System for Kids?

d6 dice pool. stat+skill to make the die pool, roll your pool, add the pips up, beat the DC.

its also free and universal. they've got space, fantasy, and adventure books.

Mini Six is an even more simplified version. only like the first 10 pages are rules, the rest are alt rules and pre-made settings.

the Ghostbusters RPG is just a really old D6 game back during WEG's prime. I just think its really beginner friendly (kinda hard to die in too)

they also made a Star Wars RPG.

there's also simple D6 on 1d4chan. the rules are just a jpeg

Fuck me that looks WAY too much like Super Dungeon Explore.

FAE
That's a good suggestion too. Stupid simple.

Oh, nice.

I've seen d6 star wars.

...

That's pretty simple. I'll share it with him too, see what he thinks.

Any other suggestions?

How old are those kids? If they're primary school age or older, I'm pretty sure they would be fine playing D&D as long as DM is good at explaining rules.

>It's there a rulebook to accompany that sheet?
As far as I know, the only rules are the ones it gives there. Still, that's pretty much all you need except for spells, and for those you could use some other game as inspiration, and just tweak the effects of the spells to make them the right power level. One thing you could is to let folks pick D&D spells from levels 1-4. When you cast them, roll a d6 against the level of the spell. If you exceed the spell's level, you properly cast the spell. If you tie the spell's level, you have partial success (the effect is diminished, there is a side effect, etc.). If you roll lower than the spell's level, you fail.

Of course, you'd have to fudge the effects anyway, so maybe you could just use the existing spell list as inspiration.

>I think 4e might be too slow/complicated.
>I can kinda see low level 4e working, but beyond that it'd be too complicated.

There is a simpler alternative...

Probably still worth pregenning characters.

The Warren
Golden Sky Stories
Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
Vast, Starlit

This could work, if you replaced the expletives, of course.

How old are they?

Honestly, I suggest you just drop something fast and loose.
A dice pool mechanic is good for really rather young ones.

Write three things your character can do really well, like swings swords, throwing fireballs, riding horses, or telling lies.
Now write something he doesn't like, or is bad at.
When he tries to do something, roll two (six sided) dice. If he's doing one of the things he's good at, you get an extra die for each thing he's good at that is currently what he's doing.
Like if he's good at fighting dragons and throwing big rocks, he rolls four dice to hit a dragon with a big rock.
But if the thing he's bad at or doesn't like is in the situation, roll one less die. Like the previous hero, he hates bad smells so he only rolls three dice if it's a stinky dragon who hasn't bathed in years.
Once the dice hit the table, if any land on a 5 or 6, you did the action. If multiple, you did the action very well.
...The odds of success are like 1/3 for one die, just better than half normally, about 2/3 for one talent, 7/10 for two talents, and 4/5 if you get all five dice... roughly, I could give you exacts, but fuck that.
Combat is a three strike system.
Get hit once and your hurt, twice and your exhausted (roll one less die on every action), and thrice you're knocked out... this is from my homebrew ruleset that isn't ruleslite at all, and has a bit more, but usually it plays out like this and is pretty nice.
Extra successes cause extra hits, enemies have number of hits (and dice rolled per attack) adjusted for how scary they are, and can possibly do tricky things that make certain heroes unable to fight them for a turn (like flying too high for swords, or snake coiling around one of them).

If they're a bit older, play Ninja Burger or Paranoia XP (using Zap! rules).

I run most of my games in D6 even over systems like Savage Worlds, if that tells you anything about how far the complexity can scale. On the other end of things it can be incredibly simple. The power of the rules lies in their customizability. Could be great to run games using it for kids, and then up the complexity for the older kids (run 6 attributes instead of 4, more involved skill lists, more detailed gear lists that gives weapons more benefits and differences than just damage, etc)

I got the impression it was largely grade 3-6, so, like 7 to 11 maybe. I'm not quite sure, he didn't say.

Not a bad idea, I'll mention it to him.

Thanks!

Lots of good suggestions here. Thanks guys.

Savage Worlds uses a health/wounds system similar to that. 3 Levels basically. Fine, Shaken, and D.E.D. Except in SW you burn a meta resource to reduce the status from shaken to fine so it turns out to be more than that in practice.

I'll have to check those out, I'm not familiar with them.

I'm seconding The Warren. Perfect setting for kids. Of course it could also turn into Watership Down at the GM's whim.

Yeah, I've played SW. Bennie's are like overcomplicated HP.

What is the Warren?

Or those other games for that matter? I have no familiarity with them.

I don't think that's really what they were intended to be, as they are supposed to be a measure of basically plot power/plot armor. They give you bonuses to rolls and shit, allow you to fuck shit up and manipulate the world and so on. But they're always used as a shitty HP-like resource because the game only has three levels of damage by default. You can hardly take a punch to the face or a sword stroke without either croaking or burning bennies. But if you've played it, you already know that.

