Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Ironical Oct 16, 2014 7:35:11	I am looking to do something of a prologue for a campaign I am planning on running. While I am sure other DMs have done this millions of times, I was wondering if there were any written adventures/modules online where the players are actually children.
#2 Luis_Carlos Oct 16, 2014 8:36:16	Think about source of inspiration the classic fairy tales, the children cartoon, or books like Chronicles of Naria, Harry Potter or R.L.Stine's Goosebumps or the teleseries "Are you afraid of the dark?", "So weird".
#3 Ironical Oct 16, 2014 8:53:08	My personal inspiration actually involves three of the players as children. Two of them are members of a little orphanage and one of them is a noble's son who comes to play with some friends he has made there, sometimes sleeping over. There is a local gang nearby that deals in child slavery. The orphanage is deep enough within a safe district that it hasn't ever really been touched before, but recently the gang has gotten desperate. A member will attempt to sneak in and abduct one or two of the children, and hopefully the PC's will be able to deal with the home intruder and make sure he doesn't get away with it. It still needs a bit more development, but I thought it might be interesting.   I mostly wanted to take a gander at other examples of the concept, just to see how other people have gone about the whole idea.
#4 Phobos Oct 16, 2014 9:10:43	This was once on Wizard's site, forget where, it's connected to a childrens book my daughter read.  I kept  acopy and happen to have it in my dropbox, so here's a link.  I'm guessing it's still on wizards.com soemwhere.   https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33308208/MS_HeroesHesiod.pdf
#5 Slyck314 Oct 16, 2014 9:12:31	I started a capaign in this way in 3e. In the first session the characters were preteens. We used a point build and they only got half their points to distribute at this point, and 4 HPs. The second session had them as late teenagers and they all receiver the rest of their ability points, some skill points and 6 HPs. Finally in the third session, as young adults, did they finish upgrading their characters to 1st level.
#6 Azzy1974 Oct 16, 2014 9:36:44	Ironical wrote:
#7 Timborama Oct 16, 2014 11:21:14	Ways to do children: Everyone is a small 1st level character. Or Level 0 small characters (see below)   Or do what I like to call a "Level 0" adventure (or "normies"). You basically play as regular people. As such, you have no class levels. Your hit die is either a d4 or a d6 (maybe d4, because children). Maybe their point buy would be smaller, as well. Each person can pick a quirk that makes them special, but can sometimes come with a detriment.   My friends and I have done this a few times to run "Scooby-Doo" type adventures where we play ourselves in our DnD world. We don't bother with racial features or stats, we just apply what we think is best (a little ego may be involved when it comes to one's Ability scores...). We add fun things one guy needing glasses to see, I'm resistant to weather/temperature like in real life, my girlfriend being naturally good with animals. These things can be hyperbole, as well! Skills and Proficencies are handed as they make sense. Our martial artist friend is proficient with actual weapons, I'm proficient with Longswords because I have so many hanging on my wall, etc. etc. Maybe the religious one in our group has a Cleric Cantrip. Stuff like that. These can be a lot of fun, especially when you take 2 damage and realize you're almost dead...   Since they're kids, maybe make them small, and maybe they have pretty bad stats. Not awful, just...not great. Certain quirks can more than make up for a bad strength score or low intelligence. And make their HD a d4 or d6, that eventually changes to whatever their class ends up being (so it'd still be a d6 for a Wizard, for example)   (we did this in 3.x, and will actually be doing so again in 5th! 4E made it a little bit harder so we didn't really try. Our "personal" characters were just in the background as NPCs, mainly)
#8 MechaPilot Oct 16, 2014 18:24:54	@OP: I don't use publised adventures, so I can't speak to that aspect of your question.  However, I do recall the AD&D 2e book Creative Campaigns talking about playing as children.
#9 alienux Oct 21, 2014 11:11:25	Phobos wrote:
#10 skelekon Nov 01, 2014 5:40:00	I'm a bit late to this thread, but I was just browsing through old modules and came across a 2E Al-Qadim module called 'Reunion' where you play as children.   The module is about a tribe that has been captured by raiders and is in three chapters  - the first you play as the men of a tribe, the second as the women, and the third as the children. The goal of each chapter is to escape and reach an oasis to be reunited with the rest of the tribe, with a different emphasis in each chapter (combat, negotiation & improvisation, respectively).
#11 draegn Nov 01, 2014 7:21:03	You could borrow from Talislanta and adapt the backgrounds to have aging. Being that in 5E all races age age approximately the same rate until late teens, you could start at an arbitary age example age 7 and by choosing backgrounds age a few years for a range of "child" characters.    Street Urchin ages 2 years Wizard Apprentice ages 7 years Military cadet ages 5 years
#12 Dreamstryder Nov 01, 2014 21:56:41	In fantasy tales of children I've liked, they are ushered into the world relatively sheltered but soon find themselves in a world as violent and nuanced as anything else: Tombs of Atuan, Pan's Labyrinth, Madoka Magica, Harry Potter, and you may want to investigate the original Peter Pan. A big part of that transition is: how do they leave the shelter into danger? How are they parted from their guardian?(duty? tragedy? accident?) Does their guardian change into their enemy? Do they get into adult-scale trouble trying to fix or avoid child-scale trouble? If something horrible is happening just outside the walls of their sanctuary, how does it affect them inside? Do they see adults or other children who were directly affected? Are they not allowed to have things or go places because of increased danger at the fringes? Does an acquaintance suddenly stop frequenting the playground and no one offers you a clear explanation of where they went?