I'd run the kids through the 4e derivative Monster Slayers one time
which was o.k. but a bit too railroad and seemed rather pointless,
plus I found it still a bit too complicated for them, but that was a
year ago.
I had planned some time ago to run Holmes Basic for them, but never
even got through character creation as it was a bit too complicated
for their short attention spans.
My daughter's 8 and she has trouble keeping up with her school work,
and RPGs are good for learning a lot of things, so I thought it would
be good. My son is 10 and doing alright in school.
The last week or so I got the bug to work on my RPG, I'm still working
on the monster and magic item section, but it's compatible enough with
old school you can use those from any old edition. The Basic Player's
Guide has long been finished and tested well enough. I finally got up
the courage to try it with the kids. I decided to run the Holmes
Basic sample dungeon as It's my favorite start to D&D.
Character creation in BURPG is really fast, you only need to choose
your class and roll up 3 random items in addition to standard
equipment, we got through that in under 15 minutes which really
surprised me how quick it was again, my daughter even got how to
figure the percentile dice after her second one. My daughter choose
an Invoker (cleric basically) I described as a healer/fighter she
named her Megan but halfway through the game changed her name to
Rose. My son chose an Adventurer (fighter) and named him Callrio. So
I took the Spellcaster as an NPC. My son mentioned he was glad to not
have to worry about spells, It only took me a minute or two to set
those up for myself, but I'm intimately familiar with the system since
I wrote it.
There was a lot of laughing from them at the PP line on their sheet
(platinum pieces.
I used a figure I had for a gnome wizard I'd played years ago and
there was lots of laughing about how little he was.
My son wasn't paying much attention to begin with when I started them
in the inn, or at the beginning of the dungeon, but he chose to turn
left.
My son drew up his character on the sheet, and got another paper and
drew some of his equipment (a blank book he had from his equipment
rolls and some other stuff) and wrote some stuff about his character
on another sheet while I was going back and forth between them with
character creation.
Callrio decided to go left and went into the room first and the
skeletons. They got initiative, but no surprise, 3 attacked him, 1
hit for 1 damage. One also attacked and hit Megan for 2. On the kid's initiative Callrio missed rolling a 4, and Megan used Awe (Turn undead,
I wanted to avoid that phase as I've read of and even had one new
player think that meant to turn oneself into an undead instead of
making them run away, I don't really like the word awe for that but
haven't come up with something better - maybe glory.) She turned all
of them. My spellcaster attacked one from the back but missed well.
2nd round PCs get initiative, my son notices flint and steel as one of
the items on his character sheet and tries to set one of the skeletons
on fire (he plays Minecraft so knows what flint and steel is from that
game.) I was nonplussed for a second but the skeletons were covered in
dusty webs so allowed it to work, which burned it up (I rolled really
bad for hp on the skeletons, none over 2.) My daughter's character
now named Rose hit the one that was attacking her last round and
killed it, and my spellcaster hit the one he'd attacked the previous
round and also killed it. The last one started to flee from the Awe
(no free attacks for that in URPG, I also screwed up here as an
Invoker has to continue concentrating on Awe for the undead to
continue running away, even my own rules I don't always remember in
the heat of the moment.)
For the next round my son had gone to the bathroom, I had my daughter
roll initiative and she tied with the skeletons with a 6, she caught
up to the last skeleton and also killed it. My son was now back and
suggested picking up all the bones, they might be worth something. He
and I were both tired so we ended the game there, my daughter wanted
to continue, and took the figures of a skeleton and her's and mashed
them together making fighting sound effects. I told her we'd play
tomorrow. A little more than an hour had passed from when we started
making characters.
- Justisaur
URPG Site:
https://sites.google.com/site/justisaursdd/urpg
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