Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share (15 page)

This system is patterned rather significantly on D&D and a few other RPGs I’ve played over the years. The key factors for your child’s “character” are Attributes, Race, and Class. Using the blank character sheet included in Appendix B (which is also available as a downloadable file at
www.geekdadbook.com
), help your “player” create his character, thinking a lot about what his own strengths and interests are, and crafting the character in such a way that will optimize the results from doing things he would already be expected to do—yes, help him min/max the character if you like, or keep him balanced if you want to encourage him to do a broader range of activities. Since you’ll ultimately control the challenge rolls your children will make and the experience point value of the challenges they face, you can still adjust the “game” based on how they craft their characters at this stage. If they maximize certain attributes in the hope of making successes easier down the line, you can always set a higher challenge rating to balance. Just don’t tell them you’re doing it—you’d be likely to hear “but that’s not fair!”

Players start with 12s straight across, and 5 Attribute points to distribute. For every gained attribute point, they can also move an existing point from one Attribute to another. For example, if a starting player wanted to max out his STR, he could use all 5 of his starting points to raise the 12 to a 17, and then move an additional point from INT (making it 11) to STR to end up with an 18. Said player could still move around an additional 4 points, say from INT to DEX, ending up with the following Attributes:

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).

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 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.

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!