Getting one's children interested in wargaming

[Golgotha]

Any tips on how to encourage one's children interested in wargaming welcome...

Herewith, something a bit different, ideal perhaps for games like Mike Rayhawk's BrikWars. See: https://brikwars.com/  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrikWars

"BrikWars is a miniatures wargame, but unlike more serious wargames, BrikWars is intended for battles between toys, and especially plastic building bricks and other construction toys. The BrikWars rules let players take turns moving toy troops and toy vehicles through toy terrain to attack one another with toy weapons and die horrifying toy deaths." - See: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7623/brikwars

Which parent does not have construction blocks and or toy figures lying around - ideal then for encouraging children into wargaming. My son is very pleased that I also play with toys - 

“BrikWars battles take place in a world of minifigs, and the minifig species draws its heritage from generations of hard fought survival in the toy chests of six-year-old boys. Whether knights, spacemen, construction workers, or chefs, their souls thrill with the racial memory of a time when a toy's highest calling was to do joyous and bloody battle with all challengers.” – Page 9 BrikWars Rulebook, do love this quote especially given that my son is six years old.

My son wanted a mech warrior type robot made from Lego so the two of us put this together. He has a man inside though he is not visible through the dark glass. The Star Wars Lego piece is for scale.

I am sure one could use Lego blocks and something like this as the substructure to a model mech by then removing any obvious Lego appearance and adding detail. Indeed, I think Lego blocks can be a potential resource for building models, especially to build up the basic substructure.

His upper body can turn 360 degrees as his upper and lower body are attached using a part that can turn. His forearms can also move. As can be seen he has an array of various weapons and my son and I called him the robot of death. 





More pictures available here: https://frictionbmcminiatures.blogspot.com/2020/08/golgothas-lego-mech-robot-of-death.html

[racm32]

There are two games I have been using to get my eldest son interested in gaming since he was 4 (now 6). Hero Kids which is more of a table top RPGish game available from Drive Through RPG. Pirates Constructible Strategy Games, though out of print you can still buy packs from Amazon and ebay.

[Davout]

I've got two girls ages 8 and 10 that I am slowly trying to bring into the hobby. I started them off by getting them some Reaper Bones figures to paint. They are cheap figs and don't need to be primed plus Reaper makes a ton of female characters so the girls have lots to choose from.

We've used those figs as stand ins when we play Hero Quest, and as figures when we play a great little RPG called A Fairy's Tale.

I've recently introduced them to Gaslands which they both liked. I feel like this is another great "entry" level game because the figures (in this case Matchbox cars) are super cheap and come in a huge variety.

My plan is to show them Oathmark next.

My advice is to start small. Skirmish games are great because they can identify with a small number of characters and they don't have to paint up a ton of figures. We've played Frostgrave with Lego figures and terrain and it worked great.

Take them to the shop and let them pick something out and then find a simple ruleset and go to town.

[manic _miner]

 Dark Alliance do some Lord of the Rings inspired miniatures in 1/72 scale.A box costs around £8 for 48 figures in most boxes.Two boxes will have you sorted for a good start.Cheap enough and pretty hard to break them. https://www.hannants.co.uk/search/index.php?search=dark+alliance
 Lucid Eye also have some Toon Ranges that might be another good option. https://www.lucideyepublications.com/
 There are five pretty nice looking sets of figures on this link at the bottom of the page.They also do other figures and some nice looking terrain too.
 https://souldark.ru/category/tehnolog-fantasy-battles/
 The Warheads range might also be of interest.Another nice looking cartoon style range and rules set too.
 https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=221_222_207

[Bearwoodman]

Nice Mech! Just the sort of thing my son likes.

I agree with Davout about starting small.  My friend and I have tried to introduce our primary school age children to play wargames. My daughters enjoyed a bit of D&D that my friend GM'ed, although they have never been interested in other battle games.

My son has played some AoS and 40k as well as a few others but we found Frostgrave hit the sweet spot of being interesting enough to both grown ups and children. We ended up playing with two warbands: a joint adults' warband and a joint sons' warband (one player controls the wizard, the other the apprentice and the rest is decided by negotiation/discussion). This kept the game moving fast enough to maintain interest and also meant that the model count was fairly low which meant it was not much of a barrier to entry. It is nice for the boys to play with a band they have painted themselves (with perhaps just a few details added by Dad if requested).

