My 9 year old son is a huge Star Wars fan (introduced when he was 4). I've got the AoR Beginner Box and am thinking of introducing him to RPGs with it.

How does the game run with a single player? Any suggestions of tweaks I should do?

Single player is totally doable. If I were doing it this way (single player, AoR Beginner box), I would pick up the AoR GM Kit (my favorite GM Kit for this game by far) and use the optional "Squad" rules to help your son command his very own squad of Rebel infiltrators in their mission to take over Whisper Base.

Speaking as a dad who's run his 6-year-old through a few games, you'll probably wanna try and ground things in the narrative as much as possible. Feel free to play fast and loose with the mechanics, unless your son asks a specific question about how a certain rule works.

If I were going a slightly different route to introduce my kid to the game, I might be tempted to build a character with him, using Force and Destiny's "Knight Level" rules to generate a higher-level character, and pump up several of his skills, so that he can be really good at a fair number of tasks.

I started my young son off with the AoR Beginner Box, though it went far enough off-piste that the adventure itself only provided a framework. We still use Whisper Base, however, and Zal is at least nominally his Squadron Leader. The mechanics shouldn't require much tweaking, so long as his PC isn't truly alone (in encounters designed to face a party).

I tend to run 1 to 3 GMPCs to assist him, and sometimes nudge him along, if needed. I think you will probably want to create a character with your son, so just make sure his squadmates and fellow adventurers complement him, rather than outshine his efforts. "Knight Level" will help to make him a little more awesome, from the start.

And yes. Fast and loose is the name of the game. Age of Rebellion can provide a more structured, mission-based game, which I've found my 6 year old enjoys; but I largely let him tell me when he wants to roll the dice.

Sometimes, he ends up telling the story, and just acts the narrative out with action figures... and that's okay, too.

Have fun!

Definitely do it. My oldest is 9 and he absolutely loves this system, we have played the FaD beginner boxe and I think I'll do the AoR next. No rules need changing, but expect some very creative and cinematic scenes. They really like to play the hero in my experience so the things they attempt are always big.

I tend to go easy on the difficulty I set, and try to help them pick a character that's going to do well in physical tasks. Combat is fun for them, so more enemies that are weaker puts a smile on their faces too.

Having a squad yo command is definitely a good idea, they will probably be forgotten half the time but still be useful for you to ratchet up the tension a little. Occasionally you can say things like "you look back and see [insert one of child's friends name here] is injured, he has taken a shot to the foot." Or if you need a little comedy then "your squad follows you through the door, just as you think your all in the room you hear a loud clunk... Jimmy just banged his head on the door!"

I have played the system with my younger kids and they tend to care less about rules, you have to break some rules a bit more to keep their creative ideas flowing. But our 9 year old definitely gets it, he reads all the books I have (all the books!) and constantly comes to me saying "dad, dad, dad! Look at this, how cool is this!" Ganks where his most recent discovery.

17 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

just as you think your all in the room you hear a loud clunk... Jimmy just banged his head on the door!

Exactly.

I was thinking of running this for my own kids. The older 5 out of 6, the four year old has the attention span of a four year old, which isn't saying much. The four girls are creative and very pretend oriented, and my oldest son is a huge Star Wars Fan. I think they may enjoy it. Glad to see I'm not alone in wanting to, or even having done it.

5 hours ago, Kiowa706 said:

the four year old has the attention span of a four year old, which isn't saying much.

I started with my son when he was 5 (almost 6, really), and the trick was short sessions. 45-75 minutes. Props and funny voices.

I'd grant 5xp, and help him apply it to something he was interested in improving. 9 months later, he usually lasts about 2 hours.

Yeah, I do short sessions as well, with fairly frequent breaks, especially if he's looking fidgety.

I just keep reminding myself, "the purpose of gaming is fun." And kids often have fun in different ways than adults

Running it for a 9 year old and for single player I'd ramp down the difficulty of the bad guys.

Here's my general suggestions:

1. Go with what they're doing. It may be silly, outlandish or implausible. Go with it. Let them tell a story. Add fun and interesting consequences and push back for their choices but don't shut them down or pull the "Ok, that's a Daunting check". You may or may not need to reign them in when they spend Advantage/Triumph but generally you're safe if you get them to describe what happens or what's added to a scene and then you apply the mechanical affects after the fact.

2. Let them be descriptive or action oriented and then bring up checks (if needed). This system lends itself well to description/action first and figuring out what check to make second.

