Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: macmod on December 19, 2018, 12:22:52 PM
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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
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What about frostgrave using Lego figures?
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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).
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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
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Munchkin, especially the Grimm tales or Munchkin Oz sets.
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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 (https://hobgoblinry.blogspot.com/2018/12/down-in-dungeon-with-song-of-blades-and.html)).
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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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Given your historical minis, I wonder if Matakishi's Crom! (https://www.matakishi.net/store/p4/CROM%21.html) 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.
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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
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Not a serious game and likely more suitable for little ones, but here we go:
http://www.westfaliaminiatures.com/downloads/thedungeonplaybooky.pdf
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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.
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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.
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Check out Alien World's or Fantasy blade by Echidna Games.
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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
This is what I have done to get our grandchildren to play. To the list above I would add
Make use of any favourite toys or books/films in the scenarios
We started with "Thomas the Tank Engine" and some favourite toys with minimalrules to ensure the "baddies" were defeated.
http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Games_with_Grandad/01%20Sodor/01%20Sodor%20invaded.htm (http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Games_with_Grandad/01%20Sodor/01%20Sodor%20invaded.htm)
(http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Games_with_Grandad/01%20Sodor/clip_image007.jpg)
Now they play - "The Hobbit", "Lord of the Rings Strategy Game", "Bolt Action" and Zombie games using our modified Akulas Rules
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The first game I played with my little girl was Hero Quest as well, so I'm going to have to second tin shed gamer on that one. it's the perfect gateway game.
It's you, as the game master, against the kid(s), so they work together, rather than against eachother. Plus; you can moderate accordingly. So if they're having a hard time, ease up on them, and if they're bored, crank up the difficulty by adding more monsters, or putting down bigger baddies. You can even really clamp down on those players who are not team-players (i.e. picking up treasure another player just killed a monster for, not sharing loot, etc).
I've also shortened quests by, for instance, adding a secret door somewhere, because otherwise it would take way too long for her (look for telltale signs that attention spans are dropping, and DM accordingly).
We've since then also played Space Hulk (scary!), and Lionheart; a simple boardgame that can be found for very cheap (€7,50 in my case, all miniatures still on the sprue). It is, in essence, an amalgam of chess and miniature wargames.
Those rules are very simple, there are two sizable armies (silver and gold), which are roughly 28mm sized, and can be painted too!
I also have a copy of Super Dungeon Explore, which has certainly caught her fancy. She just loves the artwork (chibby fantasy) on the box, and I should really paint them up for us to use them in play.
The game itself is an attempt to re-create the feel of 8-bit adventure computer games from back in the day, and not really suited as an introductory game. But the minis themselves can be used in virtually any game of course.
And if you want a 'proper' wargame, why not look at either Saga (as you're invested in historicals already), or Lion/Dragon Rampant?
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Hi.
I had a thread going when I introduced my daughter into wargaming. We actually used the very old and totally free Fantasy Warriors. My inspiration came from Jevenkahs and her familys gaming site. I hope this gives you some inspiration.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=55961.0
MGK
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Thank you all for your suggestions I am going to taint their souls over the Christmas period 😈
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A couple of years ago I played with my children using Matakishi's DUNGEONEER and playmobil figures. Playmobil are great because you can customize the figures.
