Robin D.

Laws on

PRINCE VALIANT
KEY DESIGNERS: GREG STAFFORD, WILLIAM DUNN, LYNN WILLIS
CHAOSIUM (1989)
3 – 6 PLAYERS; SUGGESTED AGES: 12 AND UP

ROLEPLAYING GAMES, WHICH ALLOW participants to join together to create

a fun and adventurous verbal story, seem like they ought to be ideal for families.
All they require is a cooperative spirit and a sense of imagination — qualities no
age group claims a monopoly on. In practice, roleplaying rules sets ideal for all
members of a typical family aren’t so easy to find. Dungeons & Dragons, the orig-
inator of the form as we know it and still the default introduction to the genre,
appeals brilliantly to people who delight in the mastery of complex rules details.
The elaborate structure it and its many descendants offer is sweet music to a swath
of players, mostly male, who stumble onto roleplaying in early adolescence or
beyond.
Family gaming, with its range of age groups and mindsets, calls for a simpler,
stripped-down approach to roleplaying. Prince Valiant: The Storytelling Game
provides just such an entry point.
Prince Valiant takes its basis in the classic newspaper comic strip, begun in
1937 by writer/illustrator Hal Foster and carried on to this day by successors. The
game allows you to create stories around characters inhabiting Foster’s sunny,
romantic version of the King Arthur myth. Both game and comic strip serve up
their thrills and derring-do within a positive, clean-cut context. Their reassuring
good nature appeals to younger kids, though they also offer plenty of Vikings,
clashing swords, and suits of armor to hook the fancy of older ones. The game
follows the comic strip in its happy disregard for historical accuracy. Parents with
a mind to do so can, however, use game sessions to sneakily induce in their kids a
basic grounding in the real history of Dark Ages Europe.
Character creation is simple, requiring players to make only two rules deci-
sions. First they must allocate seven points between two qualities — brawn and
presence — which are used to determine the results of broadly defined action
attempts. One measures physical capability; the other, mental. Then players assign
272 ✯ FAMILY GAMES: THE 100 BEST

nine points to skills, from a list of 14. Examples of these more specific abilities
include agility, archery, courtesie, fellowship, healing, and hunting. Players also
invent suitable names for their characters, then describe their backgrounds,
appearance, and personalities.
As in most roleplaying games, one participant takes on a guiding role, here
called a storyteller. In a family game, you’ll want one of the adults, or an older kid
capable of smoothly handling a group of excited players, to perform this job. The
storyteller creates basic situations, called episodes, to which the players respond
by describing the actions of their characters. When outcomes are in doubt, the
storyteller uses the game’s resolution system to determine if the heroes succeed or
fail. Prince Valiant uses an ingeniously simple system of coin tosses, as modified
by the characters’ brawn, presence, and skills, to decide when the heroes forge
ahead, and when they are confronted with additional setbacks or complications.
Set aside a supply of shiny new pennies to ward off the grubby hand syndrome
that comes with prolonged coin-handling.
Guidance for storytellers appears in the form of pre-written episodes. Incidents
covered include dragon attacks, requests for aid from despairing families, and an
array of knights who issue challenges to the heroes. A clear, consistent format
allows you to easily create similar adventures arising from the Arthurian setting.
By dividing the episode format into categories according to their function in the
narrative — nuisance, assistance, and attack are examples — the game painlessly
teaches you the basics of story structure.
Prince Valiant shares with other roleplaying games the trait of persistence over
time: characters may succeed or fail in their story goals, but the players never win
or lose. Instead, their heroes return for as many episodes as you care to spin, much
like the ongoing protagonists of a TV series — or the Prince Valiant strip itself. A
continuity spontaneously develops as the characters build on past successes and
seek to overturn the complications of past failures. During the game, characters
accrue fame, which they can use to improve their skills or boost their chances of
success at certain social actions.
After several sessions, some groups may feel drawn toward the advanced rules.
Added options include a beefed-up skill list, adding such abilities as bargaining,
disguise, farming, and money-handling. By the standard of the typical roleplaying
game, these extra rules remain radically simple in presentation and in play.
A key aspect of any roleplaying game is its malleability: together, storyteller
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and players are the ultimate authors of their own experience. They can alter any-
thing, from the world to the rules themselves, to suit their own tastes and needs.
Although Prince Valiant is eminently suitable as a family game, it doesn’t take that
as its primary focus. A few obvious tweaks come to mind for storytellers running
the game for kids, or with a mixed group of children and adults.
For starters, I’d deemphasize the game’s focus on evoking the Hal Foster style.
Although the strip is still published in some newspapers, and King Features makes
periodic attempts to revive it in other media, few kids will have heard of it. The
strip’s stately appeal may be better appreciated by grown-ups. When I was a kid
in the early 1970s, I remember finding it stodgily opaque. Whether it was the
absence of word balloons or the classically measured compositions, its lack of
obvious energy kept me at arm’s length. I don’t think I’m projecting when I assume
that today’s kids, raised on SpongeBob and the Xbox, may need you to inject a
more raucous, irreverent energy into your storytelling than strictly fits the Foster
ethos.
In keeping with the strip, Prince Valiant allows for female characters but
acknowledges the many obstacles that prevent them from acting with the same
freedom as young male knights. To run the game for girls, adjust Foster’s
Arthurian mythos to permit female knights. Let them pursue adventure with the
same disregard for historical sexism as the boys do.
You can also allow kid players to customize the setting by adding elements that
tickle their imaginations, whether or not they’re true to Foster or the Arthurian
tradition. Foster’s strip takes a rationalistic approach to magic. If the kids want to
add a dash of Harry Potter, follow their lead. If they’re going through a Twilight
phase and want to meet a hunky, non-threatening vampire, take advantage of that
pre-established interest. The opportunity to build on one another’s creative contri-
butions is the core of the roleplaying experience. Granting this full flower will
probably require you to set aside the game’s purist inclinations; the personalized
roleplaying experience is well worth it.
The solid structure of Prince Valiant: The Storytelling Game provides the ideal
platform for the family gamer to introduce his or her brood to the joys of role-
playing. This is only fitting, as lead designer Greg Stafford’s love of storytelling in
general and the classic strips of Hal Foster shines through on every infectious page.

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274 ✯ FAMILY GAMES: THE 100 BEST

ROBIN D. LAWS is a writer and game designer. His roleplaying game

designs include Feng Shui, The Dying Earth, Rune, HeroQuest, and The
Esoterrorists. Among Robin’s six novels are Pierced Heart, The Rough
and the Smooth, and The Freedom Phalanx. His nonfiction work includes
40 Years of Gen Con, an oral history of the hobby games industry’s
biggest convention. Pelgrane Press recently published an anthology of his
appallingly funny comic strip, The Birds. Robin’s recent roleplaying
design, Mutant City Blues, is a game of procedural investigation in a
world where one percent of the population has acquired superpowers.
Robin hails from Toronto and is a fixture of the game convention guest
circuit.