Spoil me Island of the Forgotten Tomb

[PaMar]

Hi everybody,

A friend of mine who is a former (i.e. inactive for decades) role-player recently told me that his two sons (12-15, if I remember correctly) would like to try RPGs, but he doesn't feel like putting together a campaign for them. Especially, I think, he wouldn't like to spend lots of time to prepare this and then find out one (or both) don't really care.

I am a bit rusty myself, but I suggested the following compromise: I will GM for them (but he has to play, too) for a couple of nights, just to see how it goes. Of course I agree that I wouldn't want to start designing worlds and adventures for someone I don't know personally (the boys, I mean) and that could very well find out they prefer video games after there first half hour.

So, my proposal was to get Bash Fantasy (they would like Fantasy, apparently) along with the Pirate adventure/worldbook, purely because it looks simple enough and yet crunchy enough to provide (I hope) some tactical fun without boggling down everyone in details.

My friend agrees with the plan, and has raised up the ante by saying that most probably there will be another adult (a lady) who is a newcomer to RPG but interested in playing.

Now, I realize that getting the PDF from drivethru is no big expense, and we will probably end up buying the adventure anyway, but I'd like to know beforehand if it will fit my situation.

Specifically I plan to replace the fantasy countries with the real-world analogue, but keeping the fantasy part (so assuming that we have dwarves in the analogue of Switzerland, I will tell my players that Switzerland has dwarves, instead of using whatever the fantasy name is).

Also, I would like to ask a bit more about the whole adventure. The two boys will probably prefer plenty of Hack&Slash (or maybe not, but this I suppose is a valid assumption) while the two adults would like some more roleplaying. I can of course alter and adapt but I'd like to get an idea of what I am facing.

Also, even if this is considered a trial run with no real plans for the future, I'd like to know if people here could offer some advice about adventures for other systems that can easily be adapted to Bash Fantasy and the Island of Forgotten Tomb milieu, so that I can have options in case this becomes a massive hit (I don't think I have enough time to prepare adventures from scratch, nowadays, but adapting could still work).

Thanks everybody...