Actual Play with Actual Kids
My second-oldest friend in the world and his younger son were in town this weekend and SOF thought YS would like to try a roleplaying game. On a whim/inspiration, last night I bought a PDF of chadu's Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot: The RPG and whipped myself through it. I've played Truth & Justice before, which is also based on the PDQ System, so I figured I had a good chance of getting up to speed.
I GMed. SOF played a Robot, named, alas, Mr. Roboto. My hook was that an idealist, Professor Heck, recruited one of each type of Champion into a new team that would strive for ideals of fraternity and comity against the alien menace, the team being, of course, Heck's Men. However, my son and daughter both wanted to play Monkeys, so I kept Professor Heck and just had him admit that, "Obviously, I'm still working the Pirate angle." (YS chose to play a Ninja.)
Adult ages: mid-40s. (I can say that until October!) Kids' ages: 11.5 (Offering Boy), 8 (YS), 7.5 (The Littlest Offering).
I just figured on running the adventure in the book, or part of it, or a version of part of it. As a system intro, I first had Professor Heck stage a "friendly" intramural match in a field with a half dozen teepees and a plane - because SOF had scale-model teepees and planes in a handy box. The Monkeys won - flung poo and a banana boomerang overcoming shuriken and, in fact, the Super-Strong Robot swinging the plane around. At the end of the combat, Professor Heck intoned, "I like to think we've learned something today, about friendship."
We moved along to one of the locations in the adventure itself, an abandoned Fire House, where Zho Zhang the Ninja snuck up on a homeless guy, and then the Alien-suborned NPC Ninja burst in to Challenge Zho Zhang to a Mojo Fight. His Sidekick Ninjas did surprisingly well in their own one-on-one matches against Mr. Roboto and OB's Monkey, Doctor Bob. And during the course of it, the attention spans of the two youngest kids wandered, and so did they. We found them upstairs playing a pet-care game on the computer, and I think they're getting married. All that said, it was fun. Little kids only have so much gaming in 'em at any one time.
SOF hasn't played many RPGs in the last 20 years. He liked the PDQ System a lot. Offering Boy picked it up quick, and pronounced the game AND the system his favorite of the ones we've played so far. (The competition was the Marvel Universe RPG, which was not really designed for kids, and The Princes' Kingdom, which was designed for kids but not playtested with them.) He wants to play it again.
Now, while the tone and topic of MNPR: RPG are incredibly kid-friendly, the text itself is less so. If you aren't comfortable with mild profanity and risque asides in your children's reading material, it's probably best to just explain the rules to them. For my part, I think I like the implementation of PDQ better in MNPR:RPG than in Truth & Justice.
I GMed. SOF played a Robot, named, alas, Mr. Roboto. My hook was that an idealist, Professor Heck, recruited one of each type of Champion into a new team that would strive for ideals of fraternity and comity against the alien menace, the team being, of course, Heck's Men. However, my son and daughter both wanted to play Monkeys, so I kept Professor Heck and just had him admit that, "Obviously, I'm still working the Pirate angle." (YS chose to play a Ninja.)
Adult ages: mid-40s. (I can say that until October!) Kids' ages: 11.5 (Offering Boy), 8 (YS), 7.5 (The Littlest Offering).
I just figured on running the adventure in the book, or part of it, or a version of part of it. As a system intro, I first had Professor Heck stage a "friendly" intramural match in a field with a half dozen teepees and a plane - because SOF had scale-model teepees and planes in a handy box. The Monkeys won - flung poo and a banana boomerang overcoming shuriken and, in fact, the Super-Strong Robot swinging the plane around. At the end of the combat, Professor Heck intoned, "I like to think we've learned something today, about friendship."
We moved along to one of the locations in the adventure itself, an abandoned Fire House, where Zho Zhang the Ninja snuck up on a homeless guy, and then the Alien-suborned NPC Ninja burst in to Challenge Zho Zhang to a Mojo Fight. His Sidekick Ninjas did surprisingly well in their own one-on-one matches against Mr. Roboto and OB's Monkey, Doctor Bob. And during the course of it, the attention spans of the two youngest kids wandered, and so did they. We found them upstairs playing a pet-care game on the computer, and I think they're getting married. All that said, it was fun. Little kids only have so much gaming in 'em at any one time.
SOF hasn't played many RPGs in the last 20 years. He liked the PDQ System a lot. Offering Boy picked it up quick, and pronounced the game AND the system his favorite of the ones we've played so far. (The competition was the Marvel Universe RPG, which was not really designed for kids, and The Princes' Kingdom, which was designed for kids but not playtested with them.) He wants to play it again.
Now, while the tone and topic of MNPR: RPG are incredibly kid-friendly, the text itself is less so. If you aren't comfortable with mild profanity and risque asides in your children's reading material, it's probably best to just explain the rules to them. For my part, I think I like the implementation of PDQ better in MNPR:RPG than in Truth & Justice.