Playing with kids

Hey. I’m planning a game with my kids - in Zelda BOTW universe - and I’d like to use a streamlined version of BITD. We played once this summer and it worked well, but it was largely improvised, so there is certainly room for improvement. For the record, my kids are 6 and 9yo.

What I did last time:

  • used the dice mechanic as is, with failure, success and partial success. works great.
  • removed the actions and attributes entirely, replaced it with 3 “aspects” a la Fate or Trophy Dark. Each aspect that applies to the situation gives you one die.
  • no stress track
  • no resistance roll

I’d like to improve upon the last two points, because they give leverage to the players.

For the stress, I’m wondering how to regain stress - I think the stress relief mechanic is too involved for kids.

For the resistance rolls, as there are no attributes/actions, I would have to find something else to roll.

Any idea, suggestions?

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Hello, @tgirod
:wave: :rat:

Considering you are playing a LOZ BOTW universe, maybe you can transform stress into something like “stamina”?

I think it could work, since there’s a stamina bar in botw and push yourself makes you tired and so on. If it fills, instead of having a trauma, your character could just be exhausted for some time, maybe “removing” dies from rolls.

I am not sure if you are running downtime actions. Assuming no, you could just reset all the stamina after they rest (maybe they have a low total stamina to balance this). On the other hand, if downtime exists, just let the kids come up with how the character rests, maybe they sleep a lot or eat a big bowl of ice cream, and that resets their stamina to 0 (or to a die roll).

For resistances, I suppose you could just use a fixed value? For example, it costs 2 stamina to resist and that’s it. Of course, it does take some of the “risk/reward” concept of the original resistance, but should be fine for a streamlined.

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This worked well for my 8 year old. Alright It might be TOO simple for what you are looking for https://pin.it/6b2dTLn

More crunch (but still less than BitD): https://mrdrhobo.itch.io/world-of-blades

Hey, thanks for your input!

About stress, yes I was also thinking about renaming it stamina - or maybe drive, motivation, something that expands the scope a little bit.

About the aspects replacing actions, maybe I could borrow the approaches from Fate Accelerated (careful, clever, flashy, forceful, quick, sneaky) and give them 4 dots.

As for resistance, a fixed cost can be fine, yes. Or maybe a fixed roll, like one die.

@paulgsilva thanks for the references, I’ll check them out!

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Perhaps for the aspects you could use the triforce for inspiration: Courage, Strength, and Wisdom

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that would be a nice touch !