by Ken Denmead
Use the classic D&D/LotR races for this to keep it simple.
Feel free to make up your own additional character races based on what your kids may want (girls may enjoy Faeries, boys may want Ogres—or vice versa!), but always make sure the balance is +10%/-10% for the experience from contrasting kinds of challenges they may face).
Character Classes
Depending on the class, the character will earn one additional skill point every third level in a focused area. Skill points can be used to acquire a new skill or to increase the character’s rank in an existing skill.
Again, feel free to add or edit these classes depending on your children’s interests. Just stick to the game mechanic of granting one additional skill point every third level in an area tagged with two specific types.
Tags
Tags are ways of organizing ideas. In this game, both Skills and Challenges are tagged with different words that help identify what concepts they apply to, helping sort out what bonuses may figure in determining experience. Ultimately, how Skills and Challenges are tagged is up to you and how you want to run the game. For instance, you may decide that allowing your child to apply his Magic bonus to creating a good science fair project makes sense, but applying his Agility bonus does not.
Skills
In our game, skills represent not only things your child knows how to do, but may also be permissions he’s been granted or chores he may perform only with special approval. Skills are things such as a regular weekly allowance or how much TV/computer game or play time they are granted each week. Skills can also be how late the child can stay up on school nights, whether he can take an elective course, be on a sports team, or use the lawn mower unsupervised. It’s anything your child can do that you should be monitoring as part of being an involved parent, and anything that can be seen as a reward for meeting goals and expectations.
Certain skills are “growable,” meaning they can be increased over time. We call this “adding ranks.” For example, when your child is six or seven, getting $1 a week in allowance may be sufficient, so he may choose to take one Skill in Allowance ($1 per week per rank). As he gets older, and financial needs increase (must buy more video games!), he may choose to spend the skill points he gets when leveling up by increasing his rank in Allowance to get them up to $3 per week. The same may work for minutes of television per week, or school night bedtime.
Other skills may have limited growth yet also allow the earning of more experience points. For example, Yard Work. At rank 1, this means the child is allowed to help an adult with yard work for small amounts of eps. At rank 2, the child is allowed to help with yard work, including supervised use of the lawn mower and hedge trimmer. This will allow him to earn higher amounts of eps for the challenges he faces. At rank 3, the child is allowed to perform yard work completely unsupervised, earning even more eps every time he does the job. Of course, as these skills require a certain level of maturity and care, you can make them harder to attain by increasing the skill points required to buy additional ranks, or set a minimum age for choosing them. Once again: Tailor the system to your children!
Suggested Skills, Point Adjustments (Tags)
1-POINT SKILLS
Bivouac—+1 to Challenge Rolls for cleaning a room (cleaning, solitary). Rankable.
Scullery—+1 to Challenge Rolls for doing the dishes (cleaning, solitary). Rankable.
Animal Handling—+1 to Challenge Rolls for pet care (feeding, scooping, washing, walking). Rankable.
Athletics—+1 to Challenge Rolls for successes in sporting endeavors (practice, games, outdoor play). Rankable.
Academics—+1 to Challenge Rolls for successes in educational endeavors (tests, spelling bees, weekly homework, reading goals). Rankable.
Minstrelsy—+1 to Challenge Rolls for successes in performance (plays, chorus, arts, band/instrument practice). Rankable.
Salary—+$1 per week in allowance (benefit, monetary). Rankable.
Curfew—+30 minutes to base bedtime.
Entertainment—+30 minutes a week to allowed TV, video game, computer game time. Rankable.
Indoor Tool Use (Specific Tool)—Permission to use a specific indoor tool toward confronting higher-exp challenges (washing machine, iron, vacuum, stove, oven, etc.). Two ranks: 1 point allows supervised use, 2 points allow unsupervised use.
Outdoor Tool Use (Specific Tool)—Permission to use a specific outdoor tool toward confronting higher-exp challenges (lawn mower, hedge trimmers, leaf blower, pressure washer, etc.). Two ranks: 1 point allows supervised use. 2 points allow unsupervised use.
Environmentalism—+1 toward Challenge Rolls on environmentally friendly activities (recycling, composting, park cleanups).
2-POINT SKILLS
Indoor Combat—+1 to Challenge Rolls for all indoor chores, such as room cleaning, laundry, dishes (does not include tool use). Rankable.
Outdoor Combat—+1 to Challenge Rolls for all outdoor chores such as basic yard work, simple maintenance, or cleanup (does not include tool use). Rankable.
Cooking—+1 to Challenge Rolls for fixing family meals. Rankable.
3-POINT SKILLS
Mastery (Challenge)—+5 to Challenge Rolls for a specific challenge for which the character has taken over complete responsibility (per GM’s determination). For example, if the character has taken on doing all the family laundry, every day, he could take this skill and be relatively assured of earning high bonus eps every week. Must already have skills for any tools required.
Driver’s License—One rank: Authority to take driver training and obtain a learner’s permit. Two ranks: Permission to take the test and get the license. Three ranks: Permission to use the car supervised. Four Ranks: Permission to use the car unsupervised.
