules, but I loved them enoughto adapt them. You can also find some custom commissions he did and some monsters in the Sep-Dec 2011 posts.

 After finding these great character sheets, I used editing software to cut out the character art so I could make mini standees for the game. It took a little skill and editing magic to fill in a few areas where the character art was cut off, so that the minis would not be missing a foot or have part of a text box covering a hand. The homemade standees look great with this Wanderer’s Emporium standees set I found online. The Essentials Set comes with 183 standees in a fun cartoon art. The standees are colorful, fun for kids, affordable and easy to store.

Our first adventure was based on a board game that I own called Library Labyrinth. In the board game a Book Wyrm sent the library in to darkness and chaos while releasing terrors from the book. In the adventure I made for our inaugural game an eval warlock tears apart a book, releasing the 4 monsters within and casting the library into darkness. This is a distraction so he can slip into the vault to steal an artifact.

 

I also created the NPC (An NPC is a character in the game controlled by the DM) staff of the library that the agents will be dealing with. I used art I found online for them. For the program days, I made some posters showcase the character choices (character image and one line about them), a poster showing all staff with their job title and a “how to read the character sheet” poster. These are displayed at program. Since we are doing one shots, I don’t know the kids and they don’t know each other, I decided to make dry erase table cards with images of the character and room for them to write their character name.

 

If you have any questions about the program, feel free to reach out to me.

Margie Martinson

Tween Services Associate