Hero Kids: First Session

White cubes (rats) face off against our party.

Today, my Hero Kids players met during Club time and managed to do the following:

• Started the adventure in a tavern
• Accepted a call for help
• Went into a basement and defeated a group of rats

Three cliches in one session, it's awesome. Nothing is a cliche to these kids because it's all new to them. They managed to defeat the four rats in the first encounter. I left the special rules aside and focused on basic melee attack and defence, as well as health levels. We've had a new player join us, Kai the Knight:

Kai is the tank with a mighty 3 defense.

Today we did a recap of the whole concept, looked at our character sheets and began the adventure. I recorded the 45 minute session's audio for posterity and to save me having to keep notes. Once I get over the cringing at listening to my recorded voice, it will be super useful and perhaps hilarious - my kids are funny.

GM (me): Are you going to run back to your house and get your weapons?

Sophie the Warrior: I've got my axe.

GM: You've got your axe with you already? Do you have it with you here in the restaurant?

Sophie: [beat] I just take my axe everywhere.

They took to the general idea of an RP session fine, and enjoyed rolling dice - they found it very suspenseful waiting to see which side would win a dice roll. I began to encourage them to use 'words like in a story', actual descriptions, of what they wanted to do. They got a kick out of using character names instead of their real names, which I wanted to do to make the recording easier to parse but also helped them remember their roles. 

The Knight player had lots of creative suggestions but is still adjusting to the idea of giving ideas that can work with what they're trying to achieve. I am trying not to be the downer who is denying all of the oddball ideas, but I suppose someone needs to draw the line. He wanted to be able to throw his shield, but in this system there's a clear line between melee and ranged. So, we settled for the concept of him using his shield to bash melee enemies. 

Large iPad stuck in the middle of the group. 

The iPad audio seemed very effective, though I need a better space for it to live as it took up some room. I chose the floor to sprawl ourselves out on, next time I'll take the time to lay out some desks or find a play-space that has desks set up permanently, maybe in the Learning Commons.

So far, so good! We had quite a few eager watchers during the last part of the game as students came in from break-time. I'm almost disappointed I'm on leave for the next few weeks so that we can't carry on with Hero Kids right away.