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by throwaway86530 835 days ago
That resonates with my experience, role playing with my 4 year old daughter was a blast. Playing a character while being DM is a very good idea to pass hints and have more fun, I did not thought about this.

> although it takes a bit out of me lol

So much this. Preparation took time, and the game itself consumed a lot of my time and mental energy. Sadly, this came to a point were my daughter was highly motivated to play, but I was often not in the mood for that or had enough time to play, so our sessions became less and less frequent, to disappear entirely. I think it's been more than one year we did not play (she is 7 now).

Nevertheless it was a great experience. All fathers should consider give it a try. For the record, I never really played this kind of game before, just witnessed some.

We probably played more than 30 games. Toward the end it followed the same template where she was a witch (a gentle witch of course) that went from towns to towns to solve issues (generally related to magic). Most often she had to learn a new incantation along the way to help her in this adventure. Sometimes she also had to use previously learned incantations written on her notebook. That was a bit a trick on my part to get her read a bit. Drawing a basic plan of the city helped a bit, so toward the end we did that a lot.

In one year or so, his brother will be old enough to play, so I might try again. Something that would help is pre-made campaigns (just in case someone knows some nice resources for that). As I am thinking about this, I guess generative IA can be leveraged for this purpose.