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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Jordan D. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/16/2019 14:26:51

Well, I tested it out on my niece and it seemed to work well enough for her, she managed with the advanced rules just fine. In fact the advanced rules quickly became necessary, as the wanted her princess to have powers, which requires the intermediate level rules, and she said she wanted to try and open one of the barrels in the first room, which requires some of the "advanced" rules. I was planning on just doing the first room of the "Basement O Rats" adventure that came with it, but she stayed interested long enough to want to do the next 2 rooms as well, and then said she wanted to make her own game, so I let her do that.

I changed the story of "Basement O Rats" a little, which is easy to do since the story is very simple; just one short paragraph at the start of the adventure, and one equally short paragraph at the start and finish of each room. This makes it easy to customize, adapt, and make stuff up on the fly. I think more adult pen and paper games could learn from this.

I made the story more princess focused, and she seemed to appreciate this. I had made Flame Princess (Adventure Time reference) and asked her if she wanted to play as her, or if she would rather make her own character, and she wanted to make her own (whom she called Pumpkin Princess), so I took her through the character creation process without too much trouble, by asking her a series of questions about what sort of princess powers she wanted to have. She seemed to want me to make a character to play as too, not wanting Pumpkin Princess to adventure alone, so I used Flame Princess as my avatar and we set forth to rescue our princess friend, Ice Cream Princess. Other than that we kept the story line the same.

Since I was only expecting to play the first map, that was the only one I had copied out in pencil. She helped me draw the other maps as we played them, adding innovative features like barrels of ice cream horded underground by the giant rats, and holes in the ground that we needed to jump over. I think my having a character to play as actually helped her understand how to play the game, even though making your own character is normally considered a faux par for the "GM" in pen and paper games (and for good reason) it was what she wanted, and it seemed to work.

I followed the books advice about having the baddies run away when defeated, rather than being killed, but she often declared that she had killed them anyway ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Having finished "Basement O Rats" in two sessions I am quite happy with how it went.

The base rules are indeed very simple, with lots of optional extra rules for older children that can be added on in a modular fashion as and when they are ready for it.

All you need is a copy of this book, at least one d6, a pencil, an eraser, and some paper.

5 extra d6 will make things go more smoothly.

A printer plus the pdf version of this book will save some time if you or the players don't like to scribble things out by hand too much.

Has helpful advice on keeping young players with short attention spans engaged.

No addition or subtraction, everything is done just by comparing dice, a very elegant system.

Uses a grid system to measure distances, so you will either need to draw a grid on a sheet of paper (doesn't take long) or print and play.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Andrew O. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/22/2019 06:36:29

Hero Kids soft cover book.

Compact, concise with simple rules. The manual has stood up to a eight year old playng with it. Lots of available add ons and campaign material so games can be just pick up and go with minimal prep. Useful with low attention span players, be they 10 or 45.

Very much does what it promises.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by DD W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/13/2019 20:01:58

Hero Kids is a huge hit in our house and has been for years now. Easy to get kids on board, easy on the adult running it, and simple enough for kids to run themselves. Got my brother-in-law a copy and hooked the nephews too.

Rules work well for a surprising range of ages since they give just enough structure without trying to constrain everything. I've run for 8 year olds and 3 year olds (sometimes together) and everyone has had a great time.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Mike C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/11/2019 09:33:22

I love the concept here: It's simple and inexpensive and a fun place to introduce role-playing games to kids. I gave it four stars because if you've got kids who want adventures, then just buy this and get started. It's the best start I know of for this group. It's better than a game with plastic minis, in my view, because you can affordably face so many different creatures.

But it could have been better. I'd love to see it get a minor update.

Wizards and Warriors only

There are no rules in the system to make a fast-talker, a thief, or a beast master. It would have added some variety to have skills to disarm traps, pick locks on treasure chests, talk a monster into trading his treasure for some of your lunch. (Maybe there are expansions for this; I haven't read them all yet.)

