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Author Topic: Fantasy small scale for kids  (Read 2805 times)

Offline macmod

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 68
Fantasy small scale for kids
« on: December 19, 2018, 12:22:52 PM »
Hi I want to get my girls (7 and 9) into gaming, what rules would people recommend? I think they should be fairly simple to keep them interested and cheap (from my point of view)!
Cheers

Offline 3 fingers

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Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #1 on: December 19, 2018, 12:38:51 PM »
What about frostgrave using Lego figures?

Offline Hobgoblin

  • Galactic Brain
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    • Hobgoblinry
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #2 on: December 19, 2018, 12:42:28 PM »
Song of Blades and Heroes.

I started playing it with my son on his sixth birthday, and he still loves it now, several years on. My daughter, who's seven, often plays it too. We've introduced loads of the kids' friends to it too, and it always goes down well.

The game has several big advantages for kids. First, movement is easy, with measuring sticks, which are much simpler than messing around with rulers or tapes. You only need six-sided dice (three per player, or three for the whole game), and you're always looking at just one score on each die (higher is better). There's some very simple maths in combat, as you add a number to a single die roll. And there's also a great risk/reward trade-off: how many dice do you roll for activations, given that two failures end your turn? It's easy for kids to grasp, and can have exciting results as the kind of wild gambles that kids like either come off spectacularly or fail abysmally.

It's less than a tenner on Amazon, and there's enough in the book to keep you playing for years. You can also stat up anything you like through the online warband generator on the Ganesha Games site. The generator creates printable roster sheets, which are a big help with kids too. And the figure count is small - five to ten a side for the best games.

Song of Blades also works really well with multiple players, because turns are short and unpredictable. We've played lots of games with three, four, five or six players. A good principle is 'the higher the player count, the lower the figure count per player'. So, if you have a game with lots of kids, keep them to five or fewer figures a head.

Another cost advantage is that you can easily rope in toys to serve as large monsters - or play the whole thing with Lego (as several people do).

Offline tyrionhalfman

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 994
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #3 on: December 19, 2018, 12:43:18 PM »
I second Frostgrave, small amounts of figures and terrain on a small board, and can use just about any figures you want as long as it’s clear which soldier type they’re representing

Offline robh

  • Scatterbrained Genius
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  • Spanish offworld colonies
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #4 on: December 19, 2018, 12:49:37 PM »
Munchkin, especially the Grimm tales or Munchkin Oz sets.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #5 on: December 19, 2018, 12:59:53 PM »
What about frostgrave using Lego figures?

That's a good call, but I think Frostgrave isn't an ideal starting game for kids, because the spells add so much complexity and prep time. It's a good one for when they have the basic concepts of a wargame and can spend time themselves reading through the spell lists and choosing what to do.

I'd argue that 'time to table' is a key concept for running games with kids. An advantage of Song of Blades is that you can get a game going in five minutes flat (player A chooses the two warbands while player B sets up the table, then player A chooses which side of the table to enter while player B decides which warband to use). If the kids have friends coming round, I often take a few minutes to print out a few balanced warbands so that they can play a game if they fancy it.

One concept in Frostgrave that's really useful, though, is having objectives (treasure or whatever) for the players to get off the table. The basic Song of Blades book as that as one of the set-ups, and it definitely works well.

One thing that you can do with any simple skirmish game is set up a 'dungeon crawl' using floorplans or hand-drawn tiles to give a sense of exploration in a cooperative game or just to create a good environment for an interesting battle (like this one).

It's also worth thinking about doing some simple RPGs. Both my kids love RPGs, and I think it's very easy to get into RPG territory when gaming with kids, as they'll often say "I want my person to hide here" or "I'm going to persuade the monster to be my friend" or whatever. There are loads of very simple and very good RPGs that you can get for nothing or next to nothing.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #6 on: December 19, 2018, 01:24:21 PM »
Another game that's worth a look is Pulp Alley. It's very story-driven, which might appeal. I'd say that it lies between Song of Blades and Frostgrave in complexity. It uses lots of different dice and takes slightly longer to set up than Song of Blades, and it also needs a more careful read of the rules first time out. But once you've grasped the rules, it's easy to stat up a side and get going, and it doesn't have all the spell-related choices of Frostgrave (which take up quite a lot of a rather long rulebook, if I recall correctly).

What miniatures do you have to draw upon at the moment?

Offline macmod

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 68
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2018, 01:30:50 PM »
Blimey cheers for the replies! I’ve mainly got historical minis but I thought I could get a few of the plastic frames (female frostgrave stands out!) and help them make their own heroes

Offline Munindk

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 642
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Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #8 on: December 19, 2018, 01:58:46 PM »
Rangers of Shadow Deep is a solo or coop low magic version of Frostgrave with a RPG element too it. You could use your historical miniatures as rangers, companions and some of the enemies, but you'll probably need to aquire some monsters and animals.

