Designing Adventures for Kids

This week I was pondering about designing games for children. A few years back I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to contribute some adventure content for the Hero Kids Community Guild. For those uninitiated, Hero Kids is a super simple, yet unique, clean and tight system (utilizing only d6's) for running RPGs with kids between the ages of 5 and 12 years old.

However, my background is writing D&D content for adults, and at the time, I had never written for children before. The first question I asked myself was, are my normal themes of horror, exciting combat, and intricate stories suitable for kids of that age? Probably not.

I mean, I could throw in a small zombie run, add a murderous lich to boot, but how many nights do parents really want to be woken by their screaming child from nightmares filled with zombies and other classic RPG monsters? Answer: NONE!

So the classics might not be best suited here. That is when I turned my attention to my own young son and daughter (5yo and 7yo at the time respectively). I observed the kinds of TV shows they were watching, and more notably laughing with - it was Captain Underpants. This show is pure junk-time, full of fart jokes, and silly humor... but the kids loved it! And at the end of the day, their enjoyment is what matters.

One thing I really wanted to do was bring joy and humor to the kid's experience at the table, not horrify them. So, for my first adventure with the Hero Kids system, I decided to write an adventure revolving around a friendly dragon's magical flatulence - I mean, really, who doesn't love a good fart joke, right?

And thus, The Case of the Repulsive Fart Monster was born.

Tip: When designing for kids, always observe what brings THEM joy. A long winded, intricate masterpiece, filled with decade old RPG tropes is likely to bore (or worse, SCARE) your little heroes and likely push them away from ever wanting to play again. The key: Keep it SHORT, keep it SIMPLE, and keep it FUN. Use mainstream kid's TV shows for inspiration - that is where their "tropes" will come from.