SCARAB Gaming Convention January 14-16, 2011 Columbia, SC
Mouse Guard News from SCARAB
The kids track will have a number of games and we are very excited about the enthusiastic response from players about these events.
Our latest addition to this great event is the Mouse Guard RPG.
Although not a diceless system, we have learned over the years that games where the role-playing is what leads the story is perfect for kids games. Kids relate well to the concept of being a small creature in a large world and understand easily many of the concepts behind what a mouse has to do to survive on a daily basis. They relate easily to the basic concepts of hunger and thirst, injured, sick, etc. We have found that this is a fantastic games for kids between 8-14 and often times find that they are able to grasp the system better than many adults who we find are often, dice-bound. They want to role dice to evolve the story as opposed to being a part of the story creation process. Kids easliy leap into the process of creating a vibrant and telling tale of their mice heroes.
Could you please trim this post down to relevant information for Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard players? Or just post a link to your blog?
Introduce yourself! Say hello! Tell us something about yourself! Mouse Guard isn’t a children’s game, so perhaps you can explain how it’s being run at your con.
If you keep this as a copy/paste of your blog, I’m going to have to consider it spam.
Prepaying for your room has a huge benefit. If you book the hotel room online at Magnuson Hotels website within the next couple of weeks you can get your room for $47.20 per night for a single king or two double beds or $52 a night for a single king or two double bed suite. Conditions are you have to prepay for the room and there is no refund. This makes the price of the room for the entire weekend less than the price of one night at just about all of the other cons in the whole of the southeast. If you’re planning on coming to SCARAB, you’re crazy if you miss this opportunity!
We are looking for GMs to help run Mouse Guard RPG events!
Mouse Guard is a deceptive game. It seems like it might be for kids, but it’s not. It’s an adult RPG. If anything, the game is best with gamer families – gamer dad and gamer daughter playing together. It isn’t designed for kids to play on their own.
I hope you’re going giving that impression at your con.
You are absolutely correct. This is a great family game which is what first attracted our board members to it. For the kids track we run a modified version of the system to keep the rules simple. There is just not enough time in a single convention round to teach the entire burning wheel system to kids. But we have found that kids absolutely grasp the story telling and the GM turn V Players turn aspect of the game really well, surprisingly better than most adults who are introduced to the game from a d20 type rpg.
The main thing kids grasp is the concept of being a small object in a large world, they generally come into the game with a mouse’s perspective on life and the world around them.
The biggest issue we have is, exactly what you picked up on, adults want to play the game and we generally don’t run this in the normal, non-kids, track because we simply cannot find GMs that know the system.
We may have to discuss the option of running a family track where parents and kids can play family friendly rpg games with other parent/kid pairs? Hmmmm, you may have given me an inspiration to present for next years convention.
September 20, 2010
If you think this is a lot of games come to SCARAB and get the full experience!
The list of games we are bringing to XCON World is extensive. Here is a sneak peek:
Savage Worlds, Deadlands, Necessary Evil, Shadowrun, D20 Modern, Star Wars, D&D 4.0, D&D 3.5, Indie Press: (Fiasco, Kagematsu, Geiger Counter, Maid: The RPG, Little Fears, Dogs in the Vineyard, Unending River, Ingenuous, Misspent Youth), Pathfinder, Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies, Dresden Files, Truth and Justice, AD&D 2.0, Call of Cthulhu, Are You a Werewolf and Zorcerer of Zo. We will be running LARP Combat demos, LARP Costume Making demos and LARP Make-up demos. Boardgames, boardgames and more boardgames! We have a full schedule of games and will be running almost 400 hours of game sessions.