This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

My Grade school aged kid’s favorite RPG

Started by weirdguy564, May 02, 2025, 09:29:35 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

weirdguy564

Grade school age kids and playing RPG's can be a bit tricky.  I know. My son and I play them on occasion. 

The biggest hurdle is pretty obvious in my son's case.  His attention span.

He cannot sit thru a long, tedious session of combat rounds, especially if it's just boring dice roll hit and be hit. 

Thankfully, there are two games he really likes.  Tiny Supers, and Amazing Tales QuickStart. 

Tiny Supers is our favorite RPG right now.  It's part of the Tiny-D6 set of games.  Roll 1D6 for things that hard, 2D6 for medium difficulty, or 3D6 for the easy tasks.  You don't add them up.  You just want a 5 or 6 to come up.  For statistics, that's a 33.3%, 55%, or 70% chance to succeed.  You get two actions on your turn. 1-handed weapons do one damage, 2-handlers do 2 damage and go on a cooldown until your next turn.  There are classes, but no stats beyond 6-8 hit points set by your class, and all you do in character creation is choose 3 abilities from a list.

Amazing Tales QuickStart is free, and meant for very young kids.  It's super free form.  You just pick four things your character is good at, then assign a spread of a 1D12, 1D10, 1D8, or 1D6 to a skill.  It could be sword fighting, being friendly, teleporting, piloting spaceships, summoning a rainbow, whatever.  It's supposed to be a kid's imagination gone wild, and so long as you can make a decent argument that your ability applies, you can roll for it.  A 1 or 2 is a fail, but 3+ is a success.  A fight can be a single dice roll if you want, but typically I ran it as about two or three dice rolls.  A beginning, middle, and and end for a fight. 

I am curious what everyone else plays if they run games for kids.
I'm glad for you if you like the top selling game of the genre.  Me, I like the road less travelled, and will be the player asking we try a game you've never heard of.

doomfarer1

#1
Sometimes I can get my son to play, He just turned 8 last week. I have gotten him and a friend into Melee, and then a programmed adventure from Dark City Games (adapted from The Fantasy Trip), which is nice because their choices are dictated, and we play on the hex map with the counters. They enjoy it and play can last up to an hour or so, sometimes less.

I am about to introduce them to the game I really want to play, Enlightened from D9 Games, which moves even faster and I can whip up monsters on the fly if I have to. Also, the d9 concept is fun and will engage them more, I am hoping. My goal is to make that game feel as much like Moldvay D&D as I can, which I also may introduce them to at some point, just because it's how I started. But right now these other games are where my interests lie.

it isn't always pretty sometimes they bicker, and goof around, and my son endeavors to put figures that he fancies on the board etc. But at least they are at the table for a bit.

jhkim

My son's 25 now, but when he was little I tried a few simpler RPGs with him - Faery's Tale and Monster Island were ones he particularly liked.

I have a old page on RPGs for kids that has a bunch of broken links now.

https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/whatis/kids.html