On the painting side I backed a Reaper Bones Kickstarter which meant I have a wide variety of fantasy figures and creatures at a low price per miniature so I am very relaxed about the children having a go at them irrespective of the quality of the final result.

My gaming friends are (sadly) not particularly interested in historical gaming but we have played What a Tanker using 1:72 tanks. This is I think a very good way of dipping a toe into WW2. The rules are pretty easy to understand and the children enjoyed these games.  What is more the models can be very cheap (e.g. Armourfast where you can get 2 tanks for under £9) and you do not need very many. I  bought my friend a couple of Panzers for him and his son to make which they knocked up pretty quickly and which provided a bit of a change from skeletons/space marines. Meanwhile my son and I put together a few Allied tanks and we were away. The rules could easily be adapted for Sci-fi armoured warfare, although I have not tried this yet.

Another game to consider is Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes. It seems to be very popular amongst members of this forum and although I have not had a chance to play it much I have enjoyed it when I have. It is straightforward and adaptable. I have also played it with Lego!
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=124689.msg1571476#msg1571476

Good luck and have fun!

[Diablo Jon]

I tried ...I failed.

My eldest was all about the football he wargamed with me a  couple of times but he was only really happy chasing a ball around a muddy field, on a freezing cold, Sunday morning.

My youngest didn't think toy soldiers where for girls and took up ballet instead. Apparently deforming your toes, for life, in point shoes is about as fun as it gets. Her history teacher, at school, does tell me she is top of her class and predicted an A* so maybe I have influenced her a bit somewhere along the way.

[RSDean]

My sons are now 30 and 27, so my memories of how we got to where we are are buried somewhat deeply.  I enquired this morning to see if they had any words of wisdom, and elder son noted that they had been especially inspired by Fuzzy Heroes, a wargame using stuffed animals, which used to see a lot of play in the kids’ space at Historicon and Cold Wars.  It’s still available digitally, or as a Print on Demand hard copy:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/61474/Fuzzy-Heroes-2nd-Edition?cPath=4879

He also notes that we had a plentiful supply of 54mm plastic toy soldiers, blocks, and such around.

From my point of view, I started them off with simple home rules.  I recall that some of the earliest “real” games we played were using DBA and Hordes of the Things.  They eventually branched out into Magic and D&D, and we certainly play some fantasy (HotT is still the default family miniatures game), but both became excellent painters and have units in the club 40mm imagi-nations 18th century project.  The older one is slowly working on a late 19th century imagi-nations set up, and is the family expert on the late Bronze Age.  That project has been revided recently using DBA, so he’s got armies of Hitties, Egyptians, Canaanites, and Sea Peoples so far.  The younger one is a bit busy with a PhD program in chemistry, but has been researching the 11th century Mediterranean for a personal DBA project.  He ended up with a minor in history as an undergraduate, to the surprise of the rest of us, as he had little interest in the actual history earlier on.

There’s a picture of all of us at the end of last year’s Gencon after action report, along with my brother and my wife:

http://sharpbrush.blogspot.com/2019/08/gencon-2019-aar.html
 

[fred]

I had some success with Song of Blades and heroes and my two daughters - but while they were happy to play daddy's games for a bit, they aren't that keen anymore. They will still play proper boardgames though.

The bit they liked was picking the different figures - and what they would choose to go together as a gang could be rather different to what a conventional group of figures would have looked like! My eldest got good at using a large mob of halflings very effectively.

[RSDean]

If I had had Song of Blades and Heroes in 1999 or so, when I was involving my kids, I certainly would have considered using it.  It seems to me to be a reasonable choice, with a little care over keeping the number and interaction of special abilities within everyone’s attention span (including the parents!).

