This is a bit of a passion project, and resulted in one of the coolest moments I’ve ever had in my history of tabletop gaming.
Sometime back, my then-6-year-old neighbor-kid was a little bit upset that the adults in the room were playing Dungeons & Dragons and she did not get to play. It didn’t matter that we were a year and a half into it established campaign and that she was six: all she knew is that she was left out and that’s no fun. I agreed.
A few days later, with some basic design principles in mind and a stack of post-it notes, sRPG was born. Our game was very minimalistic, with three stats and only one mechanic.
That basic version of the game is included here, with a slightly revised more advanced version as well that has hit points and a leveling mechanism, as well as a time to retire a given character.
There’s no set setting, this game has been used for space adventures, a cat and mouse chase game, and a high fantasy rescue mission with a princess at the helm. It can handle any place and thing your small friends can think of! The coolest part of this adventure occurred some weeks after the game was created. My neighbor-kid had friends over, and she pulled out our post-it notes and character sheets, passed them out to her friends, and without prompting began to teach them to play. I had a lot of cool experiences around the table, but this is definitely towards the top of the list. Watching them use these tools to further their imagination and games was a real pleasure.
I hope this little game can help you introduce some young ones to the wonderful, fantastic adventures that tabletop role playing has to offer. Additionally, it’s released under a Creative Commons license, and I cannot wait to see your remixes! Just include the attribution, links, other necessaries.
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