Gaming with Kids

[Phoebe]

I know this topic comes up from time to time, but since I recently tried it and discovered how interestingly different it is, I'm curious if people have tips. My kids took quite readily to the idea of pretending to be another character who has these powers, and they wanted to run all around exercising the powers before they could even get to a place in the story where the exercise was more meaningful, shall we say. Part of that will be solved once they are forced to confront meaning by the Narrator, in the form of goblins. However, I'm wondering if this kind of imaginative derailing is a normal part of all kid games just given how awesome and imaginative they are, and what tips you have for getting things on track.

The other difficulty is that Pathfinder characters are pretty darn complicated if you've never played before. We didn't have time to finish everything about the characters and in particular I left off traits and Feats for this first session. I'm wondering if you think it would be reasonable for me to choose a few Feats for each character I'm just force them to have the ones I think are useful, and then one of the ways their characters will be rewarded in advance is that they can either choose to replace one of the feets I gave or they can come up with some extra ones. Will that make the characters to high-powered in a way that makes the game less fun? I don't really want people just poring over the character sheet, thinking about what they can do, and then focusing on that to the exclusion of decision-making in the game that is actually more important. But they need to have some feats... I don't know.

I also can't get past the humor of the fact that my gentlest and quietest child immediately zeroed in on every single magic spell that involved acid attacks, and is just trying to find any possible excuse to unleash the acid attacks.

[Walrus]

I am soooo looking forward to gaming with my kids!

[Kyle]

When my kids were little, we rolled up their stats, picked race and class, then I asked them what they wanted their background to be. Then we agreed that I'd pick all the skills and feats to round out the character per what they said they wanted their character to be.

As complicated as the rules are in Pathfinder, it's only important that you know them. The only thing they care about- this early in it- is you tell them what they need to role to hit, or succeed at a skill, or whatever.

The one counterintuitive thing I encountered is this- I anticipated that the kids would be more entertained by the combat than the role playing, when exactly the opposite was true. Especially with the younger ones. They really liked the role playing part of it, and the combat became so mechanical and was boring to them. I actually would gauge their reactions in combat, and when it seemed like their interest was waning, then I'd have one of them perform an amazing act- and that would get them invested back into it.

Also, don't be afraid to get silly with it. Silly is fun.