My 10 and 7 year olds have asked me to teach them Shadowrun, they both love RPG video games, ie. WoW and GuildWars just to name two. Mom doesn't want me to because she doesn't want them to grow up to be a nerd like me.

The question(s) are:

Has anyone ran a Shadowrun game with players this young?

What kind of storyline was used?

I can see following maybe a beast hunt because they would understand that easy enough. And I could keep it nonleathal as far as combat goes to curb the chance of nightmares. Any other ideas?

You could always do Robin Hood type senarios obviously a little violence but you can script it enough to keep it PG ish.

Some thugs stole a family possesion they higher the runers who are locals to get it back for them.

Some ones prized pet is kidnaped and sent a ransom.

You could give a frame up where they need to run around trying to figure out who has framed them and set the record straight.

I sorta just look back to old A-Team and other shows that had violence but nothing serious.

Zarlock

I got into Shadowrun a couple of years after I started playing and running RPGs. So I was about 11. As for violence I don't think age is a huge issue as long as one knows the difference between fantasy and real life. That after all is the real issue with all things.

Phew, SR is a harsh setting to start with for small kids. It lives from the setting and I am not sure kids need that. In my experience working with kids, they can handle talking about bad stuff that happens in the world, introducing it as a past time however - don't

But, if you ignore the dark parts of the settings and go with some mystery, light-hearted fun like a group of friends fighting some evil spirits (in a cartoonish evil way) it could work. Think Jacky Chan or Power Rangers or some stuff like that. Maybe in good, since you can tell the stories
Should be alot more fun than just watching it on TV.

On the plus side of playing a RPG with your kids: You get to spend time with them, do something fun and probably get to know them better than by playing Wii. Lets not even talk about the educational possibilities.

I've got a friend who wisely put it thusly: "don't put in anything worse than Grimm's fairy tales". So nothing worse than cannibalism, murder of parents by children, attempted murder of children by parents, dismemberment of children by parents, children abandoned in the woods to die of exposure by parents, severe self-mutilation, and early teenage pregnancy.

Kids have different tolerance levels, but unless you're particularly dark in your tone or vivid in your description, I doubt you're going to cause any nightmares. My personal opinion is that when they're old enough to calculate expected successes with a given number of dice and TN, they're old enough to play, and if they don't know how to yet, they're old enough for you to teach them

~J

Damn, I got to kick that 30 year old out my group, he has no clue about the relation between dice and successes.

And true, alot of 'children storys' are incredible scary or brutal once you really think them through. Be it Grimm's tales on the brutal end and the fashist mind controlling lovable care bears on the dystopian wonderful end. And let's not even talk about Narnia here...

Narnia? What's the problem with Mithraic symbolism?

~J

From an education point of view, I think it's a great idea. It's a great way to be sneaky about teaching math. You get addition and subtraction, negative numbers, and probability, all without cracking a textbook. I'd recommend making all of your rolls (assuming you're the GM) in the open, so that they can do the math with you.

From a behavioral angle, yeah, keep the stories light. Maybe even have them play the "child detectives in a grown-up world" that Disney et alia seem to be enjoying lately. It's a great opportunity to teach certain aspects of the values you'd like them to have when you release them into the wild.

Disclaimer: I am a teacher, but my clientele are a bit older (I teach high school and college), so while I've studied education theory for younger kids, I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it.

Thanks for the input.

Right now I've got an idea about using Dog the Bounty Hunter as a model on how the characters and the story are developed. Even those with a SIN sometimes jump bail don't they? It would be hard to legally track down someone without SIN, that is what other runners are for, not bounty hunters. This way the PCs could be all they wanted to be on the other side of the law, the legal side. Permits and all.

Well, if I had to play RPG with kids, I'd rather play another game that play a family-friendly version of Shadowrun. Actually I'd go with a game like Toon which, from what I've seen, works wonder with kids.

Believe it or not, at Origins, I demoed BattleTech for a pair of seven-year-olds and their dad. They loved it, and ultimately Dad got the starter set for his kids. Actually, it's a great introduction to gaming, strategy, arithmetic, probability, and geometry, especially with the simplified version that can build into the full version as they mature.

My 5 year old son thinks Shadowrun is super cool, but doesn't quite get role playing yet. He views everything in "shoot it, take its stuff" terms thanks to his exposure to computer and console games (Dungeons Runners, LEGO Star Wars, etc). He's been bugging me for about a month to play.

So last week my wife and I decided to humor him and sat down to play some Shadowrun Lite. I let them choose between a street sam and a mage. Their assignment was to run the border into enemy territory and investigate a small, but busy village that had turning into a ghost town overnight.

