Hi,
I am thinking about getting the beginner box to play with a 9 and 7 year old (I want them to understand why I disappear every Sunday for 8 hours).
Is 7 too young to get started? Or, is this a simplified version of the rules that can easily be grasped. Also, if simplified, to what extent are they? For example, AoO's are they present?
I just am curious as to how much rule depth am I required to go into.
I don't want to catch heat from their mom because the youngest cried for an hour after I smushed him for drinking a potion in combat!
And while I am here, I keep reading about the solo adventure. Is this something I can lead the lads through individually? Or is it for them to sit down by themselves and hammer through?
Thanks!
A 9 & 7 year-old are going to need some help walking through things and learning how to make characters, but they can certainly play the game. I'd start with the pre-gens rather than making characters actually.
No AoOs, no CmB, much shorter spell/feat/skills lists, no iterative attacks.
You can run them through the solo adventure individually (or together).
Thanks!
I love that the Paizo community is so quick to respond to questions about the Beginner Box. :)
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I've uncorked the Beginner Box on my near-five year old daughter. When in doubt just start hucking out game mechanics (or taking on the mechanics processing load yourself) in favor of the roleplaying and choice/plan/strategy portion of the game. It's a neat product that scales up or down to expectations pretty well. With my daughter I had her roll dice, come up with ideas and engage in what her character was experiencing. I handled the rest of the crunching.
We've played a couple times thus far (about an hour or so each time) and she really likes the fact that she's finally able to play the same game as dad. She was trying to replay portions of our game during her pretend time with my son who is 2. He seemed to like the idea of hitting goblins, but had little use for the character motivations of Adeline's mouse warrior (valeros with a mouseguard twist). I suppose that means he's about as advanced as some gamers I've played with who are in their 30's.
Age matters not in the realm of adventure. In fact kids almost universally rock at pretending and imagining hypothetical situations. I'd heartily recommend getting kids hooked on imagination-land adventures before the video games do. It's an ever shrinking window, but I'm doing my part to replace myself with two more gamers for the future :-). The Beginner Box helps me.
Some may find this a bit sadistic, but I've been playing Core Rulebook/APG Pathfinder with my (now) 11, 9, and 7 year old. We've been playing it for two years, and my middle son now has a level five fighter that uses the Two-handed fighter archetype from the APG. I have pared down the rules, but only slightly. My daughter (the oldest) has three characters, one rogue, one cleric, one wizardess. Youngest is an elven ranger. The "campaigns" are all small one shot encounters that I loosely string together with background story, but they work.
Just wanted to throw it out there, that since I know it's not impossible to play regular Pathfinder with that age group, playing Beginner Box should absolutely be doable.
Yeah, I'm sold!
The kids have fantastic imaginations, but they are obsessed with video games, so this is going to be phase one of "video-game replacement therapy"
Maybe I will convince their mom to play, as she STILL doesn't understand my Sunday PF commitments!
Yeah, I'm sold!
The kids have fantastic imaginations, but they are obsessed with video games, so this is going to be phase one of "video-game replacement therapy"
Maybe I will convince their mom to play, as she STILL doesn't understand my Sunday PF commitments!
Good luck with the wife. My own thinks I'm in the process of indoctrinating the kids into a cult. She won't touch role-playing games with the standard 10 foot pole.
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I started my kids on Heroquest - it's a shame that is out of print right now but it is an awesome intro to role-playing. They started that when they were 6 and 8. When we'd run through a couple of the box scenarios I brought out my minis and battle mat and we did a slightly expanded version. Right now they're 8 and 10 and they have taken to the beginner box with gusto as players, though they're probably not ready to run games on their own.
Go for it! I started playing D&D when I was 8 and haven't looked back. I agree with Chris that there is a difference between playing and GMing, but a 7 and 9 year old should be able to grasp the concepts of the game if they are interested.
I also agree with Herbo about tossing out rules if they don't work. I've run weekly games at my local library for the last year for teens and tweens. I never knew who is going to show up, so I developed a stripped down version of Pathfinder that is relatively easy to learn for newbies, but is faithful to the game.
I found that kids do better with role playing than remembering game mechanics. I would strongly suggest cutting out skills and substituting them with the appropriate ability rolls. This works well for most classes. You'll have to tweak the rogue, but it's not hard to give the class and a "Rogue Skills" or "Subterfuge" ability that allows them to do roguish things like pick locks and move silently.
You could also do away with skill checks and let them succeed or fail based on the merits of the story. One of the kids in my last game had a great suggestion and I let him succeed without a roll. He got really excited that he did something that wasn't in the rules and I think it hooked him on the idea of playing RPG's.
Good luck!
I got the Box set for my 10 year old for his birthday back in November. He ran the adventure a few days later without a problem for 2 adults and one of his friends. Of course we introduced him to Pathfinder around the age of 9 years old.
Basically what I'm saying is a lot of it has to come from how well your child reads. My son reads at least a 6 grade level, and has been playing RPG's for around a year now.
The box set is easily understood and well put together, that someone under the age of 13 should be able to understand it.
I just ran my 10 year old through the adventure in the BB. We both had a blast, whooping when Black Fang went down. It was a ton of fun. He's slightly above average in reading but below in math and he had zero problems.
Thanks for the insights, I ordered it today so hurry up estimated delivery date of Feb 20!
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Thanks for the insights, I ordered it today so hurry up estimated delivery date of Feb 20!
Ouch. That's a long time from now! I just picked my BB up today and payed it with my four-year-old son. Granted, we didn't use any of the rules, but he had fun smashing goblins and orcs with his minis that I also bought. He just wanted to kill bad guys. I tried to set up scenarios and the like and he would grab a handful of dice, roll them, and then use his guy to smash the goblin or Orc or whatever it was. Then he started getting monsters out and placing them on the board. It was fun!