Thanks everyone, I'm checking it all out now!
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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What Should I Play?
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I know this is an old post, but I will give a +1 to Hero Kids for a few reasons:
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There's like 4 stats and all you need is a bunch of D6.
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The character sheets fit on an index card and are easy enough for a 6 year old to grasp everything on it.
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If you want to run their setting, tons of info is provided with quest seeds and pre-made adventures, and it is super easy to adapt to a different setting, or even totally different genre, because of how simple the stats are.
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It has a great monster compendium, with tons of fantasy monsters, with notes on balancing encounters.
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If you want to get creative and make totally custom monsters, the information included on balancing gives you all the tools to do that.
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The PDF bundle on DriveThruRPG is like $20 for the PDFs of most of the adventures, the core book, the monster compendium, and the gazetteer, all of which are great.
I'm running an ongoing campaign with a 6 year old, a 7.5 year old and my 16 year old sister. We had a 3 hour session last time, and the ADHD 6 year old was there for the whole thing (with a couple 5 minute breaks).
If you have any questions about it let me know. I'm not a super experienced GM. I've only run Hero Kids and Genesys, with being a GM in Hero Kids being my intro to TTRPGs.
I've not played it but I hear that Magical Kitties is a great RPG for kids, if it's the kids style of course.
Otherwise I'd absolutely recommend just hacking the one-page-rpg Lasers and Feelings. Hacking it is really really easy. You just pick two good buzzwords that oppose eachother and clearly set the tone of the game, ideally a planning word and a doing word but I once ran a hack called Scandal and Virtue that worked really well as it's basically the lawful - chaotic scale. Here are a list of hacks other people have made.
Just understand that playing a game with kids that young means throwing out the rules as soon as you start. So you need something with absolutely minimal rules (or you're wasting you time) and a story that's easy for them to latch on to.
I love using Honey Heist with kids. It's basically Lasers & Feelings, but you're a bear disguised as a human trying to steal honey from humans. Kids can really take that premise and run with. If you run multiple sessions do it picaresquely, where each session is a self-contained episode.
do it picaresquely
Thank you for the new word! I'm sharing it in the community I put together to share new, fun words I find!
Also, thank you for the game suggestion! My children are older and I am able to play more complicated games with them (typically Pathfinder) but my niece is getting older and in a couple years I'll probably try Honey Heist with her!
The Tiny d6 system has several ruleset for different genres and it's pretty easy to pick up.