Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share (17 page)

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:

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.

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.

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.

T
he 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:

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: