Been meaning to write this up for a bit.

Been meaning to write this up for a bit.

Been meaning to write this up for a bit. Over the holidays, I was blessed with the opportunity to run a one shot game for my daughter and a few of her friends. A whole gaggle of 7 to 9 year old girls. With the latest Star Wars out in theaters, the plan was to play Scum & Villainy with a ragtag group of rebels on the run from the Empire. The girls, it turned out, had other plans…

Me: Now the game we’re going to play is called Scu–

Gaggle 1: Oooh! Is this like steampunk?

Me: (blinks) … steampunk? You know steampunk?

Gaggle 2: Well yeah, steampunk is cool because (long excited list of reasons).

Gaggle Chorus: Yeah! WE LOVE STEAMPUNK!

Me: …

Me: …

Gaggle Chorus: (a sea of hopeful, expectant gazes)

Me: …

Me: Why yes, that’s exactly what this is.

Gaggle Chorus: (cheers)

That was, of course, the only acceptable answer to be given. So instead of a starship, the girls commanded a flying wooden ship powered by sails. Instead of planets, floating islands hovered above dangerous jungles dotted with mysterious Precursor ruins. Robots replaced with clockwork automatons. Instead of mechanics, pilots, speakers, and whatnot, they assumed the roles of engineers, naval officers, and ambassadors in service to the Queen while secretly operating in hostile lands.

The starting scenario was a mixture of Scum & Villainy and Lady Blackbird. A colleague, discovering a mysterious Precursor artifact, needed help in transporting it back to the Queen. Unfortunately, during the handoff they were all captured by a ridiculously large dirigible brimming with imperial clockwork soldiers. The group’s mission: escape the brig, free their ship, and return to the Queen with artifact in tow.

As might be expected, the game was loud, chaotic, and loads of fun. This was the first role-playing game most had ever played before, and thus I played rather fast and loose with the rules, to the point that you would have needed to squint and turn your head sideways to see the resemblance to Blades in the Dark and Scum & Villainy.

But it was a raging success! The young ladies were really engaged the whole session and seemed to have a fantastic time escaping the clutches of their evil automaton captors while racing to freedom in their flying sailboat.

So while I can’t commit to saying we played a proper game of Scum & Villainy, it was the seed that produced a wonderful afternoon for a gaggle of gamers-to-be. Much fun was had.

19 thoughts on “Been meaning to write this up for a bit.”

  3. Awesome Kyle! Did you use the S&V character sheets? Or something else? How did the kids find the core mechanic? Easy to parse? I guess helping was the order of the day, or group actions?

  5. No, I didn’t use the S&V character sheet for a couple reasons. One is that I was abstracting vice to a simple rest action and wanted to remove it from the sheet completely. The second reason is simply that illicit drugs is on the equipment list and I didn’t want that available as an option.

    I ended up creating my own character sheets and printing them onto multiple index cards. One card held the actions, another card held the damage chart and class ability. Once they escaped from the brig and were reunited with their belongings, I passed out cards containing their items.

    They grasped the basic rules pretty easily. I didn’t go into position or effect explicitly, but rather tried to convey it during narration. There were lots of group action rolls which they seemed to enjoy a lot, perhaps due to them being able to “lead the group.” At one point they broke up into two groups, one running off to retrieve everyone’s equipment while the other snuck back to the ship in order to repair it for the getaway. They were very inventive in how they approached the complications that came up. It was fun to watch!

  11. I recently ran No Thank You Evil for my 6 year old niece and my brother and it was great but I don’t love the system. Hadn’t even considered a simplified Blades game. Food for thought, thanks for sharing Kyle!

  15. Thanks for the kudos, folks. Gives me the warm fuzzies!

    Stras Acimovic​, I’m happy to send you images of the character sheet when I get the chance.

    Henry de Veuve​, apart from removing vice, the steampunk “hack” was just a straight reskin of S&V. Star systems become regions, planets become floating islands, etc. In other words, Stras and John LeBoeuf-Little​ already did all the heavy lifting.

    My only real contribution was renaming the roles to better fit the steampunk theme: Engineer, Royal Guard, Court Mystic, Naval Officer, Explorer, Ambassador, Scholar.

  16. Hey Kyle Cantrell – just wanted to leave this here in case you ever need it for future space adventures with young generations of gamers: https://goo.gl/FRpEkt

    (now with 100% less vice and drugs – or at least I think I caught all mention of it… let me know if you spot anything)

    Someday if I have time I might find you some cool fonts and gears for images and maybe update class names ^_~

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