Unfortunately, I just haven’t yet managed to start some DnD Next play testing with the kids, due to end-of-term school commitment, exams and work stuff. Definitely want to have a go as it does look like a ruleset well suited to gaming with children. This is important for me, as I’ve found 4E great with the kids, so I certainly don’t want to go backwards from here 🙂

Anyway, I was considering the play-test materials, especially the Caves of Chaos included adventure, and just how to present this in a kids’ session. As I’ve mentioned before, the kids love all the maps and minis we’ve been playing with, and would get quite thrown by being pitched straight into ‘Theatre of the Mind’ combat. So I decided I would go with battle maps, even though the initial rules don’t highlight this style of combat greatly. I’m also interested in how the rules as written play out with a battle map. For me, although I’m certainly very interested in, and am likely to be a big fan of the proposed tactical combat module, its important that the base rules work fine on a battle map!

So, that decision made, I soon decided that the included old-style map didn’t really cut it for adventure maps … so of course I’ve started on my own. First up was a map of the valley itself to hand-out at the start of the game. I’ve done this in a more modern style using Jonathan Roberts Dungeon style for CC3. Hope you like it … battle-maps to follow 🙂