My son is now at an age where he thinks superheroes are pretty cool. I’ve been ordering the Tiny Titans Trade Paperbacks for him from Amazon, and they’re a pretty big hit. Especially when I read them and “do the voices”.

So it’s not too surprising that he’s been getting asking about the Heroclix minis I have down in the office and the old Marvel Superheroes RPG box that’s on the shelf. He has lots of question about what kind of games they are and how you play them.

I’m a believer in trying not to rush things with kids and letting them enjoy age appropriate toys and games as much as possible before introducing more “big kid” things. After all they’re only little for a short time and some games that are for ages 10+ seem to hold our interest for much, much longer (heh). So I didn’t want to try playing FASERIP or Heroclix… but I did want to play “the superhero game” with him.

What we’ve been doing is using the figures and maps and making up a very simple game with more emphasis on free-form description, turn-taking, counting, and some basic strategy. We’ve played it a few times now, and each time I gradually introduce some new twist to keep it interesting for him.

So far some of the “rules” we’ve used in our games are:

• Roll a dice and move your figure that many squares
• When a hero and villain are next to each other they each roll a dice to see who wins the battle
• If a hero loses they’re knocked down and a friend has to help them back up
• If a villain loses they’re captured and taken to jail
• A hero has to decide whether to spend his turn battling or helping another hero
• Some heroes and villains roll bigger or smaller dice for moving and battling
• Some heroes and villains roll different dice for moving and battling
• If you describe how your hero uses his power you might get to roll a bigger dice, or have something interesting happen (as decided by Dad)
• Speedy (the Archer) can roll a dice to see how many squares his arrow moves, and if it reaches a villain he can have a “roll off” against the villain to see if the villain is knocked down

Of particular interest in our mini “campaign” (since my son feels the events of one game are directly applicable to the next game) has been the following events:

• The Joker escaping from the board caused much outrage and concern from Superman, Batman and Aquaman. They felt he wasn’t playing fairly by running away, and there was a strong desire to have another game so that the Joker could be properly apprehended.
• When the Joker appeared to be trying to run away in the following game, the heroes split up to battle the Joker’s henchmen while also blocking the Clown Prince’s escape route
• Since Aqualad was able to roll bigger dice while he was in the water, this led to some good planning around where the other heroes would choose to have their battles with the villains.
• When Beast Boy changed into a Lion to capture a villain, there was some unexpected (and great!) description about how the Lion didn’t bite the villain, but scared him so that he surrendered to the police.

I think I need to get some more figures.