Excellent product! Clearly created by someone who (A) understands solid game design, and (B) understands kids. Speaking as a teacher and a father, I have absolutely zero complaints about this product and much love. As a longtime gamer who wants his kids to love gaming, it was important to me that product be simplified without being "dumbed down" and that it emphasize game play and enjoyment over rules lawyering. Hero Kids hits it on both counts.

The core system is solid, using a basic opposed dice pools dynamic. There is some flavor text in the adventures but not an overwhelming amount. I've chosing to expand upon what is already a solid foundation by adding named PCs, custom flat figs, and papercraft buildings.

Highly recommend.

A good starting point for my kid in role playinh RPG. I think starting from 5 years old will be more interesting.

My two daughters, ages 7 and 5, enjoyed their first tabletop RPG experience with the rat adventure the mechanics were easy for them to grasp. The setting and classes are all fun to play and inspired their imaginations. i think it hit the mark for the older kid. the younger needed some guidance at first.

I have two boys ages 8 and 10. I had tried to introduce them to D&D but the rules were far too complex. I found an article online and it had mentioned Wil Wheaton suggesting parents try Hero Kids. I bought and downloaded the PDF's and learned the game very quickly. It was very easy to explain to my boys and easy to set up. They really loved Tomb of the lost king and we just finished The lost village. My youngest is a big fan of large hulk-like characters and only ever plays the Dragon-kin Brute from the Hero Cards expansion. The equipment cards expansion gave the game the element of "loot" which I think are my boys favorite feature of RPG's. Overall I am very satisfied with this game as are my sons. The game could be a tad more colorful or the maps more detailed but our imaginations greatly supplement this small con. Overall I give hero Kids a 9/10 rating and have suggested it to all my tabletop friends!

If I start out with "my 5 year old loves this game," you will forgive my lack of originality. The simple dice-pool mechanics, printable maps and paper figurines engage his imagination while the hero and monster cards fit into what he has seen in video games. Sure, the advantages of ranged-vs.-melee combat elude him and we sort of fudge movement rates, but he has fun!

Ive played two adventures with my 5yr old and hes loved it. He gets really into the adventures which are short enough to keep his atyention, but ling enough to provide a small story. It's very basic, but he can pretty well understand his character sheet. Ive been waiting for him to get old enough to play RPGs with and thanks to Hero Kids the day has come sooner than i ever expected.

So far my son is still enjoying the first adventure Basement o rats as my husband and I alternately gm for him and teach him game mechanics. He is asking to play every evening and the halfhour adventure length is just right for his attention span.

I bought Hero Kids and a bundle of adventures and played Basement O' Rats and Escape from the Ghost Pirates with my kids (now 7 and 5).

The game itself is pretty good. It's simple enough and nicely enough presented to appeal to kids, and cutting out and gluing the miniatures to use on the playing mat was a fun exercise for them (which they mostly did when they were 5 and 3). The adventure maps look good.

The problem is, the two adventures I played are dead boring. They are in the form: description, fight, description, fight, ... There's very little enemy variety within the adventure and very little in the way of interaction with characters. I had to make quite a few changes to make it more fun, and even then it wasn't that great. It's also hard to expand the adventures or create my own because there are few figures for extra enemies beyond those in the adventures.

The reason I came here to review this was having just bought The Cloud Dungeon. As an adventure the Cloud Dungeon is much more inventive, includes several player choices and varied enemies, and there's the part of physically modifying the character image, which should add to the fun. All in all, it looks to me like a more interesting and engaging experience for kids.

On the other hand, The Cloud Dungeon is just one adventure, and Hero Kids feels like more of an RPG framework. If it offered the tools to become a real RPG, such as a monster compendium, then a parent could easily create campaigns and not be limited to what's available. Without this I feel that the game is incomplete, and requires a lot of massaging, at which point it's not that much more attractive than taking another game (D&D, Pathfinder, whatever), simplifying it, and using the large amount of materials available for that game instead of the limited amount available for Hero Kids.

My 2.5 year old constantly asks me to play Dungeons and Dragons with him, so I googled "rpgs for kids" and ended up finding this. After seeing the incredible reviews (here and elsewhere online), I dove in with the complete collection.

My son has been asking every day when Hero Kids is coming in the mail (I used the coupon from the complete collection to get a discount on the softcover version). I was planning on waiting until his 3rd birthday to play the game, since I figured that he wouldn't have the attention span to play yet (and it is meant for 4 - 10 year olds!). But today everybody is home sick and I remembered that Hero Kids comes with pages to colour. Instead of colouring the pages, though, my son found the rogue and asked to play the game with him. We played through the Basement o' Rats introductory adventure, with some modifications made to speed it up a bit (instead of some of the combat, players can just make funny faces and try to scare the rats away, just so the game length is about half of what it normally would be). He had a great time! He only has so much experience to draw upon, so it obviously didn't occur to him to do much other than try to hit the rats, but he did surprise me once by suggesting to use his rope to climb a ledge!

