New Blog

Not sure if anyone is following this anymore, but I’ve started a new blog for the Saskatoon Homeschool RPG Club.  It will include art work and game reports, etc. written by the kids in the group.  I’ll be migrating any relevant posts to the new site as soon as I figure out how and deleting this blog.

RPGs – A Christian dad’s Perspective part 2

For those that are interested, part 2 of my interview on Growing Creative Kids is up now.

RPGs a Christian Dad’s Perspective

I’ve been fairly busy this last week and haven’t gotten around to posting anything new for a couple of days.  I realize that I have some campaign reports to catch up on too.  I hope to get back to posting every two to three days on a regular basis.  In the meantime, here is a link to part one of an interview I did with Sheena Witter on her Growing Creative Kids blog, entitled Role Playing Games – A Christian Dad’s Perspective.

Most of the interview deals with my response to the bad reputation that RPGs have developed over the years and how I, as a Christian parent, don’t have a problem running RPGs for kids.  Part 2 will also explore how I use RPGs as a homeschooling tool.

I hope you enjoy it.

Fabled Lands

Fabled Lands was a series of game books originally released in the 1990′s.  They have been out of print for many years since then, but are now being re-released.  I found a few of the older version a couple of years ago at the Saskatoon Symphony Book Sale for $1.00 each.  I didn’t realize at the time what a great deal I had discovered as many of the old series were selling for much more.  Varte loved them, I was quite excited when I found out they were being re-released.  Originally the author planned a series of twelve books, but only the first six ever saw the light of day.  Now, books 1-4 have been re-released on Amazon.   From what I understand, the rest will be released depending on how sales of the first four go.

1. The War Torn Kingdom
2. Cities of Gold and Glory
3. Over the Blood Dark Sea
4. The Plains of Howling Darkness

At about $9.00 a book, these are a great deal if you have kids that love Fantasy and you don’t have time to Role Play with them.  These books are great for getting your kids to read more, the come with beautifully illustrated maps, a simple dice based resolution system, and are designed so that the kids can travel from one book to another and back again with the same character.  There is also a large fan base on the web with additional resources.

Shadows: A Great Entry Level RPG

Shadows is a good, free, entry level RPG for parents who would like to start role playing with their kids.  It is basically the same as telling an adventure story, but adds a few dice rolls to the mix.  This is the game in a nut shell, (but make sure you download the PDF as it contains some good examples and advice) Each child in the game has a shadow self – who wants to cause trouble, and a light self – who wants to do what’s right.  Each person playing the game needs tow different colored six sided dice, one shadow die, and one light die.  As you tell the story, before the kids can give their input, they roll both dice.  Whichever die is higher determines which side (i.e. the shadow or the light side) of the child’s personality gets to decide the action.

There are several things I like about this game, on the one hand it is a good introduction  to interpreting dice rolls in an RPG.  The choices are simple, and it is fairly easy to understand the use of the dice.  Also, from a role playing perspective it is a good introduction to the use of characters distinct from the player  Kids will have to make choices in line with their dice rolls, not necessarily in line with what they themselves my have wanted to choose.

From the perspective of a parent, however, I like this game because it can be a very good discussion starter with your kids.  Don’t get too heavy, but from time to time comment on the kids’ choices or ask them what they think of their character’s choices and whether or not the characters are making the right choices.  By the time I discovered this game, my kids were a bit too old to really enjoy it, and we had already started playing D&D together, so it seemed too simple for them – I think we only played it once or twice.  I wish I had discovered it sooner.  If anyone gives it a try, please let me know how it went.

RPG Basics: Telling Adventure Stories

One day when my kids were quite young, we were sitting in the car waiting for my wife.  The kids were getting bored, and asked for a story.  At the time, my inspiration had run dry and I couldn’t even think of a fairy tale to tell them.   I had an idea, however, I started out the story like this, “Crystal and Varte are walking in the forest and they see an old cabin, what do they do?” The kids caught on right away, and told me they wanted to look inside.  I described the inside of the cabin for them, including a hole in the floor, and asked them what they wanted to do again.  My intrepid explorers climbed into the hole to see where it led.  I forget where the story went after that, but I think it involved finding a cave of goblins teaching them to be nice – or some such thing.  (The kids were only 4 and 6 at the time, so it wasn’t the most epic of Fantasy stories.)  I realized, however, that I had struck on a great way to keep the kids entertained while we were waiting.  I found that to involve the kids in a story all I had to do was to come up with an opening line, and give them a choice.  The story would quickly take on a life of it’s own as we all added in our own details of the story.

Not only is this a great way to keep your kids from going squirley in the car, telling adventure stories like this is a great way to introduce your kids (and even yourself) to Role Playing Games.  There are no dice or rules to worry about, it is just the story telling.  That is, after all what RPGs are really all about, having fun by telling a good story collaboratively.  The rules, stats and dice rolls are there to help you tell the story, they are not the story themselves.  You may never even need to go beyond this if you and your kids are having fun with it.  However, as your kids grow, they may begin to want to develop more and more complex stories and you may want to begin looking into some actual RPG rules.  That’s just fine, if you’ve learned how to tell a good story, you have learned the most basic skill for being a good Game Master (GM).  Next post I’ll talk about some easy to learn (and free!) RPGs to get you started on your way to developing a fun, educational and potentially life long hobby for you and your kids.