Kid Heroes

SYSTEM: Any

Just finished the first collected volume of Super Sons and I enjoyed it. It strikes me as an interesting idea for a limited roleplaying campaign, too: players are children of established heroes. Unlike, say, a Teen Titans or Young Avengers-style game, part of it is that the parents will get involved.

I wouldn't use it for play with actual kids; my theory is that kids want to be adults in their games, even if they make kid-like choices. (My son never wanted actual conflict when he was a toddler, and the assumption always seemed to be that there was someone he could go to who would solve the problem.) But every kid is different; be guided by the kid involved.

Anyway, the premise is that, because the parents work together in some way, the kids will be thrown together. One of them should probably be an instigator, somebody who can get them into trouble or investigate adventures.

Because they're not necessarily an established group, the adventures probably substitute a "Getting the band together" sequence for the hook or threat. Again, you don't want to have to try to convince the other players often (that's one reason this would be limited run) but once in a while, it's nice.

The central problems (and I'm not one of those writers who starts with the meaning it symbolizes) could mostly be "children" of issues that the adult heroes have dealt with. If you're making up the adults as well, then you just have little capsule statements of what the original problem was. (The first five issues of Super Sons deals with a side effect of the Amazo virus. "One man Justice League" is the description given of Amazo, the virus gets two panels.)

If you do work off the underlying meaning, then you'll have to think about what you're trying to accomplish with the adventure. The parents can then provide what Algis Budrys used to call the vindication at the end of the story.

Side note: I am moving away from the idea that you have to have a theme in the sense that you want to prove a certain thing, like "X is bad" or "Y is good". Instead, for roleplaying purposes, "theme" seems more like defining the handball court you're going to play in. The situations show good or bad but you don't make a statement, just like you don't dictate how the players are going to solve the problem. You make sure there's at least one solution, you provide lots of different things they can use to generate a solution, and you think about generally three avenues:

• They beat up the bad guy
• They defeat the bad guy in some way that doesn't involve beating up
• They don't win against the bad guy

And when I digress like this, as KARTAS listeners know, it's time to end this.