KidWorld Corebook, Podreczniki RPG, KidWorld

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KidWorld the Role Playing Game
is published by Vajra Enterprises, Portland, Oregon
ISBN 0-9713095-4-X
Written and Designed by
Eloy LaSanta and Brian St.Claire-King
Cover by Jason Juta
Art by
Michaël Brack (Trap, p.97. Bloody Mary, p.222)
Nicole Cardiff (Masked Kids, p.160. Addict Kids, p.132)
Anthony Carpenter (Slave Trader, p.127)
Liz Clarke (Branded, p.85)
Ed Cox (Brawn Guard, p.33)
Pablo Palomeque (Playing With Dolly, p.237)
Adam Hunter Peck (Siamese Corps, p.179. Scouts vs. Horse Riders, p.18)
Tyler Windham (Little Doctors, p.175)
Claire Buhler (North Amereca Map, p.272).
Playtested by James Amarcardi, Marnie Atkins, Claire Danae Buhler,
Jillian Burdsall, Diamond Charlotte, Charles Crow, Zach Doyle,
Martin Jacobs, Allon Mureinik, Chris Musgrave, Stephen Nazian,
Nick "Eeyore!" Page, Joseph Ryan Peters, Alistair Rose, Laura Selman,
Dr. Milo Sentara, George Sharp, Tiffany St.Claire-King, Heather Weeks,
Dr. Garry M. Weinberger, Eyal Zait and Amir Zeltzer
Editorial Assistance by Allon Mureinik
Scientiic Consultation by Dr. Amber Buhler Ph.D
Special thanks to Tenzin, Julian and Gabrielle for showing us how kickass kids can be.
Copyright © 2008 by Vajra Enterprises
All rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention.
No part of this book may be reproduced for commercial purposes.
Small portions may be reproduced for use in play.
Visit www.VajraEnterprises.com
KidWorld In Brief
Style
- KidWorld is a dark and desperate place where people have
nobody they can turn to for help and may have to do terrible
things to survive. It is a shattered society where PC’s do not
know what they will run into when they wander into the next
town. It is a world of great variety, where peaceful democracies
exist just miles away from cruel dictatorships. Above all it is a
world where human nature: the kindness, curiosity and hope for
the future along with the cruelty, prejudice and tendency to give
in to peer pressure, have come to the forefront and pulse in raw
form across KidWorld.
Background
- KidWorld takes place 4 years after the emergence
of the Plague. This mysterious disease quickly spread
throughout the world. A majority of the world’s adults died and
all those that survived were struck blind. As adults were going
blind and realized that kids were not, there was widespread fear
that America’s enemies would create child armies and use them
to invade the country. So as to not be caught defenseless, the
army scrambled to capture kids and induct them into the army.
Yet the army grabbed more kids than they could control or care
for. The kids rebelled and escaped. This led to a society in which
both kids and adults thought their only option was to enslave
or be enslaved. There are four basic types of communities in
KidWorld:
-Those where there are only kids. Adults have either not
shown up or have been driven away. This is by far the most
common kind. Kid communities range from those who are
peaceful and prosperous to those ruled by violence, prejudice
and madness.
-Communities ruled by kids where kids enslave adults, using
them for manual labor or taking advantage of their knowledge
but never really trusting them.
-Communities where there are only adults. They most likely
want kids to live with them and help them but are unable to ind
any willing to. Most survive by subsistence farming.
-Communities where adults enslave kids, using them as their
eyes and keeping them in bondage to prevent escapes.
The Plague is still in the people of KidWorld: sighted kids know
they will slowly go blind as they approach physical maturity.
that allow them to feel any intruders, bicycles attached to
rope and pulley systems so that blind adults can bike around
communities at high speed, clay bas-relief maps with "you are
here" stars at every street-corner, and many more.
Organizations
- Most communities are completely autonomous.
Some have very little contact with other communities, others
have contact mostly via traveling traders. Because travel is
arduous and long distance communication rare, there are very
few organizations that can extend their reach beyond a town
or city. Among those rare organizations are remnants of the
military, cults (including the doomsday cult that has claimed
responsibility for the Plague) and new religions (including
God’s War, an anti-adult religion originating from Miami).
Dangers
- Threats to the residents of KidWorld include wild
animals, diseases, traps (both recent and those created during
the initial chaos to protect from looters), apocalyptic cults,
slavers, bandits and eye eaters (adults who eat the eyes of
children to temporarily regain vision). Yet the most common
danger in KidWorld is kids. Some kids are dangerous for the
same reasons typical of adults (fanaticism, prejudice, cruelty,
greed, desperation). Yet kids are most dangerous because of
their propensity to give in to peer pressure. Kids often do or
believe things just because other kids do and this can lead kid
communities into insane or grossly immoral behavior.
Player Characters
- PCs can either play sighted children,
partially blind adolescents or fully blind adults. The primary
goal of all PCs is to survive. Secondary goals may include
inding lost family, trying to rebuild civilization or trying to
ind a cure for the Plague. Kid character classes correspond to
“professions” or primary means of survival, e.g. Builders build,
Horse Riders have horses, Scouts have wilderness survival
skills, etc. Adult classes correspond to the strengths that have
most helped the PC survive to this point: Brains have survived
through knowledge or quick wits, Brawns have survived via
physical strength or ability to defend themselves and Mouths
by being able to organize or manipulate people.
Character Creation
- Players choose an age. This sets the
amount of attribute points, caps on certain attributes and
possible blindness penalties. Then players choose a character
class, which sets skill costs and resources. The class system is
very lexible, making certain options cheaper but not rigidly
deining who the character is or what the character can do.
Players then buy skills and equipment and round out the PC
with advantages and disadvantages. Experience points can be
used to increase attributes and skills. They also cause kids to
age (200 XP = one birthday), giving more attributes but also
moving kid PCs closer to being blind adults.
