Playing with my son

drkrash · Post by **drkrash** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 7:24 am

Not much of an "actual play" report, but my son has been drooling over all of these cool character sheets people have made here and which I collate into huge PDFs.

I've been testing the waters a little bit with gaming in general with him, because he's definitely interested in Daddy's cool stuff. He's only 5, so I can't go too far with rules (he's a bright kid, but he has the attention span off...uh...a 5-year old).

We have played RPGKids and that worked pretty well, though it took him till the end of the adventure before he started developing anything resembling tactics or a grasp of the rules.

But we both love superheroes. So I wanted to do something with that.

So last night I was prepping for a (grown-up) game and we were talking and he said he wanted to play a superhero game. I had just been thinking that BASH might work with him, so I said, "OK. Let's do it."

I pulled out a Robin Heroclix and some thugs, pulled out a Robin character sheet I have for BASH, and went to it. We even used a Heroclix map to set up a bank robbery in progress.

My son couldn't understand the rules, really, so for the dice, I just had him count up the dots and I did the math. As for choosing attacks, I just used the names of the attacks on the character sheet and let him pick.

Needless to say, Robin dealt with the 3 thugs in very short order. He wanted to play some more, so I pulled out a Bane clix and had him enter the scene. Except I didn't have any Bane stats prepared. So I used Solomon Grundy. Oy.

This proved quite a challenge to Robin. He couldn't hurt Grundy and, for the most part, Grundy couldn't hit Robin. Except when I rolled a 17 and rocked Robin's world with a fist.

But eventually, of his own accord, my son realized he should go try to hide to set up an ambush, but we didn't get to go past when Robin hid in some bushes. So there is some burgeoning tactical sense here that I need to develop.

It was bedtime before we finished, but it was definitely a successful experiemnt. We'll be doing it again soon! And I have a use for all those unused Heroclix I have!

Crose87420 · Post by **Crose87420** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 9:43 am

Nice.

BeardedDork · Post by **BeardedDork** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 10:22 am

Awesome.

Boost · Post by **Boost** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 12:35 pm

I never thought of it, but BASH is a great system to get your kids interested. Probably more like a second or third game system like the way you did it.

Sounds like you guys had a great time.

Volsung · Post by **Volsung** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 4:18 pm

I hope I'll be able to play with my kids like this. Once I'll be a father

kevperrine · Post by **kevperrine** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 11:16 pm

I've always been interested in "marketing" RPGs toward kids. That's marketing in a good and honest sense. Not trying to shill money from Mommy and Daddy. I think the creativity of kids added to the use of the rules (often involving good math learning) is a great thing.

I can't wait until my nephew and niece are old enough (but that's like 4+ years ... hehe...

So... since I just don't know.
What are good ages to introduce kids to RPGs at?
What ages for:

- the creativity & excitement of a "game" part
- the subtraction/addition rule part
- and (with BASH!) the multiplication rule part

What would you say those different ages would be?
just wondering
-kev-

drkrash · Post by **drkrash** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 11:23 pm

Well, this is a new experiment for me too. And we're keeping things really simple.

As for the math, he simply adds up the dice. And when he rolls doubles, it gets tricky for him. I do all the multiplication.

As for the creativity, I tell him what his character's powers are and let him decide. When he seems to be off-target, I suggest options.

I actively try to let him win without actually cheating in his favor.

I think 5 is about as young as you want to go.