I wonder how difficult it would be to make a kid-friendly Dungeon World hack. I’d say the current earliest age for the game, as written, with no hacking, is about 12+. Okay with cartoony violence, understands the difference between reality and fantasy, etc.
I wonder what it would take to make it 10+ or 8+ or just those with a mom or dad as GM?
I have played it as written with my daughter, who had no trouble at 8. The world was definitely more kid-friendly but no rules needed to change.
What’s the age limit for fairy tales, in your opinion?
Seems like a Grimm-hack would be minimal, and good for whatever age is able to work with those…
I have played with 10 year olds and it works well. They are great at telling me what their character is doing.
Mostly I was thinking about a hack of the rules-as-written to turn over to a group of kids and say “have fun”!
I think length is your main obstacle. A small playbook-style handout for GMs telling them what they can do as a match for the character playbooks might work (but even that might be too many words).
Maybe something like a Dungeon playbook for the DM, containing a mini-dungeon plus all necessary to run it?
I’d think it would be important to identify what prevents DW from being suitable for an 8yo.
World of Dungeons might be easier to build out than DW is to strip down.
If it were my 8yo, I think I might start with stripping out hack and slash and the moves that revolve around dealing harm. You can still aggressively pursue your intent through fictional positioning and defying danger.
I agree about the length being the biggest hurdle for kids, or anyone new to RPGs. What about a kid/beginner friendly World of Dungeons hack?
I think that tonally, an adjustment back from Ghostbusters to The Real Ghostbusters and yeah, removal of drinking / killing. Change violence into bashing your foes unconscious, etc. that part would be easy enough.
I think that making sure all the moves have obvious results on failure would be important. Kids, like anyone, get bored and frustrated when they are given too much freedom without any guidance.
I think the first thing would be to play it as written (or sit in on a game and take notes) and see how kids do it differently.
Basically, I ask because some of my favourite stories of DW actual play are kids and parents playing together and I wonder if there is a good way to make a custom version of the game for just that…
I’m particularly intrigued by this question,even though my son is a bit too young for the next couple of years. Given the degree to which players can be rules-unaware and focus on the fiction (with the GM’s help), it seems that DW would be a fertile ground for games with younger children. It also seems that making DW non-lethal would be a fairly easy adjustment.