u/ItsFailureMan

I (30m) have been into ttrpgs for a long time but never really had a consistent group to play with since I was highschool age. I would dm the occasional one shot for friends/ family but nothing that went on for more than a session or two.

So I looked up my local game shop and saw they had a “learn to play dnd session coming up” the post said they had premade characters and dice and everything to learn to play, however the post showed a bunch of kids playing. So I was thinking “alright my niece (9 years old) has played a couple of times with my wife and I and she might want to learn more so I could just bring her with me to this event so i could get a feel for what the stores vibe was.

So I tell my sister and she tells my niece. She gets all excited counting down the days and everything and we show up to the store and I talk to the owner for a bit and he shows us to the table and says the dm isn’t there yet but should arrive shortly.

We sit there for like 30 mins until the owner returns with a 2014 PHB and some character sheets and condescendingly tells us “dungeons and dragons is mostly reading” and says we should read the book to make our characters. My niece had already made a lvl 1 character with me that she knows how to play but I didn’t bring the sheet because I expected we would be using generated characters. So we quickly knock out our characters in like 40 mins in which time the dm, and 5 other players have arrived ranging from around her age to around my age.

Then we sit there for about four hours while everyone talks about dnd and makes their characters. No real session 0 backstory talk, no learning what dnd even is … just people learning how to make characters. Then we leave and are advised we will start playing next week.

My niece said she had fun and was excited to play next week.

Next week rolls around and we show up to the table and there is a new player there. We sit there for like 2 hours as this new player creates their character and then the dm opens up a “hero of the borderlands” starter set.

He flips through the background cards and is unable to find a background matching my niece’s “guild merchant” background and says she will play as a criminal. We change her character sheet up a bit and she seems happy with the change.

We are introduced to the adventure as we are walking up to the keep and are spoken to by a guard.

My niece immediately says she wants to shoot an arrow at the guard.

I realize that becoming a criminal has ruined her ability to behave like a civil human and this is about to fall off the rails if it isn’t redirected right away. The dm allows her to make an attack roll on the guard and she misses. Another pc is able to restrain her to keep her from shooting another arrow.

My niece declares that the other pc is her enemy and vows to kill her.

I tell the dm we will be right back and I bring my niece outside of the store and briefly talk to her about table manners and “we need to be a party who all work together and gets along or else dungeons and dragons as a game doesn’t work” we do some quick backstory work and come to the conclusion that her character used to be a thief but is now trying to be good but is fighting with their reputation as a thief even though that’s not who they are now.

We go back to the table and the party is now inside a library doing some skill checks attempting to get some magic scrolls back into their cases. We have a good time with this encounter and it seems like everyone is having a good time.

Then a friend of the dm walks up to the table and asks everyone how the game is going. One of the players who is maybe 20ish years old jokingly says it’s good and we are trying to control my niece’s character’s violent outburst.

The dm’s friend then makes a joke about my niece being violent for a 5 year old.

My niece corrects the dms friend and says she’s 9.

The dm’s friend then calls her 4.

She says she’s 9

Dm’s friend calls her 3

Then my niece gets angry and said some of the most deranged and foul insults that I have ever heard and I didn’t even know what to say.

No one seemed overly offended but there was a clear awkwardness in the air.

The dm tells me he heard me earlier saying that we were planning on leaving around 5pm and it was 5pm now. ( I had not said anything about planning on leaving but I felt that I was potentially being evicted from the table). I agree and we pack up and head on out.

I messaged the dm on their store’s discord kinda trying to debrief the whole situation and was left on read. I tell my sister a synopsis of this whole incident and tell my niece that we won’t be playing dnd at the store anymore.

I (30m) have been into ttrpgs for a long time but never really had a consistent group to play with since I was highschool age. I would dm the occasional one shot for friends/ family but nothing that went on for more than a session or two.

