[Slumber] first thoughts on kid's RPG

[011121]

Slumber is an RPG designed to be played by parents (or other adults) with young children.  The likely age range of interest is 3-8 or so, depending on the individual child's capabilities.  The game is meant to be both educational and entertaining (although I refuse to use the neologism "edutainment").

In keeping with the audience the system is very simple.  Additionally there is no combat system per se.  Rather there is roughhousing.  This consists of tickling, snorfles, crushes, squeezes, shakes, and so on.  The game is set within dreams and the endurance stat is REM (rapid eye movements).  As you get roughhoused your REM decreases and if it hits zero then you wake up giggling about what a strange dream you had.

Character's consist of two parts, dreamer and dreamed.  The dreamer is a child who is dreaming and the dreamed is what they dream themselves to be.  This is the most tricky conceit of the game to get straight and I might have to find a way to simplify it.  The dreamer is basically just a name and experience stat.  The dreamed is a series of four parts: a head, arms, body, and legs.  Each part is determined randomly from one of a few different lists.  One list might be animals, another monsters, another robots, another dinosaurs, and so on.  These parts are regenerated each time you play because each time is a new dream.

So for example let's say we have a game with Mary (the mother) doing the GM thing.  Her son Billy is playing.  Billy plays a dreamer, whom he just thinks of as himself asleep.  At the start of the game they roll to see what Dreamer Billy dreams himself to be.  They decide to roll on the animal table, once for each part, and they end up with an elephant head, a zebra body, monkey arms, and grasshopper legs.

Arms, body, and legs have an associated stat and may have a special ability.  Heads only have a special ability.  Arms determine the strength stat which determines how well you roughhouse others.  Body determines the REM stat which determines how long you can be roughhoused without waking up (ending the adventure).  Legs determine a speed stat which is measured in "dream meters" which are deliberately undefined in real world terms.

Special abilities might be things like a frog's long tongue (if you have a frog head) which would allow you to do zerbert style roughhousing at range. 

That's just about it as far as system. 

Here were the original design goals:

1) make it simple and easy so that new RPGers (both parents and kids) can dive right in.
2) make it nonviolent
3) make it fun, and don;t worry about the education, they'll find something to absorb as long as they are kept  interested.

Any comments so far?  Any parents out there that would like this sort of thing?  I've played it a bit with my own kids and I think it has potential.

[xenopulse]

Welcome to the Forge! I'm Christian.

I think you've got a nice idea there with some neat aspects, especially the assembly of the dreamed avatar.  I'm curious to see how you tie the education into it, and what the dreamed will actually do within the dream.  Given the limited framework you've presented, here are my questions:

1) Why have an REM stat?  That is, which one of your design goals does it fulfill to have a stat that ends the game for the child at a time the child might not want it to end?

2) Why have experience for the dreamer?  It seems that your goal of a simple pickup design could be better served without that at all, and with the assumption that the player is synonymous with the dreamer.  Anything that cuts down on record keeping and required props will be a plus, I think.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Hi, and welcome. What's your name?

Your game seems interesting, and not the least because I'm designing a similar one. You might want to check that one out for inspiration.

Other than that, a request for clarification: is the roughhousing you're talking about something that happens in the fiction, or something that the players do?

[011121]

Welcome to the Forge! I'm Christian.

I think you've got a nice idea there with some neat aspects, especially the assembly of the dreamed avatar.  I'm curious to see how you tie the education into it, and what the dreamed will actually do within the dream.  Given the limited framework you've presented, here are my questions:

1) Why have an REM stat?  That is, which one of your design goals does it fulfill to have a stat that ends the game for the child at a time the child might not want it to end?

2) Why have experience for the dreamer?  It seems that your goal of a simple pickup design could be better served without that at all, and with the assumption that the player is synonymous with the dreamer.  Anything that cuts down on record keeping and required props will be a plus, I think.

Hello,

As far as education, I've found that if you don't try to make it educational it actually ends up being much more educational.  That is, when you focus on "what am I going to tech the kids" you are ignoring the more important question of "what are they ready to learn."  So if you just go into it with a mindset of let's have fun, and I'm not going to talk down to the kids, then you'll be surprised what they learn.  Hence why I do have REM in the game.  Almost certainly the kids won't know what they are, but they can ask and their parents can answer.  Most likely the kids won't remember, but maybe they will.

