When I was twelve years old my friends and I attempted to decipher the mysteries of Dungeons & Dragons. As I recall, the game we ended up playing involved us hitting each other with sticks. If only we had James Stowe's child-friendly D&D character sheets.
James Stowe is an artist and illustrator that wanted to do something nice for his son's 8th birthday.
For my son's 8th birthday party he convinced me to run Dungeons and Dragons for four 2nd graders... I decided to take actual characters made in the DND Insider and simplify them us that the boys could have fun without much of a learning curve. Here are the six characters I made from scratch for the game. I am happy to report it was a huge success, each boy had a fantastic time... and so did I. I would happily do it again.
30 years ago this would have been considered borderline child abuse in some circles. Today it's just pretty damn cool. I can't wait for my boys get old enough to DM.
Hit up the link below for the full set of kid-friendly D&D characters.
DND for 8 year olds [Art by Stowe]
You can contact Michael Fahey, the author of this post, at fahey@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.