#RPGaDay2015 - 2nd - Kickstarted Game

It's August 2015, and to follow on with the success of last year's #RPGaDay event, David Chapman at Autocratik has created a new list. Each day in August, I'll be posting my "answer" to that day's topic.

I had a tougher time with this subject than one might expect—Kickstarter game most pleased I backed. I've decided on presenting a tie: Mermaid Adventures and East Texas University (ETU). As you might guess, there's a story for each.

Mermaid Adventures is a great kids game about... Mermaids! There are several cool things about it—the system is fun, it's written by my good friend Eloy Lasanta at Third Eye Games—but the main reason this one's special is that my daughter playtested it when she was eight. Consequently, I ended up running a lot. When it came time for the survey when I backed it, I did so in her name.

When Pinnacle Entertainment did their Kickstarter for Deadlands: Noir, I skipped it. I was feeling a little burned out on Deadlands and Savage Worlds at the time. To this day, it is "the Kickstarter that got away" for me. Aside from being a great game, it's one of the best values to ever grace Kickstarter. I haven't missed a Pinnacle Kickstarter since.

That in mind, there's no way I would have missed the ETU Kickstarter. I have always loved 12 to Midnight's Pinebox setting. What's more, ETU was announced in (I think) 2008, and I've literally wanted it since then. To this day it is the Kickstarter I've backed for the most money ($80), and, like Deadlands: Noir, it was a great value.

@ReverbGamers Master List Number 28

#28: Do you have any house rules when you game? What are they, and why do you use them? If not, why not?

There are two house rules. The first one is pretty common. I believe the second one is becoming common.

1) Floor dice don't count. If the dice hit the floor they get re-rolled. This rule is an old one for me. I think it comes from worrying about people cheating when they pick up their die. I'm not so much worried about that today--if cheating is what floats your boat, and it's not negatively affecting the other players, go for it. These days, this rule is just tradition.

2) This rule is completely non-negotiable. Those who play in my house must be kid friendly. This rule is about eight years old at the time of this writing. My wife and I have a daughter. She can be loud and obnoxious. She's been known to interrupt the game on occasion. And we don't apologize for her. If this is a problem for you, you may game elsewhere. Our current weekly game consists of mostly parents and one kid friendly non-parent. The other parents bring their kids too. The reason for this is pretty simple. We want to game. And we would like for our daughter to look at gaming positively. To encourage this, we don't ship her off to a relative or babysitter when we game. It's just something that happens in our house.

Heck, these days, we game with out daughter on occasion.

@ReverbGamers Master List Number 5

#5: Have you ever introduced a child to gaming, or played a game with a young person? How is gaming with kids different than gaming with adults?

Yes. Yes I have. There are a couple differences when playing with kids.

• Kids have shorter attention spans. The typical game session for an adult group is about four hours (sometimes more). For kids, avoid going much past two hours--that way lies madness (and frustration).
• Kids are more creative than adults. If you're a GM, and you think your players have messed up your master plans in the past, try GMing a seven-year-old or two. You'll stop complaining about your adult players going "off course." A kid at the table will surely keep you on your toes.
• Kids are more honest than adults. If they're not having fun, you'll know it.

As a parent, I will close by saying nothing is cooler than watching your kid "get" roleplaying and want to do it with you.

The Family Game

Recently, we've started a family roleplaying game on Sunday afternoons.


I am GMing the game, and the players are my wife (Veronica), my brother (Cliff), my brother-in-law (Scott), and my daughter (CaLeigh), who's nearly eight. While my wife and I have quite a bit of experience, everyone else at the table has little to no experience with pen and paper RPGs.


To keep it simple and free-flowing, I've decided to run ICONS. Veronica put aside her prejudice against random character creation, and we went all in with it. To say the least, character creation was quite a bit of fun. Despite the ability to throw together a character in minutes, we decided to do it as a group; and I walked them through each step. We ended up with:

• Lady Flux (CaLeigh): A shape changer who can grow and shrink, usually into animals - think Beast Boy.
• Knight Shade (Cliff): A crime fighter with elemental power over darkness.
• Force (Scott): A mutant with the power of telekinesis.
• SwitchBack (Veronica): An ex-cat burglar with a transmutation gun.

After a quick discussion, Cliff and Veronica decided Knight Shade convinced SwitchBack to become a hero (in Knight Shade #42!), so there was at least one connection in the group. We decided the team would get together after a chance meeting, so we're running the first adventure, Sins of the Past by Theron Bretz, before doing Team Creation.


I did make one small mechanical change to the rules. Veronica is not a fan of the d6-d6 dice mechanic, and I thought the ladder concept, in general, might cause some confusion with CaLeigh. So I'm just having everyone roll up and add, and on the back end, I'm simply adding 7 to the difficulty. Shedding the plus/minus concept doesn't change any probabilities, and it seemed to make the game run just a bit faster. It may not be technically faster, but I for one have been rolling 2d6 for a very long time (going back to Monopoly when I was younger than CaLeigh). It just feels really natural.


We started late for our first play session, and Cliff and Scott had plans after our scheduled stop time; so we only got through the first two chapters of the story. There were still some highlights. Lady Flux turned into a huge ape and belly-flopped an armored bad gal. SwitchBack used her transmutaion gun to turn the same bad gal's armor to pudding (it'll turn back in 10 pages). Knight Shade overconfidently raised a wall of darkness, only to have it shut down by a villain with probability control. Force used his telekinesis to throw a metal desk through the darkness, only to find the armored villain holding it when Knight Shade's wall came down.


Fun was had by all.