An Abominable Fancy

The kid woke me up this morning, saying "Let's play D&D, but let's be sea creatures." Okey-doke. Illustrations from Walt McDougall’s Good Stories for Children, 1902-05 I asked him to make up a list of sea creatures he'd like to play (having no idea if he meant natural sea fauna, or mermen and sea serpents, or what), while I did a quick re-skinning of +Chris McDowall 's   One-Page Edition of Into The Odd. Here is the result: Undersea Odd Quick and dirty, but we were playing before the cereal got soggy, and that was good. Although, I think the kid would have appreciated more fights and treasure.

Some trainers to go with my Training Levels for the Kid's Game. I'm thinking that you need to make arrangements with a trainer every level for Levels 1-4, and every other from 5-9, and you're pretty much self-educated from there. Durgan the Bear Actually a bear. An adventurer that has retired to the woods outside of town. Will happily spar with anyone who shows up at his cave bearing good food. Results: +1 to hit and damage in melee +1d6 Hit Points +1 Save vs. Disease At Fighting Level 1: wear Medium Armor w/o penalty At Fighting Level 3: wear Heavy Armor w/o penalty Fletch the Onocentaur Archer This rough half-man half-donkey has terrible manners and little interest in taking on students, but is the best archer you've ever seen. Results: +1 to hit and damage with ranged attacks +1d6 Hit Points +1 to Save vs. Paralysis Hawkeye: +1 to checks relating to seeing things that are far away Does not count as Fighting Level for purposes of wearing armo

For the Kid's Game, I've decided to ditch Class in favor of á la carte Training Levels. This is blatantly derived from  +Daniel Sell 's "Adventurer" rules . Level     XP              Saving Throw 0             0                         16 1             100                     15 2             2000                   15 3             4000                   14 4             8000                   14 5             16000                 13 6             32000                 13 7             64000                 12 8             120000               12 9             240000               12 Each time you gain a new level, pick the type of training you receive: Fighting, Spells, or Skills. Fighting +1 to hit in melee and ranged attacks +1d6 Hit Points +1 to Save vs. Paralysis At Fighting Level 1: wear Medium Armor without penalty At Fighting Level 3: wear Heavy Armor without penalty Spells Cast one spell per day per Spell Level. +1d4 Hit

I've been playing a lot with the kid, mostly by-the-book Holmes. I bough the kid his own copy of the  Blueholme Prentice Rules , which makes for a great introduction. It's clearly written, a nicely digestible amount for a kid to wrap his head around, and the public domain fairy-tale art looks great and passes the parental appropriateness check. This is my first time as an adult even attempting to play rules-as-written, and it's been a great experience. If Blueholme Compleat were out, we'd definitely carry on with that. But, now that our characters are starting to get up in levels, we need to transition to another ruleset. The kid wants to trade off GM'ing sessions with me for some friends, this summer. To make things easier on both him and his friends, I'm back to hacking a simplified ruleset. I've abandoned some of the scaffolding I built into my earlier attempts at a set of Kid's Rules . The kid wants real damage, the possibility of death, an

The Kid woke me up this morning with an idea for his own version of D&D: Creatures and Classrooms. Monster-Teachers try to bore you (costing you Fun Points), and the students try to wear down their teachers with pranks until they retire. Follow up: The kid took his rules into school, and has started up a game during "Centers" time. Three days in, and it sounds like things are going well—the players have discovered that the Teachers are aliens with a vulnerability to water, and have armed themselves with water guns. "I think I'll take them to Mars, today," he said at breakfast.

Attributes Roll 3d6, assign as you wish. 3-7:      -1 8-14:     0 15-17: +1 18:      +2 STRENGTH: How strong you are. Useful for fighting, climbing, and carrying treasure.                 +/- to melee attack and damage DEXTERITY: How fast you are and how accurate your aim is.                 +/- to ranged attack and Armor Class. CONSTITUTION: How healthy you are.                 +/- to Hit Points INTELLIGENCE: How much you know, and how good you are at figuring things out.                 +/- to Spells learned with leveling as a spell-caster WISDOM: How aware you are of the world around you, including the spirit world.                 +/- 10% XP CHARISMA: How good a leader you are, and how well you can get along with people and animals.                 +/- Pet LUCK Add up all your attributes to determine how many Luck Points you have. Total               Luck 78 or more        0 66-77                1 54-65                2 48-53                3 42-47      

I've been noodling with a ruleset for playing with my kid. He wants to play D&D , so it's basically Holmes on training wheels, customized towards my kid's particular proclivities. Here's a table for determining your character concept: A few notes: 1. The results of this chart do not convey any mechanical effects. Just because you rolled "Wizard" doesn't mean you are any good at wizardry.  Maybe you were raised by wizards, but your true talent lies in... uhm, dinosaur racing? 2. There is no info established for any of the Realms. They're just evocative names. Totally up to the kid what it's like to be from The Corridors of Time. 3. My intention is that, after rolling the above tables and generating stats, the kid draws a picture of their character. For my kid, at least, this seems to be a shamanic moment, calling forth a new soul and fixing it to the material world.