Ye Olde Inn

by **RpgGamerDad** » March 27th, 2015, 9:35 am

Regarding issues of combat and killing in gaming with kids - by coincidence I have just written an article about that for the Mad Adventurers Society (an RPG and board-gaming site). Just some suggestions - would be very happy for others to leave advice in the comments and I'll do a follow-up article.

http://www.madadventurers.com/rpggamerdad-kids-and-combat

Yeah, I'm with you on that, gamer dad. I usually don't go into a lot of detail with the combat
results (guts flying, blood flowing, death and such). I get all excited about a good swing, and
I might wave my arms and say loudly "Oh, you swing your sword and hit him real good!".
Then I make a goofy dying sound and take the figure off the board. I emphasize the fact
that he took all of his Body Points and now he's gone...not really that he's dead.

We let our son (and his 3 year old sister) play with guns...we strongly enforce the idea that
you do not point them at other people - just imaginary bad guys and aliens and such. We
play with good-quality foam swords - and we make sure they don't do that with daddy or
mommy around. We also use the swords as a good example of taking care of expensive things...
as they are kind of expensive.

We do not let them watch a lot of violent cartoons. We JUST started letting our son (now 5-1/2)
start watching some batman cartoons...and it is not often. Everything up to now has been Cat and
the Hat, Disney Jr cartoons, and PBS programming for kids. I've started looking for tame comic books
for super heroes for us to read together...but it is still a lot of Curious George, Dr Seuss, Little Critter,
and Peanuts books. And even with those...we simply skip any name calling and uses of "stupid" and
"dumb".

There has been no Star Trek or Star Wars...as much as I want there to be. My nephews watch Star
Wars, and they are wild little 4-1/2 year old boys. Not necessarily because of the Star Wars...but
I'm sure it doesn't help.

Are we a little overboard - maybe. We can't keep him a little boy forever, we know...and we can't
shelter him from name calling and things like "stupid" and "dumb" and people getting shot and
blown up for much longer, probably. But there is no reason to just let it go all willy-nilly, either.

It also depends on the kid, too. We know our son is very easily influenced and will have nightmares
easily. Which is why he hasn't seen Ghostbusters yet, though I know he will LOVE IT when he does.

by **RpgGamerDad** » March 28th, 2015, 7:58 am

Hi - thanks for that response! Very detailed and considered. I really appreciate it. Foam swords are awesome (but don't tend to last long in this house) - we do have some wooden ones too but they only come out on special occasions because it's just to easy to break fingers!

I posted this on reddit as well and am getting lots of responses. It seems the general consensus is, keep things fairly abstract and play it by ear - which seems like good advice to me. Some people advocate removing combat entirely which I can understand but it seems a little drastic given how important swords are to the 'swords and sorcery' genre!

A couple of people suggested Super Heroes and make them indestructible. So, you can punch the baddy through a wall but he gets up and flies away shaking his fist at you. I can see that working - but, again, it's quite restrictive in terms of setting/theme. And I do like the old-skool fantasy genre.

by **el_flesh** » March 29th, 2015, 11:04 am

Ghostbusters might actually help the kid be less afraid, especially if you get hold of a Halloween costume of one for him.

by **Patroclus** » March 30th, 2015, 10:53 am

About kids, I have two boys (3 and 4) and for now it’s impossible to make them sit down and play without taking the game pieces and throw them around. But even if they start to listen and learn rules, I doubt we will have a normal quality game soon.

About the theme and how they react, we have seen the animated film Lord of the Rings of Ralph Bakshi(1978), and they like it. The 4 year old boy was asking questions about the elves, and the ring, etc. But after the movie, I’ve watched him he was closing all the doors of every room he enters. He was scared but it is normal, nothing to worry about. Now I don’t believe he remembers anything from the film. If you ask me, you can let them play with the demonlike miniatures of HQ, and kill things as long as you tell them “it’s a game”.

by **ruiza97** » March 30th, 2015, 11:22 am

el_flesh wrote:Ghostbusters might actually help the kid be less afraid, especially if you get hold of a Halloween costume of one for him.

The game is coming out in October.

by **TMU** » July 21st, 2015, 2:55 pm

The Road Warrior wrote:
Sparkymark wrote:On the box it says 10+.?

Never pay any attention to what it says on the box. You know far better what your children are capable of than any games designer.

Or maybe the game designer thougt that 10+ kids are ready to kill things

by **Decipher** » July 27th, 2015, 4:31 am

I was playing D&D at 5 and I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I also started my girls out with Magic and D&D around 5 and 6.

by **Daedalus** » September 24th, 2015, 4:07 pm

sajungzak wrote:The trick, it seems, is keeping their attention long enough. It depends on the kid. Really, to play a game, all players should be able to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic. A firm grasp on the concept of logic is a plus. But even then, it depends how you play. You could create a game for four-year-olds, if you wanted to....

A Kid Kwest would be cool. Seb created something like that for himself and a friend using Warhammer Quest. He wrote up the adventure on his blog with lots of cool eye-candy. definitely worth checking out: http://eastern-empire.com/warhammer-quest-the-castle-cellar-caper/