Desdichado
Legend
So, while my wife was out of town with the two younger guys (3 and 1) I decided to take the two older ones (Spencer, 8 and Jessica, 6) and introduce them to RPGs this weekend.
We had just watched season 1 and 2 back to back of the Clone Wars, plus I had just downloaded the new Revenge of the Sith trailer, so I thought Star Wars was a good setting to play in, since they're obviously familiar with it.
For rules, I went with a very simplified version of The Window where I dicated what the skills would be, and told them how many dice ranges they could use. Character sheets were small -- I fit them on an Index card. They only had a few skills, Lightsaber, Force Move, Jump, Run, Spot, Hide, Pilot and Force Sense, and they had five Health levels -- essentially any type of attack did 1 level of damage. They had d6, 2 d8s, d10, 2 d12s and 2 d20s to assign to their various skills -- and that was the dice they would roll on checks of those skills, the goal being to roll under a target number for success. Obviously, the skill in which they put their d6 would be their best skill, etc. For opposed rolls, say against a battle droid or Sith enemy, they'd both roll their die for the skill in question and whomever was lowest won.
It was a nice, easy system that they could understand right away, including chargen, and we didn't have to spend too much time worrying about rules. They surprised me with their creativity too, in dealing with enemies and attempting lots of different things. I've got a fairly complete game log over at this thread in the Story Hour forum, but a quick summary; they were both Jedi, and Yoda sent them to go rescue a kidnapped princess on an icy planet in a tower; where they faced battle droids of various types and that two lightsaber Sith gal from Clone Wars.
It seems to have been a big hit with them, especially with my oldest; he was demanding that I run something else for them immediately and when I said maybe later this week, he tried to bargain for later today, and asked me about it repeatedly all afternoon and evening. Given the strength of that first play, I'm going to try and get my wife to join in on the fun, and maybe branch out to a fantasy setting as well.
We had just watched season 1 and 2 back to back of the Clone Wars, plus I had just downloaded the new Revenge of the Sith trailer, so I thought Star Wars was a good setting to play in, since they're obviously familiar with it.
For rules, I went with a very simplified version of The Window where I dicated what the skills would be, and told them how many dice ranges they could use. Character sheets were small -- I fit them on an Index card. They only had a few skills, Lightsaber, Force Move, Jump, Run, Spot, Hide, Pilot and Force Sense, and they had five Health levels -- essentially any type of attack did 1 level of damage. They had d6, 2 d8s, d10, 2 d12s and 2 d20s to assign to their various skills -- and that was the dice they would roll on checks of those skills, the goal being to roll under a target number for success. Obviously, the skill in which they put their d6 would be their best skill, etc. For opposed rolls, say against a battle droid or Sith enemy, they'd both roll their die for the skill in question and whomever was lowest won.
It was a nice, easy system that they could understand right away, including chargen, and we didn't have to spend too much time worrying about rules. They surprised me with their creativity too, in dealing with enemies and attempting lots of different things. I've got a fairly complete game log over at this thread in the Story Hour forum, but a quick summary; they were both Jedi, and Yoda sent them to go rescue a kidnapped princess on an icy planet in a tower; where they faced battle droids of various types and that two lightsaber Sith gal from Clone Wars.
It seems to have been a big hit with them, especially with my oldest; he was demanding that I run something else for them immediately and when I said maybe later this week, he tried to bargain for later today, and asked me about it repeatedly all afternoon and evening. Given the strength of that first play, I'm going to try and get my wife to join in on the fun, and maybe branch out to a fantasy setting as well.
Now she calls them "Ice" (no "D" yet 
) and asks me often, "Ice? Ice?" Then I bring the dice out and she rolls them, squealing with delight. [Sigh 
]
