The school agreed readily to my pitch. I sent over a few lines about how\neducational tabletop roleplaying games are and how I had adapted the game for\nthe age group, but I didn\u2019t have to do any further persuading. I think it\nhelped that the office manager had had a university friend who was a gamer, and\nI got support from the librarian when we got talking about my kids going to her\ncreative writing club. But for whatever reason the school was very receptive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a flyer emailed out by the school, a follow-up via some parent phone\nchat groups, and a bit of word-of-mouth from my son, I got 11 paying customers\n(plus my own kids) out of no more than 150 eligible pupils, which I think is a\ngood ratio. Apparently it is one of the biggest starts they\u2019ve seen for a\nparent-run activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Choice cards work<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nI distilled my selection of five class, six race and nine background options onto summary cards. The kids passed them around, looked at them and discussed before choosing. That worked pretty well. Illustrations on some of the cards helped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found the popular races were Elf then Orc, with a couple of Humans. No\ntakers for any short races. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The popular classes were Rogue then Cleric then Wizard, with a Barbarian and\na Fighter. There are four rogues in one party of seven and I suggested one or\ntwo should change but they\u2019re all sticking to it. I couldn\u2019t even persuade the\none who wanted from the start to be able to do ice magic to pick wizard\u2014he just\nused his elf cantrip for Ray of Frost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Favourite background was Outlander followed by Noble, Acolyte and Sage, and\nan Urchin and an Entertainer. Folk Hero, Soldier and Guild Artisan were clearly\nall too mundane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do we learn from this? Simple choices from short lists of options,\nclearly presented, work fine. My kids wanted their characters to be impressive\nand exciting, and many of them sneaky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Choosing details is tricky<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nThe finer points were a bit less smooth. Everyone needs to choose class\nskill proficiencies, and weapons. Most choose armour, and at least one class\noption like spells, domain, fighting style or expertise. Many characters had\nrace or background free-choice languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had printed out class choice sheets to guide them through, but they were\nnot quite enough. I had listed class skills, but there were lots of questions\nand confusions about what the skill names meant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had included on the sheets the Equipment menus from the PHB class\ndescriptions, but for Fighter and Barbarian these have entries like \u2018any\nmartial weapon\u2019, so I had printed a simplified copy of the main weapon lists.\nIn one group the cleric players also got hold of this, and the main thing that\nstood out as differentiating the weapons was damage, so they chose high-damage\nweapons off this list (rather than the one-handed options from the Cleric class\nrules) and I didn\u2019t like to say no too much. Actually, I\u2019m looking forward to\nthe Orc Tempest Cleric dishing out some righteous 2d6+3 maul damage, so we\u2019re\nfailing forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I think in future I\u2019ll provide simpler, clearer, more complete choice\nsheets, and be very clear that they are to be gone through in order. If I have\nto omit some options I consider less usable, so be it. I may even ignore\nlanguages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, and ability scores. I looked between sessions at everyone\u2019s class,\nweapon, skill and personality choices and figured out what scores I thought\nwould suit them (PHB array for equality between players). Then I filled out the\nnumbers for them and next session handed over the completed sheets with the\noption to change things if they thought different. No-one wanted to change any\nso I feel that was a good way to do it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personality<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n![\"Packets](\"http:\/\/c7720051.myzen.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/personacards.jpg\")
I also created cards for choosing Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. I liked this framework when I saw it in the 5e PHB but, having created a character or two with my own kids at home, we were finding the 6-8 options tied to each background a bit restrictive. So I picked a largish selection of options from across all the backgrounds and made them freely available, putting them on choice cards with snappy titles as well as sentences in character voice. I also found common threads across some of the backgrounds, especially in Bonds, so I amalgamated and generalised some of the options, with prompts to come up with specifics for a Bond like \u2018Roots\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the players were pretty enthused about this, and chose multiple options in each category – we’ll have to see how this comes through in play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a very wide spread of personality traits, with independence and self-will being the most popular, and steeliness, boastfulness, joking, bluntness, determination