

RPG for Pre-Schoolers - bengarvey
http://kidsdungeonadventure.com/
Your kids have a great imagination, so put it to good use and try the Kids Dungeon Adventure. My daughter is 4 and she loves it.
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hsmyers
Showing my age I guess, but two things occur to me; 1. RPG stands for Rocket
Propelled Grenade to my mind so it took a while to crack the context :), and
2. much more importantly don't we have a pretty good product description and
field test going on here? Seems like desktop CNC and a load of maple could
lead to initial sales at Society for Creative Anachronism fairs later this
summer and more general toy fairs post success after...

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michael_dorfman
And I guess I'm showing my age: RPG for me means Report Program Generator, and
was what we used to program in (alongside COBOL) back in the pre-PC days. (Cf
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG_II>)

(It was a trip of a programming language-- OpCodes had different meanings,
depending on which column they were placed in. Take a look at the sample code
in the Wikipedia article.)

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marshray
At first I was a little bothered by the idea of a "preschool dungeon
adventure". But on further reflection I suppose it says something positive
about our culture that the term "dungeon" has lost it's association with
"torture chamber".

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pg
That association is comparatively recent anyway, probably Victorian or later.

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akkartik
The meaning of 'underground cell' is apparently from the 14th century:
<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dungeon>

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JeffL
Sounds like a cool idea. It would be interesting to see the rules you're using
in addition to the pictures of the dungeons.

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bengarvey
Battle system is very simple and not the focus of the game. You need to make
it a true obstacle, but the real fun for the kids is completing the quest,
opening the treasures, finding all the monsters, etc.

The battles are essentially: Roll to see who goes first, then each side takes
turns beating up the other with a six sided die to determine damage.

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rycs
you know what? my wife is at the living room trying to study and we have a 4
year old son that I have to keep busy today. I am a big fan of RPG games and I
really liked this idea, going to see if it works with him :) thank you!

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rycs
much to my surprise it worked, I mean, after we finished the first maze (it
was short just a proof of concept), he wanted to do another one and he really
got into trying to save the schoolbus, funny thing was that he rolled the dice
over the monsters and then hit them with the dice during the battle, epic!

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bengarvey
Glad you liked it! My daughter has a toy robot that has it's own battle song.

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mamacker
Played this with my boys(5 and 3) and they really liked it. Play lasted for
about two hours - and they are looking forward to the next. A tip that worked
well with them - carry over money and food for the next quest - made them
value the coins/food even more!

Thanks!

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protomyth
Hero Quest and its ilk were good for this sort of thing.

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dgabriel
Have you sent a free copy to Dooce? She's a good start for publicity.

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bengarvey
Thanks for the tip. I'll do that.

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protomyth
When the kid gets a little older, Arkham Horror (a Cthulhu Mythos board game)
might be something to try. It has all the players working against the "game".

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bengarvey
I love co-op games, so thanks for the tip.

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protomyth
The sets they sell in this line are really good and pretty well balanced.
Depending on what set you play with, it is a very different game each time.

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Mz
My two sons used to do this kind of thing all the time, minus the printed
monsters. They had entire boxes of items that they kept around specifically to
help them build mazes and also were very bad about co-opting every video-tape
in the house or similar.

