Originally shared by +Doyce Testerman
Kaylee (10) made up her character for No Thank You, Evil! about a week ago (Laurelai, a Sneaky Kid who Reads Great Books), but I've been traveling for work, so we haven't had a chance to play or get a character set up for Sean (5). We finally took care of that today.
As in any Cypher system game, NTYE characters are defined with a pretty simple sentence: [name] is an [adjective] [noun] who [verbs], and each of those elements have mechanical effects. The only real difference in this version of the game is that the sentences become simpler the younger the players get. So very young player might only be Name and Noun, while a moderately complicated character might be Name, and an Adjective/Noun.
And they all have a wacky companion of course, because why not?
The other extremely kid friendly thing NTYE does is provide you with a set of well illustrated cards for each of 'pregen' Noun options you can use right out of the book. Sean had already carefully scoured these options, and knew he wanted to play a Creature, with a Robot Lizard Dog companion (named Oscar). Easy!
We went through the list of provided adjectives to decide what kind of creature he was, and he immediately latched onto Sneaky.
This is when things got fun.
"So Sean," I said, "are you a kid who pretends to be a Creature when you're on an adventure, or are you a Creature who pretends to be a normal kid?"
He didn't even hesitate. "I'm a creature, and I pretend to be a kid."
"Cool. What's your guy's name? "
"Well," he said, "he needs a name that will convince everyone he's a normal kid, because I'm Sneaky." I nodded. "So… His name is 'Adolescent.'"
I blink. "Adolescent?"
"Yep. To trick people." He thinks. "Sometime just Ado."
"… Okay."
Because seriously what else do you say to that?