Game Mechanics
- All mechanics are based on a simple
system. The sum of attribute + skill or other factor + 1d20 must
be equal to or higher than the dificulty of the proposed action.
Opposed rolls are made when two actions are in conlict with
each other: each party tries to get more above their dificulty
than the other party. Fighting is made up of opposed actions
and reactions with different dificulties and effects. In combat,
for each round each character gets one action to make against
an enemy and one reaction if someone else does something to
them.
Setting Options
- KidNight is an optional appendix in which
the beliefs of kids concerning luck, wishes, ghosts, monsters,
etc. are true. Kids have access to supernatural skills and
other supernatural character creation options. KidSurreal is
an optional setting in which, instead of a Plague, the perfect
summer afternoon has dilated kids’ sense of time to such a
degree that kid empires can rise and fall before adults even get
around to noticing what kids are doing.
Tech Level
- Electricity grids have failed, national and
international trade (including agricultural trade) has stopped,
and consumables that are not being replenished (e.g. gasoline,
ammunition, pharmaceuticals) are becoming increasingly rare.
A few communities have created a source of electricity (e.g.
solar panels, a windmill or even hand-cranked generators) to
run appliances and even communicate with other communities
via short-wave radio. It is primarily communities where adults
enslave kids which have this high level of tech (since they have
the knowledge to design the tech and sight to implement it).
Most communities, however, rely on candles and bonires for
light, scrounge in abandoned buildings for tools, weapons and
clothing and have only books, acoustic instruments and each
other for entertainment.
Some communities have igured out how to grow food or gather it
from the wild, and this food is often traded to other communities.
Some adult communities, who plant and gather by feel, are only
barely able to create enough food to keep themselves alive. Not
enough people are producing food and many (mostly kids) are
forced to use up rapidly diminishing stores of preserved Pre-
Plague food to avoid starvation.
Many adult communities use slavery to deal with their lack of
sight. They force kids to navigate for them, read for them, repair
technology for them, even perform surgery for them. Those
adult communities without kid slaves are forced to come up
with creative means of doing things without sight. Some of
these innovations include: sentries attached to a web of strings
003
IntroduCtion
Dear Sahara,
If you’re reading this then you’ve most likely escaped from,
or were let go from, wherever the military took you and you
made your way back here, hoping to ind us. Unfortunately,
the fact that you’re reading this means we are dead. I’m
sorry. I’m sorry that your mother and I can’t be here for
you, to comfort and protect and teach you.
A Brief History of
Childhood
Sometime around the middle of the 1800s,
an incredible change happened in the view of
Americans towards children. Previously, the
view had been informed by Puritanism, and
especially Calvinism. Americans believed
that human nature is essentially sinful and that
humans have to be taught to control their evil
impulses. In this view of things, children are just
small, ignorant adults who have not yet learned
self-control. Child labor in this era was perfectly
acceptable because children had no less duty to
contribute to their families than adults did.
I was not the best father. I should have spent more time with
you. I should not have allowed myself to get frustrated so
easily. But you have to know this: since the day you were
born it has been my greatest wish that you would thrive and
ind happiness in your life. If there ever comes a time when
you have to do something really hard in order to survive,
and you’re not sure if you can do it, I want you to think
"Mom and dad’s last wish was that I survive, so I’m going
to do what I have to."
We believe in you, Sahara. We believe that you are a smart
and good and brave person. We believe that no matter
how bad things get you will igure out a way to get by. If
anyone tries to convince you that you aren’t good enough,
ignore them.
You’ve probably already igured out that this world isn’t
fair. The good guys don’t always win just because they’re
good. It’s not fair that a kid should die, but that doesn’t
mean it won’t happen. You can’t just expect that nothing
terrible will happen to you, you have to ight every day to
keep it from happening.
Don’t trust anyone, even if they act nice, even if they give
you things or tell you they love you. Since you can see,
a lot of adults will think you’re a valuable commodity,
something to be captured and locked away. You are not a
slave. You are not on this Earth to sacriice your freedom
to keep other people alive.
And don’t forget that you are more than just a kid, you
are the future of the human race. Just by living, just by
surviving until you’re a grownup and can have kids of
your own, you’re not just helping yourself, you’re helping
to keep alive the culture and society and knowledge that
countless generations have fought for.
After the change, however, people started to
view children as beautiful "innocents" who, if
left to their own devices, would live in their own
personal gardens of eden. Childhood became
seen as it’s own unique stage of development.
Play was seen as healthy and "children’s books"
emerged as a genre.
This incredible shift relected a change in the
view of human nature. At the beginning of
the century, people thought that children were
born corrupt and had to be taught to be good by
the society. At the end of the century, people
believed that children were born innocent and
good and were later corrupted by society.
The next major development was evolutionary
psychology, in which scientists tried to view
the behavior of children in terms of how those
behaviors would have helped our ancestors
survive. Play, it turned out, is not just a form
of entertainment, it is how kids learn to deal
with the dangers and challenges of the world.
Tickle ights teach kids to protect vital areas
from attack. Running, jumping and climbing
build strength and coordination. Hide-and-seek
and chase games teach kids to hunt and to avoid
predators. Playing at forts teaches kids to ind
or build shelter. Social games, such as playing
house, ready kids for adult roles in society.
Telling scary stories prepare kids to deal with
fear and surprise.
There’s so much more I wish I could teach you: about right
and wrong, science, health, logic, self-defense, standing
up to peer pressure, the birds and the bees, dealing with
tragedy. There are so many things to be learned about
getting by in this world. You’ll igure them out on your
own, though. I believe you can. I believe you will. You
have to.
Love always,
Dad
004
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