RPGKids - Session Report

I've played Labyrinth Lord with my three young nephews a couple of times, and though we had fun, overall I was left with the feeling that trying again in a year or two might be best. Meanwhile, my friend John in PA, a 4e player, had been trying to find a D&D-like game that would be suitable for he and his six year old boy to play. I suggested RPGKids, and below is his response - I thought someone here might find it of interest as I know a lot of us old schoolers now have kids right in this age range...

We've been playing the good guys vs bad guys rpg with the boy. Very fun.

He likes playing the bad guys.

I found some free fantasy counters to print out, so we have 5 different party members and a bunch of kobolds, goblins and zombies. Adrian & Ruth designed a party, so we just agree on some monsters and Adrian picks a map out of my Keep of the Shadowfall module and we go for it.

This morning for instance, we found a graveyard map and he put 2 zombies, 2 dagger throwing zombies -- he wanted them to be poisonous daggers! -- and 2 skeleton archers in some coffins in the tomb. They started making noise, so we rolled initiative. Our big fighter stepped in first to investigate while the zombies patiently waited for him to make the first move. Then they leaped out and attacked everyone. About 5 turns later, everybody was dead, especially the poor magic-user who was ganged up on: the confident Josephina casts magic missle -- roll 19 -- toward the skeleton archer who is curiously unharmed by the spell's magic -- roll 20. I think we'll have to add a healer class to help the party survive such onslaughts!

Thanks for the rules (link)... We've already thought about different versions of the game (like healers mentioned above). Or bigger badder monsters with more hit points and area damage, i.e. dragons. I think I can get him up to playing with a couple of my friends in a full blown d&d4e session.

But the main thing is just being able to whip out a map and some miniatures -- or counters -- and just play for 1/2 an hour or an hour so those original rules are very cool.

Then he followed up in another email:

By the way, he mentioned Josephina's demise this morning again. "Remember when the skeleton rolled a 20 and Josephina rolled a 19?"
"Yes, I do. Poor Josephina couldn't do anything."
"And now they're all dead," he responded with a smile.