[Deptheads] Fw: Strategicon and a kids' track?

[Strategicon Department Heads]

Karla,

1.) Re: the difference between ages. Depending on the game and its nature, the difference between 5 and 11, or between 8 and 13, can be pretty significant. We run a game that involves physical foam sword combat—obviously we cannot have five-year-olds running around, and when it comes to sport and pretend violence, we’ve found that different age groups play, learn, and norm on acceptable levels of force *very* differently. Moreover, while it’s easy to post in the family area that a game is 10+, there is not currently a way on the website to submit or post a game with that age guidance, nor to search and register for such a game with a better-defined age range. My experience in LARPs has been that there is a much bigger difference between 13 and 16 than between 12 and 13, so Lili’s point about having a game range for tweens might be useful to consider. If 13 years old is the right age to start volunteering, then that is your prerogative to determine. 13+ has not always been the most useful age range for LARPs, however.
2.) Lili is asking for a track, not necessarily an area. A track would be a line of games across departments scheduled such that a person on the “Tween Track” could search on the website and find something to play in every time slot between hours X and Y, to be determined by us, probably on Saturday and Sunday of con. We already have a number of games that could qualify; the difference would be thoughtfulness about scheduling, working together, and having a tag on the website allowing players to search for games on the track during prereg, and possibly a few pages in the conbook relisting everything on the track to make it easy for those players to use. Such a thing would be useful to me, funneling players toward games like the Boffer Showcase, where tweens can be left with us to be beaten up with foam swords while their parents enjoy games elsewhere, and picked up at 6pm properly exhausted and ready for dinner. 😊
3.) While it’s absolutely true that tweens generally find stuff to do, this is an opportunity to systematize and communicate more closely about where games specifically for this age group go in the schedule, advertise them on a special page in the conbook, list the track on a page of the website, add a tag to prereg to help families find those games, and allow departments to select GMs who work well with this age group for the track. Simply because kids find a way to have fun within our current system doesn’t mean we’ve optimized, it doesn’t mean we can’t do better, and it doesn’t mean that having such a track wouldn’t attract more such families and hence more congoers. 
4.) I agree with what you said about the need for parents to be *available* rather than hovering, which is why I’d love to see a better system in place for linking kids to their parents through reg and/or on their badges. We have parents sign a waiver at the Boffer Showcase and ask them to leave some info with us so we can get ahold of them. Maybe parents can fill out a little card at reg and leave it in the back of their kids’ badge holders with some contact info or something? Might also be useful if a kid gets lost, or to include allergy info. I’d love it at the showcase if parents could indicate to me what NSAIDs/anti-inflammatories they’re okay with their kids taking, so when I have a fifteen-year-old icing their knee, they can grab some ibuprofen from the first aid kit without me having to call their mom (something we’ll probably add to the waiver). It’s really been the lack of systematization and information—the inability to find parents or get ahold of them once their kid is left with us, and no information about how to best keep this kid safe—that makes me nervous about running games for kids, not the kids themselves. 
5.) Karla, your kids sound rad! And as you well know, there are a lot of differences between kids, both in terms of maturity and things like reading level. We might want to emphasize and encourage parents to think about and assess their kids’ maturity and reading level, rather than just strict age limitations. As I’ve gotten to know kids and their parents at the con, especially kids in this age range, I’ve learned to gear them towards stuff for what I perceive to be their maturity and reading level, rather than strictly their age, when I recommend games to them. I’ve noticed that kids from about the age of 11 are eager to roam around con, get out of the Family Area, and have experiences separate from their parents. It’s not universally true, but there’s something to the idea that we have a group of kids who might need slightly different rules than the under-tens. I have already begun relaxing rules about who can be left at games like the Boffer Showcase, if I know their parents and they make themselves available through the waiver, but I snap the rule back in place if a kid is too immature to play the game without their parent present. But it’s also happened at Valkyrie that a kid of 11 or 12 (or 13) is left to play without a parent; sometimes that goes very well, and sometimes they become a roving band of psychopaths shooting everyone and threatening to mutiny against the captain for… reasons? 😊
6.) Since we need volunteers and there seems to be a plethora of ravening teenaged gamers around the convention looking for things to do, maybe we should direct our recruitment in their direction. Maybe we should have an info session about being a volunteer next con? If we do a teen gamer info page of some kind in the conbook, we can plop the info session on there, along with a few events they might like. I don’t think the teenagers proper need a track, but an info page might be good, with their attention drawn to it when they pick up badges at reg. 

