Starport: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game for Kids | Wider Path | REVIEW w/Becca.

What’s up Good Timers? I'm Becca Scott and today I have a little review for you: Starport is a new roleplaying game it's geared towards kids and families, it's set in a fantasy world where you can meet dragons, help space gnomes and bake a magical cake.

This is an intro to storytelling that creates a non-violent atmosphere for adventure and creativity. You know all us adults are playing role playing games all the time and they are inherently violent, so thank goodness the folks over at Wider Path decided to make this game because they saw that the space was missing a place for kids to have this non-violent activity.

So players will take on the role of characters, as usual, and the game is facilitated by a Guide - this is probably going to be a parent, or maybe you can rope an older sibling into running the game for you. Starport features this super simple rules set - the main rule being that all non-trivial actions in the game, like jumping over a laser fence, or repairing a broken robot, or rescuing a space cat from a space tree, these all require a d20 roll against a target number set by the Guide, which can be anywhere from 1-25.

This is known as an action roll. So for characters you've got four main traits, Helpful, Smart, Sneaky, and Tough. At the beginning of each adventure, a character begins with a pool of TOKENS associated with each trait. This number is equal to their level in that trait.

These tokens can be used throughout the game to add on to action rolls, and if a character has zero remaining in a certain trait, they can no longer make any associated action rolls until they refresh their pool. Character Creation - it's equally streamlined.

Players select up to ten tokens distributed amongst the four traits. They also gain one ability, which can range from the really simple stuff like “strong” which increases the Toughness trait, to complex talents, like Genie, which can provide an all-knowing spirit to truthfully answer questions.

Wait a minute I thought you only got three questions with a genie why am I hearing the wrong story? The leveling system provides players with additional tokens and abilities as they gain experience. Starport also has a very important pet and equipment system, all this supported by coins collected during the adventures.

So pets are NPCs roleplayed by the guide to provide a little in-game assistance to the players. They also come with some helpful benefits like increased trait rolls, special powers like DUPLICATION. Now equipment - you can have super cool stuff like hoverboards, a freezing wand, and of course, Super Duper Glue.

Everybody needs Super Duper Glue - so many uses, so super, so duper. Starport comes with a custom setting handily named STARPORT, which features special locations to help guides and players find adventures in their stories. So there's the Town Hall, the Port of Stars, the Laboratory, and Starville.

Tthe game includes several helpful jumping-off points for encounters and campaign ideas. They even have a location called “game room”! Yeah, a game room in a game. Wild. I know. It's charming, it's so important that kids have a way that they can play role playing games too that are a little less complicated and way less violent, but just as fun.

These simplified rules they really streamline the experience - the token system for traits it's easy to understand and teaches kids how to be resourceful with their actions which is gonna translate into making them amazing board gamers for your name night later.

Gotta start managing those resources early kids there's a lot of good games out there. -The rulebook it's so nicely formatted and give parents three introductory scenarios for easy adventuring, and the organization of each adventure also helps parents design their own stories.

Starport splits these into four steps: Present the Hook, Reveal the Problem, Overcome the Problem, and Conclusion. A perfect simplified structure for adventure writing. I mean I wish my DMs kept it that simple sometimes. Seriously guys don't overthink it, basic story writing principles! The art and design is definitely geared for kids, in a way that might make it difficult to wrangle the older range of players.

About ten to twelve I think kids start looking UP in terms of content, they may be wanting to play Dungeons and Dragons, so if you have a wide range of kids I think it's definitely going to be more appealing to the younger range. Also check out the just released Starport Adventure:Quest for the Dragon Egg.

Brave adventurers must travel to the Dragon Realm to rescue an egg that was stolen by a crystal dragon. Alright that's it for my review of Starport. I am just so glad kids these days are getting into RPG games younger and younger, I think it's very exciting for fostering the imagination and keeping that going throughout your entire lifetime so I'm really excited to get to tell you about this game.