It was a little while ago, but I refereed a brief RPG of the pen and paper kind, the one I wrote a while back and revamped last year.
I know that pen and paper RPGames are probably a GenX thing now, the Millennials can’t read and the Zyklons keep sliding their fingers on the pages wondering why the writing doesn’t change.
That all said, it was a n enjoyable experience considering the players were a rather autistic millennial, a slightly autistic Gender and my eldest daughter.
None of them had played any such games before, and I did throw at them a rather “advanced” RPG scenario, nevertheless, it was far from a total failure, and I think they did enjoy parts of it.
I am used to battle-hardened RPGers so it was my fault for not giving them a more linear and simple scenario. I should have stuck to simple cowboy antics with maybe a little supernatural thrown in, but noooo, I had to get them into a Red Indian Shaman temporal wormhole opening that threw them into a semi-post zombie apocalypse scenario from the future with things like helicopters that had to be described as giant mechanical beetles (I must have done a good job because it took them a while to realise it was a helicopter).
My old RPG friends would have revelled in that. But these guys could have used a much simpler scenario to get them used to the mechanics, even though they are frightfully simple even compared to old D&D rules.
Anyway, I was dusting off some papers and came across the gaming notes and I read through the rules again for fun, and even if I do say so myself, it is a good little game. Quite possible to run a brief, bloody and fun scenario in an hour even with 4 or 5 players, including character creation if the referee is up to speed with the rules (reading the short rulebook once a couple of hours before is enough to make you player ready. When you have read it through a couple of times and played a few games this becomes ridiculously simple to run games for).
Anyway, even if you have not played pen and paper RPGs before, or you think you are too old, or whatever, I strongly suggest you try it and at least let your children try it. The face-to-face interaction with the other humans fosters interpersonal skills that frankly I think are almost lost to the internet and digital “social” brain-sucking platforms.
Sure I’d love it if you played my RPG games, either this one or the Zombie Apocalypse one, which also has a module out, but either way just play them. I don’t care what game or what system, try it. It really is a worthwhile endeavour.
