Not quite on topic, but nearly. My kids turned 10 on Sunday. We started roleplaying games using the Dragon Warriors system about two years ago after I saw how they got into the BBC’s Merlin series on television. We’re playing a continuous campaign in a Legend-like world with fixed characters rather than individual adventures.

Readers of this blog will know by now that we’re presently in a state of flux. We finished the 2010/2011 gaming season (we usually only play in the winter half of the year) still playing according to Dragon Warriors rules. July saw us trying a test drive with Savage Worlds using an available module together with pregen’d characters.

Yesterday I was home alone with the kids on a rainy day before school starts again. Over lunch we were talking about when we might start up again and my son volunteered that he preferred the Dragon Warriors system. When I asked him why, his response was that ‘the combat is more realistic’. ‘Interesting response for a 10-year old’ I thought. Dragon warriors uses an Attack score vs. Defence to resolve combat (with Defence being split amongst the opponents that the PC is facing), followed by an armour bypass role and fixed damage against hit points, whereby the hitpoints advance incrementally as characters level up. Savage Worlds isn’t that different. Fighting skill vs. Parry followed by Damage vs. Toughness but a fixed number of wounds. Nevertheless, the whole ‘aces’ and ‘exploding dice’ thing was a bit silly for him. A ten-year old.

And then we got onto talking about the various players in the group. We started gaming with the family (wife included) and a neighbour, none of which had any previous experience with tabletop RPGs (the neighbour had plenty of experience with computer RPGs). In spring an experienced gaming colleague joined us for a couple of sessions, changing the dynamic significantly with his in-character role playing. The kids are adamant that they want to continue in this vein. ‘Silly’ players were definitely not wanted (not that we have had any experience of this). Anybody else joining the group ‘would have to take the game seriously’.

Somehow, somewhere along the line, we must have done something right with them. I’m proud of my geeklets!