I'm introducing my kids to D&D; Here's how I'm doing it and why it's important

I’m finally ready to bring them into my D&D games. They’re excited. I’m excited.

And because I have been playing D&D for years, I have a shelf full of adventure books, bins full of miniature monsters and heroes, piles of maps featuring exotic locales and a dice bag shaped like a monster that’s overflowing with multicolored dice.

If you don’t know Dungeons & Dragons, it’s the world’s most popular tabletop roleplaying game, and it has inspired innumerable other games including board games and video games. In any RPG, you take on the role of a character who heads on adventures, learning new skills and leveling up as they complete quests and combat monsters.

And while D&D is the first RPG, it continues to be the most popular. The game’s current edition dominates Amazon’s sales charts and can be found on TV in shows such as “Stranger Things” and on the shelves at Target, too.

It’s a fun time, especially if you’ve ever wanted to play your own version of a “Lord of the Rings”-style fantasy adventure, heading out with friends in search of adventure.

I’m excited to share my hobby with my boys — Sam, 8, and Elliott, 5 — and happy that it will teach them some valuable skills along the way.

First, I found out what kind of adventure they’d like to play. Roleplaying games provide nearly infinite opportunities for adventure. Would they like to seek lost treasure? Venture into space? Fare the seas on a pirate ship? Slay an evil dragon? Delve into a dark dungeon? There’s something out there for everyone.

Why play D&D with your kids? So many good reasons. It helps with problem solving. It works their imagination. It improves social skills. It teaches them basic addition and subtraction. It helps kids practice patience. It helps them learn to work together. And playing a character helps practice empathy by having a child see the world through someone else’s eyes.

I also looked for a version of D&D that works for them. There are a multitude of kid-friendly variants of D&D. If nobody you know has played before, you could try out the D&D Starter Set, which has everything you need to play your first game including dice, character sheets, rules and a complete adventure. (It’s also inexpensive and widely available.) There’s also a “Stranger Things” set if your kids are a little older and love the show. D&D is a game with somewhat complicated rules, so you could try something like Amazing Tales, which is a simplified RPG just for kiddos. There are other options, too, such as Wardlings, a world where only children have magical powers and go on adventures.

Next, I let my kids create their own characters. I talked to Sam and Elliott about what kind of character they’d like to play, and I created their characters for them. It means they can play whatever wild character they’d like to play and have fun doing it. I also let them design their own character miniature on HeroForge.com, a site that has millions of options. When the minis were ready, we also sat down to paint them.

Then we sat down to play. I set up maps. I got their minis. I started telling them a story about a magic artifact hidden deep in the forest and how they were the only adventurers who’d be able to track it down. Then my own character, a wizened old wizard, arrived to guide them. And they were hooked. I’ve had to adapt things, simplify the rules and help them a whole lot. But they’re loving every second of it, and now I have a standing D&D game every weekend.

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Kevin Coffey writes about music at PopsAndHisses.com and games at CritForBrains.com. He’s also a husband and dad, comic nerd, Dungeon Master and Mets fan.