Café de Nuit

Red Box/Mentzer D&D is my recommendation, as well. It's the most user-friendly, cleanest, easiest incarnation of the game.

TOON, man. Kids love cartoons, the system/setting gives them plenty of freedom to explore their imaginations, there is no death system (you just sit out of the game for a few minutes), it is light hearted but can be made more serious as you like (ran Nodwickian games with it), the system is easy to pick up and it is fun for adults to play as well.

Plus, you can get all the books on pdf if you want:

http://www.sjgames.com/toon/

And if not you can either get them from the site or find them in many used gamer shops.

This one is easy, though might contain pretty dark spots:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Warriors



THIS here is my very first choice rules-wise, and contains a few good scenarios for kids as well:

http://www.basicfantasy.org/news.html

Check out the following ENworld threads:
Settings/games for kids
Roleplaying With Children
An Experience "Teaching" 3e
and this website: RPGs for kids

Intrepid wrote:My nine year old daughter wants to start playing RPG's with me. I tried to start her on 4th ed and she seemed to get confused a little easier than I would have liked. So I figure I would ask the esteemed members of the fraternity what they thought would be a good starting point.

Remember: Kids learn FAR easier than us.
She may be a bit confused at first, adding modifiers and she may lack in strategy = she won't use the right thing the right time.

BUT:
-Adding things up will help her learn adding things up.
-Soon she will know the system BETTER than you.
-You'll spend time with your daughter saying stories to her.

Make the stories "strategy lite" and you'll be fine. I.e. Take more time to describe the princess' dress in the top level of the big bad wizard's tower, guarded by a dragon and all other things your child likes to hear about in fairy tales, and have her fight easier encounters like lvl-1 instead of lvl+1.
I would also suggest keeping the plot simple at first.

Have you considered any of the role playing board games, like Warhammer, "Chaos in the Old World" or Munchkin or even the RLoft board game (which got sucky reviews, but might be easier to learn than full scale RPGs at age of 9, just depends on her maturity level.) But the Warhammer one is pretty fun, easy to learn after 1 game and each round lasts maybe 1-2 hours. And the plastic pieces make grown adults laugh with glee and excitement. Truly. Me and my friends, all 20 and 30 year olds are like a bunch of little kids over this game. It would be a lot of fun to spend time playing as a family, IMO.

LadySoth wrote:RLoft board game (which got sucky reviews, but might be easier to learn than full scale RPGs at age of 9, just depends on her maturity level.)

I wouldn't say that... It got decidedly mixed reviews. Seems to be a love or hate thing.
But much more love than hate from the general boardgame community. It's currently hanging at #170 in boardgamegeek's rankings. That's a pretty darn good rating.


(It's a good game. It's a really good D&D game. It's just not such a great Ravenloft game..)

I hear a lot of votes for the red box and am actually planning on purchasing one for a 9 year old. (As they were actually translated into german and there are even quite a few basic d&d modules available in german). How fast would he need the other boxes? (Expert, Master, etc.) How do they compare to the Rules Cyclopedia?

Also does anyone know antything about the new (4e?) D&D red box or Green Ronin's Dragon Age RPG ?

The threads i linked to above say many good things about Faerie Tale. Anyone know that one?

Also for you guys with english speaking youngsters, have you already seen the red box hack?
http://www.oldschoolhack.net/redboxhack/
http://livingfree.wikidot.com/redbox-hack