and action-orientation also getting more than one pick. Also a couple who wanted to be peacemakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Self-interest was the most popular Ideal, followed by creativity, and a couple for mutual tolerance and freedom. Other than that there was again a wide spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most popular Bonds were commitments to other PCs, either selected individuals or the group as a whole. Also several chose to have a rival or a nemesis, though I don’t think anyone came up with specific details straight away. We’ll work on that soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ll talk about Flaws below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An hour is a short session, and character creation takes time<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nWith my optimistic head on, I had kind of hoped to get character creation done in the first session, maybe two. But we only get about an hour of the actual activity in the after-school slot and, even with a simplified process, creating six characters for new players took over two hours. One set of players had a bit more initial familiarity with adventure games of various sorts and stayed fairly focused on the technical questions like skills and weapons; they had their characters mostly done in two sessions, and used the third session for description and appearance, and a roleplaying scene gathering intelligence about the first dungeon. The other group had some players who were more confused or put off by the nuts and bolts, and they took most of two sessions over that, and personality went into Week 3, leaving only a short time for the intelligence-gathering roleplay. But they loved the personality choosing and got into the rapidplay dialogue, and we finished that phase of the club on a high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids ask a lot of questions<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nI know, right? But *really* a lot. Plenty of grown-up clarifying details to\ngladden my nerdy little heart, but also lots of out-there hypotheticals born of\nwild imagination. I think, especially when they are getting into a new\nactivity, they want to find the boundaries of what is possible and what is\nexpected in this framework. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And they shout out their ideas as soon as they have them, they comment\nunreservedly on each other\u2019s choices, and while you\u2019re engaged with one others\nare getting bored and starting to do their own thing\u2014if possible, under the\ntables. It\u2019s a chaotic kind of fun. I salute the professionals who handle\ngroups four or five times this size all day long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids have their own ideas and want to make their characters\nspecial<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nIf, like me back in the day, you learnt the game from the rulebooks, you might for your early character building have mostly stuck to the options offered in the rulebooks. But teaching the game to the kids orally I found them running ahead of me and going way off-piste with all sorts of ideas for making their characters awesome. One player had written out their character concept of \u201cenchantments and ice; shooting, sneaking, speed\u201d before I had finished saying it was time to choose a race. I had a player demanding a baby bronze dragon as a pet, and another wanting to be a vampire. Between them they\u2019ve got red skin, black skin, blue skin, red hair, blue hair, orange hair, red eyes, white eyes, stormy grey, and an eyepatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love it. I\u2019ve said yes to all the cosmetic stuff. The baby bronze dragon is firmly offstage but might make an appearance as an NPC in a few levels\u2019 time. I have vetoed all undead powers, but that one character still insistently self-identifies as a vampire, which is fine by me as a personality schtick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leads me to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten-year-olds are edgy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n ![\"Kid's](\"http:\/\/c7720051.myzen.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/dreadedshadow.jpg\")
Well, edgy perhaps isn\u2019t quite the right word. A few *are* genuinely keen to explore dark sides to their characters and stories: one novice player interrupted my introduction with \u201cOoh, is there dark magic? Hey, can I be *evil*?!\u201d and eyes wide with glee (and yes, it was the vampire). But I think, more than that, they are keen to make their characters hard and strong, without being perfect in a people-pleasing or conventional way. So across the thirteen characters in the two groups, there are six Rogues. There are characters called The Dreaded Shadow and The Icicle. Personality traits like \u201cI never show fear\u201d are popular, but the part of the characterisation framework that really got them going was the Flaws. One player chose seven. Even the kid who was so disdainful of characterisation at the start that they put Personality: Doesn\u2019t Care and Ideal: Jelly was sufficiently intrigued by Flaws that they chose two from the cards I handed out. And the popular flaws are not overt vulnerabilities, but rough edges like holding grudges, judgementality, or not admitting being wrong. Even the liabilities are active and heroic, like risk-taking and things they can’t resist doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friendships are important<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nKids