A MARVEL-ours afternoon gaming with littles

A tale of adapting a game for its audience.

My little sister is in town and we got to spend a couple hours together with her two young boys at our new house we’re moving into. Right now most of the games are in boxes, and there are mounds of them in the living room. The boys—who are 4 and 6–saw the pile of games and were astounded. I offered to open some boxes and see if I could find a box with games good for their age. They haven’t played much more than Monopoly in their house, my sister told me (I’m gonna fix that!).

I opened the first box, not knowing what was inside… They gasped and grabbed at Marvel Legendary that was right on top. Oops. I tried to explain it wasn’t a great game for them just now, but they would brook no refusal. So I started by pulling out cards to let them look at them, accepting they would make a total mess of our carefully organized box (filled with many expansions, so very full, and very reliant on the dividers. That went out the window immediately.)

“I WANNA BE SPIDER-MAN!” 

“Well, that’s not quite how it works”, I stumbled. 

“OOOOH WOLVERINE! I’m Wolverine!”

I hemmed and hawed, trying to guide them to a different game, but it was a losing battle. So then I decided to embrace the challenge. I excitedly told them they are recruiters for SHIELD, and their job is to assemble a whole TEAM of heroes to battle the villains (so far, a light description of the game). You don’t play any ONE character, you get the PLAY THEM ALL!

I explained the “scratches” were like attack points (one brother kinda gets this, he is JUST getting into the edges of Pokemon), and the stars were like “money for recruiting”. I made up a simple list of rules on the fly about what they could do on their turn, and then I played game master, flipping up a random enemy for them to battle, complete with loud BAMS and BOOMS when they defeated an enemy. I impressed upon them that they had to work together—their first co-op game, awwww!—and they would pool resources to help defeat the villains. They did a great job with that.

As they got more comfortable, and the older one started stopping to read the additional text on the bottom, I introduced a few new rules. Just simple ones that made it feel like the game was getting more complex and the villains more determined to beat them. At the end of every game, they begged for another game. I would rotate a market of heroes for them to recruit, and the villain pile they were trying to get through, keeping the game fresh.

So basically I made up some rules on the fly that made it accessible for kids their age and experience level. And they rocked it! Sure, the youngest was mostly interested in accumulating wealth, and his older brother was doing most of the fighting, but they were both grinning from ear to ear, practicing counting and addition and multiplication. The older brother was starting to ask keen questions about iconography. I feel confident if given a little time with him one on one, I could have had him playing the full rule set. 

In the end, they made me promise when they are in town again that we’ll play it again. “Sure buddy. We have 500 games, though. So maybe next time you will want to play something else.” But I know next time when they ask to play it again (and I am betting they will), we can build toward the full rule set and get them smashing the villains in no time. And in the meantime, I am sending my sister my Geeklists geared toward mixed age family fun.

Have you ever created new rules or modified them for the age or ability of the players? What is a fun memory you have of this for you?