Greybird's page

Historically, tiny towns like that usually relied on traveling tinkers to handle repairs and would buy specialty goods - like horseshoes - from traveling merchants. They'd buy enough to get by until the next merchant came through. If something broke, they make due without or their neighbors help them out. In extreme cases one person might make a trip to a nearby town to place an order for the whole town.

This is not historical, but the basis is, and still explains how a small village could function.

I'm getting ready to play with my kids. I've been playing the full game for a while now, and my plan is to transition them into the full rules slowly. The thing to remember is that the BB rules and the full rules aren't two separate games. They're the same game, just with a few pieces trimmed here and there. You don't need to jump fully from one to the other. Make it a transition.

My plan, as it stands now:

1 - Play an adventure or two with the pregens to let them learn the basics without fighting with all the details.

2 - Play a short campaign with custom made characters. Since they will already know the basics, character generation will actually make sense to them. They'll understand why an 18 is good and a 4 is bad, or what skill points actually mean. I don't plan to change much of anything on this first campaign. The point is to make them as comfortable with the basic rules as possible. The only thing I'll likely do is that somewhere around level 3 or 4 (when they seem ready), I'll switch them to the full character sheets I use in my regular games. I won't be adding any extra info (CMB, etc), I'll just be having them get used to finding the basic rules stats on the full sheet.

3 - Start a new campaign. Characters will be generated with the Core Rulebook this time. I'll start them with the full list of available skills/weapons/feats but we'll start only using the basic rules. Leveling up will be via the full rules.

4 - Every couple of adventures/every level I'll introduce one new thing. I will only introduce a new rule when the previous one has been seamlessly integrated into our games. I'll likely introduce flat footed first, as it is easy to understand and doesn't involve a huge load of procedures (hint: Note your flat footed AC on your character sheet so you aren't trying to calculate it each time.)

5 - Next will be combat maneuvers. I will NOT attempt to teach them these. It'll just confuse them. Instead, I'll give them a written list and say, "From now on you can try these things if you want to." We'll tackle them as they come up. Heck, most experienced regular players don't know how to do a combat maneuver steal off the top of their head, either.

6 - Attacks of Opportunity will be next, as they affect a lot of other activities, from casting to moving to drinking a potion.

My goal is that we'll be implementing the last of these rules about the time they hit level 5 and officially 'graduate' to the full game. Of course, if anything starts to be a problem and 'jams the gears', I'll move it back to the bottom of the list and reintroduce it later.

Another huge hint: Spend five bucks and buy the Sord-PF. Print it out. Punch some holes and keep it on hand. It summarizes the rules in such a way that you can look them up in seconds instead of minutes. You'll still need to read the full version in the core rulebook, but afterwards you can use this as a handy reference to the whole thing.

Yep, this is to you.

I'm a single parent of two kids. I'm also a gamer, and have been since elementary school. I know that when my kids show interest in something, I like to check it out first. I like to see what I'm getting them into. Since I frequently check official forums, I figure that some of you will end up here, trying to decide whether this RPG hobby is something you want to get your kids into. Maybe you want to find out whether this hobby has any real-world value. Maybe you're like me, and grew up during that raging paranoia of the early 80s that had parents thinking that a game would have their kids hiding in the sewers and sacrificing to dark gods. Then again, maybe you don't know the first thing about it. Like I said, this is for you.

What RPGs are: They are, essentially, interactive storytelling games. Think of them as a mix of telling ghost stories around a campfire and improvisational theater. One person (called the game master, or GM) is in charge. He has an outline for a story. He sets the stage by describing the situation and the players take part in the story by describing their responses. Conversations with characters in the story are simply acted out between the players and the GM. If you imagine a game of cops and robbers for big kids (and yes, even adults) you won't be too far off the mark.

All those papers and dice? The papers list equipment and abilities every character in the story has access to, and they rate each character's strengths and weaknesses with a number. A powerful warrior might have a strength rated 18, but an intelligence rated a mere 9. The numbers are used by essentially (simplifying for clarity) adding them to the roll of a die. The higher the rating, the higher the result of a die roll. 18+(1 to 20) is usually higher than 9+(1 to 20.) The higher the result of a die roll, the more effective an attempt to use an ability or skill is. That warrior's attempts to use his 18 strength will be much more effective than his attempts to use his 9 intelligence.

Ok, now to the nitty gritty. Now that we know what these games are, what do they actually do to your kids? I'm going to use myself as an example here, mainly because I know myself well and keep myself close at hand. I rolled my first 20-sided die when I was nine years old, and am still rolling as I inch ever closer to the big four-oh. Here is what it did to me and how it affected my life:

~I got constant practice with on-the-fly mathematics. This is obviously less relevant as an adult, but when I first started, the numbers I was adding and subtracting a hundred times a game were as complex as what I was getting in school, and I had to learn to do them quickly, accurately, and in my head.

~On a similar note, the game introduced me to the concepts of probability and statistics. Trust me, after you've played for a while the difference between a 5 in 20 chance and a 7 in 20 chance becomes significant. Is it worth it to take a chance on that slippery rope now when it makes it 15% harder to succeed, or is 15% too much to risk? Can your kids answer that? They will after playing RPGs for a while.

~They got me to read. I don't just mean I was reading the rules, I mean that I was reading everything, and constantly. You never saw me without a book in hand. By the time I was ten years old I was pouring through novels like mad, and this was in a time before Harry Potter, when 'young adult' fantasy novels weren't available. Along those same lines...

~...They got me to study, and to love studying. I'm not kidding. Playing and loving a game full of exotic cultures and medieval settings made me want to know more about those things. I started studying in elementary school, continued with courses in college, and still study and learn every chance I get. What am I talking about? These games led me directly to study, at various times: Art and art history, music history, ancient and medieval history, social and cultural anthropology, philosophy, military history, archaeology, mythology, folklore, literature, sociology, zoology/botany/biology, linguistics, language (I still have a smattering of ancient Greek and Latin), numerous historical crafts and skills, and more. I have numerous bookshelves filled with everything from medieval histories to Shakespeare, from mythology to language texts. Being introduced to a fantasy world based on our own creates a hunger to understand, and that can blossom into a love and fascination with our own world that last a lifetime.

~A strong imagination. That may not sound like much as an adult, but a strong, practiced imagination is the number one tool for problem solving and innovation. Problem solving is all about looking at a problem and thinking of a solution that can solve that problem. That's called imagination. Innovation - the ability to find new approaches and methods - is an invaluable tool in almost any profession or industry. In a society that tends to downplay imagination in adults, a tool like RPGs that constantly and actively exercises one's imagination can be a huge advantage.

~A social life. All of my best friends growing up were people I met through gaming. That's true as an adult as well. It may seem counter intuitive, but you can't game and stay a loner. I doesn't work. You meet great people in gaming. The game requires imagination and a healthy intellect, and the people with those qualities are the ones you end up spending your free time with. In fact, I met my wife and the mother of my kids when she was a player in one of my games in high school. We may be divorced now, but we were together for nearly 15 years. That isn't bad for a hobby.

As to the bad stuff? Well, I didn't ever sacrifice any of my friends to any dark gods, although when I was a teenager, I did sacrifice a great deal of junk food to a dark gullet.

Anyway, my kids are eight and ten. I got them the Beginner's Box a couple of weeks ago, and we'll be playing our first game together this week. After all, I have to look to their future, don't I? What better way to do that than to introduce them to something that will, essentially, trick them into doing extra, voluntary homework for the rest of their lives?