Simply put, it was a bug hunt. Borrowing heavily from 8-Legged Freaks and all those 50's and 60's atomic horror movies I saw as a kid (Them, in particular), they were assaulted by giant spiders, scorpions, and other creepy crawlies. Realizing they didn't have the firepower (or ammo!) to beat all the bugs, they fled back to their military base.

All in all, it lasted about 30 minutes. There was no role playing to speak of, but my son had a great time and my wife was amused by the whole thing. Of course, now I can't tell him when I leave to play Shadowrun with my friends, because he wants to go and play too...

I was considering unpacking my Shadowrun Duels figures for him to play with (what am I doing with them?), but I think I'll wait a few years. He's really bad about loosing pieces to his toys.

-paws

Very prudent, Paws. While it's good to teach the kids, if you don't cater to what they're looking for, they're unlikely to ask to play a second time.

I look forward to my child (currently 4, so we're just ironing out talking) being able to play SR. Failing all else, it'll be a good lesson on why drugs are bad and why we don't talk to strangers.

I really don't object to the idea of children being exposed to the concept of violence. Like Kage brought up, our traditional fairy tales are full of them, and for good reason. However, I would not want to either provide too much in the way of descriptions, nor encourage the PCs to engage in behavior I don't approve of (at that age, anyway). The kids should be encouraged to be moral, strong, brave, and most of all, intelligent. RPGs are a fantastic arena for teaching those skills.

When I was a teenager and starting to get into rpg's, my younger brothers wanted in on the game too. SR wasn't out yet, and the parents were dead set against me getting D+D in the house, but I convinced them that Top Secret S.I. would be okay. Playing as spies with gadgets and such. We eventually house ruled most of my youngest brothers G.I. Joe toys with TSSI stats. Everyone wanted to be Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow. I was about 16, my one brother was 14 and the youngest was about 10, I think. I was the GM and kept the bad stuff to a minimum, even throwing in a lesson about drinking alcohol to excess while on a mission into the mix.
How young is too young is a decision for the parents to make together, but if you keep it light and fun, I don't see anything wrong with it. God forbid the little crumb cruncher gets a real appreciation for reading, math skills, and strategic thinking.

If your kids take WOW ok, on both the fantasy violence and real-vs-game fronts, they are certainly old enough for Shadowrun.

To use Batman analogies, keep the tone more "The Batman" and less Frank Miller.

Shadowrun: The Animated Series...

Eh, I'd watch it.

Thanks everyone for your ideas and input. As of right now, the boss (my beautiful wife) has told me in no uncertain terms that our kids will NOT become nerds. "When I think of roleplaying, I think of 30 year olds playing in their parents basement." Well I'm 34 and have my own basement thank you very much. But as the old saying goes, "she who controls the sex can make the rules." What can I say, i think with both heads.

HeavyMetalYeti,

Sorry to hear that. Does the boss also play? My wife started playing about six months ago and while she isn't that into the game (she likes the joking around the table) she isn't opposed to the boys playing when they are a little older. You might try to get her involved in the game too. However, YMMV.

Also worth considering, while many people enjoy the simulationist gaming that requires dice and mechanics and such, I found my wife loves the storylines of RPGs and absolutely fell in love with such an idea. Frankly, the idea of interactive story-telling is fairly old, and no one can really object to engaging in such things with one's children, wife included. The only thing there is you have to find a setting your audience finds acceptable.

This comes with a caveat though, be careful, your plan may be a bit too successful...

You don't need to be a nerd to game or appreciate gaming. You just need an appreciation of creativity and imagination.

And math skills help.

And literacy is good too (and it reinforces reading as a recreation activity).

And, well, being a nerd never hurts, but its not mandatory.

I guess I'm lucky, my son is 2 and just like to roll dice. I don't think I will start with SR most likely TMNT or Super Heroes. I have Introduced 8+ yrs to RPG to learn how to tell a store for making a game. The basic choose your own adventure for the one younger then 8. Good luck with teaching the little ones.

Shadowrun can be pretty grim. I guess it depends on what parts of the game you want to emphasize. But there is plenty of material there for young kids... but I started playing when I was around 13.

I've tried to get her to play, she claims that she doesn't have the imagination for it. When it comes to video RPGs, she has no ploblems. I've watched her kick ass on WoW, Guild Wars, even on Diablo and Zelda but the whole idea of using your brain to see the action instead of your eyes I guess is beyond her. Or so she claims. As far as being a nerd, well she did marry one so that entitles her to an honorary degree of geekdom if you ask me. I haven't given up yet...

