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A Father's Journey - the first post...
John @ ICE:
This forum is more of a diary or “blog†of the process of starting an RPG group with my kids. I suppose thee place to start is to give you all a little background info. I suppose in many ways I’m the typical parent: a loving wife and two good kids, a fairly time intensive job, but I’m the boss, so I have a little more control. I’m American, but I have lived in London for 12 years. Enjoying the Olympics right now – massive buzz in the city and since I get to root for two teams (US and GB), I have a lot to cheer about!
Perhaps atypically, I happened to buy a game company, ICE, out of bankruptcy in 2001. At the time, I thought I could get the investment back and with a little luck, convert some IP into the electronic medium and maybe make some good money, however I considered this a long shot. But an equal consideration was I thought it would allow me to indulge in a big way into my main hobby and a real creative passion – RPGs – when I retired, and if I could find a licensee to husband the company and hopefully improve it, I could slowly work my way into it. Well, it didn’t exactly go as planned, but I hope its back on track for the slow but steady growth where the IP and really the ICE community as whole will begin to grow stronger again.
But that’s more the business end of it, and really only interesting from a “meta-game†level. I want to be part of the creative process, too, and of course, I want to play!
Now, at 45 years of age, I have not been able to do that much in the last couple years. I was last running a HARP campaign. And so I have been mulling how best, how efficiently can I get back to playing WITHOUT taking away from family time, which would immediately trigger repercussions with the lovely wife...
hmmm....play....with....my....KIDS!
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Oh – and my wife has been invited to play too (she claims she played D&D in the past, but I’m skeptical ???). I’m just worried she will do it out of the need to feel that she must participate, but we all know what it’s like to have a player around a table who is not stoked to be there!
Gigi and Charley, ages 11 and 8, are my two daughters. They are avid readers, have active imaginations, love Harry Potter and I have managed to get them into fantasy reading and movies, as well as doing some “LARPing†when we take woodland walks in the English countryside (I almost always get to play the ogre or the orc...)
S o, despite a busy schedule, about a year ago, I started to think that they would be the right ages to start playing this summer – Charley is a little young, but I think she can manage it.
The first step was starting to work out with Thom, also a member of the Aurigas team and my brother-in-law for those who don’t know, on how this might work in the context of ICE products. So we have been kicking back and forth a way to distil the best of HARP / RM into a VERY BASIC set of rules designed to “just start role-playingâ€. We are not done yet but getting there. I don’t know if I will focus too much on that process, but rather the “getting the campaign ready†and “getting the adventure modules ready stuff†more. I also intend this to be a record of how the hobby fits into daily life and family life and track how it works, and hopefully to elicit suggestions from others. Maybe then it can become a useful guide to others.
I plan to try to post about once every one to two weeks. And I will be tracking the board and looking to engage...of course, when I can find the time to do so!
GrumpyOldFart:
Back in the day, I personally considered AD&D to be so streamlined and basic that yes, you could teach a 10 year old how to be a good gamer. And yes, I'd love to see an ICE game that is so basic you can teach your kids (or in my case, my great nephews) the fun of RPGs.
That said, I think of granularity and the ability to make the system fit the GM's world concept to be the core of ICE games. This seems consistent to me through all incarnations of RM and HARP. So while I know for certain an RPG could be made simple and streamlined to the point where your 10 year old can be a 'full' player (I've played one that simple myself, after all), I think the real neat trick would be making it that simple and streamlined and still have the robust modularity that makes it recognizable as an ICE product.
JimiSue:
A friend of mine from college and a very gifted roleplayer, is constantly working on systems and mechanisms. I mention this because he has a similar issue although his boys are a little younger and last time I spoke to him about it he was constructing a system that he could use to indoctrin... I mean, introduce his kids into the hobby. I'll point him towards this thread :)
WoeRie:
You should talk with your german partners from 13mann.de. They created a d10 system called Aborea, which is so increadible easy and still has a feeling of RM/HARP (at least with some fantasy and good will). The only thing which I'm missing are the critical hits... but... I know... we want to play with Kids, so it's better to keep the fights a bit more abstract ;)
I will go on holiday tomorrow and we have the box with us. We will try to play it with my 8 year son in the evenings. I hope this works ;)
Langthorne:
Don't underestimate the kids. I have introduced RM to loads of kids over the years and I have found that they can pick it up pretty quickly, especially if they are given loads of guidance and support early in the process.
The big proviso is that they need to be strong readers and have pretty good mental arithmetic - but playing will improve those skills anyway.
The best place to start is to give them a setting and ask them what sort of character they would like to play. Let them go nuts with detail and flights of fancy, and then gradually pare down the ideas into something that fits the system and scenario. Generally, they start out wanting to be good at everything, but it doesn't take them long to come to terms with the reality of the game and how characters develop. Having at least one quirky or unique trait (within the party) makes them happy to have a niche.
Best of luck!
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