In a momentous occasion, my 7 year old daughter ran an adventure for me on the weekend. It was the module Whoa! Here Come the Dead for Far Away Land RPG. It went remarkably well.

I have been running Far Away Land for her and her younger sister for a while now. I have detailed the first session of that game elsewhere. Far Away Land is an excellent RPG for younger players and we have tried most of the usual suspects. The core mechanic has very little math, it is flexible and vibrant and it also satisfies all my criteria as an experienced RPGer too. The setting creation mini-games are also fabulous for involving younger players and harnessing their ideas.

My daughter surprised me when she said she wanted to GM too. I think she was enamoured by having secret stuff behind a GM screen, but she has a genuine gift for storytelling and entertaining, so I agreed. Fortunately, Far Away Land has just started releasing a monthly series of short adventures. I would normally be reluctant to have used a prewritten adventure but the FAL series seemed perfect. I had run the first, Isle of the Rat Wizard, for the two and it had been a fun and simple affair. The adventures are 5-6 pages long and come with a cool piece of art and an even cooler map. So far, the adventures have consisted of a mini sandbox, with a settlement under a threat. They then detail various historical events, items, plot hooks, people, weather and monsters associated with that. My daughter also has a fascination with vampires, so the second in the series, "Whoa! Here Come the Dead", really caught her interest.

Though she is a good reader for her age, I sat down with her for half an hour and read it to her. We used a highlighter for the salient bits. We then had a refresher half an hour session the day before the game. She told me of things she wanted to add and I discussed how to do this, along with a series of other ideas she may want to use (assuming she would forget all of it).

When we got around to playing, I helped her along especially around rules calls and the like. However, she ran most of it by herself and she was amazing. In the climax, which she has added stuff too, she had a tendency for the self-indulgent (what GM doesn't!), ingrained on her from playing with her young friends, but overall she was conscientious and even ad-libbed ideas that blew me away. She also retained a lot of what we had discussed and never showed any sign of indecision or faltering during the 75 minute game.  

The result is that she wants to run again and is eagerly awaiting November's "Crazy Maze Daze" adventure. My 5 year old has also demanded to GM, though I may work on a scene for her to do, given her young age

If you have young RPGers in the family, I can't recommend Far Away Land enough. Hell, its great for mature players too. Those that want to run with young players, I recommend using this character sheet that I created that allows for skills to be done freeform, and as pictures rather than words.

wow, that sounds amazing!

i would have thought that 7 might be too young to run a game, but appearantly that's not true. a gm-prodigy!

also, "skills as pictures"... brilliant!

I did provide assistance around the rules and in other places.

For example, my 5 year old is quite quiet in comparison, so I kept prompting my eldest to ask her what her PC was doing. I also explained to break things down by "Speed" attribute when conflict or combat started, though she seemed to pick them up after the first explanation.

At one point, she had dead ended the players (with an expectation that we would find a secret door that we had no idea about). We talked about ad-libbing alternate solutions based on what the PCs were doing and she quickly rolled with it.

I got into D&D when I was around 6-7 and my brother was around 10. I think I had run a game at around that age. Of course, it was a little different since all my players were other people age 6-10, who had all only played in our group, so no real experience with an adult GM.

Glad to hear it went well! Its always cool to hear about people playing games with their kids, though. I'm starting a game later today with my daughter in it.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;792932I got into D&D when I was around 6-7 and my brother was around 10. I think I had run a game at around that age. Of course, it was a little different since all my players were other people age 6-10, who had all only played in our group, so no real experience with an adult GM.

I was pretty much the same.

I am running a young RPGer stream at a local con (http://kapcon.rpg.net.nz/?q=node/585) and one of the aims is to get the young RPGers to also run games for each other.

I have an 11 month old and I really, really, hope he is into gaming when he get older. I have tried to get the wife interested but with mixed results.

Both my kids are into RPGs a lot and I run DnD 5e for them pretty regularly.

My daughter (11) ran an RPG developed for the cats novels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_%28novel_series%29

A very narrative simple RPG. She already had all the background knowledge ready as she's read all the books.
Was quite fun actually.

My son (14) has been running 5E for us sometimes, which has been fun.

Good luck. My wife games too, which has also helped in regard to my two daughters TBH.

I think 4 years of age is the absolute minimum for a roleplaying game to work, and probably younger than most would attempt. 7 years of age really sees a jump in the kind of abilities roleplaying game use. Board games tend to kick in a year or so earlier, and literal games are better than abstract ones.

Quote from: Skywalker;792955Good luck. My wife games too, which has also helped in regard to my two daughters TBH.

My wife is not at all into RPGs, but she likes getting a break when the kids and I go to the gaming room for hours and play RPGs.

Quote from: Skywalker;792955I think 4 years of age is the absolute minimum for a roleplaying game to work, and probably younger than most would attempt. 7 years of age really sees a jump in the kind of abilities roleplaying game use. Board games tend to kick in a year or so earlier, and literal games are better than abstract ones.

I started my kids out several years ago when I had the DnD boardgame, which had cardboard maps made ready, figures and some scenarios.
There were special D6s supplied to it was really easy to run and play.

I guess my daughter was 6 or 7 at the time.
I also had an adult gaming group going before then and before my daughter started with the DnD boardgame, she wasn't keen on RPGs, but the adults I played with were ok with my son sitting in playing up until his bedtime.
We'd keep the gaming age appropriate for the hour and a bit before he went to bed.
Then the gaming rating went up after he left.
I was fortunate enough to have players who were cool with kids playing for a bit.

The D&D board games are good, especially as they are cooperative, so you can play on the same side as your kids.

Quote from: Skywalker;792957The D&D board games are good, especially as they are cooperative, so you can play on the same side as your kids.

And it came with lots of miniatures, which I still use.

I also had Heroquest and other Fantasy Boardgames.
I still have Talisman, the new edition, which we still play from time to time.

Quote from: danskmacabre;792958And it came with lots of miniatures, which I still use.

I also had Heroquest and other Fantasy Boardgames.
I still have Talisman, the new edition, which we still play from time to time.

HeroQuest and the MB D&D Adventure Board Game are good for simplicity.

We actual play Descent 2e, but I don't use a Threat Deck and we ignore advancements.

Quote from: Skywalker;792959HeroQuest and the MB D&D Adventure Board Game are good for simplicity.

We actual play Descent 2e, but I don't use a Threat Deck and we ignore advancements.

Oh yes, I have the Descent 2e as well.
We used to play that a fair bit.
These days we just use the figures out of it, which are pretty decent.

Given it seemed to be what interested her most, I will make her her very own GM Screen with this customisable one. Its only 6" tall and has 6 panels. That's enough to place the gorgeous FAL poster and 4 cover prints I got in the KS in the front and each of the 6 small pages of the adventure in the back

My 7 year old son's been doing a good job GMing for me; I do most of the rules stuff but he creates the scenario (with a lot of rolling-on-tables), sets target numbers etc. We started off his GMing career with the rules-free Legacy of the Crystal Shard adventure, ended up using mostly Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules. Didn't really use the scripted adventure, instead he did a sandbox campaign thing using the encounter tables, maps, and characters from the setting book, which worked well. After that he next GM'd using the maps & minis from the Descent board game to create an adventure (the lair of a fire dragon), for rules we used the Pathfinder Beginner Box, which has notably excellent treasure tables. Again that has worked great.

It's been fun for me getting to be the player, not having to stress about making a good adventure, but still able to advise him on the rules.