I woke up this morning to two exciting announcements about crowdfunders for kid-oriented RPGs, which is outstanding news indeed: the first is a set of adventures for Martin Lloyd's superb Amazing Tales, a (four and up) kid-and-adult RPG that's endlessly fun and incredibly easy to get started with; the second is Destiny Dez, from Scott Wayne Indiana, last seen around here with his pacifist RPG Lotus Dimension, now back with an RPG for 3-8 year olds, in which "kids come up with their own plans to navigate situations before rolling a 20 sided die to decide their fate and move on in the story."
I love RPGs for really little kids (when my daughter was a toddler, I created a stripped-down version of D&D to play with her, and Enrique Bertran did the same for his 4 year old).
Amazing Tales (previously only available with a long fulfillment delay from a print-on-demand outlet, now available as a pre-printed book) was especially great when I took my daughter — then nine — on a book tour around Australia and New Zealand, it being a game that we could take from the airplane to the hotel room all the way to walking down the street (I kept a pocket full of dice for her to roll at key junctures). It's really exciting to see Lloyd back with a volume of pre-set adventures for the game, at €15 for a PDF and €25 for a hardcover.
Meanwhile, Destiny Dez holds out the promise of gaming with kids as young as three years old, at $20 for a paperback and $28 for a hardcover, built around a hybrid of choose-your-own-adventures and imaginative play.
Some of my best parenting moments — for me and my kid — have been while playing RPGs. These are both really exciting developments to wake up to. Both creators have good track records for delivering on previous crowdfunders, making pre-supporting the publications into a very safe bet (though as with all such projects, there is always the possibility that you'll get nothing for your money).
The Big Book of Amazing Tales [Martin Lloyd/Kickstarter]
Destiny Dez, Drum of Destiny, My First RPG [Scott Wayne Indiana/Kickstarter]
(Thanks, Tim Harford and Scott Wayne Indiana!)
