Quote from: James J SkachHaving never been a big fan of dice pools, I'm wondering if there's a way to alter this to be a single die mechanic - like a d10 or something.  I have noticed that the kids like a single die to compare, but I haven't tried dice pools with them.

It depends what age you're trying for.  I played it with a range from 6 to 11.  
It slows things down considerably to ask them to add, say, 5 plus 8 in their heads.  Whereas even kids who are 4 or 5 can count tokens.  It would be nicer if you had stickers or something on the dice rather than distinguishing even/odd, but it's not bad.  

If you want to convert to a roll and add, I'd suggest stat + 1d6, where 5-6 is one success, 7-8 is two successes, etc.

My kids and I played all sorts of let's pretend before the RPG came along. If he hadn't asked to play we would have just continued with let's pretend. But as it stands now, I don't think I could drag the dice, map, and counters out of his hands kicking and screaming. We still play let's pretend about other stuff, but if it has anything to do with superheros, he wants to play the game.

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James J Skach you miserable bastard! Do you realize the damage you've done to the social fabric of the world? Now instead of playing games with her friends when she's older, your daughter will bake them tasty vittles. They'll all get fat and die early deaths. Your almost-abuse escalated itself to murder! And what's worse is that one of those people would probably have cured cancer if you hadn't murdered them.

Quote from: Firefly GamesSeveral folks on this forum own the game, so hopefully they'll have some suggestions, too.

I do, and I'm in the process of binding a copy I printed from the .PDF for my daughter.  We haven't played yet, but I will give it a review once we do.

Cheers,
!i!

Slightly back on topic, I think, here is a game you may consider for pre-teen children.

Covert Generation.

Quote from: Firefly GamesFaery's Tale uses a simple dice pool. Roll 1d6 for each point in the relevant attribute - Body, Mind, or Spirit, which are rated 1-5. Evens are successes, odds are failures. Or you can use 4-6 as a success if your kids have trouble with evens & odds. You can also use other binary resolution systems - draw colored stones from a bag, flip a coin, etc. A '6' counts as a success & lets you roll a bonus die. Compare your success tally to a difficulty score or to another character's roll - the highest tally wins.

You also can spend your faery's precious magical Essence to cheat fate by adding successes to your roll.

Hope that helps. I'm happy to answer any other questions you have, too.

Thank you, I think I'll try Tournament of the Fey, I like the concept and I'm quite sure my daughter will enjoy it.

Quote from: RPGPunditI've previously stated: I'm against gamer parents playing RPGs with their kids.  It almost certainly guarantees that said kids will reject roleplaying games along with everything else from their childhood in an act of rebellion against you when they hit their teens.

It'll be "that stupid geeky thing dad likes, that he forced me to do when I was 9".

RPGPundit

Wow. I respect your right to your own opinion in regards to whether gamer parents should game with their children.

However...
In my experience as a parent (of a 21 year old who is as big a gamer geek as I, and a 19 year old who never had any interest as a child and still doest, and an 11 year old who's got her own geeky interests (anime/manga) that don't exactly mirror mine but which she's as fervent about as I am gaming) gaming with children who show interest doesn't "almost certainly guarantee" anything. I'd be very interested in whether your statement is based on anecdotal information, your own personal experiences, or those of the gamers around you, or whether it's just extrapolation based on your experiences with other teen "rejection" of parental activities.

My own experiences could disagree more with your statement. My son became interested in gaming as a very young individual and still games to this day. My middle daughter never showed any interest, so we didn't include her (but she doesn't look down on us for it, or reject it as something geeky her parents do, it's just not her thing). And my youngest would love to rp if we could find a manga-style game that's set in her age-focus. Of course, I can't see the future to tell whether she'll reject it or not, but given the older two's reactions, I figure she'll either like it or not, as suits her tastes, not based on whether we like it or whether she tried it earlier or not.

It's not been my experience as a parent that my kids have rejected any particular aspect of their childhood/youth as a knee-jerk reaction. We've given them the space to grow and try new things, and not tried to pigeon hole them into any particular interest or activity, so the things they do are things they're interested in, and when they want to stop, they know they can without any pressure to continue on our part.

Maybe what you're describing is more a result of a particular combination of parental and child personality traits than an across the board "almost certainty"?

~jess~
//www.jesshartley.com

Quote from: JessHartleyMaybe what you're describing is more a result of a particular combination of parental and child personality traits than an across the board "almost certainty"?

This is spot on. There is an explicit assumption that all children will engage in a teen rebellion and reject the values and interests of their parents. This is certainly not the case; it depends far more on the parenting, the parent-child relationship and, of course, the way that value formation occurs.

Thank you for a sensible response.

Damn you Lev! Why must you constantly come here and berate Pundit while harping on your Forgey B.S.

Also, the position requires that not only do all children rebel, but all children also reject the fun things they did with their parents as part of that rebellion. I know personally that is untrue, as I was one of the more rebellious kids I know. My sister outdid me, but she had to go to prison to do it.

Meanwhile, during all that rebellion I'm still playing games. Mostly RPGs, but also board games, like I'd done all my life with my dad's side of the family, and video games like I'd grown up playing with my mom (she was the Centipede queen). So obviously some funner activities can survive teenage rebellion in at least one case, and I have no delusions that I'm some special unique flower so I'm pretty certain other teens did similar things.

We have 3 kids playing in our saturday morning Usagi Yojimbo campaign.


They're great

QM

My daughter has been dressing up a lot lately.

What has she dressed up as?

A vampire.
A witch.
A fairy.
A ghost.

...


MY DAUGHTER IS A WHITE WOLF SWINE!!!!!!!!!!!

Buy her some black eyeliner, man.  Either you ride the wave or it'll pull you under and drag you across the barnacles.

*sob*

What did I do? Where did I go wrong?

If you don't want her to be WW swine, follow the Pundit's two step plan:

1) Have lots of fun with her playing White Wolf games

2) Wait for teenage rebellion to force her to give it up.

Quote from: James McMurray1) Have lots of fun...playing White Wolf games

For me, this is an oxymoron.

Well, I just threw that in. I don't recall Pundit specifying that there had to be fun for gaming to be rebelled against.

And if you're not having fun playing a WW game, you're playing it wrong. Unless it's the system itself you don't like.