I would love to play table top RPGs with my children... But I have no idea what is out there that is designed for this age group.

Any ideas?
Any advice?
This message was last edited by the user at 23:12, Thu 04 Sept 2014.

I started playing d&d basic at about 8 years of age. I got started just finding the books lying around the house. It was "Hey neat pictures, reminds me of Final Fantasy". It was not to long before I went behind my uncles back and learned the rules. My brother and I created games based on video games, and our own dreams.

Other then that, maybe play the game around them and tone down some of the things to what you feel is ok for that age?


EDIT:
Hahaha, sorry seems I misread your post.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:55, Thu 04 Sept 2014.

I used Faery's Tale. It's great, published by Firefly Games. Started my kid when she was around five. I can't recommend it highly enough.

After we'd played that for a while, I got her the West End Games Star Wars hardcover book for her birthday. I started running it for her and she began to tell me what I was doing wrong! She might've been seven.

Since then we've moved on through Basic D&D to 1e AD&D. Got her the Gygax memorial editions. Now I run a game for dads and kids, we're having a blast! Next will be Classic Traveller...

And she just turned twelve.

Gurps and Mechwarrior!

But seriously, I would think it would have to be whatever the kid likes. If they're in to Pokemon, a game with similar themes might interest them I suppose, regardless of ruleset (or not following the rules all the time more likely).

Lego has a cool game which you can design and build boards with legos. Magic a wizard, thief barbarian etc. work together as a team or against each other to collect treasures and defeat momstoers like bats, and goblins and it uses a D6. I have a few of these set and play with my 6 year old and even with my D&D group when we just what something to pass a quick few hours.

Its called Heroica, Not sure if they still make it because it really boomed in the stores. and with legos being so pricey I happen to pick a lot of them up at deep discounts.

They have some newer stuff but i havent taken a look yet as i wait for the discounts on Legos.

I can't emphasise highly enough 'not following the rules'. They're going to have, potentially, years to have to follow the rules to the letter. Work around the rules to let them have fun. Ignore the rules. Dump the rules. Allow them to do things that, per the RAW, you just can't do.

Especially if you're also gaming with more experienced players.

I have heard great things about Faery's Tale.

Also, a little less traditional, but still a storytelling exercise with some "gamification" that's oriented towards kids is "Happy Birthday, Robot!".  Basically it uses some basic rules, and some dice to structure a group telling a collective story.  Might be a good first step into the broader idea of communal storytelling, which is pretty much what RPGs are at their core, if you're looking for something to go in between nothing and the step up to a more traditionally formatted game.

Some great advice already! Thanks comrades.

This community rocks.

Grow with me RPG.  SPECIFICALLY geared towards children of ages 4-7 with advice advice to the parent on how to get the kids into rpg'ing.  Not sure if I can give the website where you can find it for sale but they do offer a few pieces for the rule set.

In reply to tulgurth (msg # 9):

No links required :) my Google-Fu is strong.

I once taught a group of 12 year-olds 3.5 D&D, so I feel strongly that if they want to play, they'll learn with a good teacher darn near any system.

That said, Numenera, with its Cypher System, I believe to be good for kids.  The rules are very simple, and there's great room for the GM to adjudicate.  As the point of the game is to explore (you actually don't gain XP for killing monsters, but for discovering things), it encourages kids to think of other solutions than just killing monsters and taking their stuff (though you can do that too).  A friend of mine has a 9 year-old daughter, who, along with her 5 year-old brother, plays Numenera with their dad as the GM.

The nice thing about it is because the rules are so simple, you can easily make up monsters or NPCs to your players' comfort level.  Some Numenera monsters are quite disturbing, but you can re-skin them effortlessly, or just make your own with the game mechanics.

My advice is to look at what the kids like, outside of RPGs.  There is at least one passable My Little Pony RPG that would work for kids if you glossed over some of the rules.  http://www.roleplayingismagic.com/

There is also Laser Ponies.  http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/...t/65022/Laser-Ponies

You can really play any system that you want.  Just make all the choices really simple and abstract stuff.  D&D 5 seems simple enough on the face of it, although I haven't really played it much.  I don't think you'll have to abstract much, though, there's nowhere near as much paperwork and math as in previous editions.

I even knew one kid of about 9 or 10 that started with 2nd edition. Even Shadowrun. You just tended to have to let them say what they wanted to do, and then you translate it into gamespeak.

Dagger for Kids: Supplemental Rules for Classic Role-playing with Kids is a very basic rule system. It is available as a free download.

Not played it but Hero Kids looks right for you. I use the authors other game, Heroes Against Darkness, here on rpol and it is pretty good.

http://herokidsrpg.blogspot.co...o-kids-overview.html

Savage World of My Little Pony

It is based on the Savage Worlds system so is a good introduction to that system, and given SW's structure, it is a good intro to RPGs in general.

You can find it here,
http://giftkrieg23.deviantart....th-Edition-347963248

Unfortunately, it is intended to go with the core rules, though even a passing familiarity with it can be enough to skip the core rules if you really want to.

What kind of die do you need for Faery's Tale?

My daughter used to sit on the basement stairs and watch as my friends and I played various games, mostly Deadlands at that time. When she was about nine, I started doing a free-form sort of game with her based on an event I had played at Origins involving kids abducted by desert raiders. Every time we were riding in the car on the way to some other activity, we'd pick up the story.

She wanted me to run some games for her and a few of her friends. We did a regular game with her group from the time they were ten until they were about fourteen. We used Deadlands, Dragonlance, and Call of Cthulhu. Those were good times and the kids all really enjoyed the gaming.

When she was thirteen, I took my daughter to the Origins Games Fair for the first time. Three years later she was helping me run my first RPG events and two years after that she was running her own event. We're still writing and running RPGs there.

It takes a fair amount of teaching and patience in the early years. With a child younger than ten I think it's important to keep the sessions relatively short and to the point.

Even at ten or eleven I had to demonstrate how to investigate a mystery to my daughter's group with coaching: "What do you know? What do you need to find out? Who might be able to help you?" And it was important to keep my own notes, because they couldn't remember the details until they got to be around twelve or so -- and these were all TAG students.

So it can be a great hobby to get involved in with kids. It tends to push their interest in reading and history, too.

There may be some 'RPG boardgames' made for younger kids that would provide a transition, similar to 'Betrayal at House on the Hill' or 'Arkham Horror' but a bit simpler and shorter.

Way back when I was a teenager, and they actually used to leave small children in my care sometimes, this was how I'd keep them wrangled: old school Basic D&D (a little more simplified) with a very simple run of Keep on the Borderlands, or of In Search of the Unknown, since that's set up for being custom stocked.

Characters are pre-rolled, the encounters are a bit simplified, and well, they almost always did way better than a group of adult players would since I was such a softy.