I know a middle-aged anthropologist and lecturer, Johnathan, who passed down all of his old SR1-SR2 books to me. Every friday he has his gaming group. They get together and play lots of different pen and paper games, and they've even played games they wrote themselves. I'm more about the Shadowrun, so I've never joined. But this group has been playing for years, and inevitably, a bunch of the guys had kids, and the kids grew up, and they started to come with their dads.

Of course, when they were younger they'd play a bit of combat, and then go to sleep as the gamer's started role-playing deep issues and such. And as they get older they get more and more interested.

Of course, they always play psychotic characters. One particular child always plays the complete antagonist to his dad's character, and foils his plans any chance he gets. He was once sitting watch on a pirate ship (in some pirate game), and then he raised a false alarm for fun, and then set fire to the ship.

So playing with kids is awesome

realise that you are condeming your kids to a life of virginity and will live in your basement till the day you die.

how are you kids s'posed ta get a hot babe when they find out they play games like this? your wife definately thinks otherwise.

My own experiences in gaming started when I was 5. I was too young to play, but I discovered gaming again when I was 12. I found it fun playing Paranoia, and then I moved to D&D. D&D was fun. It was not so much the gaming, but drawing and using my imagination. I think anything that makes kids use their imagination is a good thing. Preferably things that are inspired by the books and activities around them. I found that LARP was really fun.

Lets face it kids are really hard to stay put for a few hours, instead you should allow them to play.

I waited at least 8 months before telling her just what the hell I was doing on the internet.

Any girl worth a damn really won't care, unless it actually effects the relationship (which I assume it wouldn't). And if they would care, just don't tell them until you've got a ring or a bun in the oven. What are they going to do then!?

That'll serve them right for their nerd prejudice. And then you can spawn an army of half nerd/half pleb's that will take over the world!





...It's a wonder I have a girlfriend at all.

Indeed it is.

The screen name however, is appropriate.

the question is how dark/violence/rated R/rated NC-17/rated X/adult material your game is. The game system itself doesnt mean that the content has to be adult in nature. Just most games are played with a bunch of adults (people by their drivers license should be adults) or teenagers that are almost adults, so the games tend to be more adult like. Has nothing to do with the system. I see the same thing withe AD&D, D20 games, etc. It is all about whom is at the table.

My only concern is your 7yo might not have the attention span to sit at the table for hours playing. If he/she does, then great!

I am all for letting kids play RPGs that are kid friendly. And you can make just about any mainstream RPG friendly to kids. Ok i know one of you jokers will point out one that isnt but you understand what I am saying..

just my 2 cents worth..

a rare woman ya have there. a keeper

mine and the 99 percent of all women out there? oh well she feinted interest while we were going out, even went to a few games and met my fellow vrigin losers. After the marriage she didn't want me to play these "silly" games anymore "why do you want to go out and leave me and spend time with other people? it means you don't love me i guess" the nagging slowly build up to where sex was the issue "guess if you want to go there you don't want sex?". like a jedi knight, do alright deflecting the nagging, but all those things combined left me unable to do much against it, tons o nagging and no sex leves me the jedi at 1:40 no defence whatsoever. or better anology the lions' roar at 7:38 sounds just like the wifes with similar results ta boot.


oh and teach your kids to have fun reading, and doing homework. Will get more out of it., save the geeky nerdy stuff when they are a little older and you can tell if they are become one anyway, may as well compelte the process

My mom is a nerd which meant that her two spawn, myself included, we are both nerds. I think we turned out alright.

Here is the kicker, if it weren't for AD&D and the people i met playing. I wouldn't have met my wife. She worked with one of the players. And get this, he was the anti-nerd. Long haired, metal head who got laid ALL THE TIME. actually it was that fact that kept him from adding my wife to his long list. She was a virgin, (just like this nerd) and was scared of his reputation. So the nerd won out. But now its "You need to grow up and not play those dumb ass games." when i tell her if it weren't for those "dumb ass games" we would never have met. ...Well i'll not repeat that here.

Anyway, i think that i could easily make SR kid friendly. If only i could get the chance.

No offense, but... that's some bullshit. Really no other way to put it.

-paws

What about board games? They're like the mary jane of gaming. Once you get started on them, its just a hop, skip, and jump to paper gaming. Risk, Settlers of Catan, Classic Battletech, Zombies...

If you think that's too obvious, you could "tell stories" with LEGO people... maybe even rolling dice to introduce some basic concepts... That was my wife's introduction to D&D back in the mid to early 80's. Her father would "DM" for my wife and her little brother using Castle LEGOs. Before long, my wife was "DMing" for her little brother.