Girls and Boys

It's great that the warrior can be a girl or a boy. It's flat-out disappointing that the brute, rogue, healer and knight don't have male or female options. Can you guess whether the healer is a boy or a girl? Yeah, it's a girl. And the knight's a boy.

Art

The character and monster stat cards are on a parchment colored background but the illustrations are in black and white. And they're PDFs, not JPGs.

If the intent is for the players (kids) to color their own heros, it's more difficult because the cards are PDFs and have to be converted to JPG before you can open them in a paint program. And it's more expensive to print the cards because of the parchment background. It could have all been grayscale (color it yourself) or color (print and go). This is the worst of both.

And why not color the monster cards and monster paper minis? There are pirates, snakes, large snakes, rats, snakes, spiders, more than a half-dozen of each, all 1" tall. It would have been great to have these in color.

Even the maps are in grayscale.

When you set up for a session the game looks very gray.

Setup

This is a minor annoyance, really, but the monster cards don't have cut-out borders on the page, so it's left to you to make them the same size. I wish the paper minis had cut lines instead of borders, or perhaps thicker borders, so that cutting them out didn't leave fragments of the lines and make my cutting work look sloppy.

I also wish the paper minis didn't go quite so close to the edge of the paper. This makes it really difficult to print them larger. For example, if your kids have plastic minis from the game store for their heroes, and you print the skeletons at normal scale, the skeletons will look absolutely puny. It would have been nice to print them about 20% larger. You can't do that because art is too close to the edge and the edges (legs and feet) get cropped. Being able to print larger would have helped show off the detail in the art, too.

Overall

I genuinely like this better than expensive competitors like Mice and Mystics (and even HeroQuest). Paper minis enables Hero Kids to have a larger variety of creatures to encounter, and creatures of many different sizes. The stories in this are better (the prose is more concise), and the rules are cleaner. This means you get to play faster without spending much time in the rulebook. It's a game I like to bring to the table with kids. I just wish it were more attractive.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Valerio P. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/20/2019 03:29:38

This game is just... Wonderful! The first attempt with my children, this Sunday, took us just about twenty minutes of playing, and they didn't want to stop. I just improvised a couple combat encounters for them, very straightforward, with a bit of "story connection" between them, and they were completely excited.

I'm so happy I've purchased the full lot, I have so much to work with, and the initial reaction from my children seems to point out that they will love this hobby, just like daddy does!

Thanks a lot for this great small game!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Christian S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/10/2019 13:24:53

I'm afraid I've not played a roleplaying game for years, but my 9-year-old daughter found my old dice, asked me how they worked, and she was entralled with the idea—so I poked around the internet to see what there was nowadays and i settled on HERO KIDS. My two younger kids were hooked from the beginning of Basement o' Rats. My 11-year-old, initially disdainful, got interested and asked to join in—we had to contrive a way for her to join in partway through. The combat was exciting enough, and they got into it, but their favorite part was the side trip to the chamber with the pool, where they had to figure out how to extricate a small treasure chest from amidst magically frozen rats, without getting trapped and frozen themselves. I also decided the mushrooms there would be useful magical ingredients and were safe to eat, but made the characters glow blue the remainder of the adventure, which tickled the kids. In all, you've roped in three kids, 7 through 11, who had a blast with their first RPG, and one dad who had a blast with them, and got to roll some serious dice for the first time in ages. I highly recommend the bundle for grownups whose professional life doesn't leave lots of time for creating—the adventures are a lifesaver.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Josh D. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/07/2019 00:33:25

This has been great, I play with my 5yo son and my 3yo daughter. It's quality time for us and a bit of time alone for my wife. My daughter is the one that is constantly asking whether we can play more HeroKids on the weekend! If you're a parent, just buy the bundle - great value for money on an hours to $ point of view.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Dan L. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/21/2019 11:43:04

This is a great system—not only for introducing young kids to RPGs, but also for enabling families with young kids to play RPGs together. The system is simple enough for very young children to be able to play, but has enough detail that older kids can enhance their characters' capabilities as they understand more.