really want to play with their friends. It is clear that deciding to\nsign up for the club happened mainly in groups of friends who talked about it\ntogether. I initially worked with the parents to sign each child up to the day\nthat best fitted their weekly schedule. But as soon as the kids found out their\nallocated days and started comparing notes I got I think three requests to\ntransfer into a group with more of their classmates. The one kid who comes on a\ndifferent day from their buddies several times wandered over to them in the\nrendezvous area, and had to be sent back to the other club they\u2019re signed up\nfor that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, players in both groups spontaneously chose each other\u2019s characters as their Bonds, and again within those classroom\/playground pre-existing friendship groups. I hope that friendships will strengthen across the classes, year groups and genders through the club, but at the moment, the social aspect with their existing friends is really strong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Please note that copyright in the hand-drawn illustration belongs to the artist, one of the club players, and I am using it with permission. The photo is mine.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had experience yourself with running games for kids? Playing games\nas a kid run by an adult? Tell us about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the start of the School of Adventure club, I did my best to simplify the character creation process. It is still complicated, especially making characters for six beginner players at once. I think I\u2019ve learned some lessons. There\u2019s an appetite for RPGs in primary schools The school agreed readily to my pitch. I sent… Continue reading School of Adventure \u2013 character building<\/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\/18"}],"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=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The finer points were a bit less smooth. Everyone needs to choose class\nskill proficiencies, and weapons. Most choose armour, and at least one class\noption like spells, domain, fighting style or expertise. Many characters had\nrace or background free-choice languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had printed out class choice sheets to guide them through, but they were\nnot quite enough. I had listed class skills, but there were lots of questions\nand confusions about what the skill names meant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had included on the sheets the Equipment menus from the PHB class\ndescriptions, but for Fighter and Barbarian these have entries like \u2018any\nmartial weapon\u2019, so I had printed a simplified copy of the main weapon lists.\nIn one group the cleric players also got hold of this, and the main thing that\nstood out as differentiating the weapons was damage, so they chose high-damage\nweapons off this list (rather than the one-handed options from the Cleric class\nrules) and I didn\u2019t like to say no too much. Actually, I\u2019m looking forward to\nthe Orc Tempest Cleric dishing out some righteous 2d6+3 maul damage, so we\u2019re\nfailing forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I think in future I\u2019ll provide simpler, clearer, more complete choice\nsheets, and be very clear that they are to be gone through in order. If I have\nto omit some options I consider less usable, so be it. I may even ignore\nlanguages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, and ability scores. I looked between sessions at everyone\u2019s class,\nweapon, skill and personality choices and figured out what scores I thought\nwould suit them (PHB array for equality between players). Then I filled out the\nnumbers for them and next session handed over the completed sheets with the\noption to change things if they thought different. No-one wanted to change any\nso I feel that was a good way to do it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Personality<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nI also created cards for choosing Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. I liked this framework when I saw it in the 5e PHB but, having created a character or two with my own kids at home, we were finding the 6-8 options tied to each background a bit restrictive. So I picked a largish selection of options from across all the backgrounds and made them freely available, putting them on choice cards with snappy titles as well as sentences in character voice. I also found common threads across some of the backgrounds, especially in Bonds, so I amalgamated and generalised some of the options, with prompts to come up with specifics for a Bond like \u2018Roots\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the players were pretty enthused about this, and chose multiple options in each category – we’ll have to see how this comes through in play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a very wide spread of personality traits, with independence and self-will being the most popular, and steeliness, boastfulness, joking, bluntness, determination and action-orientation also getting more than one pick. Also a couple who wanted to be peacemakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Self-interest was the most popular Ideal, followed by creativity, and a couple for mutual tolerance and freedom. Other than that there was again a wide spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most popular Bonds were commitments to other PCs, either selected