Kids' adventure recommendation(s) requested

[kensanata]

I think Faery Tale Deluxe might be the thing you need. And there's a free Christmas adventure available right now from their blog: It Happened One Christmas. The intro paragraph says "Just like the game, it's suitable for ages 6 and up."

I actually wanted to try it with my best friend's kids yesterday but we ended playing Abalone, Memory, and Domino.

In terms of fluff, Faery Tale Deluxe gives you four "classes": Pixies (can fly), brownies (can turn invisible), sprites (knights with an animal companion), and pookas (can shapechange into animal form), three attributes (mind, body, spirit), hero point mechanics using "essence" points, gifts (cost essence to use), and dicepool mechanics (body 3 = roll three dice, even numbers are successes).

You probably want to skip chargen for very young kids (picking gifts, assigning points to attributes) and use counters for essence instead of writing down numbers.

The book has many sidebars explaining how to play the game with kids. Whether these are useful or not I cannot tell because I haven't tried it yet. But I plan to!

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I checked out the link to It Happened One Christmas and ended up downloading that. After sleeping on it, I decided I really don't want to shell out even the ten bucks for the Faery's Tale Deluxe .pdf right now, but maybe next month after I see how it goes with the children I'll feel more inclined to buy the .pdf. Reading over the Faery's Tale insert on rpgnow.com, I see the setting calls for sprites, pookas, etc.. What I plan to do is use the MM to make pre-generated characters (very, very simple characters) loosely based on "faery" stats as extant in the MM. I also plan to give each faery character one spell. Someone will get a dumbed-down version of cure light wounds, someone else will get maybe the lullaby spell, and I'm not sure what I'll give for the third spell. Got any ideas? Dancing Lights, maybe. They'd like that.

I'll pass out character sheets and let the girls give their characters names, which is about as in-depth as I think we need for their age. We'll give It Happened One Christmas a try and if the children like playing, then next month I'll buy a copy of Faery's Tale Deluxe and we'll continue on with the full rules set. Sounds like it would make a nice surprise Valentine's Day present for the three of them.

 

[Geoffrey]

Two modules that might fit the bill:

The Goblin Fair ( http://www.enworld.org/reviews.php?do=review&reviewid=2009345 ) sounds pretty light-hearted.

The old B1: In Search of the Unknown has a sense of wonder to it that I've never seen equalled in another module. Plus, it doesn't stock the dungeon with monsters. Any monsters you want, you have to put in. Consequently, the module can be run as a mostly non-threatening adventure of discovery of strange, magical things.

 

[snotling]

I picked up the 3.5 boxed set. my kids loved it. 9 and 7. Also had an 8 year old with us.

Very visual and pretty easy to follow. the sheets are not complicated either.

The only draw back is that once it is done, it is done. the adventures are short and goto 2nd level.

I have started a new campaign for the boxed set for my kids and was going to play it, but we all got sick, so I never finished it.. Hopefully we will soon.

I know this reply is a bit late, but good luck.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

It's not at all late! And I hear you on being sick. Five out of six of us in my family just recently (read about four days ago) finished up with colds that had lingered and had us on the "sickie" merrigoround for about five weeks straight. We didn't do much of anything while we were down and out, especially mom (me). Whem mom gets sick, things tend to grind to a halt at the house. Thankfully, that doesn't happen all that often. I hope you get well, and soon.

If I come across the 3.5 basic game, I'll probably snap it up. I'd like to have it but don't want to pay shipping fees for it, so I'll keep waiting until I see and old "new" copy in a store. I know I've seen them in stores in my area as recently as the fall. Amazon.com says it's out-of-print, though. All their offerings come through 3rd-party retailers. As it stands, I think what we're currently using is pretty much the 2E iteration of the same. Nice, big board game with D&D-style rules, pregen characters, and cards for spells, items, monsters, and room environments.

The adventure book inside the board game includes two or three short modules. We're almost done with the first module. We've spent four hours in two consecutive days thus far and are 2/3 the way through the module. I estimate one more afternoon of playing for another two hours and we'll finish.

The PCs are first level right now. I read in advance a wee bit between turns this afternoon and I think the second module picks up where the first one ends, so I'm guessing (and can confirm this tomorrow if anyone is interested) the second module must be for 2nd-level characters or higher. I saw some frost giant monster figures in the game, and those would be pretty difficult for low-level PCs to overcome without some serious DM fudging. Either the PCs will be high enough level to overcome the frost giants or they're meant to run away. IICR, more than one 1E/2E adventure used high-level foes which the PCs were never meant to actually fight. This would be in keeping with that theme. But take that with a grain of salt--we haven't actually got that far yet!

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Also wanted to report that I did, in fact, order the Faery's Tale Deluxe book (Green Ronin distributes it). I was waiting to order it until I saw how the board game went over. Now that I see they are well and truly liking the game, I felt comfortable expending the cash for something special for them. Went with the actual book over a .pdf. I paid $15 and change for it but got free shipping, so I'm content. We'll play through it after it arrives later in January. I'll pop back in here to post my impression(s) of Faery's Tale after we play it.

 

[eric mcloins]

I have run a Grimm mini-campaign and I strongly recommend you do NOT use Grimm for children.

As you said it is VERY grim, and part of the fun playing kids is that you're a grownup playing kids. When you're a kid you don't want to play a kid, you want to play a grownup superhero. Also, the whole idea of the Grimm setting is to take beloved fairy tales and kiddie stories, twisting them around and corrupting the hell out of them. I can hardly believe that any kid would enjoy that. I mean, it's cool to fight a psycho serial killer Pinnocchio when you're grown, but kids would find it rather disturbing, don't you think?

 

[Dr Awkward]

If you're going to make gaming with your girls a regular thing, you might be interested in Sam Chupp's discussion group, Kids & RPGs: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/kids-rpg/ - and his podcast, Dragonkin: http://dragonkin.wordpress.com/

I've also got my own lil' project going here, if you're interested: http://www.theescapist.com/ypal/

Have fun!

 

[Pinotage]

I'll second Faery's Tale. I reviewed this some time ago on RPGNow.com, but alas the review disappeared along with Ronin Arts (it was published by Firefly Games originally, an imprint of RA) from RPGNow. It's well worth it - simple system, easy to understand, and full of imagination.

Also highly recommended is Tiny Terrors from EN Publishing. That's got to be the best d20 system for kids - one of the most fun products I've seen. There are a couple of free adventures for it, and it's easy to pick up if you're familiar with d20 modern or fantasy (although it uses more of the former). You can see my review for it here: Tiny Terrors Review

Pinotage

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Ooh! Shiny! Thank you for the three nice links, Dr Awkward.

Sorry I missed reading your review, Pinotage. I did buy Faery's Tale, and am looking forward to playing through it with the girls. It seems rules lite, which will be nice. The combat in Dragon Quest does get slightly clunky at times. I'll check out Tiny Terrors (thanks for the recommendation and the link). I own d20 Modern and am somewhat familiar with that rules set. Never played it, just read it.