This series follows the trials, tribulations, successes, and failures of a fairly inexperienced GM who has recently picked up the hobby after a long time away. It aims to assist new GM’s by examining what worked, didn’t work, and what failed miserably as he spins up new campaigns, modules, encounters, and adventures for his friends and family in Fantasy Flight Games’ Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny system.
This is part 2 in a series of articles devoted to helping old and new gamers alike bring their children and younger players to love RPG’s.
In my first article, I examined the different elements that brought me back to RPG’s after a long hiatus, and I also talked about ways to get younger players engaged, interested, and hopefully hooked on this amazing hobby, by getting the action going quickly. I recently have been working to get my kids excited about roleplaying and helping my son’s friends to get involved as well. To continue the discussion, I want to delve into the next area that doomed my gaming session with my son and his friends to failure. That area is the concept of choice.
Choose Your Own Adventure
One of the many draws of a good RPG is that we can basically do whatever we want to do. We can make our characters act the way we want. In a small way, we can transport our minds into the bodies of characters and people we’ve only dreamed of being. RPG’s don’t have a finite list of actions you can take per turn like a board game. Within the structure of the rules, you can do whatever you want. At its core, I believe this is what draws gamers to RPG’s the most. Mechanics and game systems are great, but those can be found in any video game. What makes us love RPG’s is, hopefully, the roleplaying.
I figured this would be my son’s and his friends’ favorite aspect of the game, and that they would revel in the idea they can be cinematic and perform heroic feats to save the day. I think I was right. The 13 year-old players at my table loved the infinite amount of choices they had at their disposal. Despite their enthusiasm over the concept, however, younger players might not be ready for it. My son’s friends were not. So, what happened to the core tenant of what we love about RPG’s that made my games with the younger players nearly implode?
First, just like with character creation I examined last time, there were simply too many choices in a typical RPG encounter. “A group of 5 stormtroopers race out of the transport and aim their blasters at you… what do you do?” That question is too daunting for many younger players. I found the players constantly making simple actions way too cumbersome and over-thought to the point of arguing amongst themselves, and situations that required planning were tackled with head-on simplicity. Getting them to agree on a single course of action was impossible.
The boys I was teaching were all 12 and 13 years old. They simply didn’t have enough life experience to know what a person might do in certain situations. I had the boys’ PC’s meet someone in a Star Wars pub. When I asked them what they wanted to do narratively, they had absolutely no clue. The most I got out of my son was that he wanted to order a “blue milk”. After I thought about it, this made sense… they’ve never been to a bar! Why was I making them do that? Having the characters do any sort of investigation or problem solving was just too tall an order as my players didn’t have the life experience to tell them what they could do.
Attention spans were also a problem. While two boys were talking about what to do, the other two were goofing around, fidgeting, or not paying attention to their friends’ actions and ideas. It was like herding cats. This is where the game started to lose its fun for me.
So how do you teach an RPG to youngsters who have too many options, or not enough experience to know what options there are?
- Remember the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from the 1980’s? You were presented a fork in the road of a story and got to choose which page you turned to next, depending on what you wanted the character to do. I suggest making your own Choose Your Own Adventure with younger players. Instead of asking, “What do you do?”, give the players two or three choices, and have planned out how to handle each choice. Narrow the options. Simplicity is your friend. You’ll find them coming up with alternatives after a few encounters. Even think about giving them the pro’s and con’s of each possible action before hand, or what die rolls might be needed to accomplish each one.
- Make sure your choices do not focus on one player or another. If you have one choice that’s good for a computer expert, another choice best for a sharpshooter, and one for a pilot, then the computer expert, sharpshooter, and pilot will argue over which choice to make. Make the choices generic enough so any of the PC’s might choose it.
- Draw up encounters and use plots that your young players will understand. Combat encounters are the simplest and easiest for younger PC’s to grasp. They’re also the most exciting to them. Embrace it. Throw stormtrooper after stormtrooper at them to mow down, even if in a normal session of your friends this might get dull. Make the big boss at the end straight-forward in how it may be killed. For social encounters, keep things simple and familiar. Don’t include any hidden character agendas or complex situations the youngsters wouldn’t identify with. Use real life examples for them when describing game elements.
- Despite how many choices you let your players make or not, keep the plot a very linear experience and keep the players on rails more than you would an experienced or adult group of players.
So my biggest problem was making the encounters, plot, and courses of action too broad and more geared towards adults. I was trying to make a fun, interesting, deep RPG experience for my younger players, but ended up creating something too daunting for them to absorb. I needed to remind myself that even the simplest RPG plot and encounter, while it might not make you too interested as a player, would be fun and interesting to a younger gamer.
Have you encountered anything like this before? Did you try running a game that confused your child or seemed too overwhelming? What did you try that worked, or didn’t work for you?
Next time I will be writing about how to alter your RPG’s initiative system to provide the most fun at a table of younger players.
Keep on rollin’!
Scott Alden
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