Pencil and paper will still last in the video age! <grins happily>

Tallifer

Hero
There is yet hope for pen and paper roleplaying and the next generations.


Today I used some scrap paper to print out homework for my English class of nine year old Korean children, a generation and nation of children completely attached to consoles, computers and the internet... the scrap paper happened to be from a pile of print-outs of "Thunderspire Labyrinth" which I had discarded because the printer had made a mess of them... the children often check out the backs of their handouts to see what interesting scribbles there are... they were completely baffled by the grid maps and strange text... one girl started to read aloud, "A well in this room hides a phalagar, a squidlike creature that burrows through the earth and uses its tentacles to grab and rend its prey... Teacher, what is this??"


"It is a game about knights... like King Arthur. You pretend to be knights and meet dangerous witches like Morgan le Fay and fight dragons."


"We want to play that game!" the class cries in chorus.


"Perhaps we could some day... after all, it is not a computer game, so we could all play with just paper and pencils and some dice."


"Yes, let us play it!"


"Anyways... back to the boy who cried wolf..."
 

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Heh. I'm dreaming of the day my classes have decent enough English to play. :p

I've got my adults hooked on Catan currently with a monthly game night for that. Slowly, slowly I shall bring them in and hook them. :p
 

If I do teach the children the joys of roleplaying, I will have to come up with a very simple system to accomodate their age, English skills and most of all the limited time available (I do have a curriculum I must follow, however flexibly).

Also, there are five girls and five boys, so while all the boys can be knights, most of the girls will not want to be. Korean society is more traditional. Maybe one will want to be a Joan of Arc sort. Perhaps the game could be set in a Narnia-like world, so that some girls could play talking animals. (I prefer an Arthurian world, so players will not be wizards or witches: those are the nefarious villians and wondrous workers of magical marvels.)
 

Yeah, just use a d6 style system. Ie, roll the dice required, add the numbers together, and if you beat the DC, you win. Or, I dunno.

But knights and talking animals are probably the way to go. Keep combat to a minimum. Emphasize traps. But 10 PCs! Holy cow.
 

Another possible way to handle a situation like this would be to have a setup with 3 "PCs" (maybe a knight, his squire, and their faithful hound, or something similar) and the "narrator".

Instead of having preset rules, introduce the concept of a 'skill challenge'. Let the kids take turns being narrator (with generous guidance from you), and voting on what the characters choose to do. In other words, more group storytelling than roleplaying.

Skill challenges could be just a d20 vs a set DC, with modifiers chosen for things the kids think each character would be good at, and the difficulty chosen by the narrator.
 

I wouldn't be so sure about the girls not wanting to be martial characters. Most Asian countries, including Korea, have martial princess heroines. Who are often real people. (Well, so do Western countries, but most of them have been whitewashed nearly out of existance in the past century or so.)

And, of course, there are always the martial arts. (Contrary to popular belief, karate was invented in Korea, not Japan.)
 

I would suggest looking at a system called Risus, if you haven't seen it already:

Risus: The Anything RPG

The whole system is six pages long, has a VERY simple mechanic, and could be taught to a room of nine-year olds with very few problems. It's excellent, I'm told, for spurring players on into inventing their own "mechanics" for their actions in the game. You could talk a foe into submission as easily as you could club him into it. :D
 

/snip

And, of course, there are always the martial arts. (Contrary to popular belief, karate was invented in Korea, not Japan.)

I don't think so. Karate comes to Japan from China by way of Okinawa.

Maybe you're thinking of Tae Kwon Do?

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Back on Topic

I think I'll go with the chorus here and say that D&D is perhaps not the best game to use. I'd go with a MUCH simpler system, like Savage Worlds, or even something like RISUS (which can be a real blast). Trying to teach even Basic D&D with the language issues and the age issues (let's face it, I wouldn't teach a 10 year old native speaker AD&D or 3e D&D) would be very challenging.

There are TONS of very good rules light systems out there that might be a better place to start.
 

I don't think so. Karate comes to Japan from China by way of Okinawa.

Maybe you're thinking of Tae Kwon Do?
Nope. It was invented in Korea, although the basics came from China. Originally called karatedo. Kara is Chinese (but I forget what it means), te is Korean for fist and do is Japanese for way. They wanted to please everyone, since everyone invaded them pretty regularly. But the Japanese took to it and made it their own, ironically dropping the Japanese part of the name.

Unfortunately I no longer have my martial arts books and magazines, so I can't check on where I read about it. (But it was in more than one place.)

Even more unfortunately, I can't think of anything brilliant to add to the thread. But it is an interesting one!
 

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