And then there's the idea of "accidentally" leaving some polyhedrons lying around for the kids to find. Nothing like an inquisitive 5-7 year old asking questions about things...

-paws

Oh dear, only if you think they're ready for 'the talk'.

'Mommy, where do critical hits come from?'


Since it's come up, I love my wife. She's beautiful and we took our kids to all of our RPGs. My eldest (now 4) knows how to say 'botch!' and the youngest knows how to roll them bones. Their time draws nigh...

Well, just for fun, I played a child soldier adept who stowed away on a suborbital to San Francisco. It was a deliberate munchkin campaign with a drake follower of the Path of the Stewart (from Tir na n'Og), a runaway cyberzombie, and a Dissonant Otaku. Wasn't particularly deep, but we had a blast! (in more ways than one )

"Oh... well, Jimmy. When a fighter rolls a natural 20, he has a chance to score extra damage on his opponent. This might happen be cause the fighter hit his enemy's armor in a weak sp..."

"Oh! I know! That's like in Lord of the Rings when that oruk-hai gets decapitated, right?!"

"Erm... yes, kind of like that."

Later...

"Honey, we need to talk about what you and the boys are watching on movie nights."

"Uh oh..."

-paws

I really am a bad parent. I watched a terrible thriller, Cube, the other night and the next day my four-year-old was talking about how people got caught in the cube and got broken, and what does 'die' mean.

Yeah... I've seen that movie. I kind of wish I could have that part of my life back. I'm sure I could have found something else to do with that time.

I've had to talk with my 5 year old about death lately due to some things going on with my family IRL. Its been... not quite awkward, but definitely weird. He's started asking if video game characters die... what can die... and so on.

-paws

yep, that'd be marriage alrighty

Actually that reminds me of something from when I was a little kid. We were playing with Legos a lot. So I made up some rules for sailing the ship that used dice from board games and some of the little pieces were money and so on. And then I sort of wound up effectively being a GM. That might be more fun for them, easier, and less dark.

If you ever do SR may I suggest not having the kids do illegal stuff? Maybe have them be cops or safari hunters that go out with stun guns or something?



On the note of convincing the "boss". I actually wish my daughter would be a little geeky. I've had geek and non geek friends growing up.

None of the geeks

-knocked a girl up in high school/got knocked up
-got heavily into alcohol
-got into drugs
-beat their girlfriends/wives
-went to jail for rape (or anything really)

And so on. The non geeks? Not doing so well on those counts. Though the "rapist" I know was of the consensual statitory kind, which is sorta different. But I don't know of a role player rapist, while the local fraternities in college seemed to be date rape factories.

Geeks do however go to college, get married, have kids, all that.


In short it seems like raising a geek is parenting in easy mode. You just have to make sure they're the successful sort of geek not the stay at home kind. Make sure their grades stay stellar and encourage them to get after school jobs when you can. Also watch out for slipping physical fitness or hygene.

Yeeeeah. I'm glad I married a gamer.

-paws

Thanks again for all the input. I think I will just have her read these posts the next time it comes up. As for the Lego idea, I think that could happen shortly.

Oh, regardless of what your wife considers "nerdy" having her husband sit down to play legos with the kids has got to warm her heart. You know how many men can't be bothered to spend quality one-on-one time with their kids? You should just point out that lego kits these days come with D6, too. And I've seen at least one of the gaming stores around here that has a kids afternoon, where kids and their parents can come in and play games. You might see if there's something like that around where you live, and then tell her you're going to have a "boy's day out"...

My daughter is 6 and I've started her on the path to roleplaying by slipping "interactive storytelling" into our bed-time routine, too. She loves it, and I consider it good practice for when she starts playing with us. (Although she comes with me to roleplaying nights, she tends to just roll the dice, count up my 'hits' or laugh if she gets me to glitch, then wander off to play computer games after a little while) But I figure I'll wait until she's closer to 10 before having her start playing Shadowrun...

I start the story with a character she likes (in my daughter's case, an elven princess... yeah, she's a girly-girl). Then I begin the story and let her pick the character's actions as we go. Just a quick jump from there to having her roll some dice to see how effective her character has been. As an example of last night's story:

Me: "So the princess decided to go for a walk. While she's walking, it starts raining really hard. She sees a castle on top of a hill..."

Daughter: "Is it a pink castle?"

Me: "Yes, a pink castle. What do you think the princess should do?"

Daughter: "Is there a dragon?"

Me (ominous voice): "Not outside..."

Daughter: "Oh, oh, she should pull out her sword and sneak into the castle! Is the door purple? The door should be purple."

