Playing with kids - roleplaying games for the whole family

Somewhere around the second session, a small face appears at the edge of the table. "Can I play too?" Or it happens the other way round: you have been playing for years and you want to bring it home, to the kitchen table, to the people who keep asking what you actually do on Thursday nights. Either way the question is the same. Can children play roleplaying games?

They can, and they are usually better at it than we are. A roleplaying game is make-believe with a referee and a few dice. Children have been playing make-believe since they could talk; the dice are the only new part. What changes when kids join is not whether the game works, but how you run it. This guide covers the how: what to change, which games fit which age, and how to get a first evening at home off the ground.

What changes when children join

Three things, mostly.

The sessions get shorter. An adult table happily runs three or four hours. With children under ten, plan for forty-five minutes to an hour and stop while it is still fun. A cliffhanger at the end of a short session does more for the next one than an extra half hour of tired play.

The goals get more concrete. Grown-ups enjoy a slow mystery. Children want to know what they are doing right now: find the lost kitten, cross the river, get into the tower. Give them a clear goal at the start and let the story happen on the way.

And the numbers move to the background. Most games run on a handful of statistics and a roll. With kids, keep the sheet small and the maths in your own head. They will happily learn "roll high is good" in one session. Everything beyond that can wait.

One thing does not change: the dice. Children accept a die as a fair referee in a way they never accept a parent. "The die says the door is stuck" ends an argument that "I say the door is stuck" never will. Let the dice do the hard work.

Which age, which game

Every child is different, so treat these as rough bands rather than rules. They come from our own tables, not from a box.

Around six to eight. Look for games with pictures, props and a story you can hold in your hand. If you want to play in Dutch, De Verhalenvlam is made for exactly this: a Dutch-language box for families, written for ages six and up, with a rulebook, a craft book and an adventure drawn from Dutch history and folklore. In English, Mausritter is the one we hand over most often. You play brave little mice in a world that is far too big for you, and your belongings are physical cards you slide around on the table. Children understand the card inventory faster than adults do. It won the ENNIE for Best Family Game in 2021 and has not aged a day. Our Mausritter starter guide walks you through the box.

Around nine to twelve. This is the golden age for the hobby. Children this age can hold a plan, remember a villain and argue about a decision. Land of Eem was made with them in mind: a warm, slightly worn-out fantasy world full of skeleton bards and gelatinous goos, where characters gain experience for exploring and talking rather than fighting. It took three ENNIEs in 2025, including Gold for Best Family Game, and it plays just as well when the adults join in. The Land of Eem starter guide tells you where to begin.

Teenagers. From here on, most games are open to them, and the question becomes taste. Kids on Bikes lets them play kids on bikes solving a mystery in a small town, the kind of story they have been watching on screen for years, and it is light enough to run after dinner. Dragonbane is the full box for the family that wants proper dungeons and dragons with a grin: everything is in it, from dice to a solo booklet, and the rules are quick enough that a fourteen-year-old can run it for their parents. Both have a starter guide: Kids on Bikes and Dragonbane.

And Dungeons & Dragons? Absolutely, in time. It is a bigger game with more to learn, and a family that has played something lighter first will find it a much shorter climb.

Running the game for your own children

You do not need to be an experienced game master. You need to be a parent who asks good questions. If you have never run a game at all, your first time as game master walks you through that first evening.

Prepare one page, not a campaign. A place, a problem, three people they might meet, and one thing that is not what it seems. That is an evening.

Ask before you tell. "You come to a bridge. What do you do?" is the whole game. Children will surprise you: they climb under the bridge, befriend the troll, build a raft. Say yes as often as you can and let the dice decide the rest. We wrote a whole piece about that reflex for game masters, Beyond the wall, and it applies double at a table of eight-year-olds.

Let them make things. A map drawn in crayon is worth more than any printed one. A character they named themselves is a character they will defend to the last hit point. If they want to play a dragon, a princess and a talking dog in the same party, that is a perfectly good party.

Keep danger real and death soft. Children want the monster to be scary; they do not want the story to end. Let characters be captured, knocked out, chased or lost, and let them wake up somewhere worse. That is more exciting than a dead hero and a crying player.

And end early. The best sign that a session worked is a child asking when the next one is.

When the whole family plays

Mixed tables are their own kind of fun. The trick is to let the youngest lead. Give the adults the sidekicks, the bodyguards, the talking horse, and let the children make the big decisions. Grown-ups who take over the plan, however kindly, teach a child that the game belongs to someone else.

Agree on the tone before you start. A five-minute chat about what is allowed in this story, monsters yes, blood no, nobody's pet gets hurt, does the work a full session zero does for an adult group. Children take those agreements seriously, often more seriously than we do.

And accept that it will be loud. A family table is not a hushed game of dread. It is somebody standing on a chair to describe how they jump on the dragon. That is not the game going wrong. That is the game.

Then?

The face at the edge of the table is still waiting. Say yes, keep it short, give them a goal and a die, and see what they do with the bridge. If you want more help choosing, our guide to which RPG to choose has a section for tables with children and mixed groups. New to all of this yourself? Start with how to choose your first tabletop RPG, check what you actually need to start playing, and read what to expect from your first session. The same advice holds when the youngest player is seven.