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I ran my first Faery's Tale story for my daughters yesterday. We had an absolute blast! For those of you who have kids and want a simple game to begin teaching the concept of RPGs, check out the game at Firefly Games.
Here's the run-down...
The whole family was going play on Saturday, but things weren't looking good...the girls were really grumpy and difficult, and my wife wasn't feeling well, so I postponed until Sunday. My wife was still kind of sick on Sunday, so I just ran the game for the girls. (They're 6yo twins, named Tatiana and Natasha.)
I started getting the girls ready for the game several days in advance. I knew I wanted to run the intro adventure from the rulebook, so I read "Jack and the Beanstalk" to them in support of a homework assignment where they had to listen to a story and write about the beginning, middle, and end. That way, the story was more deeply engrained and I wouldn't have to spend too much effort on explication. I also talked to them about what kind of character they wanted to play in the "storytelling game."
Saturday's setbacks were really frustrating for me. Despite trying to keep my expectations realistic, I had gotten my hopes up. When things didn't work out, I'd almost decided to give up and wait another year before I started teaching them. I went to bed a little depressed, but woke up on Sunday with renewed hope. Instead of the normal morning TV shows, I started a conversation with them about their characters and the forest of Brightwood. By lunchtime, they had decided they wanted to play, so after a few distractions, we got going.
Tatiana had chosen to play a sprite, named Berry, with a dragonfly companion, named Buzzer (the bug's name changed several times prior to play). Natasha started off wanting to play a pixie, named Flora, but changed her mind on Sunday morning. She decided she wanted to play a unicorn, so I had to make up the statistics for one.
For those of you who are interested, here are those stats:
Faery Type: Young Unicorn
Body: 2
Mind: 1
Spirit: 3
Innate Gifts: Horn Magic, Faery Friend
Horn Magic: Unicorns use their horns to work magic. The unicorn simply points her horn or touches someone or something with it and decides what she wants the magic to do.
Effortless feats of magic, such as causing a flower to bloom, purifying a vial of poison or other liquid, or dispelling invisibility, cost no Essence. Demanding feats, such as healing one mote of Essence, sharing a memory or some other kind of knowledge with a person, or confusing a mob of goblins with a brilliant rainbow beam, cost 1 Essence. Difficult feats, such as curing someone of a terrible poison or illness, reshaping a tree or other natural feature to create or close an opening, or undoing a spell that has turned a person into stone, require 2 Essence.
Using Horn Magic to cause direct or indirect harm to someone costs +1 Essence.
Faery Friend: Animals or magical creatures with Faery Friend can talk to faeries without the help of magic or charms.
Natasha named her unicorn Bretu (pronounced like the firearm, Beretta...she made it up).
I made up some special character sheets with a space for a character picture and pastel color coding: pink for Body scores, blue for Mind, and yellow for Spirit. I also added guidelines to help them with their penmanship. The color coding helped when referring to different scores later on. (If you play Faery's Tale and are interested, you can get a PDF version from the Faery_Tale group on Yahoo.)
I started off with the description of their characters waking up in Brightwood forest. Tatiana decided it was her character's birthday and she and her dragonfly were going to practice loop-the-loops over the pond. Bretu was going to watch. Tatiana also decided that she wanted to fight a goblin, so I had "Mugwort" the Goblin show up to steal her birthday presents. He challenged her to a duel, and was promptly defeated by the combined talents of Berry and Bretu. Natasha was able to use Bretu's horn as a weapon and also used her horn magic to heal Berry. The battle wasn't part of the original story, but it immediately introduced a recurring villain...Mugwort promised not to bother Berry for one cycle of the moon if he lost...and allowed them to see how dice rolling worked.
Once the actual story got going, their knowledge of "Jack and the Beanstalk" kept things moving quickly. They jumped up to offer to help Jack's mother and were anxious to climb the beanstalk. They had a good time talking to Jack's mom, though. Of course, Tatiana very casually told Jack's mother that he had probably been eaten by the giant...diplomacy is not her forte.