3. Be more narrative with using Threat/Despair. Add cool and interesting setbacks to the story instead of just using mechanical setbacks - at the very least if adding mechanical setbacks (like, uh, actual setback dice) be descriptive first of what's happening then push the setback out there to represent it.

4. If they are "defeated" (wounds exceeding threshold, etc) remember that this is Star Wars and come backs are a big part of the story - everyone can break out of detention.

I probably won't start my 4 year old just yet. Even shorter 20 minute sessions would be too long for him. He'll sit with me and help me play Pathfinder for a little while, but usually no longer than 10 minutes at a time. The older ones, as long as they aren't too long I could get them to play. One hour sessions would probably be the threshold for them. Especially my oldest son. It may boil down to a solo session with him, or with one or two of the girls. I'm printing out character sheets now, and going to give it a shot this weekend.

21 hours ago, Jedi Ronin said:

Running it for a 9 year old and for single player I'd ramp down the difficulty of the bad guys.

Having a single player does require some adjustments, since you have far less control over the outcome of an encounter, and it's far easier to accidentally create your own bottlenecks. My son and I have played for years, and at first I gave him a sidekick...a droid PC that he also controlled. I've also experimented with a GM PC that defers to his wishes. But lately we've had him just running solo, and find that it works well, so long as I keep the opposition manageable. With non-combat situations that's easier to do.

In combat the issue really boils down to the number of attacks. If the PC party had 3 people and you attacked them with 6 NPCs (minion groups, rivals, etc), the attackers would double the defenders and probably overwhelm a "fresh out of chargen" group of PCs. So with a solo PC you have to be careful about adding attackers (even one more is a doubling), and instead perhaps focus on the size of a single minion group. For a kid, it still sounds badass if they can take on 4 gamorean guards, even though the gamoreans only get one attack as a group. You'd have to go through a lot of character development before the PC can be expected to handle more than one opponent at a time.

A droid sidekick is a brilliant idea

On 7/26/2017 at 11:38 AM, Jedi Ronin said:

A droid sidekick is a brilliant idea

Indeed. My son has an astromech that is more or less his PC's pet dog:

On 7/24/2017 at 2:38 PM, Edgehawk said:

Sometimes, he ends up telling the story, and just acts the narrative out with action figures... and that's okay, too.

Thanks so much, my son "Samuel L ..." (and yes I'm totally going to play up the mace windup namesake connection his whole life) is now 8 days old... I was wondering about how to introduce him to rpgs when he was old enough. BTW I've already decided what I'm going to give him for his 5th birthday (an "electrum wind" a.k.a. mace windu's, lightsaber from ultrasabers). Ifor Halloween I got myself a rots Obi-Wan costume and i'my going to get him an infant Yoda costume.

My son already amazes me, he was born 3 weeks earlier than we expected while being fully mature. As of yesterday he had already surpassed his birth weight by 3.7 ounces, and is gaining about 2.5 ounces a day (while pooping fine and dandy). They normally expect babies to get back up to their birth weight 2 weeks after their birth and to be gaining 1.25 ounces a day at 1 week. He's able to hold up his head much better than I was expecting at this age. and he looks so much like me at that age. I look at him and see so much potential.

23 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

Thanks so much, my son "Samuel L ..." (and yes I'm totally going to play up the mace windup namesake connection his whole life) is now 8 days old... I was wondering about how to introduce him to rpgs when he was old enough. BTW I've already decided what I'm going to give him for his 5th birthday (an "electrum wind" a.k.a. mace windu's, lightsaber from ultrasabers). Ifor Halloween I got myself a rots Obi-Wan costume and i'my going to get him an infant Yoda costume.

My son already amazes me, he was born 3 weeks earlier than we expected while being fully mature. As of yesterday he had already surpassed his birth weight by 3.7 ounces, and is gaining about 2.5 ounces a day (while pooping fine and dandy). They normally expect babies to get back up to their birth weight 2 weeks after their birth and to be gaining 1.25 ounces a day at 1 week. He's able to hold up his head much better than I was expecting at this age. and he looks so much like me at that age. I look at him and see so much potential.

Congratulations. Kids are great. My youngest was a month early, but wanted to be 5 months early. His mom was in labor for 5 months. We were in the hospital stopping labor once or twice a week for 5 months. It was pretty tough on her. But he was perfect, no problems at all. He's 4 now and loves Star Wars. Especially the Empire, much like me. It's something we enjoy together.