When I was 7 I started playing AD&D.  I was keenly interested in the game so I read the DMG and PHB extensively, commiting vast tracts to memory.  A lot of what I learned was only relevant to actually playing D&D.  But I learned a bunch of color synonyms from the DMG (things like crimson, and azure, and saffron).  I learned basic probabilities and the bell curve effect of three dice rolled and added together.  Later roleplaying introduced me to historical concepts like jannisaries and mamluks.  Things I would never have learned about through school, and certainly not before high school.  Granted these depictions were exaggerated but it was a starting point to learn about an aspect of the world I would otherwise have had no knowledge of.

Anyway, that's my philosophy on teaching kids.  The best way is not to do it at all, but just to get them into things that interest them and be available to answer their questions when they inevitably arise.  Let them learn what they're ready to learn.

As an example of play the sample adventure is about a lost dreamhost, basically a landmark in the dream world that a bunch of NPCs ask the players to find for them.  The challenges then have to be scaled to the age and problem solving abilities of the kids.  I can write another post detailing the sample adventure.

Why have a REM stat.  Interesting question.  I guess I hadn't really considered there to be an option besides having some sort of hit points.  Certainly having them adds a bit of math to the game.  Do you have any suggestions of ways to handle roughhouseing without having a hit point trait?

Why have experience.  I figured that it would be nice to have a reward for players as they continue to play, basically the way that other games do.  In this case as the dreamer gets experience they get better at dreaming.  This translates into bonus REM and lucidity points which let you pick a part instead of rolling on a table (or maybe just allow a reroll).

Good questions.  I really had not considered why I was having REM and experience.  They were just assumed, "you have an RPG you gotta have something like this in it."

[011121]

Hi, and welcome. What's your name?

Your game seems interesting, and not the least because I'm designing a similar one. You might want to check that one out for inspiration.

Other than that, a request for clarification: is the roughhousing you're talking about something that happens in the fiction, or something that the players do?

I'm Jason.

The roughhousing is meant to be in game (done by the characters not players) but I do want to reinforce that the game doesn't have to be a case of "we sit here and game fro the next two hours."  For example I suggest that after the child rolls up their dreamed aspect they might want to stop for a bit to draw a picture of it.  That's fine.

With some families when it comes to roughhousing they might want to take a break and actually roughhouse (my kids are like that).

I'll take a look at the game you're designing. 

[JasonWalters]

This is an extremely interesting thread. Jason, I applaud your desire to create an RPG suitable for young children. Just a couple of quick notes:  you might want to check out the old comic strip Little Nemo In Slumberland as a source of inspiration for your game. I think you will find it oddly relevant. Also, you may want to purchase a copy of Faery's Tale published by Firefly Games. It is likewise designed as a non-violent, child suitable RPG and has been very well reviewed by critics.   

[Meguey]

It all sounds good so far, and I hear you about the passive teaching aspect of gaming. EmilyCare wrote a piece about playing with kids that meshes with your experience wrt stopping to draw and otherwise being flexible to kid-pace; I'll try to find it. It looks like you're hitting your design goals, but I'd like to see more, like the tables refered to and the abilities for various parts.

One thing I've learned from my own boys (now 10 & 7) is that they really like adversity and the ability to triumph over the 'bad guy'. It can be silly adversity, like "The toffee monster gets melted into candy bars and all the kids gobble it up!" How does your game handle adversity for the Dreamer?

Games for kids, especially for kids and parents, is a space that needs filling, so keep it coming.

[Eric J.]

Here's a thought:

Instead of imagining a dreamer dreaming, why not just imagine a dream?

The player IS the dreamer.  They HAVE experience points or whatever.

I'm woefully ignorant of this stuff but I know that kids love having an affect on things, and oftentimes they really don't get to.  Including stuff like coloring, or whatever is very important.  Imagination games are critical for development and it's nice if they can share part of that with their family.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Eric

[Eero Tuovinen]

Ah, yes, I was supposed to write a bit more here:

As Eric says, scrap the dual-character of having a dreamer and a dreamed. I had that in my own game for a long while, and it was only ever an unnecessary complication. Kids have enough on their hands when they have to deal with an imaginary world and imaginary events without also having an additional level of abstraction between them and the game. I'd also like to say that the dream form is an unnecessary complication, but that's only the case for my game - might be that it's useful for you.