The Warren is about roleplaying as rabbits/bunnies that are part of a Warren. It's about their struggles against the environment, each other, and primarily other warrens. I don't know the other ones but The Warren ranges from feel-good bunny rp to torturous hellscape depending on the GM

>The Warren is about roleplaying as rabbits/bunnies that are part of a Warren. It's about their struggles against the environment, each other, and primarily other warrens. I don't know the other ones but The Warren ranges from feel-good bunny rp to torturous hellscape depending on the GM
Oh my....

From
>The warren on the other side of the river has been eating out of your carrot patch!
To
>The band of foxes has been eating the children every night, leaving the parents alive to make more and more of them. Tonight they make their final move to destroy your warren, and the warren across the river will take over the carrot patch at the same time

Someone actually made simple playsheets for 4e characters for kids.

jamesstowe.blogspot.hu/2011/09/dnd-for-8-year-olds.html
jamesstowe.blogspot.hu/2011/09/dnd-for-dads-2-girls-part-1.html
jamesstowe.blogspot.hu/2011/09/dnd-for-dads-girls-part-2.html

depending on the age group I'd recommend 2e D&D (I'd say good for ages ~8+ maybe lower depending on how nerdy they are) its slightly more open ended than 4e and a lot less complicated than 3 or 3.f also you can just kind of ignore rules without to much repercussion in that one. The only problem maybe the amount of reading involved but that shouldn't be that much of an issue.

>Fate Accelerated

So simple, even Ribbon can learn it.

2e has dreaded THAC0 though. It was pretty hard to understand.

THAC0 - AC = target number
or THAC0 - roll = minimum AC hit

Never played 2e and I find it trivial to understand.

Thac0 + descending armor class is incredibly unintuitive. I would use a retroclone rather than the original rules.

I never said it wasn't unintuitive. But it is also very far from hard to understand.

How old are the kids? If they're in the 5-10 year old range then this is probably the best option.

If they're 10-15 I'd go with something like Microlite d20

I agree with Microlite 20 for adolescent kids. It's simple and very easy to get into. Or maybe even something like Lasers & Feelings, if he wants a specifically sci-fi vibe.

Different guy.

Easy to understand, sure. Still awkward as fuck to use though.

>depending on the age group I'd recommend 2e D&D
AD&D is needlessly cluttered, and more than you need for a game with kids. If you want to play old school D&D, Moldvay Basic (or some retroclone) is the way to go.

>2e has dreaded THAC0 though. It was pretty hard to understand.
THAC0 is just different way of solving the exact same equation. (It's like you have two groups of two items and to find out how many items there are, you can either add 2 and 2, or multiply 2 and 2.) It's pretty easy to convert from THAC0/descending AC to the d20 mechanic/ascending AC (see pic).

B/X or LBB.

I've heard Maze Rats works well with younger players. It's also available at "pay what you want" on Drive Thru RPG:
drivethrurpg.com/product/197158/Maze-Rats

Also, I've already made my own simple system for kids and newcomers. In short, it's:

>entirely based on 6 ability scores, no modifiers
>all checks, including combat, use the same checks using 6 sided dice pools
>your abilities are defined by your species and archetype (characters are designed for episodic play, not development)
>each species and archetype has a unique ability
>all magic is dynamic and spells are created by the players (requirements are adjudicated by the referee)
>everything is kept track of using cards and tokens, so there's no need for math
>72 species cards (13 player and 59 non-player), 36 archetype cards, 72 equipment cards
>red tokens to keep track of damage, green tokens to keep track of magic

GURPS

Ignore this idiot.
If the kids might be into greek myths at all, try Mazes and Minotaurs. Crazy simple DnD lite game, set in not!Ancient Greece. Can be used to teach history and the classics! And you can slay minotaur!!!

Lmao.

I've been wanting to play GURPS with my group, including the librarian.

But I know enough to know it's a mite complicated for kids.

kickstarter.com/projects/marktruman/the-plays-the-thing-a-shakespearean-rpg

Wrong link

magpiegames.com/our-games/theplay/

I can vouch for this. Used one of the sample settings with a group completely new to tabletop games and it was a blast. Character creation was absurdly simple as well- Put twelve dice into four attributes and seven dice into skills. Your character's 90% done by then.
OP, If you do end up using Mini Six, I recommend getting a lot of standard d6 dice but also different-colored dice to help differentiate the wild die from the others. Heck, you could even go the extra mile: get a bunch of different-colored d6 dice and let each player pick out their favorite color for their wild die.

Dungeon Squad: Dumb, fast, simple.

The Princes' Kingdom
Hero Kids
Faery's Tale

Fate accelerated, lazers and feelings, F.A.T.A.L., atomic highway (only choose rearing and pursuit and your character is basically finished, d6 pools are easy), Cypher, mini d6