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Hey all. So with the on-going super-happy health fun-times, many of us are trapped inside for the foreseeable future, and a lot of those with young children to amuse. But, similar to a grey, rainy day, the silver lining to this is that it's a great excuse for some nerd-gaming! There's been a bubbling question of good suggestions, and Ettin asked for someone to make a thread so I decided to make one because I'm 1) a profoundly lonely man and 2) I used to run games for kids in the Bronx and Yonkers, so I have some insight. I’m gonna stay away from general game recommendations since there’re threads a plenty for that and instead concentrate on 2 sub-categories : 1) games that work well with kids to keep your little ones entertained, and 2) on-line gaming resources. While Tash-Kalar or Sherlock Holmes : Consulting Detective are a great way for you and a loved one to spend the quarantine, you can just ask the board gaming thread or the chat thread about that ; this is specifically for the above two points, and just shouting that Gloomhaven is great doesn’t really help anyone. Also, while I’ve done some on-line gaming it’s not my forte so that sub-section is gonna start out kind of anemic. Any and all good suggestions will be folded into the OP as they’re given. I ain’t no one special, I’m just the first guy to volunteer so I’m happy to get ideas. This is obviously a work in progress that I’ll probably be changing as I Games for Kids RPGs (Note bene : I’m only listing games that are free for the moment. Obviously if you’re willing to pay money the options increase. If/when there is demand I’ll expand on this this.) Dungeon World : In my experience, kids click with Powered by the Apocalypse games like you wouldn’t believe ; you basically don’t have to explain the rules and they just do it. They have an idea, and you just tell them to roll for it. I’m listing DW cause it’s free and widely available and the basics are something anyone who has been in the same room as D&D can pretty much get in a glance, even though it has some problems. Other PbtA games would also fit the bill, but idk if you want to play Monster Hearts with a 7 year old. Honey Heist : It’s about bears doing crimes and the rules fit on a single piece of paper. Crime. Bears. Do I really have to elaborate? Lasers and Feelings : This is really the underlying skeleton of Honey Heist but with a (very, very slightly) less kid-captivating theme : this is all about having any wacky space-opera shenanigans that you can imagine. And, again, you could basically write all the rules on your arm. (Don’t actually do this.) Most importantly, it’s free! D&D 4e : Yes, I know some grogs are going to come out of the woodwork and talk about how it’s for WoW babbies or whatever but they’re wrong and we’re literally talking about games for kids so that’s silly. The crunch can get a bit tedious at higher levels, but when I was running this for kids I actually thought that was a plus cause it can turn an 8 year old into a literal addition machine ; nothing like a couple of months of doing lots of single-digit addition to hit goblins to make a kid care. Sadly it’s out of print and not available as a .pdf to my knowledge. And to my eternal sadness, absolutely nothing will turn up if you type “d&D 4e [name of book]”. Nothing, rien, nanimonai, nyet, nichs ; don’t even bother trying. Totally not worth your time to do that. Board/Card Games (Sadly none of these are going to be free. I don’t know many print-and-play options here that are any good, and I’m avoiding stuff that can be done with just a standard deck of cards or are old stand-bys like chess. But you should definitely teach your kids shogi cause it’s cool and owns. Everyone go play shogi.) Carcassonne : A total classic and there are probably a bunch of goons who are going to complain that it’s ancient, but kids love it and it teaches some pretty good skills of pattern recognition and basic math. Plus there are 800,067 expansions if it winds up being a hit and you need to really, really hunker down for the long haul. Cockroach Poker : A kind of anti-set collection game with lots of bluffing and some pretty cute art (especially if you spring for the Royal edition). Also kids just love gross gribbly art of centipedes and bats. Hive : A MENSA-backed cute little game of laying down tiles with some super, super deep strategy. And more cute art of bugs. Space Alert : Bit of a weird sell, but if you have the right group of kids it’s a god drat blast. It’s just chaos of real-time shouting as you try to keep your spaceship from dying horrifically. Requires kids that don’t mind losing (a lot), but it’s co-op so that takes some of the sting out of it. Also has a nice kind of pseduo-ish campaign thing for teaching the rules which can be helpful. Smash-Up : I would never recommend this for adults cause the game has some serious flaws, but it’s cheap as hell and it’s literally just a card game about combining two factions into a weird little LCG deck and seeing if robots + pirates can beat ninjas + wizards. Intelligent gaming? No. Will it keep an 8 year old absolutely enthralled? Very yes. Online Gaming This one I’m less good on but I’ll give what I can and wait for suggestions : Roll20 : The classic. It gives you a virtual white-board, a chat client and a die-roller out of the box. Plus you can either pay money/scrounge for what’s free in terms of pre-fab buttons or just spend some time making your own macros. It nominally also has voice/video chat but I have never heard good things about them and myself and everyone I’ve ever even heard of uses Skype/GChat/smoke-signals instead of that. Virtual Tabletop : Similar to Roll20 (I hear) but aimed at board games. It, as the name would suggest, is a virtual tabletop that lets you do whatever you want as long as you’re either willing to either input it yourself or find/pay for a version that’s already done. I’ve never used it but I’ve heard good things. Discord : Don’t laugh. I’ve actually played some good games over it. As long as visuals aren’t important, it can be pretty good. You just need to install a die-roller. Plus it has a phone app that isn’t complete garbo if you want to go asynchronous. This has been the majority of my on-line play, actually. Anyway, this has been 3 pages of a google doc and I should probably do like my actual job and stuff. I’m gonna reserve the second post on the off-chance I somehow need more space cause it’s easier than asking Ettin down the line to do some magic if I go over the post-limit. Feel free to post any suggestions/comments! This is, at best, a draft so rough I’d have to favorably call it “rustic” to be polite. Also don’t die and please wash your hands. (USER WAS AUTOBANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 17, 2020 15:09
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Tibalt posted:Stop trying to hide the truth mods! I have literally no idea how I got autobanned for that. Like, none. Total and complete mystery. If anyone can figure it out, please tell me cause I'm curious as hell. DalaranJ posted:If you're doing synchronous discord play do you recommend video chat, or audio chat plus dropping pictures in the channel? In the games I've played, they were always pure text with just like a scheduled meet-up time (plus asynchronous faffing). And we were playing super narrative games, mostly PbtA, so most of the visuals were photo-references or atmospheric with the very rare diagram if positioning was super, super vague and we needed to check we were all on roughly the same page. Like I said, I am so not a good source for much of on-line gaming. I'm just the dude who volunteered to be the OP. UnCO3 posted:Here're some more games I think kids could enjoy, depending on the kids: Awesome! Thank you! I'll be adding any suggestions like this in chunks to the OP whenever I get a minute/a half a dozen are posted, whichever comes first. Fall of Magic sounds in particular dope as hell.
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Mar 18, 2020 04:06
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I swear I clicked “LINK!”, but my bad.
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Mar 18, 2020 04:43
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Reene posted:Pretty much a honeypot yeah. Enh, whatever. I really thought I didn't press that tag (cause I knew that rule so I dismissed it) but this is the most whatever of whatevers to ever whatever. I'm just happy that the mystery has been solved and we can move on with the actual purpose of this thread. Which is obviously to get some stay at home parents with 2 small children to play all of Gloomhaven/The Tomb of Horrors in a giant marathon session.
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Mar 18, 2020 07:17
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OP note : I'm waiting to update the OP until after the discussion gets longer than the OP itself cause I'm lazy.
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Mar 28, 2020 20:21
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