He didn't really get why he was rolling dice, but he could compare some of the lower dice rolls and tell me which dice were a higher number.

By the end of the adventure, his attention span was letting his mind wander, but he got a lot further than I had expected! As soon as we finished, he asked for another adventure. When he is a bit older, he will absolutely love this game! And there are enough enemies, equipment and heroes for a lot of replayability. I am really amazed at the quality of the game and all of the effort that has been put into maintaining it. I have absolutely no regrets getting the complete collection and hope to see more content from the developer and other parties!

I have three girls, 9, 7, and 3. My wife decided to play as well. We played the first adventure tonight and loved it! I had everyone write up a back story (creative writing skills). We spent the first hour discussing how all of the kids are related or friends in the village of Rivenshore. They were hooked before we even started adventuring. I was impressed out how their creativity started flowing!

We took about two hours to explore the rat caves, knock out all of the rats, and free Roger. Since there were 5 adventurers, I maxed out the rat count. That probably caused us to take longer than most.

All said and done, my girls loved it and can't wait to play again. My wife even admitted that she had a great time. Looks like many family fun nights are in store for us! Thanks for your wonderful game!

To anyone thinking about introducing your family into roleplaying games, this is a great deal on a great product! The amount of fun we've had already makes the price worth it, and we're just getting started! Turn off the TV, put away the iPads and the iPhones, gather around the table and adventure together as a family! Trust me, its worth it!

A great game for younger kids! I bought this back in August for my four year old son who wanted to play a "miniatures game" like his parents do. The system is fast and easy for him to use, without it feeling "dumbed down". The intro adventure was fun. He really likes the variety of characters available. I like that while the rules are ideally suited for young children, it is still capable of supporting a full roleplaying experience. I can easily see how this game is rich enough to continue to hold his interest when he is 9 or 10. If you have or know kids who want to take up the tabletop roleplaying hobby, you really can't go wrong with this game. It's a real winner!

I ran this last night for my seven year old daughter. She's played LEGO Heroica and other RPG-esque board games, but this was the first time she had a character sheet and a chance to make bigger decisions about how to play the game and get into character. She had a ball with it and was begging to play more. She spent the rest of the evening after the game creating and drawing a new character to use the next time we play.

This is a very effective age-appropriate design, and a great introduction to RPGs.

This was one of the presents for my son's 4th birthday. Just barely within the age range!

He absolutely loves it. Since his birthday, he's begged to play it very nearly every day. We've had to make official Hero Kids days of the week (Monday and Friday), so he can handle the disappointment of not playing it every day.

I haven't even had time to prep many adventures (I bought a big combo pack thing), so he's ended up playing the Basement O' Rats 3 times, before I had the next adventure ready. He loved it, all three times. And then loved the next adventure (I did the Fire in Rivenshore one next).

It's an amazing way to spend time as a family - I've been running the games, and my husband has been playing alongside the little guy. It's been wonderful.

And actually, I feel like it's improving my GM skills - it requires description and NPC handling in an entirely different way, and that's forcing my perspective to broaden. Always a good thing!

Seriously, this is amazing, for any tabletop players with young ones in the family.

Picked up the Fantasy Bundle for this. Played through the first adventure with my 5yo last weekend and he had a blast. Looking forward to playing the rest!

I would like to thank the publisher's of Hero Kids for creating this great product as looks like it is going to be a regular gaming activity for my daughter and friends. We had our first gaming session this past weekend and it went over like gangbusters. Our group included two 7 year old girls (my daughter and a friend), two adult players (to help out), one 9 year old boy and myself as the game master. The kids picked up the basic mechanics very quickly and within an hour had advanced beyond basic combat into skill and encounter tests.

Everyone loved the creative and inspiring character cards, and we had almost as much fun cutting out and prepping the well drawn monster and hero tokens. We got through about 3/4 of the Basement O' Rats Adventure (which took a bit longer than expected due to the size of the party and some energetic role-playing on all sides of the table) before it was time to fold everything up for dinner. Groans were muttered by many at this time, and questions about when we would finish quickly came up.

My only complaint about this product (and it's a minor one) is that my daughter was a little disappointed we would not be using "Daddy's cool dice" sets.

The art is great, the story was fun, and the mechanics were simple enough to learn quickly while still leaving room for growth in complexity if need be.

Thank you from Buffy the Brute, Fred the Hunter, Sophia the Healer, Ash the Rogue, and Blackrose the Druid.