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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9061426" data-attributes="member: 86653">This and similar arguments always confuse me. Kids are really imaginative and most would have a far easier time thinking of a good or bad consequence to an action than having to input their ideas into the vast page count of mechanics that is a game like D&D 5E, then figure out how to apply all the exceptions, then spit out a result. I mean, the point is even made in the article I linked.Compare task resolution in (what we know of) both systems.Yes And. Referee picks a color-coded die Yes/No die and tells the player to roll it along with the And/But die. Player rolls and the referee narrates based on the result. So a little thinking about the odds, but most of the brain power goes to imagining the fictional situation and the outcome.D&D 5E. The referee has to know how abilities work, how ability checks work, how the skill system works, how tool proficiencies work, how attacks work, how damage and HP works, check that the PC has the relevant skill (or at least what their bonus for it is), come up with a relevant DC for the action (or check the book), the player has to make the roll and do the math (yes it's simple math for some, but not for others), report the result to the referee, then the referee narrates based on the result. So a lot of thinking about the mechanics and systems and the odds, but only a little thinking about the fictional situation and the outcome.Yes, as (mostly) adult gamers who've played RPGs for years and D&D variants for (likely) years, we assume that running heavy mechanical games is easy for everyone because it's second nature to many of us. But there's a lot more "homework" that goes into a game like 5E than a game like Yes And. The kids' imagination is going somewhere. With 5E it's into the rules and mechanics, with Yes And it's into the story. Kids are going to have an infinitely easier time playing something mechanically simple rather than something mechanically complex.Also, on a personal note, I remember being a kid and a first-time RPG player. I had a lot of ideas that didn't fit the mechanics of D&D and so was told no quite frequently. Cool character concept that didn't fit the mechanics, no. Cool action idea that didn't fit the mechanics, no. On and on. It took a few years for me to stop trying to be imaginative when playing D&D, but it eventually happened. I found other games and other ways to express my imagination. It's a weird paradox of RPGs. They're games of supposedly limitless imagination that also tend to come with hundreds of pages of rules specifically detailing what you can and cannot do. It's one of the reasons I love FKR, rules ultralight, rules light, and generic systems. You actually can do anything. They fulfill that whole a "game of pure imagination" thing that most RPGs promise but utterly fail to deliver.</blockquote>

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