The girls are still developing their problem-solving skills, so I had to do quite a bit of prompting, but tried not to force either of them to do anything. Natasha couldn't figure out how to get her unicorn up the beanstalk, after I reminded her that unicorns can climb trees very well. We talked about how her magic had an effect on things of nature and that she might be able to do something to the beanstalk to help get her up there. I asked her how her magic worked and she said it was by singing.
She promptly made up a song, the words of which I couldn't understand, but it was lovely (to me, at least). I let her spend a mote of essence to create a spiralling path of vines that wound its way up the beanstalk. Berry and Buzzer just flew, of course, spending a mote of essence to soar above the cloud tops.
Once they got up to the top, they actually did look around outside of the castle. Tatiana had Berry try to find a hole in the wall, but I decided that would be a Tricky challenge, and she didn't make the roll. They both tried to push open the door, but couldn't make it budge (missed the check by 1 success). I reminded Natasha that Bretu had the gift of Lucky, so she spent a mote of essence to discover that when they pushed on the door, one of the boards was loose, allowing them to squeeze through.
They quickly found Jack, after being reminded that they really didn't want to wake up the giant. They talked to Jack for a bit, then went off to get the key to Jack's cage from the giant. With her gift of Acrobat and a really lucky roll, Berry was able to get the key from the giant without waking him up from his nap.
I was almost going to let them escape the castle without waking the giant, but my children have a flair for the dramatic, and demanded that I make the giant wake up. I kindly obliged them, having him storm into the kitchen just as Jack was climbing down a ladder they were "lucky" to find. They thought they would be able to get away, but I told them that the giant could catch them easily if they didn't distract him in some way.
We took a quick pause to talk about the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to figure out how they might escape the giant's castle. After a few pointed questions, they suddenly remembered the Golden Harp, with which they might be able to make the giant go to sleep. Berry and Buzzer chose to stay in the kitchen and keep the giant occupied, while Jack jumped on Bretu's back and they headed off to find the Golden Harp. (Yes, I allowed "meta-gaming." ;-) Oddly enough, they completely forgot about the golden goose.)
Berry and Buzzer zipped and flew just out of the giant's grasp until they finally managed to knock a pot on his head. He was still stumbling around the room when Bretu and Jack returned with the harp, who had been anxious to escape the giant's castle, too. The harp started singing and quickly put the giant to sleep...still wearing the pot on his head.
Everyone escaped and returned to Jack's home, where they each received a boon (it's like money in the setting) from Jack's mother. In the end, the unicorn, the sprite, the dragonfly, and the harp all went back to Berry's toadstool house to finish up Berry's birthday celebration.
In all, we played for over an hour and the girls never lost interest. Despite the frustration of the girls "fiddling" with their dice and essence counters, most of the time was spent laughing, singing, and generally having a great time together. The girls didn't want to stop at the end of the story, but I figured I shouldn't push my luck and decided to stop there for the day.
We will definitely be playing again. Hopefully, my wife will join us next time.
Some things I learned while running the game for them:
- It's okay for the storyteller to suggest ideas. This won't be as necessary if my wife plays, because the girls will have a grownup on "their side" who can make suggestions. In the meantime, my main focus was to allow them to keep the story moving. If they were stuck, I'd ask leading questions, either about what their faery could do or what they remembered from the stories they'd read. As long as the girls had the final choice about what their character did, they were happy.
- Too much description can be distracting. As adults, we tend to like richly detailed settings...we want the picture painted for us so we can see things clearly. The girls were more interested in "what's next" so I kept the descriptions down to a few sentences with big, expressive adjectives and let them fill in the rest.
- Be prepared to repeat yourself and remind them about the rules. Although the girls quickly understood that they needed a certain number of "successes" in order to meet a challenge, I had to work with them a lot to help them remember that a success was a result of 2, 4, or 6. (Sometimes, they thought rolling a 4 meant they got four successes.)
