[The Princes' Kingdom] Playing with the niece and nephew (long but interesting)

[Caesar_X]

For Xmas I gave The Princes' Kingdom to my 10-year old nephew, Sam.  To be honest, it was initially set aside in favor of PSP games and a clock radio that cast the time on the wall.  But later in the day he and my seven-year old niece Emily came up to me and asked to play (which was great!)  We only played three scenes during two relatively short sessions, but I thought an AP post/review was worth it to share some of my observations about the game.

First of all, I wanted to thank Clinton for making a game for kids and Vincent for making such an excellent game to base it on in the first place.  My critiques are meant to be helpful to them and to any others who might be making games for kids.

The Book: It has a great cover which really gets the (kid) fantasy and creative juices going.  You can really imagine all of the fun possibilities just by looking at those kids in their boat.  I'm obviously a gamer and I found it an entertaining read but not necessarily an easy one.  I own DitV and have only played it once, but I found myself flipping through the pages several times, especially when running a conflict and when building the island and the proto-NPCs.  I don't have the book in front of me right now, but I remember that it could really use a "Quick Play" section to get things started easily as well as a "Quick Reference Sheet" with all of the often-used rules on one page for easy reference.

The kids' father and my mother both flipped through the book because they saw the level of excitement in the kids and were interested.  But after flipping through it there was some confusion and they seemed to be intimidated by rules that were over two pages long.  Again, I think a Quick Play section would be a good way to explain to parents that "this is really all there is to playing the game; the rest is just depth, game play examples and "fun" fluff.)

The Character Sheet: This is one of the best parts of the game because it is so easily accessible.  All of the sections are laid out in the form of questions that a kid can understand.  And the laws and fallout info on the side is really helpful.  I just wish that the basic raise mechanics were on this sheet as well for easy reference.

Character Generation: Sam (the oldest one) made his character first.  He wanted his Prince to be fifteen, but after I told him the age limits he decided on twelve.  Not surprisingly, he used pop culture references for his character, naming him 'Eragon" and naming one of his relationships after a snake in Harry Potter.  He immediately went for a sword and shield for his "stuff", but added others when I told him that the game wasn't all about fighting.

Emily seemed more confused about the game (she is only seven) and took some of her brother's same qualities.  She wanted her Prince to be ten (the same age as her brother).  I told her that her stuff could be anything, so she asked if she could have some "magic dice".  Well yeah, who wouldn't??  Also not surprisingly, she wanted her character to be a princess.  I told her that she could secretly be a princess, but outwardly needed to act as a prince and she was very excited by that.

Both kids were confused by the d4/d6/d8 level of quality/relationship.  So I explained it in terms of most favorite to least favorite and best to worst and they understood better.

Proving their Princes: First up was Sam's Prince.  He wanted to prove that he was a good swordsman.  I created a quick situation where he was walking through the forest on their home island and came upon a man who was beating a dog with his staff.  "That man is going to beat that dog to death if you don't do something about it."  Sam wanted his Prince to draw his sword and put it at the man's throat (he even did the motion with his arm).  Which is understandable given most sword & sorcery movies are and how conflict resolution generally works in pop culture.  But I pointed out that he was a Prince and needed to set a good example.  I also pointed out the first Law ("Don't be violent").  And what happened next was very interesting.

He stopped, analyzed the situation for a moment, and said, "Why are you beating that dog?"  Now, this was a watershed moment for me.  Here was a kid used to playing Yu-Gi-Oh! and Madden football being turned away from the easy violent reaction and deciding instead to consider and break apart the situation to see what the problem was.  I was pretty surprised at how quickly he switched gears and moved on.  As it turned out, the man was beating the dog who had killed his best hunting bird.  So after some negotiation (and a successful conflict), the Prince traded one of his family's hunting birds and ten pounds of fresh meat for the life of the dog.  And both parties went away happy.  So Sam ended up writing down "I proved that I'm good at saving lives."  Nice.

At this point my Mom (their Grandma) had been putting dishes away in the same room and started to take notice.  She praised Sam for making good decisions and finding a good way out of the situation.  But now was Emily's time to prove her Prince(ss).  She wanted to "prove that I'm good at training animals".  She I told her that she was talking to some friends when someone told her that a tiger had gotten loose from its cage at the zoo and was threatening some children.  Like Sam, she had a little trouble with the conflict resolution system and didn't really understand the raises and sees.  But I walked her through the system and gave suggestions on what to do.  I also told her to use whatever qualities/relationships/stuff she could whenever possible to give her Prince an advantage.  It was interesting watching her Prince maneuver with the tiger to try and keep it away from the kids.  When the tiger finally started dragging one of the kids into the trees, her Prince used his magic dice to knock the tiger out long enough to get the kid free and put the tiger back in its cage.  Emily was really happy to have solved the problem and said that, "I proved that I'm good at saving children."  And she also got some good rah-rahs from her Grandma and her brother.  I was ecstatic at having introduced kids to story games in such a positive way.