Challenges/Experience/Levels
The basic idea of most RPGs is rolling a die to determine success or failure at a challenge based upon your character’s abilities, skills, and a luck factor. Success (and sometimes failure) brings experience, and characters will “level up” after accumulating experience—attain a discrete new level of understanding and skill where they may get new points to spend on increasing their skills and attributes.
For our game, the challenges won’t be imagined combat with subterranean monsters or solving a puzzle to disarm a trap; rather, these are the chores our kids must do regularly, the tests we want them to study for and perform well on, or the sports, music, or theater events we want them to practice for and perform well at. So, since the characters in our game (our kids) will actually be performing the challenges we give them, we won’t have them roll a die beforehand to determine success or failure. Instead, we’ll have them roll a die after the job is done, to determine how many experience points they earn from the job they did.
Below are some suggested challenges with base exp values and tags to help determine which skills and bonuses apply. This list is by no means exhaustive, and you should work up your own list based on your kids’ habits and talents. What is very important, though, is balancing the exp they earn. The game is set up based on the idea that kids will gain one level every three to four months. For younger kids and those just starting out, that means twelve to sixteen weeks between levels, which are 1,000 exp apart, so kids should be earning in a range of sixty to ninety exp per week. Like any good game master, you need to balance. Too many points coming in, and the kids will get bored with the game; too few and they’ll get frustrated. Use your best judgment, and communicate with them to make sure they’re getting something out of it.
Suggested Challenges, Base eps Value (Tags)
Room Cleaning (weekly), 20 eps (indoor, combat, solitary)
Dishes (weekly), 20 eps (indoor, combat, solitary)
Yard Work (weekly or per event), 10-25 eps (outdoor, combat, solitary or support)
Laundry (weekly), 10-20 eps (indoor, combat, solitary or support)
Pet Care (weekly), 15-25 eps (outdoor, combat, solitary)
Homework (weekly), 20 eps (ind
oor, magic, solitary)
Instrument/Sport Practice (weekly), 10-20 eps (indoor or outdoor, combat, solitary or group)
Tests (per event), 10-20 eps (magic, indoor, solitary)
Performances/Games (per event), 15 eps (indoor or outdoor, magic or combat, solitary, group, or support)
Church Event (per event), 20 eps (indoor or outdoor, spiritual, group or support)
Clean Out Garage (per event), 50 eps (indoor, combat, solitary or support)
Prepare a Meal/Cook (per event, weekly), 20 eps (indoor, creative, solitary or support)
Paint a Room (per event), 50 eps (indoor, combat, solitary or support)
Participate in a charity event (per event), 30 eps (indoor or outdoor, support or group)
To determine the experience earned for a task, first start by setting a base experience value for the task. Then determine a base Challenge Rating for the task; default should be 11—the statistical average roll for a d20 (actually it’s 10.5, but you can’t roll a 10.5, so we round). If your child performs the challenge especially well, you can lower the rating (making it easier to earn a bonus), or if he does it poorly, raise the rating (making a negative more likely). Then determine your child’s Challenge Roll bonus based on his Level, Attributes, and Skills. Have him roll a d20, add the bonus, and figure out the result below:
ROLL VS. CHALLENGE RATING RESULT
For example, your child’s challenge is to clean his room once a week, earning 20 base eps each time. The challenge “Room Cleaning” is tagged as “indoor, physical, solitary.” Your child’s character is a second level Elven Ranger, he has a 15 STR, and took the Bivouac skill with 1 rank so far. His Challenge Roll bonus is +2 for being second level, +1 for STR, and +1 for the Bivouac skill, for a total of +4. You feel he did a reasonable job at the cleaning, so you set the CR at 11. He rolls a d20 and gets a 12, and adds a bonus of +4 to get a total 16 versus the CR, or 5 more. Since he got 5 over the CR, he earns a +10 bonus to the eps—HOWEVER, because he is an Elf, he loses 10% eps on indoor activities, leaving him with the base 20 eps.
Yes, this is math. But your kid will do it, and enjoy it, because the risk/reward is awesome, and most kids love working this kind of thing out (and trying to game the system—watch out!).
Eventually, your players will gain enough experience to level up. The chart below sets eps goals per level, and the bonuses they gain, for a span of six to eight years of the game. Again, the goal is to have them level up about once every three to four months. If your kids play longer, expand the list as you deem fit.
Character Sheet
Of course, they’ll need a character sheet to track all of this. You’ll want to record, well, everything. Indeed, the character sheet will be a living document that gets updated every week, if not every day, sort of a checkbook combined with a personal journal. And while your geeklets may chafe at the paperwork to start, in a while the value of it as a personal record will become obvious. Plus, when you say something about their not mowing the lawn last week, they’ll have all the proof they need to refute your spurious claim. Hey, wait a minute. . . .
There’s a sample character sheet included in Appendix B at the back of this book. It’s pretty basic, but it’ll give you an example of what to track. It’s a good idea to have extra pages attached as a register of the challenges faced, the eps earned, and the skill and attribute points gained and distributed.
