I\u2019ve\nstarted running a roleplaying game (RPG) club at my kids\u2019 school. The game I\u2019m\nusing describes itself as \u201cAge 12+\u201d, but the school only goes up to age 11. So\nI kept the club to the oldest two year groups (Years 5 and 6 in the English\nsystem, ages 9 to 11) and I\u2019ve adapted the published game a bit, in an effort\nto make sure these younger kids could pick it up OK, and to avoid negative\nreactions from staff or parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have\nshifted the campaign concept from the default \u201cyour characters have embarked\nupon a life of adventure, risking their life, limb, mental well-being and\npossibly immortal soul\u201d to \u201cyour characters are students at a School of\nAdventure, a fairly safe and youth-friendly environment in which they learn the\nskills for a life of adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This\nmeans I can avoid mentioning adult themes that I would normally include in a\nmedievalesque fantasy world, like alcohol, gambling, sex, crime and punishment.\nThe curriculum structure gives me a relatable excuse to limit the kids\u2019 initial\ncharacter-building options. And there is a rationale for making combat and\nother hazards non-lethal\u2014who would send their kid to a school where termly\ntests were not pass or fail but live or die?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I originally decided on non-lethality a) not to put off sweet gentle kids who don\u2019t like gore and death and b) to avoid some of the ethical questions about the typical barge-in-kill-all-in-sight-grab-the-loot dungeon bash. Also c) to avoid kids being too upset when they invest themselves in their first character and get them killed in the first session or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having\ngone through character creation (see my next post), I can add that d) character\ngeneration takes time and I\u2019d rather not have to repeat it too often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I\u2019ve\nsaid that everything in the school\u2019s adventuring exercises is imbued with magic\nthat prevents death or permanent injury. Losing hit points is painful, getting\nto 0 hit points renders characters unconscious as normal, and failing that\nthird death save means you\u2019re out for the duration and will require revival by\nthe staff, but you will be back for the next adventure. Hmm, what happens if a\ncharacter is out until revived in an early encounter of a multi-session\nadventure\u2026 maybe staff revival can happen mid-test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, so that\u2019s the non-lethality tweak I\u2019ve made, and how the school setting helps justify it. Also, although many of my players are completely new to tabletop RPGs and several of them seem new to the Tolkienesque fantasy genre, I think they are all familiar with the Harry Potter franchise so \u2018it\u2019s a bit like Hogwarts\u2019 is a good way into the setting for them. And for me\u2014I have an immediate scheme for building the setting if I know I need a school building, school grounds, subjects, staff, houses and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could\ngo on about race in RPGs; in fact, I think I\u2019ll make it a blog post of its own\nsome time. For now let me leave aside the fundamental issues and just talk\nabout the omissions and slight tweaks I\u2019ve made to present the game\u2019s core\nraces in the School of Adventure setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First,\nI\u2019m calling the whole thing \u2018parentage\u2019 not \u2018race\u2019. RPG \u2018race\u2019 is quite a\ndifferent thing to real-world race, so I think it better to use a different\nword for it. My young players\u2019 formation of understanding about race in the\nreal world is important, and not something I should interfere with by\npresenting a whole bundle of fantastical and game-related concepts under the\nsame label. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second,\nand for reasons of the game rather than the outside world, I\u2019m not offering all\nthe races in the Player\u2019s Handbook (PHB). I offered six, with no sub-race\nchoices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I in principle\nwanted to limit the choices, because I\u2019ve seen new players somewhat bedazzled\nby the full PHB options. And I had some specific reasons for omitting certain\nraces:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dragonborn<\/strong>\u2014I had not run a dragonborn or a 5th<\/sup> edition game before, and a player-character (PC) breath weapon seemed like a new complication I should avoid. On reflection, I think I\u2019d have been fine, but six is enough choices so I\u2019ll probably continue to leave them out for now unless I find a player who pushes for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Half-Elf<\/strong>\u2014I didn\u2019t want to introduce the idea of biracial parentage to the character-building process. (I\u2019m calling Half-Orc \u2018Orc\u2019 for the same reason.) Not that I don\u2019t think biracial or more complex ancestry has a place in D&D generally\u2014far from it. But I can imagine taking forever answering a string of questions in the form \u201cCan I be half-[this] and half-[that]?