The Island: The next day I took maybe 20-30 minutes and created an island with some problems going on.  The two villages on either side of the island were building train tracks to connect both of the villages to promote trade and making the people more prosperous.  But there were some big problems:
1. The two villages couldn't decide on what type of track to use and both sides kept building towards the other with incompatible track gauges.
2. The train tracks were going to be build right through a group of houses that will be destroyed and the home owners refused to budge.
3. There are a group of great eagles (the kids seemed to like animals a lot) in the mountains who are protecting the homeowners by attacking the people building the tracks.  This is because an eagle egg fell off a nest and into the trees and one of the poor homeowners carried the egg back into the mountains to return it.

So the Princes arrives at the island and were immediately besieged by a woman who told them about the basic situation and told them that something needed to be done.  They were at a bit of a loss as to what to do.  So I suggested that the Governor of the island should have taken care of this situation already.  So Sam took charge and said that he wanted to go see the Governor.

When I rolled up the proto-NPCs earlier, the Governor ended up being pretty powerful, so I thought it would be interesting to see how Sam dealt with her.  Her home was up in the mountains, and she was busy pruning her garden while open warfare was about to break out in the valley.  Sam attempted to reason with her, but didn't get very far.  He cried foul a bit as I was creating her qualities and relationships on the fly, but I explained that this was how the game worked and that he had more resources at his disposal as well.  After some clever maneuvering, he won the conflict and got her to agree to get the mayors of the two villages and a representative of the homeowners together at a feast to discuss the problem.  Sam's reaction was, "this is going to be trouble!"

For the next scene, Sam wanted to go do something else while Emily played it out.  But I said that I needed both of them at the table during play, and because of other plans we didn't get a chance to play again before they had to fly back home.  But overall it was a lot of fun and I had some thoughts based on the experience.

Conclusions:
1. The rulebook is well written but intimidating to non-gamers.  "Is it a book?  Well what's it about?  It's a game?  Well the rules seem very complicated" pretty much summed up the reaction I got from the rest of the family.  My brother runs his own company but I honestly didn't know how he was going to figure out the island creation rules himself.
2. Emily is a fairly bright seven-year-old, but I felt like the game was a bit over her age level.  She needed to have things explained to her a lot, and tended to ape what she saw her older brother do.
3. The dice mechanics are clever, but difficult to explain to a non-gamer.  I really worry that my brother will attempt to play the game with the kids when I am gone and will give up because of frustration.  And that would really be a shame.  The things that we take for granted in story games are not at all intuitive to the general public.
4. I never once referred to the game as an "RPG" and made no references to other games like D&D.  I simply called it a "story game".  And thus I didn't get any negative reaction or raised eyebrows from the adults.  It was simply a fun game that I was teaching the kids.  Now it helped that I make games for a living and so there was already some trust that I wouldn't be teaching them something bad or wasting their time.
5. I wish there was a way to let characters who were not in a conflict affect what was happening.  I used to wonder why people went on and on about "Fanmail" in PTA, but now I see why.  When one kid was in a conflict, generally the other one wanted to watch TV or play on the computer.  If there was a way to "help out" without making it a power struggle between the players, I think that would really help keep everyone engaged.  I could see this being a big problem with 3-5 kids with the usual short attention spans.
6. The ethical and moral choices that the game brings up are really one of the best parts of the game.  The game demands that you think in a different way and use creative problem-solving as well as all of the resources at your disposal.  My Mom thought it was a really great game for the kids to be playing.  And the kids never thought that this was being shoved down their throats.  Instead they were made to feel smart and praised for being good.

So there you have it.  Wonderful game and it really made me think about story games and kids and how the two can be brought closer together.

Thanks,
Chris B.

[Yokiboy]

Hello Chris,

That was one heck of an Actual Play post, great job! I too have reflected quite a bit on story gaming with kids, as my 8-year old daughter is way intrigued by dad's huge collection of books and weekly gaming night.

We have played some improvized games of games taking place in Harry Potter's world, and a session of Ghostbusters. I had high hopes for Faery Tales, but it didn't really do it for me, I love The Princes' Kingdom and will try to give it a try when she's next up to trying "dad's games."

I agree with your conclusions as well, but don't have any answers for you at this time, apart from trying to design my own story game for kids.

TTFN,

Yoki

[Caesar_X]

Thanks for your comments, Yokiboy.  Any chance you want to write up an AP on your Faery's Tale experiences?  I gave it as a gift to Emily (the seven year old) but we didn't get a chance to play it, and TPK seemed like an easier game to get into.

Chris B.