Tuesday 12 March 2013

The 4 year old general.

After Arthur's exploits playing Goblin Quest I thought now was the time to introduce him to the fun of mass combat.  It just so happens I have been working on a simple system for us to enjoy together. I have long thought the way to get young minds really interested is to simplify the hard bit, the rolling dice and looking up results on tables. No good to just be told the result or struggle to work it out yourself it should be obvious from the dice roll even to a four year old.

To that end I ordered up a bunch of blank dice to add my own symbols to. Each dice represents one warrior and he can with each throw of the dice, defend successfully, attack successfully, both or neither. The chances for each of these outcomes is dependent on the colour dice you use. It allows attacking, defending, wounding and saving all to occur with one dice roll and comparing the result to your opponents. There are a couple of other symbols in there but they are for advanced rules. More on this another time if there is any interest.

On to the game, Arthur quickly got moving his little figures, measuring, rolling, removing casualties. His own casualties were taken hard but I was probably just as bad at fourteen never mind four. He certainly wanted to finish so, oh just read the battle report..











9 comments:

  1. Neat idea, them dice. Care to elaborate on this?

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  2. That's awesome, Erny. Symbol dice are a great way to eliminate the 'not-able-to-do-this-by-myself' problem. I'd be happy to give your rules a go at some point if you'd like.

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  3. What a delight to read about. You've definitely hit on a winning combination for your son (literally, in this case). Your system reminds me in some ways of the old Battle Masters game. The dice are a great approach, and combining attack and defense results in a single roll is ingenious. But best of all is a perfect time between father and son!

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  4. Thanks for the nice words, love your place Parzival good to see another place on the web and hope my boys are as keen on gaming as your son when they reach his age.

    At the moment the rules are no more fleshed out than these troops use these dice and these troops use those dice. movement and shooting ranges were familiar measurements. I have some ideas about using the other symbols on the dice and then I guess I'll need to jot down some rules Rab.

    Explaining the dice fully is another post matheo, there is quite a big buy in to because you need to make up lots of dice, but I guess once it's done once you don't need to do it again.

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    1. Fortunately I already have a dozen red and a dozen blue of those blank inset dice from an earlier (failed!) version of what has since become Goblinquest. Never throw anything away!

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    2. No problem Erny, looking forward to it :)

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  5. Well done mate, can't wait to learn about them dice! I think you are close to having your lad hooked.

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  6. This looks brilliant and your lad certainly lived every minute of that game!

    The Heroquest dice worked quite well with my lad when we played that game but this is a great idea to expand it to mass battle.

    Looking forward to reading more on the subject.

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  7. I think a SI-FI version couold be achieved with the use of hex paper. Having said that when we talked off of here you said the young general was OK with measuring so maybe this wouldn't be such a problem. It could maybe be an idea for rules for other young'uns that struggloed with measuring. Regardless, I think he needs to have an outing against his Uncle's Ratmen!

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