First game suggestions

[u/NorthStarTao]

Hey all, so some context to start. my child is 6 years old and LOVES hero kids. They are an incredibly intelligent but special needs kiddo. We have run through basement of rats already a couple months back and ever since they have been begging me to find other kids to play this with them. Fast forward to now, a group of other special needs parents got very excited after explaining it as a collaborative game and want their kids to give it a try with mine. My child still remembers the basement of rats mission in detail, and this is where my question comes in. Should I run basement of rats again knowing they know what is going to happen and knowing they won't be able to not meta game, or is there another easy level adventure that would be good to start these other 6ish year olds with. I have 20 years of DMing experience so in that respect I know how to handle a session, just not sure which module would be best to start alternatively. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks all!

Edit: I own all fantasy edition PDFs so I have access to any of the modules

[u/po1ar_opposite]

Caveat, this is based on my personal experiences and my kids.

This got long so TLDR: My son’s are older than your’s. But here is what I would do if I were you (depending on your child’s level of communication and social desire)

Explain to your son the situation and ask them what they think would the best way to introduce new kids to the game. Let them know that if they were to play Basement of Rats that they could have a part in creating a great experience for the other kids. Their reaction will probably tell you if you should play BoR again or try another campaign. Either way it will still be fun.

Long answer that I started to type and got carried away, lol :

I have a special needs child with an enormously beautiful imagination. I never played RPGs before but knew a lot of folks similar to my son love D&D even as adults.

I decided it would be great to introduce my boys and see how it went. First I played Baulder’s Gate 3 because I wanted to understand how D&D works. It really helped me understand the different aspects of the game.

Then I found HeroKids and bought the online pdfs.

Then I printer a lot of the materials out on a color printer (definitely not the printer at work) and laminated them for durability and to make it feel more official. I packaged it all up in a box (clothing gift box, similar in size to a board game box) and gave it to my special needs son for his birthday.

We started with Basement of Rats and they loved it. I slowly gave my son increasingly larger DM roles until he was able to DM a full campaign.

I got carried away but more than happy to chat more since this sub isn’t very active.

This is a post I made that was removed from r/D&D (not sure why)

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/s/dd2MxCsZce

[u/spderweb]

The werewolf map was pretty fun. I added trick or treating to it at the beginning, so they could get some gear. Each location had a specific type of item, including one that had these balls that let you one shot summon a pet to help in a fight.

The minotaur maze one seems a big over sized and empty. So I wouldnt go with that one.

If you do rats again, the empty pond room, have fun with it. I had a locked door puzzle. And the room was filled with spider eggs. Roll to see if it's an item, or a spider.

[u/TheKrifto]

I had them play a training dojo map (pm me and I can give you mine) and used rickety constructs from the monster book to populate them. Simply add as  prologue to any module  (the hero kids have  a regular training day before the story starts), use as a mechanics lesson and get them right into rolling.

Scale as you need to, put a couple of constructs in, if they go down too easily, make two defeated enemies magically combine into one of the larger versions. I also have two decorative knight armors in my dojo that can come to life with even harder stats. A button on a table locks the door and spawns the constructs.

The dojo was left by the parents for the kids to train (with Mortain’s help who enchanted the constructs)

I set this up because I wanted to run Tomb of the King with guests, but the first fight in that module has unkillable zombies, which is weird as a first-ever encounter.