Ideas for running a game for ~10 middle school students in one hour

#1

Hi all,

I am looking for ideas for a particular game running challenge: my wife asked me to run some sort of “heroes journey” RPG/LARPish-type-experience for around 10 middle schoolers during sunday school (at our very open, progressive Unitarian church). … we will only have an hour and knowing middle school kids I am expecting a mix of levels of interest and inclination to really participate … my general idea is to have a roughed in heroes journey arc and at specific points have questions to the group to flesh out world and propel the story, ala “what did the hero lose forever?” and “what scares the hero the most?” (build a brief encounter off of that as the adversity the hero must overcome) … don’t think we’ll have time for individual character creation, but I’d love to have some very simple resolution mechanics to provide the feel of chance … any specific games or other ideas are welcome, thanks!!

I’m cross-posting this from the Slack #rpg_chat channel from which I already have some interesting leads, including:

  • The Sundered Land
  • Companion’s Tale
  • A Thousand Faces of Adventure
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#2

I teach Sunday School at a Quaker meeting and have a pipe dream of working role-playing games into that. I’d love to hear how your experience goes!

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#3

It’s targeted at younger kids, but you might want to take a look at Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.

It’s best described as The Little Prince meets The Last Airbender. It’s very simple and quick to play.

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#4

I’ve heard that @BenMilton uses Maze Rats for kids around that age; though I’m not sure for that amount of time. Perhaps he might have some examples of what works?

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#5

My personal experience is that kids lose interest in collective storytelling very quickly, but they are entranced by things like exploration and challenge, which is why I eventually switched to running OSR games with them. If you tell them that this mission is super dangerous and only the a few of them will survive, they get even more excited. Maze Rats works really well, or Knave, or really any very light game where you can roll up random characters and explain the rules in a few minutes.

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#6

I wrote a self-contained game for groups that size or larger, with an hour, at a library. It is not a hero’s journey but rather a ghoulish dive into the gross and delightful history of corpse-stealing in 19th century Baltimore. I can share privately if you are interested. The kids dug it (see what I did there?)

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#7

I could also see Into The Odd working well for this; I ran it with some 17 year olds last year and used the included Dungeon. They were already experienced RPG players, but I think the relative ease to teach (less than 5 minutes, honestly) is a big selling point. Three stats, no to-hit rolls, etc.

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#8

Thanks for all the awesome ideas and leads!
I’m running the game tomorrow morning so I’m in mad dash mash-up mode, pulling in ideas from Companion’s Tale, For the Queen, @Jmstar’s corpse-robbing game. I’m pretty excited with where it’s going. After I run it tomorrow I’ll probably post a google doc of what I came up with.

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