All of the player characters (many fun pregenerated options are included) have a special ability. My kids have latched on to these; each is excited about their character's special strengths and functionality. The enemies also have well-concieved special abilities, so there's some exciting variety in combat even though the combat mechanic is very simple and easy for all to navigate.

The published adventures are a lot of fun, and always include enough detail to help inexperienced DM parents narrate a compelling story for the kids. Of particular note are the maps. They're done simply but very well. They're nice to print out and keep around for reuse in other adventures in other systems.

That's all enough to make this a great system; but to sweeten the deal, the prices are very reasonable.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by DANIEL R D. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/03/2019 12:36:26

Simple, objective, upgradable, replayable, PERFECT! Awesome to play with kids but I cannot deny that I am playing with a group of adult friends and we are having a lot of fun. LOL



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Steven H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/13/2018 13:26:01

Great product! I was wanting to introduce my 9yo to tabletop RPGs and this was a perfect way. She grasped it quickly and wants to play every weekend now. I will be buying the rest of the modules now I guess! Thanks!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Edward C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/08/2018 18:11:19

This is absolutly fantastic for younger kids getting into rpg's, i started by getting my kids (3, 4 and 8) to choose a hero out of the coloriong book, a seprate free download, aand got them to color in there heros as we played (a helpful distraction at times for the younger 2) I had my 8 year old help the 3 year old at times but he is definatly keen to play more, and all 3 kids already feel a connection to there heros and each others, (one encounter i may have KO'd one of their heros causing them to get a little upset....but they worked out they could use a potion on him to get him up again) Things are easily modifed to suit your needs with age diffrences ect. and the book has a few tips on running a game with younger players. Im so glad i found this!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Fantasy RPG
by Roey T. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/28/2018 07:40:47

Good points:

  • Marvelous artwork that makes the kids immediately take to the game;

  • Simple and easy system to understand - both for the parent DM (who doesn't have as much time to read a 200 rulebook, as he used to in his youth) and for the kids. My kid understood very quickly how to play the game;

  • Can be downloaded in PDF format with several versions, one of which can be easily printed on a home printer so that you can play immediately.

  • Free follow-up adventures (I just got an invitation to download the new adventure: Reign of the Dragon for free). Very generous!

BAD points:

  • Incredibly simplistic system, with no leveling OR treasure to be mentioned (this may have been overturned in expansions and further adventures, but I only read the core guidebook and first adventure).

  • The first adventure focuses only on combat, and is incredibly repetitive. Fight a group of rats, then another group of rats, then a third group of rats, then the rats and their king. I'm not adverse to violence (I love intriguing fights), but the system is so simple that the fights become boring very quickly on the one hand, and on the other hand: is this REALLY what RPGs are about? Kill monsters? I think we all know there are about much more than that. They are about the wonder of discovery, the relationship between characters, moral questions and problems, etc. Kids are NOT too young to deal with these issues! By focusing the adventure (and indeed, the core system) only on combat, it diminishes their potential enjoyment of the game.

This pattern of bad adventure design continues in Reign of the Dragon (the only add-on adventure I tried), in which the characters face a huge dragon that lands in their village, and demands to essentially become their ruler. Then, cultists come to capture the dragon, and demand that the kids turn him over to their keeping. For some incomprehensible reason, the author seems to think the kids should protect the dragon. Well, my kids immediately gave him over, and finished the adventure in three minutes. As they should have, too! Why not make the dragon be in trouble, instead of making it tyrranical and demanding? Why put the kids in a position in which they have to defend a bully, rather than making them feel as "righteous protectors"?? All this indicates to me that I can't rely on adventures written by the inventor of the game, and that I need to come up with my own - or to tweak the adventures to fit my kids (obviously, this may be different for your kids).

