i started dnd when i was ten. i am thinking my 10 year old nephew may be interested inthis. anyone think kids can play?

With a good teacher, I think a bright 10 year old would have a blast. I wish I was doing these games at that age. It's simpler than D&D, so if you got into D&D at that age, it seems like a good bet. Seems like it'd be a great thing to be able to share with a nephew. And goodness knows you can't beat a kid's imagination

Honestly if the kid has a big enough attention span you can teach them anything (Though I'd love to see a 10 year old play something like The Burning Wheel or Aces & Eights).

I think out of all of FFG's RPGs this Star Wars one is the most approachable as it's not as modifier heavy as something like Deathwatch, the setting is well known, the dice are easy to visualize, and the rules are so fluid you can improvise a lot of things instead of the more rules rigid games.

If you're worried about RPG concepts swooshing over his head try to start him off on an RPG board game first (My first game like that was the ol MB Hero Quest which totally got me into this whole mess). If he digs it and wants to dig deeper than introduce him to something like this.

This system seems like a lot of stuff to remember at first. BUT, its pretty simple and the beginner game does a good job of breaking it down as you go threw out the game. I think it would really come down to the kids attention span.

thanks everyone. hes a bright kid who was shown star wars a bit early in my opinion, and his only hobby per say is xbox. i am trying to get him off it…

sounds like it cannot hurt to pick it up. i worried about too many modifiers and such that would bore him.

WittyDroog said:

I've had a 9yo play Mouse Guard, which is closely related to Burning Wheel. There is nothing in BW that is beyond the average teen, or the brighter end of the 10yo crowd, except the vocabulary used on the skill list and lifepaths.)

A 10yo should be able to handle Edge of the Empire as a player, perhaps even as a GM.
I started RPGing at age 11, and my GM was a year younger… I was GMing a bit within the year, as well.

Yeah but Mouse Guard is Burning Wheel Lite, in almost every respect. You don't have to memorize a pleathora of incredibly specific combat actions (especially before the Gold Edition streamlined combat, man that thing is a pain in the tuchas) Compared to most RPGs The Burning Wheel is a very strange bird. I like it an all but it is not for beginners.

farseer said:

Heh heh. What's a bit early? I, unfortunately, had to wait until I was 10 yrs old to see A New Hope. Believe me if I was able to see it sooner I would have. Only the year before Star Wars I was seeing Logan's Run and wanting more sci-fi. You're never too young to see it as far as I'm concerned.

We player with my 8yo son yesterday, he did take a few more rounds to understand the dice mechanic, but not by much. It really is the maturity at the tablet hat would be a concern, but if it's to get him out of the xBox, then I suppose you're willing to deal with it. I've had my sons play as soon as they wanted to, witch was around that age. (Or when we got interested in rpg again), and my then 10 yo son played DD4 with us for a while.

You are never too young to be a Star Wars fan…

First viewing of the openinig scrawl of Episode IV. Fist pumping was not encouraged but spontaneous, all on her own.

In seriousness, I had a nephew play D&D and Star Wars using d20 at age 9. He understood it fine. Remove any of the darker aspects and be prepared for some oddities from the youngster. He once played an escaped Wookie slave boy (his choosing). When he hit a moment where he had no idea what to do, he sometimes had his Wookie slave boy fall back onto the inappropriate response of breaking into song.

Well any wookie breaking into song counts as an intimidation bonus or if the wookie wants to be found its better if everybody else makes sure they're not found by the wookie!

From whats been mentioned in this thread I guess introducing a five year old nephew might be a little too young… not for Star Wars Xbox 360 Kinetix apparently!

Have some of the minatures from the previous d20 star wars line however my sister might not be too happy though!

WittyDroog said:

Lots of BW players dismiss MG as BW-Light - but it really isn't. BW players have to unlearn/relearn a bunch when they play MG, because the differences are massive. http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Burning_Game_Comparisons

I don't want to drag this thread into a huge argument, but owning and playing both the major game difference has to be with the concept of the player/GM turn. That's really the most difficult nut to crack when it comes to a hardened gamer of any RPG because it's so out there. Beyond that though the concepts are much simplier to grasp than the alternatives in Burning Wheel. Combat is reduced to one set of mechanics with only a few actions (in the boxed set these are represented by cards) that falls on similar principles, Injury/failure is reduced to a couple of Condition cards, character burning is a game of 20 questions, etc. I mean yeah there are differences in mechanics that are not a straight simplification, but that's because of the game's setting and tone, it still very much is rooted in the Burning Wheel core but gameplay is far simplier than BW with the exception of wrapping your head about the odd game structure (which takes, what? A single session to figure out?) Certainly when my group has played it we considered it lighter than most RPGs we play including games like Deathwatch/Black Crusade, BRP titles, even some d20 variants.

But I guess we should just agree to disagree then.

My son, 7 now, has played both the Pathfinder beginner box and now 90% of the beginner box from EotE and has been doing just fine with it. He's a pretty bright kid and we've done lots of role playing in other forms before this as well so the concepts were far from forign to him. It doesn't hurt that he's an advid star wars fan We also play the new FFG minatures game together, I say the age range on that game is high because the ships are easily brakeable - which we have torched one tie fighter already

Hope this helps.

tell him to start reading this http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page and he will be more than ready