RE: Raising young Gamers Re: The GZG Digest V2 #1822

I haven't done much figure gaming with my daughters but we have done
quite a bit a board gaming, but I do have a stock of figures that the
girls (6 and 8) are allowed to play with. However we regularly play
"Awful green things from Outer space" and have graduated to "Fighting
Sail". Briony (8) does not show much interest in SF gaming (other than
"AGTFOS")but is showing interest in doing WW1 having bought an built a
Mk IV (with some help from dad) and some british infantry so all I need
is some simple WW1 rules (Comptemtible Little Armies? or Stargrunt
lite?)

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Beth.Fulton@csiro.au [mailto:Beth.Fulton@csiro.au]
Sent: 03 December 2003 00:27
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: RE: Raising young Gamers Re: The GZG Digest V2 #1822

G'day,

Biggest rule is don't exclude them. Plenty of times I've seen friends
with kids say "why don't my kids want to play?" and then as soon as the
kid turns up its all "why don't you sit down and be quiet or go over
there or go do something else" etc. Kids want to be an active part so
let them. Let them roll dice, if they go flying across the board explain
patiently to them they're not allowed to go outside the box and mark out
a box on the table edge. If you don't want the kids to touch the figs
tell them politely and have some "touchable" ones in reserve or use one
of their toys. After that its just a matter of slowly winding back the
"let kids go first, don't enforce all rules with deadly precision"
quotient until they're full on. The key underlying factor whether the
kid is 2 or 42 is patience. As in everything they've got to crawl before
they walk and you've got to have the patience to see them down that road
without just ordering them away because its too much hassle. 

Second biggest rule is silly is fine... zombie amazons protecting the
great chocolate box temple from the heroic band of dwarf loving centaurs
would freak out some of the more straight laced historical gamers down
here, but kids love it. After that its a surprisingly short step to "Mum
I did Napoleon's grand battery in show and tell today!".

Cheers

Beth

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