Overall, this is a recommended purchase for any parent who wants to involve his or her kids in RPGs for the first time, but be aware you'll need to do a lot of tweaking to the adventures.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks for the feedback. I'm always looking for this kind of feedback about what people are looking for from Hero Kids adventures. My playtesters of Reign of the Dragon were fine with volunteering to protect the dragon, but I think that your feedback is correct. I'll update the adventure to make it more clear why they should help the dragon before the cultists arrive and confront them! For the treasure, you should check out the Equipment cards that are available (these are detailed in the core rules, but the equipment and item cards are available as expansions or in adventures): http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116614/Hero-Kids--Fantasy-Expansion--Equipment-Cards Finally, leveling is an area of the game that I have been considering for a very long time. Other people have release character development rules for Hero Kids, but I have not yet: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/196871/Character-Advancement--A-Hero-Kids-Compatible-Supplement-for-Levelling-Characters?filters=45487_0_0_0_0 Thanks again!
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Forge Engine - Universal Role-Playing System
by Matthew P. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/19/2018 03:40:49

I came to Forge Engine from mostly d20 systems so there was a definite learning curve, but not in a bad way. I like that the d10 system is (mostly) opposed - having played one d10 system where 6 is a always a succcess this is better.

The energy system is more complex than most other systems but has several significant pros. Defense is not static so unlike strict turn systems you just don't throw everything you can into your "turn" and be able to rely on static defences. The need to hold onto energy to react to adverseries actions makes turns more realistic and your actually won't know that your "turn" (decision making wise) is over till it's over. Externalities (keyword) allows the GM to reward clever play, and as it is at the GM's discretion it is simple and quick and there are no rule arguments, "The DMG says it is 50% cover so I get +4 not +2!" Get your head around the energy system and the game will flow. Practical advice - get two different colours for your d10's and use one for energy (Red) and one for bonus dice (white)

Combat wise having a set pool of d10 for a weapon whether it is prehistoric (rock) generic (knife) or advanced (rifle) is simple, intuitive and easy to understand, eg, The guy with the shortbow has to spend 3 energy to get 2 attack dice (takes a bunch of effort) but me with my 44 magnum I only have to spend 2 energy (its mostly the gun doing the work) and get 4 dice (very big bullets!) and dice pools are very obvious/intuitive - Having an absolute fistful of dice is a winning feeling much much betterthan rolling two d10 and crossing your fingers.

Last and definately not least the system excels where different worlds collide, eg, pPost apocalyse where shortbows often fight handguns, Horror where magic goes up against modern policing methods, or simply that many of the skills translate accross genres eg, Medicine works for a caveman shaman (trepanning anyone?), a 17th century physician (-2 dice for using leeches?) or a 21 century surgeon (many bonus dice from technology)

Have Fun



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Forge Engine - Universal Role-Playing System
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Forge Engine - Universal Role-Playing System
by Scott C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/15/2018 23:29:07

Pros: • The system's very quick to get up and running. • I love the use of a single die type. • The way that the dice pools are used is simple but clever. • You can change the direction your character's abilities grow along the campaign - and not limited to a "class".

Cons: • I still need help with handling my character's energy in combat; when I'm "spending" energy or "adding" energy into my action pool. • Some skills and attributes weren't really used in our campaign - but that is more game style, than the rules. So it's important to establish up front which skills are used based on the campaign.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Hero Kids - Complete Fantasy PDF Bundle [BUNDLE]
by Craig H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/28/2018 05:58:24

Fantastic. Just started it, at my the school I work at, as a lunchtime activity, thought it would be a bit of fun for the kids but was worried if they would get into it. They loved it and keep asking me if it's Friday yet (when we play). I also had an absolute blast and was a bit annoyed when lunchtime was over, it's actually my first time GMing and I was a bit nervous but the bits of story it gives you to read before and after encounters really helps.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Hero Kids - Complete Fantasy PDF Bundle [BUNDLE]
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