So looking for ways to entertain my 4 year old daughter the day before payday, without resorting to the TV or Tablet, I came up with this set of rules to play.

Heroes

Start at 20 health. go over this and they pass out.

3 Stats -> Fighting, Flying, Fixing

Each Hero allocates a trait to each stat

Good - 4 Green

Better - 2 Yellow, 2 Green

Best - 4 Yellow

Millenium Falcon - 25 Health, add 1 boost for those heroes in the turrets shooting

Bad Guys

3 Stats, Fighting, Flying, Running

Each bad guy is allocated a trait to each stat, note they have more traits then stats, this helps determine the difference between a Imperial army soldier and a stormtrooper, or a TIE fighter verse Interceptor

Bad - 2 Purple

Good - 3 Purple

Better - 2 Red, 1 Purple

Best - 2 Red, 2 Purple

Most bad guys have 5 health.

Army Soldier - Good at running, Better at fighting, Bad at flying

Storm trooper - Good at running, Bad at flying, Best at shooting

TIE fighter - 8 Health, better at shooting

TIE Interceptor - 8 Health, Best at shooting

GAMEPLAY

Turn order alternates between a Hero and a bad guy. GM (the adult) should even out which bad guys activate, not always the same one.

Each character can move once and do one thing in their turn.

Doing something requires a roll, they roll the stat they want to use with the trait assigned to it.

To succeed they must get a number of (any) symbols over a threshold set by the GM (health of bad guy in the case of fighting) Less than the required threshold means the action failed. Damage accumulates against Heroes , but bad guys only die if their health threshold is reached.

Triumphs/Despairs allow for that character to take another action, up to a limit determined by GM (shooting a quad laser, can take 3 more actions for example)

GM can add boosts to heroes and setback to bad guys if they do something to help their action, or if it fits what the character is doing/using (lightsaber in close combat, standing still and firing a rifle, etc)

For space combat, I used x-wing minis and the manouvre templates, to add a bit of structure to moving around. No dials though, any ship can do any move.

Running can be used to raise the alarm or setting traps

Fixing can be used for opening doors, healing, starting up ships etc

Flying is any sort of piloting/riving, and also athletic feats

Fighting is fighting

Test run was fun. After our daughter demanding to be the bad guys, the wife and I played Mummy and Daddy escaping from the Death star prison on the Falcon.

We killed a lot of her troopers, jumped accross the bottomless chasm, escaped in the falcon, only to be shot down in the asteroid field by the Imperial Guard in his Red Interceptor.

Daughter loved it, Wife was also entertained (its been too long since our usual group meetup for our Campaign, she needed her yellow dice fix)

Neat. I actually run this game for entire tables of kids aged 4-12 who have mostly never played any RPGs before, and I pretty much just run the rules as-is with beginner box character folios. The only changes I make are I abstract the wound threshold and strain thresholds to just hurt, hurt bad, and out, or tired, really tired, and exhausted. I also don't use force points. I'm able to explain the rules to the kids and start playing within 2 minutes, and we play for a 30 minute session usually. Maps and tokens are helpful, as is being very open ended with the choices you present, and letting the kids find their own weird solutions can create some very memorable moments.

I once had a girl that was attacked by some vicious dogs, and she instantly wanted to make friends with the dog. Charm check, success, new animal companion for her! Another girl was playing a Duros Spy, and her smuggler allies had to sneak pirated video games from one side of the spaceport to the other with the empire looking for them. She snuck into an Imperial customs station, sliced a computer terminal, rolled two triumphs on her next computers check to order 200 pizzas for the stormtroopers to throw them a pizza party on the far side of the spaceport. She spent the triumphs to put the bill on Darth Vader's credit card.

Kids have a tendency to approach things very differently than your average table of gamers. So much fun, though!

If you keep playing this way and tweak some rules, please keep us up to date!

I've got a 6 year old and I've thought about using FFG but figured it was going to be too complicated. This is great.

You might look into RPG Kids when she gets a tad bit older. May daughter was able to easily run a small party using those rules. I tweaked it a bit to make it a learning experience. I had her rolling the single d6 and adding bonuses (no subtractions) and she handled it while practicing basic addition. There are spells in the game (fantasy RPG) and I made some handout cards for each spell. When casting a spell she had to read, spell, and say the "magic words" on the cards to cast the appropriate spell. As in for the Fire Ball spell she actually had to say "F I R E B A L L ....Fireball!" This was fun for her and obviously was done to get her some practice reading and spelling. We've played twice and next time we play she might be to the point of being able to memorize the spell words (no pun intended) without the cards.

I think young children are geared towards loving RPG's. It comes more natural then teaching it to teenagers or adults. Start them young.

I would add a 4th Skill, Problem Solving. This would allow for some non-combat encounters, especially puzzle or riddle type situations. But is also comes into play in other ways:

Did Blast the door controls to keep the imps from following you and there is a trench how do you get across?

Are you Being pursued by an entire fleet of Star Destroyers with no hyperdrive and only an asteroid field to hide in?

Did Your best friend has been captured by Jabba, What cunning plan will you come up with to get inside?

Did you and your friends get captured by Ewoks and you are about to get spit-roasted alive? What cunning plan will you come up with?

You and your 8 friends are traveling by foot across a continent to destroy the One ring, and you come to the mines of Moria, which are locked and there is a simple engraving above the door, how do you get in?

Ect.

Not sure if it helps... the younger players I tried to teach were like 12... but I wrote a 4 part series on teaching younger players on the d20 Radio website.

http://www.d20radio.com/main/the-gm-awakens-getting-young-new-players-into-your-favorite-rpg/

http://www.d20radio.com/main/the-gm-awakens-helping-younger-players-choose-their-adventure/

http://www.d20radio.com/main/the-gm-awakens-taking-back-the-initiative/

http://www.d20radio.com/main/the-gm-awakens-teaching-the-art-of-roleplaying/

Not sure if you'd find them helpful at all. You might likely be encountering different issues and challenges but I wanted to at least point.

Scott

I find your rules to be needlessly simplistic and unnessassary, that the game engine functions perfectly as-is.