- Storytelling/GMing for kids is a heck of a lot of fun. As an adult, I have often felt a bit self-conscious about "doing voices" and acting out scenes for my players. I think I have an innate fear of having my silly accents and ad libbed descriptions judged against the panoply of popular culture. I didn't have that problem running this game. From the "mean" voice of the goblin to the "big, dumb" voice of the giant, I was having fun just acting out the characters. Dialogue didn't need to be that involved, and I didn't have the least worry about getting up and stomping around our own kitchen as the giant crashed around his kitchen in the story. The girls' laughter and smiles were the biggest reward I've ever received as a GM.
Anyway, that's the recap of our first Faery's Tale story. I'm looking forward to the next one. I've now got an angry goblin as a foil, and a magical harp who is both a charm and a friend for the girls...it may be that Mugwort decides to capture the harp for his own wicked purposes...hmmmm.
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When I saw the age requirement and the game mechanic, I was sure you had played 4th edition.
LOL! Not a chance. Faery's Tale is about as far from tactics/strategy as you can get. I'm afraid a 4thEd-er's head would explode if forced to deal with the ambiguity in the description of the characters' Gifts.
I'm glad you enjoyed my recap. I'll probably post more later...I can't help myself, sometimes. ;-)
I have a niece that is 3 years old. I will have to pick this up for her to play when she is older.
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It sounds like you all had a wonderful time! I look forward to gaming like that with my own children (once I have them). Can I ask how old your daughters are?
My daughters are 6-year-old twins, so they're on the very low end of the guidelines for playing the game. Additionally, they have some "sensory integration" issues that cause behavior similar to ADD. Even with that, the game managed to hold their attention much better than any boardgame we've ever played because I could control the pace and flow of the game. If they wanted to spend more time on a particular scene, then we could. When I started to lose them, I'd move on and increase the level of action.
It turned out to be a rather dynamic session.
My daugther is 4 year old and she loves to play "The Fairy Game".
I do not use de "odd-even" mechanic but a "high-low" so she can understand what is a good roll and a bad one. But I believe she enjoys the game because it is a roleplaying game... with fairies.
IMHO it's a wonderful way of introduting children to RPG.
This is great, I've been looking for a way to let my little cousin (now 5) start sharing in the fun RPGs, thanks for the story and link, please post more.
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So, with the fairies, is this largely a "girls" game? I have a 7 yr old boy that would be prime for RPGs right now, but I suspect that he'd scoff at the "tinkerbell fairy princess game".
That's the cool thing about this game. It can go in almost any direction you want to take it. While the rulebook is written primarily for adults running games for kids, and has a moralistic approach (teaching kids that keeping promises is important, and doing good is the way to go), the setting and characters are very closely tied to fey folklore. You can explore as much of the "dark" side of the fey as you want.
If your son likes the Spiderwick chronicles, you can easily run games based on that kind of setting, too. I'm relying heavily on those books for source material on fey that aren't presented in the rulebook.
The characters are always presented as having both male and female options. Sprites are great fey warriors who have animal companions and ride them into combat against the forces of darkness. Pixies are the "Tinkerbell" style of faery, but they don't have to be played in a "Disney" fashion.
The main thing is that the rules system is geared toward freeform roleplay and creative storytelling. I guess it goes without saying that I highly recommend it.
Personally, I'd like to see more material from Firefly Games in support of this game...more creatures or something. However, it's so easy to come up with new stuff on your own.
So, with the fairies, is this largely a "girls" game? I have a 7 yr old boy that would be prime for RPGs right now, but I suspect that he'd scoff at the "tinkerbell fairy princess game".
A boy might get a bit bored with the default Faery setting, but the rules lend themselves very nicely to other settings. We're playing the Secrets of Droon (book series) using the rules. Spiderwick or Lemonysnicket would work as well.
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Timitius,
Todd makes a good point...one he made in another thread, and that I should have mentioned. ;-)
I'm not sure how likely you are to find this in a store. Firefly Games' website offers a 12-page preview of the deluxe PDF, but it doesn't cover any of the actual rules. That being said, the entire PDF can be downloaded for $10. It's not free, but might be worth it for you.
