Tabletop RPGs with kids
Has anybody had much experience playing DnD or other tabletops with children? I've been toying with the idea of making a fairly straightforward and simplified RPG using Story Cubes and GURPS that kids can get involved with easily and have fun playing. I'm specifically aiming to play with my daughter (8) and my niece (5) on a big family holiday in August, though I see no real reason that this couldn't work with adults as well.
Essentially, the conceit would go along the lines of each player rolling a limited number of story dice to help with character creation and such. I'd ask the players a few simple questions about their powers (for example, are you more of a wizard or more of a warrior?) to get some basic stats stats together (STR, DEX, INT, CON), and then use story dice myself to quickly improvise a short one-shot session.
Does anyone have experience playing with kids, and if so - any pointers? Am I being too ambitious about children's ability to imagine stuff in this way? If so, are there any good systems out there that are good for young people to pick up and get stuck into roleplaying with?
There's a bunch of systems out there designed for younger players that may be worth a shot!
https://amp.reddit.com/r/tabletop/comments/9d6j7o/kid_friendly_rpg/
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/79/are-there-any-good-tabletop-rpgs-for-young-beginning-players
Oh great, thanks!
I ran a couple games with the wife and our kiddo a year or two ago. The biggest thing I can advise is dig deep for your patience and emphasize the rule of cool. Kids dont wanna be bogged down with the more intricate rules if the game, but they do very well operating under the umbrella of "you can only do it in the game if a person could try it in real life". The emphasis on the rule of cool helps keep them engaged during other people's turns. I didnt have much of a problem with that as there were only three people (her, her mom, and I playing a DM and an NPC) but if you had a whole cadre then I expect it would get pretty boisterous and unruly.
I've only recently (the last year) gotten into playing D&D my girls 8 and 5 have painted a mini of their own and made models on Heroforge that they keep asking to have made up, so I've been trying to think on how I could get them to play a game as well. The older one has even given ideas about a backstory for her character, I helped a good amount but its mostly her creation.
sorry I'm not all that much help, I am looking forward to any other comments about this because I am a bit lost on how to get it all started with them as well.
There's a great one that was recently put out called Kids On Bikes. It's basically an RPG of the whole E.T./Stranger Things/Goonies genre of small town/suburban kids going on a crazy adventure with possible sci-fi or fantasy elements. I played in a one-shot of it a while back and it's pretty fun.
You can choose between being a child, a teenager or an adult, and each has some kind of bonus. Adults have a profession where they can instantly succeed on related unopposed rolls. It uses standard RPG polyhedral dice. You have a set of six skills and you assign a different die to each skill. It uses exploding dice (if you roll the highest number on any die, you get to roll again and add the two results, and this can be chained).
They recently released a deck of "Powered Character" cards that you can use that adds some kind of super powered companion (Like E.T. or 11) that the whole group controls together.
I really wanna play Kids on Bikes, it sounds like a blast!
More than 50% off at the moment
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/231938/Kids-on-Bikes-Core-Rulebook
It's a weird irony that the most popular TTRPG for new players by a massive long shot (D&D) is also one of the most complicated and hardest to learn in my opinion.
D&D is definitely on the rules heavy spectrum of RPGs. If the kids are into computer RPGs, and easily understand stats, can memorize lots of rules, and are super into character creation as a minigame, then D&D may be a good choice. Otherwise, I think it's better to start with a more rules light system.
Personally, I've been playing a lot of FATE over the past few months, and I think it's a wonderful system in general, but it's an especially wonderful system for people that are new to RPGs. In fact, people with a lot of experience with RPGs tend to have difficulty learning the paradigms in FATE (as I did).
It's a "narrative" RPG, in contrast with an "simulationist" RPG like D&D or GURPS. What that means in practice is that things are only played through if they're interesting. In D&D, you'll spend a while wandering through a hall, looking for treasure, and there may or may not be something there.
In FATE, if there's nothing there, you don't bother with it. It's more like playing through a movie than it is slogging through a dungeon. I think that style of play works very well for new players, because there's very little of the "Aha, you didn't check for the pit trap, gotcha!" type moments that D&D imposes on players without mastery of the system.
There's a system reference document that the publishers make available for free, that has virtually all of the published official content for the system (FATE Core), and also an even more streamlined version (Fate Accelerated Edition). You can play the whole game with that, four D6's, and some paper. I'd recommend checking it out for sure.
If you want to get started with dice rolling you could look at Button Men: Beat People Up which is a very simple fighting game. https://beatpeopleup.cheapass.com/
You can easily re-skin it with other themes - pokemon battles for example.