Tara

From: Strategicon Department Heads
Sent: Friday, September 6, 2019 11:54 PM
To: deptheads at strategicon.net
Subject: Re: [Deptheads] Fw: Strategicon and a kids' track?

Um...what did I just read? There is a big difference between 12 and 13, leave it that way. I don't care who plays what game, but 13 year olds can volunteer if they don't want to pay...that's how I GET my volunteers in the first place. When I started working for my badge at this con, back at the Westin, I was a runner in RPGs, and all my co-workers were 13, 14, 15 year old kids (mainly boys). These "tweens/teens" had found something to do. When they weren't doing their volunteer thing, they were playing RPGs and board games. OK...just kidding, we don't have to turn her kids into volunteers, but the rest of it...

Tween track? Most of the true "tweens" which is anything with a 1 in front of it, NOT 8 or 9, already hang out with their friends and play their games. I'm not understanding how the games that run in Family Area are too juvenile...I ran Fireworks (suggested 12+ I think), Wacky Races (suggested age 14+) was run, and Kids on Bikes is an RPG for anyone. I know we have other games going on there too. In fact, Tanya had been expressing concern that we didn't have enough "little kid" games on the schedule. As someone who gets paid the big bucks (haha) to teach classes of children how to play tabletop games, there really isn't any reason to separate 5 year olds from 11 year olds. I teach mixed ages like that all the time. If a game is too much for a kid in this area, they don't play it. No reason a game can't be in the family area or offered to kids with a minimum age limit attached in the description...8+, 10+, etc. I'm not sure what rules are being broken in the family area. Tanya lets people use the last table if it's not needed at the time. If they weren't using it, it would be sitting empty. If your kids are playing a game, you don't need to "hover" unless you are helping in the game. Remain present, and go play a game at that table at the end.  Otherwise I see kids and their family members or other older or adult people with them. That's the purpose of the Family Area. I feel like she's asking us to reinvent the wheel. The area is there. The games are there. If "tweens" (I hate that term almost as much as I hate the term "teens") wanted to play games there, they'd be there playing games.

I have nothing against kids (or I should probably rethink not only the last 37 years of my life, but my day job too), and I absolutely have nothing against having activities for all the kids. I really don't think we're lacking (much) in that department. Maybe interview all the 12 and up kids that have been going to the con for several years and ask what they think. I'm serious. I do know we have more now than we did when my youngest kids were 6 and 10 years old. Maybe my kids are a little weird, so not a good example, but the younger one was so integrated into the con after 4 years that by age 10 she was demoing games in board games (Granted, her first game demo was SPANC, so yeah, my kids are weird), and by 11 or 12 running off to play Werewolf. Heck, one of her all time con highlights is interviewing Ted Alspach for her school newsletter when she was 13. (Yeah, ok, she's really weird).  I know more than several homeschooling families (since she mentioned homeschooling) that attend, and their kids find plenty to do and plenty to play. Werewolf is a big thing with a lot of them, and Cash & Guns, as we all know. If she wants games offered in an area for "tweens", I don't think the drop off rule is an issue. These kids start running around on their own by the time they're 9 years old. I think our no drop off in the family area pertains more to 7 or 8 and under. And that being the case, I don't think those parents need to be in another room. They need to be available. I'm really not understanding exactly what we'd be doing differently. Please let me know if I've missed something in her email. 

Someone should also let her know about GameSchoolCon if she's a homeschooler and wants a super friendly kid con. Or maybe she's been, and is trying to recreate it here. This is a different con. A different feel, a different mission, and different is not a bad thing. Okay. I didn't mean to jump on a soapbox. So, oops. But I'm really just not getting what she's asking for, and how it's any different than what the reality already is. 

Karla :-)


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On Fri, Sep 6, 2019 at 9:59 PM Strategicon Department Heads <deptheads at strategicon.net> wrote:
Message From: Tara Leederman  taleederman at gmail.com
Hi guys!
 
Yes, we’ve also noticed that the age ranges available now don’t work so well for gearing games toward the proper age group nor for letting people know who is of the appropriate age to understand the rules on their own or to be left alone while parents go play games. I don’t think Lili is quite right either—a “tween” track should run from about ages 10 to age 14, because parents definitely need to stick with their kids for any game when they’re under the age of 10, and 10 is pushing it for some kids. I also usually tell parents that some “mature” games are gonna be fine for an experienced gamer of 16 or 17, but not for an energetic kid of 13, which the online age range available to us doesn’t cover well. 
 
