One question I see asked constantly on both parenting boards and on gaming boards is “what game can I use to introduce my children to role-playing games safely?” For me, the obvious answer was “Dungeons and Dragons” because I am a long time DM and did not have any qualms about creating a campaign specifically designed for young children and did not have any difficulty walking them through character creation and how to play. However, many other parents are not able to do this for a variety of reasons. Besides,it is also nice to just open up a game and have it explain exactly how to play. Gaming should be accessible, after all. 

My number one recommendation for these parents and gamers is No Thank You Evil. Designed by Shanna Germain and Monte Cook and published by Monte Cook Games, the game itself has a lot of experience behind it. The art work is cute and colorful, designed to engage children and draw them in. It certainly does that! Germain had the game out to be played at GenCon several times, and my own children could not walk past it without wanting to play, even though we had a copy at home. 

The game comes with ready-made characters and easy stats that can be navigated even by non-readers. There are adventures already set up for the Guide to walk the players through. It is pretty much ready to play out of the box. Players create their characters. The Guide tells the story with the help of the players, who describe their actions and use that character’s abilities to impact the story and how it will go. The Guide can also create their own story if they do not wish to use the pre-generated ones. 

Each character has 4 pools: Tough, Fast, Smart, and Awesome. They also have special skills and a companion animal who can help them do things.

As characters describe what they want to do, the Guide decides if it is super hard (8) all the way down to super easy (0). The player rolls the dice. They can choose to “try harder” by using points from one of their four pools until they do not have any more points. If they beat the goal, they succeed. If they don’t, they fail. It’s just that simple. I love the simplicity and the way that it starts introducing children to the idea that they roll the dice and may or may not be successful in their chosen actions. The Guide is encouraged to make it exciting, just like a GM or DM would in another roleplaying game, and the players are able to see how their choices impact what happens. It is easy to use the concepts learned in No Thank You Evil to introduce kids to other roleplaying games because it is so similar, yet simplified so children can understand it easily. 

However, my favourite part of this game is the same thing the game is named for: “No Thank You!” 

Many adult gaming groups have implemented a session 0 where players can discuss things they do not wish to see in the game, perhaps because they find it triggering or too frightening, or just uncomfortable. But it is absolutely impossible to cover every single thing that may come up during game play. Therefore, some groups (including Monte Cook and Germain’s various groups) have developed ways to discretely tell someone that a topic or storyline is too much. No Thank You Evil, taking into consideration that children are even more apt to be frightened by stories, gives each player a token. If something in the game becomes too frightening, the player can simply put the token on the table, and the Guide knows to steer away from that topic as quickly as possible to assure that everyone at the table is having a good time. 

Overall, this game is beautiful, engaging, and a wonderful way to get kids into roleplaying games. Although my own children started with Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, they were equally excited about this game and the way it was written and drew them in. The creators have the breadth of experience from years of game development and being gamers themselves to know what works, and definitely put a lot of thought and effort into this. The roleplaying world can always use new gamers, and this is a great way to get your kids started without needing to know a lot about the games yourself. Similarly, it is so well done that even veteran gamers will have a good time. My kids quickly started playing this by themselves, and that transferred into confidence to GM in other systems for my two older children. I definitely recommend this game to anybody who has children who want to play roleplaying games.