So I looked up my local game shop and saw they had a “learn to play dnd session coming up” the post said they had premade characters and dice and everything to learn to play, however the post showed a bunch of kids playing. So I was thinking “alright my niece (9 years old) has played a couple of times with my wife and I and she might want to learn more so I could just bring her with me to this event so i could get a feel for what the stores vibe was.

So I tell my sister and she tells my niece. She gets all excited counting down the days and everything and we show up to the store and I talk to the owner for a bit and he shows us to the table and says the dm isn’t there yet but should arrive shortly.

We sit there for like 30 mins until the owner returns with a 2014 PHB and some character sheets and condescendingly tells us “dungeons and dragons is mostly reading” and says we should read the book to make our characters. My niece had already made a lvl 1 character with me that she knows how to play but I didn’t bring the sheet because I expected we would be using generated characters. So we quickly knock out our characters in like 40 mins in which time the dm, and 5 other players have arrived ranging from around her age to around my age.

Then we sit there for about four hours while everyone talks about dnd and makes their characters. No real session 0 backstory talk, no learning what dnd even is … just people learning how to make characters. Then we leave and are advised we will start playing next week.

My niece said she had fun and was excited to play next week.

Next week rolls around and we show up to the table and there is a new player there. We sit there for like 2 hours as this new player creates their character and then the dm opens up a “hero of the borderlands” starter set.

He flips through the background cards and is unable to find a background matching my niece’s “guild merchant” background and says she will play as a criminal. We change her character sheet up a bit and she seems happy with the change.

We are introduced to the adventure as we are walking up to the keep and are spoken to by a guard.

My niece immediately says she wants to shoot an arrow at the guard.

I realize that becoming a criminal has ruined her ability to behave like a civil human and this is about to fall off the rails if it isn’t redirected right away. The dm allows her to make an attack roll on the guard and she misses. Another pc is able to restrain her to keep her from shooting another arrow.

My niece declares that the other pc is her enemy and vows to kill her.

I tell the dm we will be right back and I bring my niece outside of the store briefly talk to her about table manners and “we need to be a party who all work together and gets along or else dungeons and dragons as a game doesn’t work” we do some quick backstory work and come to the conclusion that her character used to be a thief but is now trying to be good but is fighting with their reputation as a thief even though that’s now who they are now.

We go back to the table and the party is now inside a library doing some skill checks attempting to get some magic scrolls back into their cases. We have a good time with this encounter and it seems like everyone is having a good time.

Then a friend of the dm walks up to the table and asks everyone how the game is going. One of the players who is maybe 20ish years old jokingly says it’s good and we are trying to control my niece’s character’s violent outburst.

The dm’s friend then makes a joke about my niece being violent for a 5 year old.

My niece corrects the dms friend and says she’s 9.

The dm’s friend then calls her 4.

She says she’s 9

Dm’s friend calls her 3

Then my niece gets angry and said some of the most deranged and foul insults that I have ever heard and I didn’t even know what to say.

No one seemed overly offended but there was a clear awkwardness in the air.

The dm tells me he heard me earlier saying that we were planning on leaving around 5pm and it was 5pm now. ( I had not said anything about planning on leaving but I felt that I was potentially being evicted from the table). I agree and we pack up and head on out.

I messaged the dm on their store’s discord kinda trying to debrief the whole situation and was left on read. I tell my sister a synopsis of this whole incident and tell my niece that we won’t be playing dnd at the store anymore.

Please someone know what I’m talking about

I remember getting these little figurines that were approximately 2 inches tall. Each character came in a box and there was a game you could play with them that involved a super tiny hexagonal dice.

The dice was a small barrel dice with two colors on it, I think red and green.

My favorite character was a red falcon robot kinda guy and instead of having feet he had a small red base. There was also a green dude with like a bug or alien head and four feet. The dudes parts were interchangeable so you could each others arms/ heads on each other. I remember there being some robot type characters as well.

I never knew how to play the game they were associated with but I think it involved getting across some kind of bridge ( not included).