My son is turning 8 and has never played an RPG. I’ve played plenty, but have never run a game. I think ICRPG might hit a sweet spot in terms of not being too complex for him (or me), but was wondering if any experienced GMs had thoughts on:
Thanks!
First of all, awesome! Second, I did this with my son when he was little, and I am pleased to say, he’s now grown up and a fine DM all on his own. Here’s the best advice I have based on my experiences:
1). I would reduce the common loop to simply a to-hit attack roll and also a common check roll. Forget about all those stats. Let’s just see if you pass/fail in the moment. You have a bonus to swing a sword/cast a spell/shoot a bow and you have a bonus to climb/jump/persuade/notice things. And that’s it. To these two bonuses, I would have two key effort categories, maybe damage and everything else. The key here is just getting your son used to the common success/fail loops and rolling for damage/effort. You can always introduce more concepts later, like individual stats, but it’s harder to go back, I found. So, remove complexity. Keep the fun focused on tests, rolling dice, and fun outcomes.
Solo play is wicked hard as a DM, and you run the risk of killing your kid’s character quickly. Literally, two good damage rolls by the monsters could end your night of play in tears. I had it happen. So, make sure your son has extra hit points, several healing potions at all times, and you might want to give strong thought to giving him a companion, Diablo style, who can stabilize or administer a healing salve. You probably also want to make monsters only do 1d4 damage, and make sure your son is kitted out with cool items. Finally, you may want to also make sure there is a trusted ally back in town, like a trusted wizard questgiver, who can summon the player back to town if all else fails. You know, Harry Potter just wakes up in the hospital.
Ew. Run away from modules. Simply ask your son what seems fun to him: rescuing a missing kid from goblins, or finding an ancient sword, or finding a cool dragon hatchling ally. Then, just prep a few fun encounters with goblins or orcs or highwaymen, have a giant chasm to leap/fly/rappel over, maybe outwit an evil wizard/escape Indiana Jones style from a boulder, and then have your son return to town victorious as a hero, where everyone makes over his accomplishments.
The key to all of these tips is to just stoke the flames, not necessarily get super mechanical and in the weeds with play. All those pieces can come way later in the journey.
Yes! Icrpg will be perfect for you guys!
My advice here will differ a bit from Alex’s very solid advice. Not that it’s better, just a different approach the I used with my 6 year old getting him to play with my two older kids (10 and 12 yr. Olds).
I went with three stats: Strength for anything melee combat related and other things that make sense to require strength. Athletics for ranged combat, dodging, jumping, etc., basically Dex. And Smarts for all magic, knowledge, wisdom, Intelligence, etc.
I would absolutely recommend running the ICRPG adventure “Orvald’s Tower”. It is a great intro adventure to ICRPG as it really shows a lot of the really cool stuff from the system in a pretty clear way.
Now, for duet style play, I would load your son’s character up with a powerful weapon early as a pick up. Kids love “finding” powerful weapons even more than starting with them. Give him a couple of healing potions or make sure he finds them early. When I ran my kids through this one, I dropped a healing fairy (Legend of Zelda style) just past the spiral stairs. Basically provide opportunities to heal up. When my kids characters “died”, they were just respawned back at the beginning of that floor videogame style. One of the cooler parts of this adventure for teaching the game is that each floor has a central obstacle that is more or less static making it conducive to “try again”.
Above all else, the best advice I can offer is this: make it fun for both of you! Cheer him on, encourage, him to think outside the box. Show him you’re on his team even though you’re running the monsters or rolling the maelstrom.
All very solid advice. We are tackling the same problems, just with slightly different methods.
Agreed. Probably the best part of ICRPG is how flexible it is. You’ll be able to mold the game into what you want/need it to be at the table with your kid and you’ll both have a blast doing it.
My wife didn’t think our 6 yr old would be able to handle sitting and playing it. But, with a little bit of coaching which die to roll and what number to look at, he was right in it with his older siblings and my wife. He was our first hero coin winner for roleplay that night lol.
Great times
The aforementioned advice is solid. This is how I ran ICRPG with my children.
I thought all the dice would be confusing, so I started with just using a d20.
I converted hearts to 3 hits. Rolls were pass or fail.
Ultimates successes are worth 2 hits. For example, if a treasure chest is 3 hits to unlock, and they roll an ultimate success, then that is worth 2 hits. There is one more hit left on the treasure chest to unlock it.
Then, I got them using effort dice. I started them off with just using a d6.
Then, we went to full ICRPG.
I use it all the time with the kids at school ranging from 3rd grade-12th. Younger groups need a bit of adjusting to keep things from getting too complicated but overall it works very well. That said, I would suggest EZD6 over ICRPG for younger kids especially due to it only having one type of dice and some player facing rolls. This is the first year I’ve used it and so far it’s been running very smooth and teaching it takes 1/3 of the time (not that ICRPG took very long to begin with). The only major change I made is an open class system rather than the pre gen stuff since kids want to change quite often so mine is more equipment based- anyone can do anything as long as they have the item; range? need a bow or spear, melee? need a sword or ax, magic? need a a staff or wand. I then ask them to pick one thing they are good at and thats what they can roll BOON in, then as they “level up” with story beats and such I give them the option to pick another thing they are good at which is where they can adjust what they want their “class” to be. " Im good at tracking" “im good with bows” “im good at sailing” “Im good at making potions” are a few things the kids have picked. They start with no armor so they are hit on anything but a 6 but at character creation they are given gold to buy starting gear with and I have stuff priced so they can get light armor (5/6 to dodge) and a weapon or two types of weapons…or as most of them did, one weapon and a bunch of random cheaper stuff they can have fun with.