individuals or the group as a whole. Also several chose to have a rival or a nemesis, though I don’t think anyone came up with specific details straight away. We’ll work on that soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ll talk about Flaws below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An hour is a short session, and character creation takes time<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nWith my optimistic head on, I had kind of hoped to get character creation done in the first session, maybe two. But we only get about an hour of the actual activity in the after-school slot and, even with a simplified process, creating six characters for new players took over two hours. One set of players had a bit more initial familiarity with adventure games of various sorts and stayed fairly focused on the technical questions like skills and weapons; they had their characters mostly done in two sessions, and used the third session for description and appearance, and a roleplaying scene gathering intelligence about the first dungeon. The other group had some players who were more confused or put off by the nuts and bolts, and they took most of two sessions over that, and personality went into Week 3, leaving only a short time for the intelligence-gathering roleplay. But they loved the personality choosing and got into the rapidplay dialogue, and we finished that phase of the club on a high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids ask a lot of questions<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nI know, right? But *really* a lot. Plenty of grown-up clarifying details to\ngladden my nerdy little heart, but also lots of out-there hypotheticals born of\nwild imagination. I think, especially when they are getting into a new\nactivity, they want to find the boundaries of what is possible and what is\nexpected in this framework. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And they shout out their ideas as soon as they have them, they comment\nunreservedly on each other\u2019s choices, and while you\u2019re engaged with one others\nare getting bored and starting to do their own thing\u2014if possible, under the\ntables. It\u2019s a chaotic kind of fun. I salute the professionals who handle\ngroups four or five times this size all day long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids have their own ideas and want to make their characters\nspecial<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nIf, like me back in the day, you learnt the game from the rulebooks, you might for your early character building have mostly stuck to the options offered in the rulebooks. But teaching the game to the kids orally I found them running ahead of me and going way off-piste with all sorts of ideas for making their characters awesome. One player had written out their character concept of \u201cenchantments and ice; shooting, sneaking, speed\u201d before I had finished saying it was time to choose a race. I had a player demanding a baby bronze dragon as a pet, and another wanting to be a vampire. Between them they\u2019ve got red skin, black skin, blue skin, red hair, blue hair, orange hair, red eyes, white eyes, stormy grey, and an eyepatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love it. I\u2019ve said yes to all the cosmetic stuff. The baby bronze dragon is firmly offstage but might make an appearance as an NPC in a few levels\u2019 time. I have vetoed all undead powers, but that one character still insistently self-identifies as a vampire, which is fine by me as a personality schtick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leads me to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten-year-olds are edgy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n Well, edgy perhaps isn\u2019t quite the right word. A few *are* genuinely keen to explore dark sides to their characters and stories: one novice player interrupted my introduction with \u201cOoh, is there dark magic? Hey, can I be *evil*?!\u201d and eyes wide with glee (and yes, it was the vampire). But I think, more than that, they are keen to make their characters hard and strong, without being perfect in a people-pleasing or conventional way. So across the thirteen characters in the two groups, there are six Rogues. There are characters called The Dreaded Shadow and The Icicle. Personality traits like \u201cI never show fear\u201d are popular, but the part of the characterisation framework that really got them going was the Flaws. One player chose seven. Even the kid who was so disdainful of characterisation at the start that they put Personality: Doesn\u2019t Care and Ideal: Jelly was sufficiently intrigued by Flaws that they chose two from the cards I handed out. And the popular flaws are not overt vulnerabilities, but rough edges like holding grudges, judgementality, or not admitting being wrong. Even the liabilities are active and heroic, like risk-taking and things they can’t resist doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friendships are important<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nKids really want to play with their friends. It is clear that deciding to\nsign up for the club happened mainly in groups of friends who talked about it\ntogether. I initially worked with the parents to sign each child up to the day\nthat best fitted their weekly schedule. But as soon as the kids found out their\nallocated days and started comparing notes I got I think three requests to\ntransfer into a group with more of their classmates. The one kid who comes on a\ndifferent day from their buddies several times wandered over to them in the\nrendezvous area, and had to be sent back to the other club they\u2019re signed up\nfor that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, players in both groups spontaneously chose each other\u2019s characters as their Bonds, and again within those classroom\/playground pre-existing friendship groups. I hope that friendships will strengthen across the classes, year groups and genders through the club, but at the moment, the social aspect with their existing friends is really strong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Please note that copyright in the hand-drawn illustration belongs to the artist, one of the club players, and I am using it with permission. The photo is mine.