Playing with the kids

Posted by Nuadha on Jul 30, 2011; 5:22pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Playing-with-the-kids-tp6636559.html

I brought Heroquest out to play with my 10-year old nephew and a friend of his last night.     It really reminded me of why I have kept this stuff over the years.    When I play with jaded old board gamers, they pick it apart and call it too simple.    (At least when I run the regular quests.    If I still had all the quests I used to write and ran people through them, I think it would be a different story.)    However, the kids "get it" instantly.    You need the right crowd to play this game which is generally people who can get behind the "RPG-lite" feel of the game and who will ham it up and talk in barbarian voices, etc..    Adults seem afraid to do that more often.   Since it is a board game, they seem to feel like they need to plot out the next turns and sit there with a serious voice.     The kids instantly understood that it was fun to talk like they are the barbarian, wizard or dwarf.    This seems more rare with adults I play board games with these days.

I think it also helps that since it was kids, I also hammed it up as the Zargon player the way I did in the old days.   With the serious adults, I don't ham it up like I used to.      I need to remember that I should ham it up full-tilt when running the game with adults too.   Maybe it will get more of them to get in to the game in what I feel is the "right way."

I got a text from my nephew (using his dad's phone) this morning asking if I will bring HQ over again tonight.   He can't wait to rescue Sir Ragnar!    :D