More Resources
Everything above should be plenty to kick things off, especially with a little thought on your part about the challenges and skills you want to use. There are downloadable versions of the charts and character sheets on www.geekdadbook.com, as well as forums where we hope people will share their additions or variations on this game.
A Never-Ending Demolition Derby
The demolition derby has always held a special place in our culture. Not unlike Ultimate Fighting, the spectacle is simple: Two cars enter, one car leaves. Problem is, once someone wins, someone else has to go looking for a new car. Actually, even the winner often has to look for a new car. Kind of a waste of materials, really.
So why not build cars for the demolition derby that are designed with breakaway components that can be reattached or easily replaced after each match? Then the competition becomes a matter of the strategic ablation (knocking pieces off) of your opponent’s vehicle, rather than a simple smash-and-bash.
Of course, if we can imagine something like this on a big scale, we ought to be able to build and play it on a small scale.
To start, you have to select your R/C cars very carefully. It’s going to be much easier to attach the LEGO plates to the outside if you have plenty of flat surfaces rather than round ones to work with. With flat surfaces, all you really need to do is select plates that roughly fit on the roof, hood, trunk, and sides. It doesn’t matter if you use a few larger plates, or more and smaller plates—the goal is the same: Make as much of the exterior surface of your vehicle that is able to have blocks attached to it.
WARNING: You may be about to permanently affix the LEGO plates to the sides of your R/C car. Do not purchase or use R/C cars that you, or someone else in your family, are attached to from an aesthetic or sentimental standpoint. The cars will be irreparably altered by this project, as could your relationship with loved ones if you hack their toys without permission.
Time for the sticky-sticky. As I suggested in the project summary above, you have a number of options for attaching the LEGO plates to the cars. Simplest is probably the old crafting standby, the hot-glue gun. A couple of globs per plate and the job is done, though you may need to give them some curing time to make sure the glue has dried.
There is also the two-sided foamy tape used for its ability to stick things to walls, and cursed for then taking layers of drywall paper with it when removed. This tape has the advantage of allowing you to build up layers to help deal with contours on the cars’ surfaces as well, though you need to make sure you’ve got your placement right the first time.
Another cool alternative is to use a roll of two-sided sticky Velcro tape (perhaps in combination with the foam tape). This will give you the flexibility of being able to remove and reaffix plates, perhaps in mid-derby, allowing for some interesting rule options. Or, for maximum remove/reattach action, the stick-on/pull-to-remove sticky strips used for picture hooks these days will do an admirable job as well.
I mentioned regular craft store squishy foam as an optional material. This would be useful for fine-tuning the attachment of plates if it is trimmed into custom shapes to help fill in dips and rises in your cars’ shells. Entirely up to you to use or ignore.
With the plates attached, you’ve done the “hard” work (and really, it’s not that hard, is it?). Now it’s time for the creativity: Build a seat on the roof for your minifig, with a simulated cage around it so he looks like the Mohawk guy from Road Warrior.
Build some kind of ramming construct on the front of your car. Or a scoop to try and flip your opponents.
Put bricks on the sides to act as armor.
Once you and your kid have your wicked-looking combat cars assembled, it’s time to SMASH!
But there’s more you can do besides just bashing into each other! Why not turn it into a game? Decide what kind of game you want your demolition derby to be, and build brick structures on the base plates accordingly. Here are some ideas: Each player gets a certain number of bricks to plug on to his car. Hold a timed battle (say, two minutes), and the car with the most remaining bricks at the end wins the round. Hold multiple rounds with multiple challengers to create a tournament.
Each player has a group of specifically colored bricks that he plugs into the outside of his car. Then he can build up structures around those bricks to protect the special bricks. Hold a timed battle, and each colored brick that’s knocked off earns the opponent a point. Score points to win games, win games to win a set, win sets to take the match!
Each player has a minifig “driver.” The driver is attached
on the roof (hopefully, using a LEGO chair of some sort), and then structures are built on the sides and around the minifig to protect it. Hold a battle, and the last minifig still attached wins.
For all the game scenarios above, if you use the Velcro idea above, allow time-outs where plates/structures can be swapped out to rebuild a car mid-battle.
An Even Geekier Idea!
To add to the derby sensibility, you can build an arena for all this model carnage. If you have some spare 2-by-4s, lay them out in a useful shape (octagons are cool), and use duct tape and a staple gun to temporarily connect the ends. For an easier and potentially cheaper approach (especially if you do the Slip ’N Slide project on page 113 in this book), use pool noodles as the borders of your arena, and try duct tape and rubber bands to loosely tie the ends together.
AND A NOTE ABOUT CLEANUP: One potential time waster with this project is having to clean up all the bricks between battles. There is an easy way around this problem. If you’re like most GeekDads, one key feature of your workshop is a Shop-Vac. Make sure it’s clean and empty at the start, and then just vacuum up all the cast-off pieces between battles, and dump them back in the construction pool when it’s time to build some more. Easy!
Okay, GeekDads and Kids—time for some vehicular carnage!
GEEKY ACTIVITIES FOR THE GREAT OUTDOORS