Han Solo, Jedi Knight

So, a year ago, I bought Amazing Tales to play with my kids, but never quite got around to it until today. My wife and daughter were taking naps, and the Boy wanted someone to play with, I broke out the book and set up a couple short games with him.


Now, bear in mind, he's 5. So, he doesn't read much, yet, though he's good with letters that aren't written in Daddy's horrible handwriting, and he's good with numbers, so Amazing Tales works great. Your character is defined by 4 skills, that you make up on the spot, to determine what you can do well. Roll a 3 or above and you succeed. I added the rule that you couldn't use the same skill twice in a row.


For example, in the first game, we played a bit of Beowulf (I have an adaptation I've been reading him since he was 2). His skills were "Great at fighting!" with a d12, "Lots of loyal knights!" with a d10, "A Big shield to protect everyone!" with a d8, and "Healing powers!" with a d6. The second, we played Peter Rabbit and the quest to get some rabbit tobacco without getting caught by Mr. McGregor or the cat. His skills were Running (d12), Hiding (d10), Digging (d8), and Climbing (d6) (I defined the skills, he did the numbers, this time).


After that, though, he wanted to tell the story. And he decided it would be about Jedi Knight Han Solo. My skills settled on "Lightsaber", "Blaster", "Awesome Ship", and "Force Powers", at d8, d10, d12, and d6, respectively. When it started, JKHS was fighting a bunch of stormtroopers and "Dark Vader". He was bit unimpressed by my favoring the blaster and the ship over cutting Darth Vader's head off with a lightsaber (he saw the Dark Side Cave scene in ESB and was obsessed with rewinding it and watching it again), and eventually wound up telling me what I was doing (which involved jumping down off the ship and cutting Darth Vader's Head off with a lightsaber) and letting me roll dice.


But my boy's first GMing experience happened on his 3rd game, when he was 5 years old, and it was a Star Wars game.