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had experience yourself with running games for kids? Playing games\nas a kid run by an adult? Tell us about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the start of the School of Adventure club, I did my best to simplify the character creation process. It is still complicated, especially making characters for six beginner players at once. I think I\u2019ve learned some lessons. There\u2019s an appetite for RPGs in primary schools The school agreed readily to my pitch. I sent… Continue reading School of Adventure \u2013 character building<\/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\/18"}],"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=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I also created cards for choosing Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. I liked this framework when I saw it in the 5e PHB but, having created a character or two with my own kids at home, we were finding the 6-8 options tied to each background a bit restrictive. So I picked a largish selection of options from across all the backgrounds and made them freely available, putting them on choice cards with snappy titles as well as sentences in character voice. I also found common threads across some of the backgrounds, especially in Bonds, so I amalgamated and generalised some of the options, with prompts to come up with specifics for a Bond like \u2018Roots\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWith my optimistic head on, I had kind of hoped to get character creation done in the first session, maybe two. But we only get about an hour of the actual activity in the after-school slot and, even with a simplified process, creating six characters for new players took over two hours. One set of players had a bit more initial familiarity with adventure games of various sorts and stayed fairly focused on the technical questions like skills and weapons; they had their characters mostly done in two sessions, and used the third session for description and appearance, and a roleplaying scene gathering intelligence about the first dungeon. The other group had some players who were more confused or put off by the nuts and bolts, and they took most of two sessions over that, and personality went into Week 3, leaving only a short time for the intelligence-gathering roleplay. But they loved the personality choosing and got into the rapidplay dialogue, and we finished that phase of the club on a high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids ask a lot of questions<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nI know, right? But *really* a lot. Plenty of grown-up clarifying details to\ngladden my nerdy little heart, but also lots of out-there hypotheticals born of\nwild imagination. I think, especially when they are getting into a new\nactivity, they want to find the boundaries of what is possible and what is\nexpected in this framework. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And they shout out their ideas as soon as they have them, they comment\nunreservedly on each other\u2019s choices, and while you\u2019re engaged with one others\nare getting bored and starting to do their own thing\u2014if possible, under the\ntables. It\u2019s a chaotic kind of fun. I salute the professionals who handle\ngroups four or five times this size all day long. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids have their own ideas and want to make their characters\nspecial<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nIf, like me back in the day, you learnt the game from the rulebooks, you might for your early character building have mostly stuck to the options offered in the rulebooks. But teaching the game to the kids orally I found them running ahead of me and going way off-piste with all sorts of ideas for making their characters awesome. One player had written out their character concept of \u201cenchantments and ice; shooting, sneaking, speed\u201d before I had finished saying it was time to choose a race. I had a player demanding a baby bronze dragon as a pet, and another wanting to be a vampire. Between them they\u2019ve got red skin, black skin, blue skin, red hair, blue hair, orange hair, red eyes, white eyes, stormy grey, and an eyepatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love it. I\u2019ve said yes to all the cosmetic stuff. The baby bronze dragon is firmly offstage but might make an appearance as an NPC in a few levels\u2019 time. I have vetoed all undead powers, but that one character still insistently self-identifies as a vampire, which is fine by me as a personality schtick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leads me to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten-year-olds are edgy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n Well, edgy perhaps isn\u2019t quite the right word. A few *are* genuinely keen to explore dark sides to their characters and stories: one novice player interrupted my introduction with \u201cOoh, is there dark magic? Hey, can I be *evil*?!