1st adventure Sunday 17 July 2011:

"OK kids, each of you grab a toy, a doll, an animal, a dinosaur, whatever"

Players:

- Zoë = "Hippo" (pink stuffed) 6 movement, 2 attacks, 3 damage

- Milo = "Dinosaurier" (plastic brontosaurus) 5 movement, 3 attacks, 2 damage

Lesson: Kids not worried about character names

More on character creation in future post

Story:

- Hippo and Dino are at home (small round pillow)

- A princess comes, crying "the nasty bear has stolen my pearl" (note: roleplay!)

- "Will you help me?" "Yes" = yay Quest hook :)

Lesson: Kids get concept right away!

Lesson: Learning by doing, if I had explained rules/stats ahead of time I would have lost them

- Simply start walking - teach movement

Lesson: for small kids, make each a ruler (piece of string) with max movement, rather than counting squares

Lesson: Teach kids to stick to max move (they are used to moving their toys unconstrained)

- Halfway to target, they walk past Ayers Rock (big orange pillow)

- Get jumped by the zebra, who asks them 3 riddles (what is "Hello" in french, what is 4 + 4, forgot the other one)

Lesson: Instantly understand riddles - alternative to fighting

- Make it to target (Lego Duplo bear on house, pear is blue plastic ball)

Lesson: Roleplay bear "Grrrrr! you'll have to fight me" - they get it right away

- Start combat

Lesson: Character creation Max 3 attacks per round (Fuzzy Heroes has more - is too much dice rolling for small kids). Dino has 3 coz of long tail, Hippo has 2

Lesson: need to help em total up the 3D6 total >10, but they recognize high vs low rolls

Lesson: use "poker dice" for damage (face cards = one damage, instead of Fuzzy Heroes 1,3,5 - ) - explained once, got it forever

- They do not get hurt, but understand damage points on enemy

- Bear to zero "sleep not death"

- Victory "what now?"

- What were you supposed to do? Oh the pearl! Then take it and walk back

Lesson: Get them to re-iterate plot several times over adventure

- On walk back, get jumped by Croc (Lego) at big orange mountain

- Hippo ran ahead, so had to take first round hit alone

Lesson: "don't split the party" :)

- Croc ran away when down to 1 hitpoint
Lesson: No need to kill to win, running away is an option

- Walk home

- Princess: "Did you get my pearl?" "Yes" "yippee - was it easy?"

-> Hook for retelling full story

- Princess gives them magic kiss to restore health - demonstratively rub out pencil marks on Hitpoint bar

Lesson: They understand healing principle

Overall total success - want to play again tomorrow - even Mummy who didn't know about this and walked in halfway through said it looked interesting

Lesson: 20-30 minute max game length (younger player concentration waning towards end)