Edited:
I found these pics in my phone.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/q6MJbQVytbeLoTp4ROPuk_wZKZRPVvoK7H2rnzAH7tdY7o2-u7kd2ECNywYq6DK178_Duo7P3pYpGusgeTcMgKmJKtcuutv_UV4KpWx_aUO8C_WKWBXDFVkmjczuvgF8G3N9WT0Nef54IVx7NLQSnQ2Y4fLayr5jiyO3MdeNF-rv5t4PUOxtPEgTznBI5m9xMkA5eQrplYMoUMyr0Xbp1IE52EDV7627dk4f1xt0ffnWDBmKXCNZK4POSdrbmNTa_kDiLyBG-VPp3UDDDJ4K12hRqpdGjP6iIsFcHRUi6QSHoVAVN-PmlbHmyjDk4uKgYx66FmO4rknATYnXOFyJfOrtDm85S7B2PRCBjEDMqxFnFWS_arB4g5ZKYVvBUvUjQzYaJ80VpCnPW36Pel213bSafO5e3miHKwrlb7BlxGyi8aDy7ObM-NqeyVtg8b8g0piBchBUc5iI916VxYK9hG0npnKsqUn-0VdDhkqvFW79gnr4nnYkWCj8UuqtU4cQHOE4sbC3ZvnscVbSp_vALJ0XieIqacNcytz_7gtmOWEfaxvR7AnsFGL6kLnW-_raRhZ3XeybJAXW68AAS2DLxWlz05NUpdIPNGLXLf0dctfBwUo02QWd2Mye407lvXN0XR1Tf2ho8Sfevs7xYd7Likzrj3UfLCx-oY24rx2ySTuuDIWIrvt8hWb6EwgfOQY7akUwoz2GcbIVEMctIA=w1163-h654-no)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WAh2ZhCDZWSdNAyelwZgTPDdjQ7vcyTkU-tay2sqxhth5knvFOe85thaliM0y6mpXr0sM9wcT6-Q7553SSPCr5CPJ0FvdT1I612bSkc_lFw0ayBEZ6hbyVCutHCvt21P5SanUE4smL_dU-sGngeNhXcnuAj_31vkCXdyafWG90T2RoFW1sp7vSPJOBhNV9TrUcpEPixEDWUEyjHLlfZ0fEDTA3HY1D27UryrisaJqUifqoV4isT12tKLR9YNbCQD3J0JAxsu7uvTLWS9WskAMoOWsjqalH8s_OXygEeqscl6osb1stfLt4tT9voi24hAZzKk4mfQf2FvEprfFMZTVhJSG8fsnzytt5DK7N_Qq2fZ2a94dkBKKZaHv9J5b6hCMxbaIub8rxa7kc4yHopiHf6y8oFLqvJyHZjezVLhjKXTiAjOqrrLpOayqB0NYwaaV-Qu9zr493liQPVZCfWctOZ_U4lySeUda8DBanw_HajFRaMnrMqNpz8XAkZ-ftgx-zoY1uLJZyNfZVX7oKBjZIVkZMp-_ufDflXvoEQS6aZWa9dbFsNSjr2Bs8ckHiZXQkH_wvev_1U61rPXJXVzANbg_XsJ2r1sbCDnEx68f34r8_OxVlvXtJp8vy9dqtwHlB-KGXO7Ro9x7xh-ycn9d2mQ=w872-h654-no)
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That previous post reminds me about the fighting fantasy RPGs, dungeoneer. That could be a good game if you get the old book and use any miniatures you want with it. I might just bring it out for with my son these holidays.
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With children I would play Open Combat, from Second Thunder. Rules are simple, you create your own profiles of fighters, there's a PDF version and you can use any kind of miniature.
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That previous post reminds me about the fighting fantasy RPGs, dungeoneer. That could be a good game if you get the old book and use any miniatures you want with it. I might just bring it out for with my son these holidays.
I loved that game. I bought the reprinted collection a few years ago.
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Cheers folks I’ve gone for a song of heroes and blades!
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Look forward to hearing how you get on. I've played a few turns of several GW games with my kids, I just super simplify the rules on the fly. After all the point for them isn't really how the game works, it's getting to roll dice with daddy and use his tiny monsters as we call them :D
Mine are 2 and 4 though so not really capable of most rulesets. They do recognise numbers and can count so the basics of rolling and moving are fine. We turned speed freeks into a simple race for example, roll to see how far you go sort of thing.
To add to the suggestions there are things like Four Against Darkness. As a paper based cooperative dungeon crawl with mostly random elements on a d6, it's simple enough to have a go with. At young ages they don't need figures as their imaginations are running riot anyway and mine understand what skeletons and ghosts are!