Little But Fierce Kickstarter to deliver a kid-friendly version of D&D

The upcoming book simplifies 5e rules and language for young players

DC Bradshaw first got the idea to come up with a version of Dungeons & Dragons for kids when his daughter was born. Six years later, she’s almost ready to play Little But Fierce, a streamlined version of 5th edition for young players that Bradshaw launched on Kickstarter March 3.

“There are games for kids, but they’re not an obvious stepping stone into something crunchier,” Bradshaw said. “I wanted to have a game where almost every player could pick up the book and read it for themselves rather than having to hand it to an adult and say ‘Can you explain this to me?’ I wanted to make sure the language throughout was not babyish but accessible.”

Bradshaw drew on his own educational background – he spent 10 years teaching both drama and math – and worked with other designers of tabletop role-playing games for kids like Hatchling Games and Steph Campbell of TTRPGkids. In 2022, he released his first version of Little But Fierce, a short PDF including four core classes along with monsters and items. The Kickstarter will fund expanded options for both characters and game masters and let him fill the book with art.

“I tried to make sure you had enough creatures to do every sort of game you’d want to do,” Bradshaw said. “You’ve got loads of giant animals. You’ve got undead – I’m calling them the Lost because I try to avoid using the word death. You’ve got dragons. You’ve got some more mythological things. You’ve got some dinosaurs, because dinosaurs are fun.”

Death is just one of the aspects of D&D Bradshaw had to reconsider. He cut Warlocks, who get their power from signing a contract with a mysterious or dark power, because he said that felt too “seedy and weird” for a kids game. He made sure that there was a spell that first level characters could use that would just knock out opponents if they didn’t want to hurt anyone. Combat has been reframed as action scenes, where players might try to escape a room filling up with sand or run away from a giant boulder rather than battling an army of orcs.

“I grew up with Monkey Island, which is a game with pirates and swords, but inevitably, how you defeat an enemy is through some sort of ridiculous plan to trick them, sneak around them, or use a combination of items to do things,” Bradshaw said. “I try to give [players] as much leeway as possible to play the game that they want to play without forcing them into combat. It could be part of the story, but it doesn’t have to be.”

The rules of Little But Fierce trim concepts that can bewilder even adult players, combining the Intelligence and Wisdom ability scores into Smarts and fusing Sorcerer and Wizard into Mage. Bradshaw changed the math to avoid having any negative numbers and removed ability scores to just show ability modifiers. The character sheet is primarily pictures representing concepts like health, skills and movement speed.

“I can easily see a situation where you’ve got a child who really wants to play, and then a younger sibling who’s not quite old enough but still wants to be involved,” Bradshaw said. “They can have a character sheet where there are no words and they can be involved without [someone] spending a very long time explaining what all this terminology is.”

Little But Fierce is crowdfunding through the end of March. Bradshaw hopes the game will appeal to other dads like him who grew up with HeroQuest and Fighting Fantasy and want to share a similar experience with their kids, along with anyone who is curious about the game after watching Stranger Things. He also hopes it will help kids find a hobby that they can enjoy throughout their lives.

“Kids are happy to explore and make believe and have fun, and they don’t think about embarrassment. Then somehow we beat this out of them through formal education and through social pressures,” Bradshaw said. “Anything that introduces kids to the idea of roleplaying and collective storytelling and a safe space for exploration and creativity is absolutely important.”