\u201d and I know I don\u2019t have a better reason for ruling out all these combinations than that the game rules don\u2019t support them and I want a short menu. So I felt it best just not to mention it. Also half-elves are a bit in-betweeny in their features so in my quest for a short menu of choices they\u2019re dispensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tiefling<\/strong>\u2014I don\u2019t want to strongly feature either heavy racial prejudice or fiends\/demons\/devils in this under-12s campaign, and they\u2019re both inherent to the concept and flavour of Tieflings as written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the\nconcept being that the PCs are young teenagers, I felt I should re-write the\nbackgrounds. They are still necessary because they provide up to half a\ncharacter\u2019s skill proficiencies and they help to differentiate two characters\nwith the same class. (This last function turned out to be important, as I will\ndiscuss in my next post). Also I think they are fun and flavourful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But as written they assume that the character is an adult, with already some backstory in the adult world. So I converted some of the PHB backgrounds to childhood concepts, such as Acolyte to temple school, Entertainer to school of performing arts, and Guild Artisan to apprenticeship. I left out Charlatan and Criminal because I didn\u2019t want to encourage too much identification with dishonest behaviour in a school club, and a couple of others just to trim out excess choices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re\nat a school for adventure, you\u2019re obviously studying adventurous skills. So I\nthought that class translated directly into the course you have chosen to study\nat the school. With a bit of renaming for flavour, I\u2019m using what to me as an\nold-timer are the four classic options: Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. Plus\nBarbarian, which I felt might be a fun choice for a kid and should be simple to\nget into. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If I decide to lengthen the menu, I may consider Druid, Ranger, Paladin, Bard, Monk. I don\u2019t want to use Warlocks in a primary-school club because characters getting magical powers from pacts with dark forces seems to risk alarming the teachers or parents. (Likewise no Oath of Vengeance, no Necromancy specialists, and if I allow the Assassin archetype I\u2019ll rename it Footpad and rely on my 5th<\/sup>-level end point to keep it reasonably light.) And I don\u2019t like either of the PHB Sorcerer options\u2014I can\u2019t be doing with anything as unpredictable as wild magic, and I don\u2019t really want to play into the fantasy genre\u2019s tendency to ascribe life-shaping significance to \u2018bloodline\u2019. If I get myself any supplement books with other Sorcerer types in them I may consider adding them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I won\u2019t\nbe awarding experience points and trying to engineer pace of advancement that\nway. I\u2019m just going to say that they start as first-years, with the abilities\nof first level characters, and level them up as a party after each main\nadventure, narrating this as them growing up into the next school year and\nlearning a more advanced curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My original plan was to spend two terms\u2014to the end of the 2019-20 academic year\u2014playing years\/levels one to five. But, revising this post for my new site at the end of the first term, having only managed to get through year one, I may have to accept the rate of about one to two School of Adventure years per real school term. Hopefully I can arrange things so that there is the potential to take at least some of the starting characters to year 5 next real year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My players are familiar with school \u2018houses\u2019, so I\u2019m using this as a convenient reason why those characters played by people attending the club on Monday are in one party for their adventure exercises and the Tuesday players\u2019 characters are in another. I\u2019ve said that the team exercises are organised by house, and that all the characters from each day are members of the same house, therefore the same team. It saves coming up with reasons to adventure together and hopefully closes down the permanent party split scenario if any in-character tensions emerge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So that\u2019s the School of Adventure concept. It\u2019d be great to hear your thoughts on it. I was thinking of writing it up into a transferable and saleable format so let me know if you\u2019d like to see that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve started running a roleplaying game (RPG) club at my kids\u2019 school. The game I\u2019m using describes itself as \u201cAge 12+\u201d, but the school only goes up to age 11. So I kept the club to the oldest two year groups (Years 5 and 6 in the English system, ages 9 to 11) and I\u2019ve… Continue reading School of Adventure – concept<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cPrevious\nschool\u201d = background<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCourse\u201d\n= class<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYear\u201d =\nlevel<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHouse\u201d =\ngroup<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n