Children's attention span

Now that I have played dozens of games with the children I have gathered a little experience on how to handle a game with them. One of the most important aspect to take into account is their attention span ability.

Just to set up the background, let me remind you that, most of the time I play with children aged between 4 and 8. 

The last 4 games we played on the same quest : Four Kingdoms. The advantage of this quest is that it can easily be divided into four main parts : one for each kingdom or quarter of the map. This was key because each part took us around one hour.

What came out of it is that a 4-year-old child will stay focused on the game for around 20 minutes. Then he will start leaving the table between his turns and play something else. Should he find another center of interest he will eventually give up playing. With a 6-year-old child it can last up to 30 minutes before the focus is lost.
Finally the eldest one, who is also the most motivated by Heroquest, can easily play for an hour without interruption.

Could anyone confirm these results ? Do you have any tips to play longer with children ?
Please let me know in the comments.

Heroquest for children

After a dozen games played with four small kids (between 4 and 8), I can draw up a first report on the subject.

First of all, depending on the child it might be tricky to make him like this game. Therefore the quests have to be easy and rewarding. I like to have them keep their heroes alive from one quest to another and gather treasures and equipments.

In this purpose, my initiation campaign (Escape the dungeon) reached its goal. Easy quests to learn the basics and earn some rewards useful for the next adventures. On the other hand, the standard quests are still too difficult for them. That's why I'm mainly using my own quests (such as "Chaos den").

Concerning heroes, the more difficult to play are spell throwers. To use them efficiently they need first to be able to read, but also tu build strategies. This might be quite difficult for them now. Thus, I'm planning to create another initiation campaign dedicated to magicians where they would have to solve problems thanks to a wise use of spells.

Another funny point is that they like to use the Heroquest Dice application on mobile phone. They really find it fun...

Finally, the games need to be quite short (1 hour max) because it is hard for young children to focus for a long time.

To be continued...

Reviving Heroquest is dead. Long live Alea Jacta Erat

 Today is the first day of the new a new era for this Blog. After several years dedicated to Heroquest, it will now open up to Role Playing Games in general.

Why such a change ?

As readers may have noticed, this blog has not only been about Heroquest but it has also given tips to play with children. You can find the articles here.

As time flows, the children are getting older. To the point that they finally got out of the dungeon to earn the ultimate reward : a whole new dimension to the game. For those interested, the ultimate quest was briefly depicted in this post.

Where does the new name comes ?

Alea Jacta Erat is the past tense of the latin quote "Alea Jacta Est" ("The die is cast" in English). This of course refers to the random part of every role playing game. Which is materialized by the typical multi-faced dice.

But this name also has another historical meaning for the author of this Blog and the first one who will guess it will get a very special reward... It's up to you !!!

What will come next ?

As a logical continuation of the previous articles, the first RPG that will be featured here will be Warhammer.

I am currently mastering two campaigns : one IRL and one on a forum (in French). Both campaigns being linked, only those who follow the later one will learn about the IRL one. Note that anyone interesting in starting another campaign (online or IRL) should not hesitate to send me a message.

As a consequence, you will find very soon resources for Warhammer RPG featured on this blog.

 

Two new Quests

There are 2 new quests. Quite easy and rewarding as children would enjoy...

The Chaos Den

 The Knight's Tomb

More new pieces of furniture

Three more new pieces of furniture

paperwork new pieces of furniture

And I finally managed to play the game with children and they seemed to like it. They also showed good cooperation behaviours !

Escape the Dungeon : an initiation campaign

Today I could try to play for the first time with children (4 to 5 yo). I created on that purpose a small campaign to teach young players the basics of Heroquest : moving, opening doors and searching.

Here are the three maps:

Escape the dungeon : an initiation campaign

Escape the dungeon 1

 The player were capture by orcs durig a raid on their village. They were brought down into a dungeon as captives. After an undetermined time they can here someone unlocking the door and running away... It's time for them to take their chance!

Notes :
Players start on the "X" marked cases.
Their goal is to find the stairways.
The main objective of this quest is to learn the basic mechanisms of Heroquest .

Escape the dungeon 2

Now they have reached the upper level, they must carry on their escape run.

Notes :
Players start on the stairways in the upper left corner
Their goal is to find the stairways marked with a "X".
The main objective of this quest is to learn how to search for traps and hidden doors. The sorcerer should remind the players to search as often as required.

Escape the dungeon 3

The players are still trying to flee the dungeon.

Notes :
Players start on the stairways in the upper left corner
Their goal is to find the stairways marked with a "X".
In this quest they will face their first enemies. Note that they are not allowed to attack them (they are still not supposed to be armed!). Once a monster sees a hero, he will immediately run after him and try to beat him (heroes defend with their normal dices).

Heroquest as an introduction to RPG

For the holidays we had planned to go camping with the 2 older kids (6 and 8 y.o.). Unfortunately weather forecasts were not good enough to bring the game along. All the more most of it was recreated with cardboard...

When the children asked to play heroquest I had the idea we could play it without the board.
So we wrote the character sheets on paper and played it like we would in a normal Rpg.
The dice were rolled thanks to my Dice For Heroquest application.

Dungeons were of course shorter but I could introduce some role-playing elements like free actions, talking...

And it worked! They even found it better to play. Heroquest turned out to be a very good introduction to rpg!