Family Friendly Roleplaying

Today’s post is in appreciation of the littlest members of your party – whether they are your own children, nephews, nieces, or any other young’n. Adventurers aren’t just born ready to take on the King of Krakens or Swamp Witches; they are trained! With the three resources listed below, you’ll not only be training up another generation of capable adventurers, but you’ll also have a blast doing it.

The Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever

This initial suggestion might come as a surprise. How can a book help children to learn the basics of role-playing, much less keep their attention? Fear not! This is not just an ordinary work of fantasy, but is actually a twist on the “pick your own ending” genre.

At the beginning of each book is a set of rules so that you can make a character and keep track of the decisions being made. Helping your children through this process can be a lot of fun if your children are a bit older. If you think that it might be a bit much for the child in your life, another option is to create the character yourself and then have them keep track of the inventory as the story progresses.

With this accomplished, it’s time to delve into the world created by Mr. Dever by reading the story to your child and letting them make decisions. If you’re worried about them making decisions that will get their characters killed, you can implement a “groundhog day” rule which allows you to rewind the events so that they can make a different choice and progress with the story.

It’s easy to make these adjustments that can help keep the game fun and inviting for your children. This series is a great option if you are worried about being able to come up with a story, and it can allow you to relax as the GM and just focus more on having fun.

Pathfinder – We Be Goblins

The modules 1 and 2 of We Be Goblins are free for download as PDFs and they are compatible with the first edition of Pathfinder. This option is a bit more complex than just walking through a story like the Lone Wolf series, but the upside is that it will play a lot more like a proper campaign.

In addition, the We Be Goblins module is full of ridiculous fun! You and the children will play as goblins that are set on a task by your goblin chief, and there are so many ways that you can get into mischief and mayhem! Children love letting their inner goblins out to wreak chaos, and it’s a good way to keep from taking any of the games too seriously.

You can use the Pathfinder rule system as is, but it’s also easy to customize as you’d like considering the ages and interests of the children.

Mausritter

This is a different system altogether than either of the above, but have no worries! If destroying demons or dealing with a range of battles is not really your speed with the kiddos, try Mausritter on for size. In this world you play as little mice going on adventures in a world far bigger than them. This is a more wholesome RP that any kid can play regardless of their sensitivity to scary or mean things. Their little mice can go through entire campaigns about helping others and making friends, or even just go exploring the world and seeing all that it has to offer.

The rulebook is very simplified and you don’t have to worry about a lot of number crunching. This game is designed to encourage freedom and exploration and it’s easy to customize in order to let the silliness and creativity of the children shine.

As a bonus, this game makes it easy to focus on things like developing good teamwork between the children.

If you’ve never tried any of these, you might find that you enjoy these games yourself a lot more than you thought you would! Adventures are best had in the company of others, and how special would it be to take those adventures with the children in your life?

What kind of RP games do you cut your teeth on? Were there any that you played as a young child? Or are there any particular ones that you’d love to share? We’d love to hear all about it! Share with us in the comments below, jump in on our YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDyKub18qqg), or even on our Discord Channel (https://discord.com/invite/g2NBTssuMh)!

Credit: written by Meraki Forest