 July 18, 2014 - 12:36pm | So I'm thinking of getting my 9year old son to play SF in some kind of small scale adventure. He's been playing Hero Clix and AGTFOS with me lately so I was wondering if he is ready for an RPG. What sort of game ideas might you try with such a young person? I don't know how his mother would feel if I let him kill bad guys... meh... ----------------------------------------------- |
 July 18, 2014 - 1:08pm | Then let him kill berserk robots, or the hydra from the basic game or use stunners to capture sathar agents. I had seen a table top terrain piece for Awful Green Things from Outer Space which really appealled to me since I like doing terrain piece and painting miniatures. If you come across any of the Tom Wham games in an old Dragon I highly recommend those. I had hours of fun with friends playing those games. Planet Busters was a gas. and there was a sarfari or elephant hunt one where you had to collect ivory I think. Monsterpocalypse is one of those collectible games where you dont know whats in the booster box you're buying which means you have to buy more than you need and then trade with friend but Ebay had losts of people that bought cases, openned them and sell every thing individually. thus you can actually pick up some specific items you're looking for to flesh out your faction. I like a lot of the miniatures they have but the rules might be a bit over a 9 year old's head. It just appealed to me since i use to play the old arcade game Rampage. Honestly, though, at age 9 I was playing Risk and that started a life long love affair with the game. Its simple, a classic, and man anywhere you go there are people that played it which means that he could end up playing it for years. EDIT: if you started him off with just a pocket box set of Car Wars rules from ebay (hopefully in decent condition) and ran an arean battle for him and is friends (and award the in game cash prise to the winner) I think you'd find that they would pretty much leave you in the dust and start playing that game all the time with or without you. Which would lead to doing math to properly design your own car with that seciton of the rules with each kid trying to design the perfect car. Go with a Pocket Box to start them out and when it catches fire with them pick up the delluxe edition latter. The problem with the delluxe edition is that there is too much in it. all the way up to helicopter whereas the pocket box is just cars and cycles. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 July 19, 2014 - 4:50am | That's easy - Raiders of Port Loren from the Basic Rules (followed by the hydra scenario). Check out the Basic Plus project for a more streamlined game that expands on the Basic Rules book. |
 July 19, 2014 - 8:22am | Make it short. I've been running games for my son and his friends, now 15, and attention spans seem to be shorter the younger the child is. |
 July 19, 2014 - 7:30pm | My 11yo has been playing since he was 8. I started with a quick introductory scenario - kind of taking a page from the video game rpg playbook. They woke up in a cave with no memory - had to fight through critters with improvised weapons on the way out. Used that to teach the mechanics - didn't even give them a character sheet until they got out. Once they reached the surface, they found out they were CDC specialists who had been cut off when a group from Streel attacked them. That was when I gave them a character sheet and helped them fill it out and give their guys names. They then had to defend the camp from another Streel attack. Once that was all done and I knew they liked the game, we moved onto other things, and eventually Volturnus. FWIW our game has been running about 3 years now. |