Damn, girly-girl's princess have swords and sneak inside castles now?
Back in my days they stayed home and longed for prince charming. They could exceptionnally save the prince, but never ever wield a sword.

Not that it's a bad thing, mind you. Maybe these girls will know better than to look for the toughest dragon-killer even if he's a jerk.

Heh.

Reminds me of the daughter of one of my wife's friends. She's about 7. Cute little blond tomboy. Into dance class, gymnastics, etc.

Last time she came over, she and my son got his lightsabers (green and blue) and ambushed me as I came out onto the patio (after telling me I need to come look at something - sneaky little gits). I got pummeled pretty soundly until I managed to find my own lightsaber (red). Then it was on.

Later on that afternoon, they were playing "giant princess attacks LEGO town." It was surreal.

-paws

Actually most stuff these days has to have the girl kicking ass. I don't think the old Disney stuff would fly these days on the big screen.

Though geeky stuff in particular has strong women.

In the 90210 shows I imagine they're still just bitchy.

My old teenage SR gaming group are mostly all parents now. So yes, when I get together with them down in Oregon we do invite their kids to play on conditions:

#1 They're interested
#2 They can make it through character generation without wandering off.

It has obviously been too long since most of you were teenagers (and quite possibly longer for me), because I remember kids in high school reading Anne Rice books and other things that can make the average SR session pale in comparison. Besides, it is fun as a GM to play the parents and kids together when the parents finally realize just what they do understand and have been keeping quiet about.

It's something that every kid has to learn sometime, particularly if you have pets. Especially if you have pets.



Your days would be the 50s? Lets not overlook the incredible badassery that was She-Ra. You can't get much better than a sword, a cape, and a magically enhanced white horse.


The Last Battle. All of it. Between the blatantly obvious anti-Islamic sentiment that permeates the entire book and the strong (though apparently unintentional) implication that Susan is going to burn in hell for eternity because she grew up and started dating, it is hard to see why Lewis thought it was a good idea at all.

But even The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe has some unintentional unfortunate implications and nightmarish body horror near the end.
The Pevensie kids ruled Narnia for years, perhaps decades, almost long enough for them to forget where they came from. They grew up, they had urges, they were the only four human beings on the entire planet. Even though Lewis didn't intend to imply this, pragmatism would demand that they at least attempt to continue the human race and the combination of loneliness and closeness that comes from being the only living humans around would probably overcome Westermarck effect in short order. Or they dated the talking animals, which gives them a chance to form normal romantic bonds but still forces them into incest to preserve their bloodline and does hover a bit close to being bestiality.

And then, they get sent back. They are, in an instant, de-aged from adults to children and all of their accomplishments are rendered moot. First, one must consider the incredible psychological trauma of being de-aged and treated like a child when you have been an adult for many years and on top of that having all of those years worth of accomplishments apparently erased. They're probably rather spoiled due to being absolute unquestioned rulers for so long and a transition to life as relatively powerless children would be especially jarring. And then there are the problems with having an adult level of knowledge and experience with a child's body and hormone levels.
And, of course, there would be the very strong temptation to continue any incestuous relationships that they developed by necessity in Narnia. If they were romantically attached to any of the non-human Narnians, it becomes even more tragic, as they are forever separated from their lovers by the disjointed passage of time and must be suffering extreme emotional turmoil because it it.

Yeah, Lewis overlooked some really obvious consequences there. When I was a kid, I was taken aback by the obvious tragedy of it.



The Batman sucks. Try Batman: The Animated Series instead.

Probably because his generation saw Islam as a threat? Or, at the very least, inferior to Christianity. It isn't pretty and we look at it as ugly today but there it is. My own grandfather has HUGE issues with race (i.e. skin tone) while I just don't.



Ummmm, did we read the same book? Granted, it has been a few years; however, I was under the impression that the children pretty much remained children despite the massive passage of time in Narnia, so ...

-----

Anyway, I now return you to the purpose of this thread - children playing RPG. My boys (ages 6, 6 and 4) enjoy rolling dice and making my DnD miniatures walk around on some dungeon tiles. (I arrange them into a looping race course.) I won't let them near SR until they have a better grasp on "pretend" versus "real" although they are doing that far faster than I thought they would.

All of this is someone comical being debated in a Shadowrun forum which makes worse statements about various religious groups and includes Islam and Christianity in versions as "Threats".

In Narnia or even in Shadowrun one has to face the fact that they make good villian settings because of their history where large groups of people have done such things described.

and either way, if your kid is old enough to deal with such historical truths then he is probably old enough to play Shadowrun so long as they can distinguish make believe from real world.