What are the best enemies to have in a kid-toned game? I've thought about robots, ghosts and zombies, anything else?. I'm not against them killing sentient things, but at least, not indiscriminatelly like mooks. A battle with a humanoid should be meaningful.
Is it OK as a GM for when a PC defeats an evil mook, to have him go away defeated, but escape by GM fiat, to avoid players execute him/torture him to get information?
That game was cute.
Mutated/corrupted nature spirits. Defeating them purifies the dark mojo away.
GM fiat is fine, but make sure players still get XP/loot after the encounter. My favorite way to do it is to introduce team rocket-like villains building more and more ridiculous machines each time. This makes for cool boss fights, make them easy to blast away afterwards and rewards players with whatever bits and pieces left on the battlefield.
If you need an enemy to escape the PCs for plot reasons, make sure you have a foolproof escape plan liad out from the start so you don't have to pull obvious GM fiat on your players. Depending on how reliably dumb your players are, you can even drop little hints as to how the enemy eventually escapes so you can at least say they had a chance. I recently had an enemy NPC escape using a magic item the players owned in the previous game. They still haven't figured out that half his gear belongs to their old characters.
Skeletons
>Slimes
>Animated armor/house hold objects/ anything
>Mushroom creatures
>Mimics
Golems
Living armor
Humanoid shaped piles of animated objects.
Bunch of books and pencils shaped like a person, bunch of compost and mushrooms, bunch of blankets and scarves, etc. Gives you a lot of different texture to fluff attacks as too.
When defeated it leaves a broken pile of stuff. Not much to question there. You can also have the magical animation leave some sort of intelligible clue behind to further plot. Like the books get overwritten with commands and directions.
>My favorite way to do it is to introduce team rocket-like villains building more and more ridiculous machines each time. This makes for cool boss fights, make them easy to blast away afterwards and rewards players with whatever bits and pieces left on the battlefield.
yeah I'm totally keeping that. Thanks a lot user!!!
>make sure you have a foolproof escape plan liad out from the start so you don't have to pull obvious GM fiat on your players
This is what I'm concerned. I'm mostly an improvising GM, so I let them do most anything they want, and I just roll with it. Maybe I can do something like "rocks fall, the enemy vanishes" and then just make up some good reasons of Why and How.
Cthulhu.
Never to early to teach the young of he who sleeps.
Get them used to incomprehensible Lovecraftien horrors now so that they are ready for his inevitable awakening.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
I'd look through the enemies of the Mother/Earthbound series plenty of weird enemies that aren't really sentient
for your convenience:
walkthrough.starmen.net
walkthrough.starmen.net
walkthrough.starmen.net
dude, kids fucking love to kill things, especially people
run them a not-grimdark evil campaign amd they'll have buckets of fun
not OP but I think it's not kids he's running the game for but just a game with a more childish tone
Anything you thought was too silly for your campaign, kids will love.
Kid psychology works like this: they act CE, but are convinced that they're LG.
>not OP but I think it's not kids he's running the game for but just a game with a more childish tone
you're right. I intentionally kept it vague to get all kinds of answers.
Isn't 'Adventure Time' based on tabletop creator plays with his son or something? I watch this shit with my 6yo brother and its a fucking blast to the point im thinking about actually DMing something similar.
I've always wondered what those weird lion-wheel monsters look like from behind...
The same.
They have two lion heads.
oh... well there ya go, learn something new every day
>Kid psychology works like this: they act CE, but are convinced that they're LG.
So from what I understand, you're saying most player characters are secretly children?
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Just don't kill them like Costume Quest
Golems can be anywhere from nightmare fuel to silly moving piles of mud. Take these clay golems from Berserk, make them mud or snow. Now you've got a strong, non-lethal enemy that just wears out adventurers instead of harming them.
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Golden Sky Stories is a kid friendly game I suppose.
simple mechanics, no combat, lots of storytelling, etc.
I think there's a mouse-themed RPG. Mouse Quest? something like that. My group has turned it into something brutal and terrifying with owls and cats and the like, but you could take it kid-friendly.
Mouse Guard!
It's like Redwall the RPG!