Questions parents ask before the first game

Brave and Bonkers is a complete tabletop roleplaying game for kids ages 6 to 12, free to download and print. These are the questions people ask before they try it, each answered on its own page, in full, at the top.

• My kid asked to play. Where do we start? Start this weekend, with a game you print at home.
• How old does my kid need to be? Six, if a grown-up sits beside them and reads the sheet out.
• Do I need to know how to play? No. The rulebook is written to be read cold, and the adventure prints the words you say out loud.
• Is it scary? Does anything die? No, and not the heroes. Getting knocked Down is not dying, and a hero who goes Down is back on their feet before the session ends, so nobody has to explain a character’s death to a seven-year-old.
• What do we need, and how long does it take? Dice, pencils, a printer and about an hour.
• How long does a game take? About an hour for the first one. Adventure 01 has a sixty-minute core and a two-hour version of the same story, and Adventures 02 and 03 run about ninety minutes as written, with a sixty-minute cut and a two-hour version printed in each.
• Can I play with just one kid? Yes. Most one-kid tables give the kid two heroes so the scenes still have enough hands in them, and you play everybody they meet.
• Can siblings of different ages play together? Yes. Brave and Bonkers is written for kids from 6 to 12 at the same table, so a six-year-old and an eleven-year-old play the same adventure with the same one-page hero sheets, and the grown-up running it goes round the table by seat so each of them gets a turn every round.
• My kid wants to run the game. Let them. A kid who can read the adventure out loud can run it, because most of what a Game Master says in Brave and Bonkers is already printed in the module, and the rest is asking what everybody does.
• Does it work for homeschooling? Yes, as a game a homeschool family can play in any week, at no cost.
• Can we run this in a classroom or a library? Yes. The notice in every book lets you print and copy Brave and Bonkers for your own table, classroom or clinic, so a school, a library or an after-school club can run it without asking us and without paying anybody.
• Is it good for a birthday party, a sleepover or a rainy day? Yes, for up to five kids at a table. Brave and Bonkers is written for three to five players and one person running the game, the first adventure fills about an hour, and everything prints at home on ordinary letter paper.

If your question is not here, the rulebook answers most of the rest, and you can ask us anything it does not.