Padawan Training

Last Friday I ran my first game for the next generation.  Inspired by the great work of +James August Walls  and  the upcoming game No Thank You, Evil! by +Monte Cook Games I decided it was time to try this with my own younglings.  My players would be my daughter Allie (Age 8), her friends Astrid (Age 8) and Claire (Age 10), and my son Connor (Age 5).

Allie especially has been getting more interested in role playing games.  She sits and watches us play some of our bi-weekly savage world game.  I let her roll some dice, and hang out for a little while, but I knew she was hooked when the next morning she would start asking me about the outcome of whatever situation we were in when bed time came.

The subject matter came down to a decision between Star Wars and Disney characters.  I posed this question to the kids, and they were all very exited to play Star Wars as this is what they spend quite a bit of time playing in the yard and playground.

The next decision was what system to use.  I'm not super familiar with the current iteration of FFG star wars games, so I didn't want to tackle learned and teaching a game to kids at the same time. Eventually my decision boiled down to the Cypher System or Savage Worlds.  I was leaning toward Savage Worlds because there is a good fan created document already out there. In the end however I decided I wanted to see how easy it was to take the new Cypher System rule book and create a star wars feel.

The players then picked thier characters, and I worked up the character sheets.

Allie - Aayla Secura - Graceful Jedi Knight (Warrior w/ Magic Flavor) who Masters Weaponry

Claire - Padme Amidala - Strong-Willed Senator (Speaker) who Interprets the Law

Astrid - Ashoka Tano - Brash Jedi Knight (Warrior w/ Magic Flavor) who Battles Robots

Connor - Wicket - Impulsive Ewok (Explorer) who Looks for Trouble

I pretty much used everything as written, just tweaked hedge magic a little bit to make it a little more force trick like.

The characters were flying to a planet to negotiate with the ruling class.  Unfortunately they were shot at during their descent.  They then had to land in the jungle and make their way to the city on foot.  They had to fight off some ferocious jungle cats, sneak around a droid encampment surrounding the turbo laser that almost shot them down.  Finally they were able to talk to the planetary ruler, and found the separatist were holding his son hostage.

They ended the night rescuing the rulers son from several battle droids.  This involved them swing from one sky scraper and crashing through the window of the hotel suite were he was being held.  They were then able to rescue him and dispatch the droid, and finish their mission of negotiation successfully.  

Connor only made it about 45 minutes, but the girls were all ready to play another mission as soon as we were done.  We'll be playing again I'm sure.  The basics of the Cypher system are easy for kids to pick up, and I plan to introduce additional rules each time we play.  During this first run through I didn't have any GM intrusions, or get into the spending of effort.  They used abilities that cost points from their pools and took some damage, but I wanted to keep it simple for the first time.

A great success and we will play again.