\u201d and eyes wide with glee (and yes, it was the vampire). But I think, more than that, they are keen to make their characters hard and strong, without being perfect in a people-pleasing or conventional way. So across the thirteen characters in the two groups, there are six Rogues. There are characters called The Dreaded Shadow and The Icicle. Personality traits like \u201cI never show fear\u201d are popular, but the part of the characterisation framework that really got them going was the Flaws. One player chose seven. Even the kid who was so disdainful of characterisation at the start that they put Personality: Doesn\u2019t Care and Ideal: Jelly was sufficiently intrigued by Flaws that they chose two from the cards I handed out. And the popular flaws are not overt vulnerabilities, but rough edges like holding grudges, judgementality, or not admitting being wrong. Even the liabilities are active and heroic, like risk-taking and things they can’t resist doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friendships are important<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nKids really want to play with their friends. It is clear that deciding to\nsign up for the club happened mainly in groups of friends who talked about it\ntogether. I initially worked with the parents to sign each child up to the day\nthat best fitted their weekly schedule. But as soon as the kids found out their\nallocated days and started comparing notes I got I think three requests to\ntransfer into a group with more of their classmates. The one kid who comes on a\ndifferent day from their buddies several times wandered over to them in the\nrendezvous area, and had to be sent back to the other club they\u2019re signed up\nfor that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, players in both groups spontaneously chose each other\u2019s characters as their Bonds, and again within those classroom\/playground pre-existing friendship groups. I hope that friendships will strengthen across the classes, year groups and genders through the club, but at the moment, the social aspect with their existing friends is really strong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Please note that copyright in the hand-drawn illustration belongs to the artist, one of the club players, and I am using it with permission. The photo is mine.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had experience yourself with running games for kids? Playing games\nas a kid run by an adult? Tell us about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the start of the School of Adventure club, I did my best to simplify the character creation process. It is still complicated, especially making characters for six beginner players at once. I think I\u2019ve learned some lessons. There\u2019s an appetite for RPGs in primary schools The school agreed readily to my pitch. I sent… Continue reading School of Adventure \u2013 character building<\/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\/18"}],"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=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
If, like me back in the day, you learnt the game from the rulebooks, you might for your early character building have mostly stuck to the options offered in the rulebooks. But teaching the game to the kids orally I found them running ahead of me and going way off-piste with all sorts of ideas for making their characters awesome. One player had written out their character concept of \u201cenchantments and ice; shooting, sneaking, speed\u201d before I had finished saying it was time to choose a race. I had a player demanding a baby bronze dragon as a pet, and another wanting to be a vampire. Between them they\u2019ve got red skin, black skin, blue skin, red hair, blue hair, orange hair, red eyes, white eyes, stormy grey, and an eyepatch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love it. I\u2019ve said yes to all the cosmetic stuff. The baby bronze dragon is firmly offstage but might make an appearance as an NPC in a few levels\u2019 time. I have vetoed all undead powers, but that one character still insistently self-identifies as a vampire, which is fine by me as a personality schtick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leads me to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ten-year-olds are edgy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n Well, edgy perhaps isn\u2019t quite the right word. A few *are* genuinely keen to explore dark sides to their characters and stories: one novice player interrupted my introduction with \u201cOoh, is there dark magic? Hey, can I be *evil*?!