(By the way, I just got your e-mail on PaizoCon II. I really hope I can attend. I'm an officer in the Navy and attending cons is really hard for me to do, because of duty station location and deployment schedules. I finally got to GenCon SoCal in 2006...right before they abolished it.)
[Crocker] This thread is proof of the existence of…FAIRIES! [/Crocker]
I have a daughter on the verge of 4 years old and another that is only 1 but my 3 year old is obsessed with fairies and fantasy. Her bedroom has been completely redone to look like Pixie Hollow. She also has her own large d20 that she picked out from Paizo and we ordered it for her. It sounds like this game will be a definite within the next year or so.
I picked this up purely on the intent to use it to teach the boy RPGs when he was older. It's encouraging to hear someone's got a 4 year old playing it...just 6 more months to go.
-Ben.
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Hey Paris,
Thanks for sharing your Beanstalk experience with us. Couldn't have asked for a better game review/recommendation - I placed an order immediately after reading your post.
Firefly's free PDF download: "It happened one Christmas" also sounds like a lot of fun, capturing a lot of what I enjoy about roleplaying, while presenting it in a way that appeals to younger players. It's a great preview of what one might expect from a session of Faery's Tale, a great little morality tale which rewards good behaviour from young players.
I'm not sure how likely you are to find this in a store.
Faery's Tale Deluxe print version is available for order here at Paizo's store, so make use of your 15% Pathfinder advantage!
(PDF versions of Faery's Tale Deluxe ($9.95) and Faery's Tale: The Haunted Castle ($2.95 adventure), are also available from Paizo's store)
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(PDF versions of Faery's Tale Deluxe ($9.95) , are also available from Paizo's store)
Just for clarification (for those that care)...
The PDF version here at the Paizo Store, is the original 64 page PDF, NOT the newer "deluxe" 96 page PDF...
The 96 page version can be found here...
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
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Okay, thanks for pointing that out Digitalelf - I'd hate for someone to pay $10 for the original PDF when they could have paid the same amount for the Deluxe PDF, based on my oversight.
Maybe Paizo should contact Firefly Games so that they may sell the Deluxe PDF and their other PDF adventure "The Mute Mistrel" here too?
Also, I just noticed PDF paper minis for Faeries Tale at RPGNOW.
Preview images here. Might provide a great visual aspect to the game, especially for young players.
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Hi, Guys!
I'm glad I rediscovered this thread, and that it's provided others with useful information.
I thought it worth mentioning that after a long hiatus, my daughters and I have resumed our adventures in Brightwood (the enchanted world of the Faery's Tale adventures).
My daughters (now 7) had asked to play again, so I purchased the Haunted Castle adventure from Paizo and ran it for them this past weekend. As always, we had fun, but I found that the adventure had more combat than they were ready for that day. The BBEG soundly trounced them on their first encounter and they had to retreat to rest for a day to replenish their essence. They did eventually defeat the evil in the castle, however, and we did have fun.
As for the paper minis, for those who don't already know, I purchased those, as well, and found that I didn't particularly like the style of the artwork. The computer generated art just didn't evoke much excitement for me or the girls. It might be okay for others, but it wasn't my thing.
For my girls' latest game, I had them create characters based on the Schleich elf figurines that they have (here's an example of one). I'm also trying to wrap my brain around the idea of creating characters to simulate the Pixie Hollow fairies, as my daughters are HUGE fans of the movie and books. In fact, one played a sprite (simulating an "animal talent" fairy), while the other played a pixie (simulating a "water talent" fairy).
It's still a good game and definitely a fantastic way to introduce kids to RPGs.
Cheers!
Paris
You might want to check out Sorcerer of Zo for a more free form rules system. Stating up the Pixie Hollow fairies would be a snap. Sorcerer of Zo is based on Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) which you can check out for free to see if you and your daughters like it.
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You might want to check out Sorcerer of Zo for a more free form rules system. Stating up the Pixie Hollow fairies would be a snap. Sorcerer of Zo is based on Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) which you can check out for free to see if you and your daughters like it.
Thanks for the advice, CF! I'll check it out.