The Energon Pub

Hi all, I am writing on behalf of my young son. He loves transformers, and has seen both movies and has loads of toy transformers to play with. As much as he like bashing them about in a childlike manner, he does also ask if there are any rules to play with them, like wargames rules, with dice or cards or whatever.
If you can give us any ideas or point us in the right direction, we would be grateful
Thanks
Scott and Chris

there is nothing official, but there was a thread about this somewhere. lemme see if i can dig it up. last i saw it was a work in progress tho.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=13604&start=0&hilit=check+sound

theres the link to the topic. there are aquite a few ways it could be toyed with also. you could scale the complication level up or down depending on what you are looking for.

i've got a few ideas of my own, based off the rules used in the g1 cell phone game. similar turn based system.

the only other thing i could think of is doin a mini's type game with the small pvc figures whose name i cant remember. heroes of cybertron?

so unless there is a hero clix type game i don't know about, probably based off the movie, thats all we got to work with.

lemme know if you need any help, or wanna bounce ideas.

This is more of an editorialization, so please take it...not meanly.

I'm just sad, really, that young kids apparently *need* rules to play with toys now. I remember with my Star Wars figures making up the CRAZIEST stories (Boba Fett always starred, and/or Han). We had no rules, no points, no dice. We told stories. We made up adventures. Our Millenium Falcon was the shaped styrofoam insert that our microwave came in. Coffee cups turned upside down (they looked *kind* of like Daleks) served as scary big ass droids. It was fun.

Does nobody do that any more?

HK, it's true: imagination is dead. Oh, wait. Stephanie Meyer already proved that to me.

I agree with HK, here. If you absolutely need rules in order to have fun, then why not make up a game? I made up my own stories when I was a kid, too.

I hope I didn't sound snippy--had to go run and proctor a test. But I'm old, so I remember when toys didn't have anything really. Not even cartoons to give us a boost in the narrative. Star Wars was huge for my generation, because it had enough narrative to give us a start, but not TOO much--so we couldn't just endlessly do that storyline or that week's episode.

And while I love (my pitiful attempts) at playing Bakugan (hey, during those baby showers, I know that smart people hang out with the kids rather than hear birthing horror stories!), I'm a little bothered in a larger social sense that all of the games coming out today seem to have so many rules and 'no you're not doing it right' and winners and losers. It's okay that they have to think strategically and do math, don't get me wrong. Those are great kinds of thinking for young minds to do.

But so is free play.

To be honest, I'm less into videogames than I used to be (I play so I can watch the pretty graphics), because THAT's too structured. Sure, you think you can do whatever you want, but to get to the next level, you have to do exactly what the game programmers want you to do, when they want you to do it. It's really trained compliance. OBEY TO SUCCEED. That's not fun for me. They train rats to do it in a maze.

I see my students who can work fine when they're given a task (most of them) but when they aren't given anything particular to do, they just sit there. I don't mean they daydream, or doodle or chat with their neighbors--I'd be *ECSTATIC* if they did those things. They literally just sit there like the lights have been turned off in their brains. And it scares the hell out of me. I spend the first two days of just about every class trying to get the students to talk to *each other*. I can't help but think that some of this really antisocial and really odd behavior (they can't entertain themselves at all) MUST come from overstructured 'play'.

Sorry, a rant probably deserving of the philosopher's forum.

Thread related--mind you, I think a game could be kind of cool--wasn't there a thread earlier where someone was making up a Trading Card style game?

HK, I just had to explain to a student what 'square footage' meant. I wonder what he *thought* it meant?

Hi, thanks to those who replied, and the link to the D20 rules.
In the meantime, I had racked my own memory banks and recalled a game I played as a teenager in the 80's, IIRC it was called "battledroids".
What i came up with, was a system which is a fairly simple set of stats for movement, shooting and fighting (Like GWs LOTR skirmish game) weapon types, ranges and damage effects, and armour points. Linked to this was a basic hit location table.
So if you have a missile launcher mounted on your left arm, and the left arm takes enough damage to be destroyed, you lose the weapon too.
Robot would be destroyed if loses its head, torso, or both legs. (One leg - can still hop half pace)
Thought about adding heat effects and heatsinks, but figured this may over complicate...

Btw, please dont worry about stopping childlike play and imagination and creativity. He does heaps of this by himself!
Its just that if poor ol' dad has to get down of the floor to play, I'd like to know what I am doing, and some rules helps...

Regards
Scott