Thursday, December 17, 2009
Playing RPGs with your family this holiday season
I was thrilled to be accepted as one of the guest blogger/columnists for Obsidian Portal's weekly front page article. I wrote about introducing your family members to RPGs. For many of you, this may be a no-brainer, but I enjoy reading articles about this and wanted to share some of my thoughts there.
5 comments:
That was a well done post. I like to bring my stuff for running Fudge games to events. Simple RPGs really makes it easy for non-gamers to see how fun role playing is. Fudge is one of the easiest RPGs out there and it is free, so I strongly suggest checking it out.
http://www.fudgerpg.com/files/pdf/fudge_1995.pdf
That's a nicely written little article! It's broad-ranging across several different possibilities for family gaming, and it gently points out that rpg gaming is a vast improvement over the alternative of letting kids disappear into the physically isolated worlds of video games and texting.
@Matt - thanks! I agree, I'd rather have kids sitting face to face playing games than just playing PvsC games.
@Sinister - I've never played Fudge, but thanks for the link.
What Matt said. One of my main arguments for RPG over video games is that the former are social, involving interaction with real people and the latter pander to a solitary style of play, isolated and with the potential for developing an obssessive and reality-detached outlook. Of course, RPGers can become obsessive but there will be several real people on hand to spot the signs and raise the alarm.
I've managed now to totally bring Junior Grognard on board with AD&D - he has no problem with the game mechanics and looks forward to his next session. The trick will be to broaden the game so that his friends can get involved - that's the big hurdle. Mind you, I'm having trouble recruiting adult players as well.
One last point - the weather is going to be in favour of staying indoors, so we might as well make use of this enforced housebound state while we can. Soon, summer will come and we'll get the calls of 'I don't want to stay cooped up in the house on a lovely day like today'
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
I'd like to mention my own upcoming RPG Adventures in Oz as a good one to play with the family. The rules are simple and fun, the setting is instantly recognizable but also infinitely expandable, and the combat system is completely bloodless, geared toward making opponents give in rather than simply fall down. A beta version of the game is a free download on the site http://ozrpg.50webs.com
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