\u201d and eyes wide with glee (and yes, it was the vampire). But I think, more than that, they are keen to make their characters hard and strong, without being perfect in a people-pleasing or conventional way. So across the thirteen characters in the two groups, there are six Rogues. There are characters called The Dreaded Shadow and The Icicle. Personality traits like \u201cI never show fear\u201d are popular, but the part of the characterisation framework that really got them going was the Flaws. One player chose seven. Even the kid who was so disdainful of characterisation at the start that they put Personality: Doesn\u2019t Care and Ideal: Jelly was sufficiently intrigued by Flaws that they chose two from the cards I handed out. And the popular flaws are not overt vulnerabilities, but rough edges like holding grudges, judgementality, or not admitting being wrong. Even the liabilities are active and heroic, like risk-taking and things they can’t resist doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friendships are important<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\nKids really want to play with their friends. It is clear that deciding to\nsign up for the club happened mainly in groups of friends who talked about it\ntogether. I initially worked with the parents to sign each child up to the day\nthat best fitted their weekly schedule. But as soon as the kids found out their\nallocated days and started comparing notes I got I think three requests to\ntransfer into a group with more of their classmates. The one kid who comes on a\ndifferent day from their buddies several times wandered over to them in the\nrendezvous area, and had to be sent back to the other club they\u2019re signed up\nfor that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, players in both groups spontaneously chose each other\u2019s characters as their Bonds, and again within those classroom\/playground pre-existing friendship groups. I hope that friendships will strengthen across the classes, year groups and genders through the club, but at the moment, the social aspect with their existing friends is really strong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Please note that copyright in the hand-drawn illustration belongs to the artist, one of the club players, and I am using it with permission. The photo is mine.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had experience yourself with running games for kids? Playing games\nas a kid run by an adult? Tell us about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the start of the School of Adventure club, I did my best to simplify the character creation process. It is still complicated, especially making characters for six beginner players at once. I think I\u2019ve learned some lessons. There\u2019s an appetite for RPGs in primary schools The school agreed readily to my pitch. I sent… Continue reading School of Adventure \u2013 character building<\/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\/18"}],"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=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Well, edgy perhaps isn\u2019t quite the right word. A few *are* genuinely keen to explore dark sides to their characters and stories: one novice player interrupted my introduction with \u201cOoh, is there dark magic? Hey, can I be *evil*?!\u201d and eyes wide with glee (and yes, it was the vampire). But I think, more than that, they are keen to make their characters hard and strong, without being perfect in a people-pleasing or conventional way. So across the thirteen characters in the two groups, there are six Rogues. There are characters called The Dreaded Shadow and The Icicle. Personality traits like \u201cI never show fear\u201d are popular, but the part of the characterisation framework that really got them going was the Flaws. One player chose seven. Even the kid who was so disdainful of characterisation at the start that they put Personality: Doesn\u2019t Care and Ideal: Jelly was sufficiently intrigued by Flaws that they chose two from the cards I handed out. And the popular flaws are not overt vulnerabilities, but rough edges like holding grudges, judgementality, or not admitting being wrong. Even the liabilities are active and heroic, like risk-taking and things they can’t resist doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKids really want to play with their friends. It is clear that deciding to\nsign up for the club happened mainly in groups of friends who talked about it\ntogether. I initially worked with the parents to sign each child up to the day\nthat best fitted their weekly schedule. But as soon as the kids found out their\nallocated days and started comparing notes I got I think three requests to\ntransfer into a group with more of their classmates. The one kid who comes on a\ndifferent day from their buddies several times wandered over to them in the\nrendezvous area, and had to be sent back to the other club they\u2019re signed up\nfor that day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, players in both groups spontaneously chose each other\u2019s characters as their Bonds, and again within those classroom\/playground pre-existing friendship groups. I hope that friendships will strengthen across the classes, year groups and genders through the club, but at the moment, the social aspect with their existing friends is really strong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Please note that copyright in the hand-drawn illustration belongs to the artist, one of the club players, and I am using it with permission. The photo is mine.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you had experience yourself with running games for kids? Playing games\nas a kid run by an adult? Tell us about it in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the start of the School of Adventure club, I did my best to simplify the character creation process. It is still complicated, especially making characters for six beginner players at once. I think I\u2019ve learned some lessons. There\u2019s an appetite for RPGs in primary schools The school agreed readily to my pitch. I sent… Continue reading School of Adventure \u2013 character building<\/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\/18"}],"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=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oakofhonor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}