[Harry Faversham]

My lad (he's 38 now) was brought up in an Emporium filled to the rafters with millitaria, toy sowjers, tanks, guns and aeroplanes all paraded around an 8X4 wargames table. He loved it...
till, one Crimbo, he got bought his first computer, and has never touched a toy sowjer since.
Sometime in the next fortnight this deluded fool will present Daddio with his first Grandson. The 'Prime Directive' now, is to last for another 10 years, with wot's left of mi' marbles intact.
This child will be moulded, into a mirror image of his demented old Granddad, and on his 10th birthday will be presented with my entire collection of priceless artifacts/junk and finally a fitting revenge will have been reaped upon his Father!

[AKULA]

Make it short...45 mins is plenty...let them choose their characters/models from a selection, and give them lots of dice to throw.


 

[RSDean]

I shared this thread with my sons, who had some additional thoughts.

My younger son notes that he grew up in a general gaming environment which probably pre-disposed him toward gaming.  He’s not sure that you could get a kid into wargaming if they didn’t have a disposition toward games already. (BTW, he’s the one whose other outlet turned out to be competitive ice dancing, but the gaming hook was already set by then...)

Both of them note that they enjoyed the specific kid programming at the HMGS conventions, both that sponsored by the con, and the special kids’ tables that our club would set up, when we had lots of kids of our own there.  We’ve gotten a bit away from that in recent years.  Our default club rules are/were Blood and Swash (the root of Gaslight), which is pretty kid friendly, and they played a lot of it.

My elder notes that wargaming allowed him a way of processing and interacting with topics that were interesting to him, and that he might have filled that need with arts or costuming or fan fiction if things had been different.  So, he thinks that kids who already have outlets for their interests may not have the bandwidth to add gaming on top of other things, which may disappoint a gaming parent but which should be understandable.

[Elbows]

I'd say it's a matter of "exposing" children to the idea of wargaming, vs. "getting them interested".  I don't support anyone forcing an interest on anyone, be it child, sibling, significant other, etc.  It's why I despise the "How do I get my GF to play 40K with me!?" kind of posts/threads.

Someone, even a child, is either interested in something - or not.  While I do think gaming is hugely healthy with regard to creativeness, problem solving, even just general reading/mathematics...it's all for naught if the kid doesn't have any interest in it.

Most of my buddies who grew into wargaming had fathers or older siblings who made models and played with toy soldiers.  This was the next logical evolution.  Playing with toy soldiers, but with rules and a purpose! (read: excuse).

I think you'll know if your kid is interested; are are they hanging out and watching, or oohing-and-aahing at your models/tables/games?  Then definitely pursue ways to let them game. If they haven't given a single glance at your gaming....then they're probably not into it.

I do think a kid-appealing game is obviously the way to go if they show an interest.  No six year old is going to get serious about ranks of Napoleonics unless you're shooting them with rubber-bands.   (actually a good way to introduce the idea of gaming is something that simple....you and your kid set up opposing forts/soldiers and sling rubberbands at each other's armies, etc.!)

[carlos marighela]

Same as anything with children.

a) Bribery

b) Coercion

c) Make it appear to be adult/ forbidden

d) Mix a mild sedative into their beverage of choice and hide the Xbox/ tablet/ mobile phone.

Seriously, if they are interested, they’ll let you know.

[Johnno]

My boys are 5 and almost 9.

I started by playing solo boardgames with miniatures. Let eldest play with me. Around 5 years of age.

Next I brought him to some conventions. He was my dice roller. (Never lost when he was throwing the dice around)  He was very well behaved and I received lots of positive comments from other gamers. I did have a charged tablet with me incase boredom set in though. And he could get chocolate and pop at the venue.

Around 7ish, got him some D&D pre-painted figures he could play with and Heroclix figures. He took care of them so I took out some of my figures and we played a low rules skirmish game.

Later, got him some Reaper Bones and Nolzur's and let him paint unrestricted.

We probably play now 3x a year. RCW or Wild West. This past year, allowed the youngest to join in the fun.

Oldest is really interested in Percy Jackson novels (Ancient Greece mythology) so have shown him some companies that make those lines. He's looking through their catalogues for his birthday in December.

Youngest likes to play with older bro and me. He's more artistic too so enjoys the painting.

I guess slow and steady. But only time will tell.