Roleplaying for Munchkins?

I have my nephew and niece staying with us for much of next week; I've
wondered whether a suitable rainy afternoon might be opportunity to
corrupt the next generation into RPGs.  They're already into Harry
Potter.

Anyone had experience of gaming with 10 year olds?  How long a session
can you play before attention spans wane?

The adventure I'm thinking of running is "El Tigre and the Pyramid of
Destruction" from Chaosium's "Blood Brothers", using Fudge rather than
CoC as the system.  I've chosen this as it's something I can run 'out
of the box' without a lot of prep time.

This lasted three or four hours when I ran it a couple of year back.
If ten year olds' attention spans don't last that long, I might try to
split it into two sessions.
--
Tim Hall
Weblog: http://www.kalyr.com/weblog
Photos: http://kalyr.fotopic.net/
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Roleplaying for Munchkins?

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, Tim Hall wrote:

> Anyone had experience of gaming with 10 year olds?  How long a session
> can you play before attention spans wane?

I gamed one-on-one with a twelve-year-old a few times.  His attention span
was very short compared to what's expected of the average gamer.  And he
was easily frustrated.  He beat up a crook and shot him with his own gun
when he couldn't get him to talk.  (It was comicbook superheroes.)

> The adventure I'm thinking of running is "El Tigre and the Pyramid of
> Destruction" from Chaosium's "Blood Brothers", using Fudge rather than
> CoC as the system.  I've chosen this as it's something I can run 'out
> of the box' without a lot of prep time.

Call of Cthulhu with ten-year-olds?  That doesn't sound very appropriate.
If only because it's not the kind of thing that's going to interest them,
let alone the material being inappropriate for them.

If they're into Harry Potter, give them Harry Potter, assuming you've read
the books.  Or Power Rangers.  Or Shreck.  Or whatever kind of thing
they're interested in that you know well enough.  Generic fairy-tale
fantasy would probably work well.

And you don't need a great deal of preparation... it's easy to wing it
with pre-teens who have never roleplayed.  They don't have any experience,
so they aren't expecting anything in particular from you, and their own
approach is bound to be simple compared to experienced adult gamers.

The only big thing to watch out for is trying to run a game in a setting
they're more familiar with than you are...  if you've only read one Harry
Potter book and they've read them all, you're risking disaster when they
pick you apart. :)

Keep it simple.  Don't challenge them with difficult choices... they
aren't used to making them in real life and it will frustrate them.
Choices, yes, but not difficult ones.

Keep it fun, keep it moving.  And don't expect them to pay attention for
four hours.  I wouldn't count on more than an hour at a time at the most.

--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net)                Gamers List Owner
    [  General RP Discussion -- http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/  ]
I'm not lost, I'm "locationally challenged".
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Roleplaying for Munchkins?

Carl D Cravens wrote:

>Call of Cthulhu with ten-year-olds?  That doesn't sound very appropriate.
>If only because it's not the kind of thing that's going to interest them,
>let alone the material being inappropriate for them.

Blood Brothers's is not only non Mythos, but some of the adventures
(although not all of them) are quite light in tone.  This particular
one is about a tag wresting team vs. three legged aliens.

>The only big thing to watch out for is trying to run a game in a setting
>they're more familiar with than you are...  if you've only read one Harry
>Potter book and they've read them all, you're risking disaster when they
>pick you apart. :)

I haven't read *any* Harry Potter at all; it makes me reluctant to run
'generic fantasy' with them.
--
Tim Hall
Weblog: http://www.kalyr.com/weblog
Photos: http://kalyr.fotopic.net/
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