As a note: It would be really awesome if kids’ badges (all the under-eighteens) or their identifying badge number gave us a way of identifying and/or contacting their parents, possibly through reg. Another handy thing for parents to know would be the kids’ reading level, and for us to advertise games accordingly. Age isn’t the only factor to consider here. I’ve had kids playing LARPs with us from age 8 who are awesome at understanding rules and could, honestly, play Starship Valkyrie without their parents working alongside them just fine—but I’ve also had at least one 12-year-old who was so immature and his reading level so low that I had to ask him to go get his dad if we wanted to stay in the game (also Starship Valkyrie). Now this was easy—we have a rule against under-13s just being left with us. But if he was one year older and had similar problems, I’d basically have had to tell his dad “look, his reading level seems too low for this game.” But there isn’t really a lot of good codification around this stuff yet, especially in LARPs, where most of the games are homebrew and unpublished. 
 
Starship Valkyrie attracted the kids and tweens, for sure, which is why it always runs in a 2pm-6pm slot. Our boffer showcase, which runs on the other weekend day’s 2pm slot, is *definitely* a teen/tween-friendly event—in fact, this last run we had almost nothing but tweens and teens, and I have gotten to know a lot of kids and parents since we started running it. When we bring in the cover shooter, it will be yet another teen/tween-friendly game, which will encourage multiple runs. I’d love to see more events geared toward this group scheduled as part of a track, so we’re not competing with each other but smoothly transitioning families through a series of great tween-friendly games. I will also be looking to schedule more LARPs for younger kids, like Wizards Quest this last con. 
 
We already have some areas in the boffer showcase where adults *could* run games if they wanted to, though it’s a bit loud in the whole area. I’d be happy to set up some tables for them, but we’d have to include the information as part of the track, and I’d like it if they could get in touch with me before con, since I’d be overseeing that space for what is essentially another event or couple of events. I could make some board games available to them, or we could ask a GM to run a tabletop for the parents, in cooperation with Shane or Jim. Let me know what you guys think.
 
Best,
 
Tara
 
 
From: Strategicon Department Heads
Sent: Friday, September 6, 2019 9:04 PM
To: Strategicon Department Heads
Subject: [Deptheads] Fw: Strategicon and a kids' track?
 
Good evening,
 
This is a follow up email from a conversation that I had with Lili (I also briefly met both of her kids referenced in the email below) while at the con last weekend.
 
What do you guys think of her idea of a tween track?
 
 
Eric
 
 
 
Hi Eric!
 
It was so nice to meet you at this year's most recent Strategicon! We've been attending for the past 2 years, and it's been a great family experience for us. My kids are now 8 & 10, and we've enjoyed the Board game 101s, Game Library, Artemis, and Party Games. And as you know, my kids entered their first tournament. What we've noticed in the past 2 years is what appears to be a huge growth in the amount of school aged kids participating, particularly in the age group of about 8-13. In this age group, these kids prefer to play more "adult" games than what is offered in the Kids' area, but we've found that it's not always easy to incorporate kids to the regular 101s. Additionally, some people do not prefer to play with kids. Also, when kids are playing a game, parents have to hover around, which does not allow the parents to play their own games.  I definitely love the Family area on the 2nd floor, and I would suggest that the rules be enforced better to be reserved for families with kids OR possibly allow parents who are hovering over kids in the nearby room.  
 
Here's another suggestion: to have a tween track for kids ages 8-13 (about 3rd - 8th graders) with or without participating parents. This could then be marketed toward families who would like to attend, who are interested in more board games, or perhaps they homeschool. If parents do not participate in the games, it would be ideal to have a nearby room or tables for parents to be able to play games quietly nearby. This is because of your signs and rule that Strategicon volunteers are not responsible for kids (nor should they be responsible for our kids).  There are already some events that might be already part of the track (like the LARP on Sundays at 2pm), or certain party games, Magic 101, some of the video game tournaments. It can all be listed in a section of the schedule (to make it easier to follow) with some additionally 101s and tournaments added. And it wouldn't need to all be necessarily in the same room all the time.  This would probably work well on Saturday and Sunday when the Family Day Pass is available. (By the way, I suggest age 13 as the upper end rather than age 12 that you have on your upper end of a kids' day pass because that is approximately the age for a older middle school aged child. In high school, kids become more independent, but I would probably supervise my own kids more closely until about the age of 13. )  
 
I believe that with a stronger track and focus on this age group, we will see a continued growth of families participating Strategicon.
 
Thanks again for listening to my suggestion! 
 
Best,
Lili
 
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