To help promote their upcoming novel Monster Slayers, Wizards of the Coast has put together Monster Slayers: The Heroes of Hesiod, a stripped-down version of Dungeons & Dragons that's fast, fun, and playable by adventurers as young as six. Best of all, it's completely free!

The game itself is a very simple version of the D&D combat rules (so simple that they could have come from any previous edition), and the adventure that's included doesn't involve a lot of actual role-playing, but any good Dungeon Master will be able to draw that out of the players with a little effort. To play, you'll need a copy of the PDF, pencil and paper, a d20 and d6 (or three d6s if you don't have any d20s lying around), and some adventurous friends.

The page for the site also briefly mentions the benefits to young people from playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (see The Young Person's Adventure League), and even suggests that this may be a good "starter package" to introduce RPGs in a library program (see Terra Libris).

Read more and download the PDF here: www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dnd/monsterslayers

(Thanks to JJ Lanza for the link.)

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