Children article: Fantastabulous!

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Post originally by rumble at 2003-01-09 14:24:29
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Thanks for the entertaining and illumination (somewhat dubiously in some areas) article.

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Post originally by Sandy Antunes at 2003-01-09 17:40:26
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Hi,

I'm glad you liked it. I'm wrapping up a less facitious bit on this for a book on faery gaming, the 'how to roleplay with children'. The meat of it is really based off a 1-page handout from David Millians, plus numerous discussions with him, Bill Walton, Nicole Lindroos, and others.

The short of which is the same as this column, ironically enough. There are, for children, pretty straightforward stages of development that map neatly into roleplaying goals.

Kids basically start at "kill the dragon! It's dead? Let's kill another one!" They progress in pre-teens to being more into the quest, the entire process of hunting and finding a dragon, not just the kill. In teens, they often are more into personal epic-- whether the dragon is killed or not matters less than _how_ their PC acted during the battle.

I wish I could map this easily into adult stuff, but I can't. Fortunately, "Robin's Laws of Gaming" (by Robin Laws, from Steve Jackson Games) does an _excellent_ job of helping figure out adult player goals/mindset, and then tells how to customize the game session for them.

Which all boils down to "figure out not what your players like, but how they like things, and give it to them".

Cheers,
Sandy
sandy@rpg.net

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Post originally by Tom Zunder at 2003-01-10 03:30:14
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I have now seen two lots of kids move through roleplaying.
Matt, currently twelve and an on-off player since 3, yup 3,
is definitely moving to the quests stage, less concerned with goals than style.

It's an interesting subject, I'd like to hear more.

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Post originally by Count_Zero at 2003-01-10 08:44:19
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Likewise. I also hope some of my local GM's would read this article, as I'm 17 and I've found it compleatly impossible to find a game (as all the open games don't want any players under the age of 21, and those games are rare. Most of the games want people in their 30s (!))

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Post originally by Cedric Chin at 2003-01-13 11:44:36
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Great article. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I run "beer and pretzel" game demos at a retail store with a younger audience, and must say the MageKnight Dungeons overlaps with the goals of the younger set. Hope to run some RPGs with kids at ConQuest or such.

Count, maybe you can hook up with a 30 year old gamer and the both of you can join an older group.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^