This weekend I did something that would probably get me killed if I ever attempted to put it up on the blog. I ran a game of +Justin Halliday‘s Hero Kids … in space … with plasma swords and laser guns and android pets … it was a lot of work. Honestly through the split coffee, the tangled mess of scotch tape (my one-year-old got to my notes) and everything else, I have no idea if I would ever be able to post anything.
The one caveat all the parents in my daughter’s game have is that I’m not allowed to post pictures of their kids online, which means no pictures of the game either. Makes me a little sad, really. The kids love the bi-weekly gaming session, and oddly last weekend’s one shot was their favorite to date.
Rules wise, nothing much changed except the lack of caster types and certain melee based types. So no brutes or warlocks, but the healer made her way through with the Medic, who was given flash bang like grenades to replace the searing light power.
The game was simple enough the heroes were traveling with people of their village to the capital world to see the coronation of the Princess of All Space. Their engines were hit by asteroids and the ship crashed on a mysterious forest planet.
Turned out the forest planet was a secret base for a bunch of space pirates and the families of the kids are taken prisoner along with the remains of the ship while the kids were out exploring. The kids initially try to follow the pirates but get hopelessly lost. Some excellent roleplaying happened here as the girls started to cry and break-down and the boys were all … well little boy brave and trying to act all grown up. I was very surprised by this and swore to myself that I would reward them somehow.
So the kids set-up what the can for a camp that night and all fall asleep to a fire that one of the boys creative started with his blasters. It was while they slept that they had their first monster encounter. A creature called an Grity which looks like a large hairless rat with a split jaw wandered into the kids’ camp sniffing for food. The boys woke up first and started to try and scare it off with roars and monkey sounds. The Grity wasn’t scared, however, and instead took the boys as a threat and attempted to attack them. Her was another great play moment because while the boys were doing this the younger of the two girls (a medic in training) whispered in my ear that she was going to roll a flash bang over to the Grity. So I secretly let her and I made the rolls behind my screen. After a few seconds I nodded to her and she screamed “CLOSE YOUR EYES!” making everyone at the table jump. The kids all closed their eyes, the Grity screamed in pain as it was blinded and ran off … unfortunately the other girl was still in her sleeping bag and the Grity accidentally caught up the sleeping bag (and girl inside) as it ran off.
The others give chase and soon find the Grity’s lair, an ancient temple with statues of robed figures holding glowing swords before them (the swords of the statues did glow). The kids explored the temple while looking for their friend, and in one room the two boys found a locked chest which they managed to bash open. Inside they found two tubes. They each took one and within moments found the buttons on the tubes which released the plasma energy sword constructs held within the tubes.
While the other three were exploring the temple and finding the plasma swords, the last girl (the captured) find herself in the den of the Grity and discovers that the animal is very gentle and is in fact the pet of an old man in dark, but much patched robes. This man reveals himself as an Exiled Knight who has been hiding on the forest world for decades. As the girl and the old man talk a sound can be heard in the distance (the boys bashing the lock). The old Knight goes to investigate, and as he leaves he activates his own plasma sword … a dark red one.
Right around here is where we ended, because we’d played for three hours and three of the kids had parents waiting in my living room, making awkward conversation with my wife.
The kids had fun, I had fun running it for them and I do feel really bad about all the notes and character sheets getting destroyed by my one-year-old after the fact (lesson of the day, never leave gaming stuff out when you have babies). If the kids ask I’ll probably run this again. They still have to rescue their friend after all.
2 thoughts on “Childreeeeeeeeen in Spaaaaaaaaace!!!!”
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Just started reading up about Hero Kids, it looks awesome. I'd like to have a convo with you on the mechanics, how easy is it to grasp etc.
Rather easy actually. A read through of the entire rule book takeas about 15 to 20 minutes and the rules and character creation rules are easy to grasp.
Combat and resolving skill challenges are bassed on the number of dice. So if a character attacks and a monster defends both roll dice. If both have two dice in each than the one with the higher number wins. That's not higher number in terms of addition but in terms of pips on a single dice. So say the attacker has a 5 and a 3 and the defender has a 4 and 4 than the attack wins because of the 5.