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“LOOK OUT!” All of a sudden a crow snatched Princess Elandril. Her friends, Kaleena, Elk, and Marge, stared in horror as their friend was carried off screaming for help, clutched in the talons of a cackling black crow. “You'll never see her again,” sneered the crow as they disappeared over the trees.
“So kids, now what are you gonna do?”
Fits and Starts
My family is new to role playing games although we have lots of experience with complex boardgames like Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico. We home educate our kids, a five year old boy and an eight year old girl, and decided to try RPGs as a way of having fun and helping our family develop our creativity. My wife and I had a little RPG experience in our past, but neither of us had ever been a GM or developed a scenario. In fact prior to this week I didn't even know that there was much of a difference between the game engine and the scenarios or campaigns.
Based on some poor advice I rushed to the game store and purchased the basic D&D players package. I got home with a bunch of dice and complicated rules, but nothing to do with them. I called the store and they told me that I had to either purchase a scenario or develop my own. Yeah right. I'm going to play a slash and dash game with my kids, or spend hours trying to figure out how to put together a campaign. Not too likely.
So I hit the internet and luckily found Faery's Tale (FT). I called Patrick Sweeny, one of the authors, and he told me that the game was designed for playing with younger players and families. Perfect. But what do I do with the game once I get it? Are there any scenarios included, I asked? He graciously sent me an unfinished scenario he was writing. I purchased the PDF version of the game. Bought ten 6-sided dice and fifty glass markers (for essence) from our local game store. And we started playing.
Our First Attempt
With our new game in hand, and a spanking new scenario about a Faery Tournament, we sat down to play. It was a complete bust. We used the ready-made characters. I read my parts from the scenario. But we really couldn't get it together. The scenario was designed more to teach the game rather than to go on an adventure. We ended even before the goblins arrived to cause trouble.
First lesson I learned. Don't use ready-made scenarios. Just like I had been told by many people, using scenarios kills the spontaneity and creativity of gaming.
Keep in mind that this is not so much a problem with the scenario that Patrick sent me, as it was a problem with being a complete newbie GM/narrator. The authors do include a section in Faery's Tale about how to be a narrator, but this is at the back of the book. I would strongly recommend a section in the beginning of the book designed to help parents, especially newbies, understand how to easily develop a game. It should focus on a couple of issues. First, it should explain how FT relates to D&D and RPG's in general. This is quite important as FT may be the first introduction to gaming and it is likely that the new players will progress to more complex games over time. Second, the introduction should explain how to easily develop a game using simple premises and then just winging it. This is what we did in our second very successful attempt.
The Second Game
“In know! How about if Kaleena (who is a pixie) flies after the crow and grabs its tail!” That sounds great. You need 3 successes to do it. Kaleena rolls a 4 and grabs the crows tail. The crow bites at her and shakes its tail. The feather she's holding pulls free and Kaleena and the crow's tail feather flutter down into the dark forest.
We started our second game with developing characters. My boy chose a sprite and my girl chose a pixie. They named them Elk and Kaleena respectively. The FT basic character patterns include ones that will be interesting to both boys and girls. We only added a couple of character gifts to keep it simple. Based on a suggestion on the FT forum I had the kids draw pictures of their characters. This worked great and enabled them to really identify with their characters.
Then I just started the story with “LOOK OUT...”. I had a simple premise that their friend Elandril was kidnapped by goblins, using a crow as the abductor, and she was taken to the mountain castle of Sluag, the goblin king. The kids immediately got into it this time around. I suspect that this is because the narrator, myself, was really present as opposed to reading from a prepared text. From this simple premise a very interesting and complex tale started to emerge.
Kaleena landed in a dark forest and summoned Elk. She had a broken wing and needed some help. A spider attacks and Elk fights it off. I set the challenge pretty high expecting to make the fight a draw, but Elk threw dice with such luck (5 sixes) that he dropped the spider by simply throwing his sword at it. Under the spider was a bag of 10 gold coins. In the fight Kaleena wanted to help and ended up with another broken wing and a hurt leg. They loaded her onto the back of Elk's dragonfly and headed toward Brimbleton, a scary town in the dark woods, to find a healer. Before they left they used a reveal spell on the crows tail, which turned out to be magic, and they were able to look into the feather to see what was happening to Elandril.
They had to cross a bridge to get into town and wouldn't you know it but there, on the middle of the bridge, was a delicious looking blueberry pie. Elk wanted to eat it but Kaleena stopped him and they crossed unharmed. When they looked back, the pie was gone. A hag healer in Brimbleton tried to poison Kaleena, but Kaleena outsmarted her and got the right healing medicine. After being cured they walked into the street, and there was the blueberry pie again. This time Elk grabbed it and the pie exploded into 200 large angry bats. Elk smacked down two of them, but Kaleena used her pixie dust (and 3 essence) to cast a sleeping spell on the remaining 198 bats. They then sold the bats back to the hag for a handsome profit.
They stopped at an inn to get some food. Unfortunately the only thing on the menu was fresh bat stew. But they ate it anyway. A goblin named Gryndyl sidled up to them and offered his services as a guide. On the way to the mountain Gryndyl had to “see a man about a horse” and went off to do his business. They waited and waited. Getting more nervous as the minutes went by. After almost an hour they heard a loud scream and Gryndyl came running out of the woods with a pack of wild, angry, bunnies chasing him. They ran across a rope bridge and Elk sliced the bridge just in time to keep the bunnies from crossing. Note that no bunnies were injured, they were just stuck on the other side.
The story continues tonight...
A Darn Good Game
With a little trial and error, we were successfully able to have a ton of fun with FT. My kids have been hounding me all day to play again. The game mechanics are simple and not at all overbearing. You simply roll dice. Even numbers count as successes. Odds are failures. The narrator sets the amount of successes needed to achieve the task. Special powers use “essence,” or fairy life force. And nobody dies when they run out of essence, they just go to sleep. There are enough rules to make the game interesting, but not so many as to be too confusing. In fact we used very few of the “official” rules in our game. I suspect that over time we will integrate more rules as we become more experienced.
For people new to FT and RPGs in general, especially if you have young children, I strongly recommend using a very simple version of the game. Focus on one or two skills such as rolling dice to succeed, how and when to use essence, and how to change the game. Over time you will likely integrate more complexities as the players and narrator become more experienced. Also the more silly, surreal, and unexpected elements you can add to the game (blueberry pies that turn into bats, being chased by angry bunnies) the easier and more fun your narrator job will be.
There are a couple things that would be really helpful. In addition to an overview of RPGs for the newbie GM/narrator a quick start chapter would be helpful. This chapter would focus on just the critical rules, deemphasize the complex and optional rules, and demonstrate how to use the system to have fun right out of the box. It should also offer a few scenario starting points like “a friend is kidnapped”, or “a special gem is stolen” rather than complete scenarios. Although these starting points are scattered throughout the book, collecting them into one place would help get the juices flowing. Finally, the quick start chapter might give some tips about when and how to start integrating more of the game's rules and complexities.
One last thing that would be nice is a quick reference sheet with all the gifts, boons, titles, and critters listed with their relative body, mind, spirit, and essence values.
I highly recommend Faery's Tale to both new and experienced gamers with children. As you can see, with relatively little experience, we were able to construct an interesting, exciting, and complex story that has engaged our whole family. Have fun.
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