We Started Playing No Thank You, Evil!

Started our first family RPG tonight, and my daughter’s first-ever structured role-playing experience. It went pretty well!

No Thank You, Evil! is a super simple RPG based on Cypher, the thing that runs Numenera. You get pools of points to spend to slightly bump die rolls, not really sure how you recharge them (EDIT: you spend “fun” and that’s the part I’m not sure how you recharge, probably doesn’t matter in a game that is run in sub-hour blocks). Roll a d6 against a target number.

The killer app of NTYE is that the game scales from preliterate to modestly involved. My daughter played the simple level, my wife played the advanced. Both of them had a firm grasp of their options, I think.

Most of the fun was in describing the bits and bobs of the world: what do you look like, where do you live, what does the Bee Queen’s Hive look like? Worked great, really engaged the little one (she’s four). The actual gameplay is 100% railroaded, roll this, this happens, etc. At this play level that is totally fine and the kid really got excited when she rolled.

We made it through character creation (daughter: a superhero with a pretty pony sidekick; wife: super-smart fighter who uses magic, robot dog sidekick) and maybe the first half of the intro, in about an hour.

0 thoughts on “We Started Playing No Thank You, Evil!”

  1. NTYE is a super simple RPG based on Cypher, the thing that runs Numenera. You get pools of points to spend to slightly bump die rolls, not really sure how you recharge them. Roll a d6 against a target number.

    Waaaaaaaaaaaaait isn’t that just GUMSHOE at that point? 😉

    Sounds cool, though! How exactly does the scaling you described work?

  2. Andy Hauge the scaling comes from how detail is introduced. At the basic level, you get a noun, which gives you stats/tokens. Next level you get an adjective to modify that noun, which bumps a single stat, and you get a knack related to your noun (class), which requires you read a little. The advanced version gives you a verb, which includes another bit of reading. At that level, your companion (the pretty pony, the robot dog) can use an ability as well.

    Basically you give each player what they can handle, which mostly just expands their play options.

  3. My oldest daughter turns 5 this month and I’m thinking about trying to run an RPG for her too. My thought at the moment is a simplified version of the Black Hack and using ideas from the Baby Bestiary, which is a book on the babies of D&D monsters, caring for them, training them, etc

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