Hi all,

So this xmas period the family and I (Wifey - Regular player, and 6 year old daughter - loves star wars, boardgames, and has dabbled with kid RPGs) are treating ourselves with a VERY white xmas by spending 3 weeks in Finland and Estonia. I bit different to our usual sweltering 42*C in Australia.

anywho, we have a good 50+ hours stuck on a plane to burn (read keep the youngling entertained) and I was thinking of developing a campaign for the trip to run. Obvious issues are space and noise.

My thoughts so far are to use the dice app on the daughters tablet, and have A5 size character sheets with little clipboards. I have a surface pro aswell that I can use to run GM notes, and draw maps on.

What is stumping me is a campaign appropriate to the age. Has anyone written/run adventures for younger groups. and are suitable for small (2 PC) groups. Alternatively would a pre-written published campaign be the way to go.

Also, character sheets. best to keep with small paper prints? or would an IT solution work. Printouts would be fine to start with, but later on if they buy new specialisations, I would have to ensure I have them ready to go. That could work if I limit what specialisations they can choose from (I.E only one game series), otherwise I will need 120+ pages ready, just-in-case. This all takes up valuable carry-on space.

Anyway. I welcome thoughts, opinions and ideas. Is this a feasable plan, or am I dreaming.

If everyone has a tablet that they will have with them, an It solution with digital character sheets may work otherwise spend a few dollars to print 2-3 copies of each of the Force trees on at 50% or 25% (2 on a page or 4 on a page) and laminate them. Then use can easily pass them out to your players and they can use markers to updated purchased talents while on the plane.

Sounds like fun. Good luck with it

@KRKappel has run Star Wars for young kids before. He's talked about on podcasts here and there (with advice), but I'm blanking on which ones. It may have been Order 66, but I remember listening to it at a time when I was branching out into other gaming podcasts, so I can't be sure.

Try and get hold of the Adversary Packs and chuck them in your hand luggage...

I have all of them. I am trying to avoid bringing any physical components though beyond character sheets

I run for kids aged 4-12 as often as I possibly can. A summary of tips and rules for adjusting the game:

1.) Listen to the kids' plan. Don't help them, don't suggest to them. Just let them tell the story they want to tell, and roll with it. It will keep you on your toes as a GM, but you definitely don't want to have an adversarial GM/player relationship when you're running for kids. Reward their creativity and make sure all the kids get a chance to voice their ideas.

2.) abstractify a few additional elements to avoid any getting bogged down. The things I tend to abstractify most often? I get rid of hitpoints, and instead just eyeball it and suggest people are able to shrug off damage, they are hurt, or they are eliminated. I don't bother tracking the wounds with any real closely. I also just have initiative always let a PC slot go first, and then just alternate between PCs and NPCs instead of actually rolling and making a slot sheet.

3.) Bring a legal pad and pencil to draw crude living maps. Kids don't need much in the way of visuals, because their imaginations can do a lot of the work, especially when they're on the younger end of the scale, but giving them something visual to latch onto often helps.

4.) Don't be afraid to be a little silly, and describe things in excruciating detail, particularly when you're describing the results of a player's check, for good or ill. Making a funny voice or describing something gross in detail is likely to be the most memorable part of the game for kids. Don't be afraid to ham it up. As the kids get older, into the 9-12 age range (particularly, but not limited to boys), gruesome details of lightsaber chops and oozing aliens and blasted enemies seem to be what they want the most time spent on. Also, once you set the tone, don't be afraid to occasionally ask them to describe it in detail. They LOVE the opportunity to describe something gross in detail, and once they know its okay, they'll relish each opportunity to do so, which also takes a lot of the mental load off you as a GM.

5.) I tend to only run 30-60 minute sessions for young kids (because its at conventions where we want to cycle as many groups of kids through as possible). But basically, any standard star wars themes should work just fine. Those movies are built for kids, after all. The only real consideration I've made that way, is that instead of introducing spice/drugs, whenever I have smugglers, they're usually smuggling bootleg video games, or music banned by the empire, and what have you.

6.) You might consider letting htem create their character backgrounds as part of the experience while on the plane. Letting them develop a shared history together for their PCs is probably just as fun for them as actually playing. Just handle creating all the mechanical bits first, and let them work out background, motivation, and obligation/morality/duty when you start the game.

Anyway, good luck! I've never tried running on a plane before, the physical mechanics of how the seats are arranged make it seem tricky if you have more than 2 players. But enjoy! Gaming with younger players is some of the most fun I've had running FFG Star Wars!

Thanks for all the advice from everyone. We are going down a slightly different path, and giving GENESYS a crack, with @GM Chris's Harry Potter theme. Little one has almost finished the second book in the series and plays it at school with her friends all the time (to the point where she spoils the books for herself).

So I picked up the core rulebook, the Setting from D20Radio and a few other resources, which I Will print out in A5 and get some little clipboards to match. I like the tweeks they have done with talents and GMDaves method for magic seems very elegant.

@KRKappel thanks for the advice in regards to char gen on the plane as first session. The setting leads excellently towards doing a narrative based character build. I will be setting it as first years attending Hogwarts, 2 years after Voldemort is first defeated by baby harry and the school is getting back on its feet after the war. This way I do not have to make up all new Professors and other characters as much.

Chargen should be fun, I will have the 2 girls meet in Diagon Alley, where they can generate their first wands (and maybe pick up a pet). Then on to the Hogwarts express where they can chat about what they want to be when they grow up (pick a career). Finally on to the sorting hat which will ask them a series of questions (which I stole from Pottermore) to sort them into their houses (picking archetypes[species])

A week to go, this should be fun!

That sounds so cool! And perfect for what you need while on the plane. Have you used Genesys before? I've thought about looking into it, but don't feel like I play enough to warrant another system purchase. Plus I really like playing in the Star Wars Setting when I do play.

6 hours ago, TheGuardian118 said:

That sounds so cool! And perfect for what you need while on the plane. Have you used Genesys before? I've thought about looking into it, but don't feel like I play enough to warrant another system purchase. Plus I really like playing in the Star Wars Setting when I do play.

Well genesys is the same system as star wars, just stripped of the SW setting, and made a universal system to make your own settings and universes

Reminds me of the time my players had to replace Jabba's deceased sand crab pit monster with a young krayt dragon, after they accidentally fell into the pit when Jabba dropped a few guys he'd just thawed out of carbonite down to feed it. The PCs "foolishly" killed Jabba's pet to survive but Jabba was on good terms with the PCs employer Grondo the Hutt so all they had to do was find him a young krayt dragon to replace the giant sand crab with.

So they were in a cave on tatooine waiting out a sandstorm and they hear the howl of a krayt and see a large silhouette shuffling towards their cave. One of the players asked me if it was a young krayt dragon and I told him to make an easy difficulty check with 5 boost dice on the check. When he succeeded I told him that this particular dragon was much much much too large to be a young krayt dragon. He sadly said... "I thought that you were just being nice with the boosts" I'm forgetting the full stats I used but it had a strain threshold of 50 😈 . They fed it a concussion grenade in a dead womp rat to stagger it, and the pressure pointed it to sleep (2 players had pressured point and were getting a lot of triumph). The droid mechanic/doctor lost a sensor arm and ion blaster due to despairs though. I think it had adversary 4 or 5. Good times 😈