Anyway, onwards: is this a combat (roughousing) challenge game? Your statistics and such seem like that would be the main treat of the game, as you have statistics that seem to be about moving quickly, withstanding damage and dealing it. All traditional war game stats, by the way. What kind of adventures do you imagine would happen in the game? As a contrasting example, my game is about very generic and slightly weird fantasy adventure dreams, so there is no hit point mechanics or such - there simply is no room for combat interactions, it's all about pass/fail cases.

Actually, write us an imaginary example scene, if you would. That is usually helpful in getting across what the game is supposed to be about.

[komradebob]

Man, there are a bunch of folks who've been working on kids-n-parents games. We really need to collect all the links to the threads in a single page or something.

Jason: I don't have a lot of commentary right now beyond general encouragement to pursue this further.

One question:
A lot of K&P game designs seem to dance around issues of violence. How do you feel about the issue, especially as someone who started playing AD&D at a young age?

[011121]

JasonWalters:
Thank you for the suggested readings.  I'll look into them.  I had heard about Faery's Tale, but I thought it was geared toward older ages than what I was looking at.  I might be mistaken there. 



Meguey:
This was sort of a testing the waters post, but since it seems like there is some interest I will do a follow up post with more details of the mechanics.  I'll probably also post the sample adventure I was working on for the game.

Without any skill system tackling adversity will mostly come down to the ingenuity of the children.  Since it is a dream they can and should be able to get away with all kinds of craziness.  That's of course in addition to the roughhousing rules for more personal adversarial reactions



Eric J:
Yeah, I've been thinking about how to conceptually streamline that (dreamer/dreamed).  The issue is that part of the character stays the same from game to game (dreamer) and part of it chnges each time (dreamed).  But it does seem clunky to me. 



Eero:
I read a post on your game and it sounds interesting.  Very very different from what I normally think of in a RPG.  In some ways I'd liken it more to a psychological test than a game.  I don't mean that as a bad thing.  It definitely seems interesting.

I'll post a follow up thread with the sample adventure.  Hopefully that will make it clearer how I imagine play progressing (although of course it will likely vary a great deal based upon the particular players and GM).



Komradebob:
I don't think violence is appropriate for this game given the very young age of the intended players.  But I think you are asking more generally. 

In general I don't believe that fantasy violence (RPG's, computer games) has a significant detrimental affect on otherwise mentally healthy individuals.  It can certainly be bad for those who are mentally unstable, but those people, by definition, need help and probably some degree of sheltering from all of life's nuances.  Real life violence (say boxing for instance) is somewhat more problematic and I wouldn't mind seeing it's influence wane in our culture.     

TV and movie violence would then be somewhere inbetween.  You have real people commiting acts of unreal violence.  I guess I'd weigh in that when a person is mentally mature enough to understand it's all fake then they are probably mature enough to watch it with no problems.

Does that answer your question?  Sorry, I'm not sure I precisely got your intent.

[011121]

Actually, is there any easy way to do a table here?  I saw the "insert table" button above but it's actual use isn't self explanatory.

[komradebob]

Hmm. What I was getting at about the violence.

When I game with my daughter ( she's ten. We been doing semi-freeformy stuff now for maybe four years), I'm often thrown off by the violence a kid can bring into a game themselves. The thing is, when I actually sit down and think about what I was like at a similar age, I have to admit I engaged in lots of pretend violence.

I guess what I'm getting at is, how do you personally feel about the whole thing as a parent with your young'un? I was especially interested when you mentioned that you'd started playing AD&D at age 7. While AD&D wasn't gory, there's a whole heckuva lotta violence.

I'm not really looking for a great answer to all things on the issue. I'm just interested in your personal feelings on it, since you've been a young kid playing violent adventure games and now you're an adult building adventure games to play with kids, but trying to work around that same kind of violence found in the first game you became acquainted with.