Fist Full of Lead (western game) is coming in a fantasy/medieval/generic version in January (last I heard) and its pretty straight forward as it was designed for convention play originally. You'll probably be fine with your historical miniatures.

Relicblade is another option thats very easy to learn (the rulebook is almost a comicbook), but it uses very specific miniatures.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #9 on: December 19, 2018, 02:16:32 PM »
Given your historical minis, I wonder if Matakishi's Crom! might be an idea- especially if you plan on having the players cooperate against the baddies.

It's designed for Conan-style games, but if you have lots of historical miniatures, you might want something that pits a couple of heroes against lots of guards or whatever - sneaking into a castle to rescue a hostage, or something like that. Crom! works really well of that sort of thing (and it's only a fiver).

From four years of doing this, I think a big deal is working out how much information your players need to keep track of. That's why Song of Blades is my main recommendation - just two stats (Quality and Combat) and the odd special rule. So, a couple of roster sheets for a game might look like this:

Orc leader: Q3, C3, Leader
Orc champion: Q3, C4, Savage, Hero
6 orcs: Q4, C3

5 elves: Q2, C3, Shooter: Long, Good Shot

I think that's about as much complexity as you want when starting out.

Crom! is pretty simple too - you get a character sheet for each player to keep their hero's dice pool on. And it's typically one hero per player.

It's also worth bearing in mind that you can get dirt-cheap monsters from Reaper Bones - six goblins for three or four quid, or whatever, and fairy large monsters for around £3. If there's a shop near you that stocks them, so you don't have postage costs, you can get quite a sizeable fantastic menagerie for very little.

And the Frostgrave sprues are great for that too: the female soldiers, obviously, but also the gnolls and cultists (with undead options). And then there's Oathmark for goblins, dwarfs and elves. You can get individual sprues on eBay for all of these for about £1 a figure. It's also easy to pick up job lots of orcs, lizardmen or whatever second hand on eBay.

My son and I are currently basing and repainting a lot of his old toy dinosaurs for use in various games; toyboxes can be a great source of big monsters.

Offline meninobesta

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 706
  • Bastard Saint, Scorn of the Earth
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #10 on: December 19, 2018, 02:30:59 PM »
sometimes I play wargames with my daughter (she is 9)

some of the things I do (hope you can take some ideas):
  • Use home made rules, with simple mechanisms using few dice roles and almost no modifiers
  • use a grid table or just simple measuring sticks
  • I write the rules with her (nothing fancy, just a couple of tables for reference)
  • each unit has only a couple of options for it's activation - run, move&shoot and shoot - each option has different effects on game terms
  • Use scenery, but keep it simple
  • don't use too many units at the same time - moving my units to create no more than 2 threats to her force
  • ask her feedback for new rules addition, new unit types to add or actions to perform and try to add them to the game in the simplest way possible
  • define scenario objectives and try to keep each game short
  • It's not a problem to create unbalanced scenarios (but always game them from both sides in a single session - first I play the bad guys then she plays the bad guys)
  • give some information about the background or history of the game setting
  • use painted minis
  • make scenario and paint minis with her
« Last Edit: December 19, 2018, 02:32:50 PM by meninobesta »
Cheers,
Pedro

Offline Schrumpfkopf

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 802
    • Westfalia Miniatures
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #11 on: December 19, 2018, 02:34:55 PM »
Not a serious game and likely more suitable for little ones, but here we go:

http://www.westfaliaminiatures.com/downloads/thedungeonplaybooky.pdf
westfaliaminiatures.com - proper stuff in 28mm

Offline tin shed gamer

  • Supporting Adventurer
  • Scatterbrained Genius
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  • Posts: 3332
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #12 on: December 19, 2018, 04:31:21 PM »
Hero Quest.
There's simply nothing that touches it as taster game. Bright colours simple rules and plenty of monster's. More importantly it doesn't take an age to set up and play (time is a killer for kid's) plus its not going to take over the house . you can even get away with a coffee table. Rather than the dining table.
More importantly than anything else . No sibling war trashing the house if they loose.
Got five of my own and we've fostered more than double that .you can take it from me.
Much , much , much, safer than monopoly!

Mark.

Offline ecurtz

  • Librarian
  • Posts: 110
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #13 on: December 19, 2018, 05:23:45 PM »
There are also some good boardgames that can be introductions to more free-form gaming. You could look at things like Mice and Mystics, Arcadia Quest, and Wildlands and see if they might appeal.

Offline krieghund

  • Scientist
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  • Beyond all Reason
Re: Fantasy small scale for kids
« Reply #14 on: December 19, 2018, 09:36:16 PM »
Check out Alien World's or Fantasy blade by Echidna Games.