In case folks missed it, here's an overview of the two sessions I ran a few weeks ago for a handful of the kids I teach:
Well, read the rules, immediately understood them, sat down with 5 kids from my Year 4 class (they're 9) this afternoon with no planning at all, and created characters and started running an adventure for them.
Within 15 minutes the entire group had been led through chargen, created characters, and had the rule system explained to them ready to play. Nice.
They took to the game like ducks to water, especially as I was able to relate many of the fae to characters they'd encountered in the Spiderwick Chronicles (I read the class all five books during storytimes this year).
Because I said I'd award Essence for creative thinking and heroism (being nice and good, not just heroic) they played up to that aspect brilliantly.
The adventure was a basic one, winged from the start, based on the idea that they said they'd like to "stop some bad faeries doing something wrong." So, I made it more personal, by having a band of goblins intent on invading the house the two brownie PCs were looking after, intent on wrecking it, ruining the brownies' reputations, and maybe even hurting them in the process.
Basically, the two pixies, sprite, and two brownies have encountered and befriended a really naughty pooka (who wanred them of the goblin plot), and started to organise their defense of the house, while the sprite and one pixie rushed to the woods nearby to enlist aid. The player of the pixie spending Essence to ensure they met a stag in a woodlnd clearing, the sprite then talking to and using Essence to convince the stag to help them fight the goblins.
So, in an impromptu hour of play, they created characters, grasped the system, and had a lot of fun (and inter-character roleplay).
The second session:
Well, the kids finished the adventure this afternoon. Much fun was had as they prepared to defend the house. A spoon was used to catapult eggs, tacks were placed on the floor inside the cottage door, pixie dust was used to create a sword and bow and arrows, as well as an area of deep sticky mud outside of the door. A deodorant can and match were used as an impromptu faery flamethrower, the befriended pooka was convinced to assume the form of a skunk and "fart at the goblins" (their choice of words), the stag charged the goblins from behind, the queen of a wasp hive was sweet talked into lending her warriors in a rear attack on the goblins, and two ducks from the pond were summoned into the fray.
Needless to say, between facing a determined sprite, a pixie with a bow and arrows, a barrage of eggs, a moat of sticky mud, a floor covered in tacks, a few gouts of flame, an entire swarm of wasps, the barreling charge of a stag, the stinky spray of a skunk, and a pair of angry ducks, the dozen or so goblins found themselves outclassed, humiliated, and fleeing for their lives.
The faery queen awarded them all small medals, and the honorary titles, "Lords/Ladies of the Cottage".
Several of the kids now want to buy .pdf copies of the game.
cheers!
Colin