How old does my kid need to be?
Six, if a grown-up sits beside them and reads the sheet out. Eight, if they want to run their hero themselves. Brave and Bonkers is built for ages 6 to 12, though the number on the birthday cake tells you less than one thing does: whether your kid can sit through somebody else’s turn. Reading is not required, and the arithmetic is adding a small printed number to a die roll, which a grown-up can do instead.
What each age is like at the table
- Six and seven. They sit next to you, you read their sheet out, and you tell them when their turn has come round. Budget properly for the argument about who gets which hero.
- Eight to ten. They read their own sheet, remember their catchphrase without prompting, and begin telling everybody else what to do, which is a different problem and a nicer one.
- Eleven and twelve. They run their hero unaided, and somewhere around the third session they ask whether they can run the game for their friends.
What it actually asks of a kid
Less than most parents expect. Two things decide it, and neither one is reading or arithmetic.
The first thing is saying what your hero does, out loud, in your own words. “I climb down the rope” is the whole of it. A shy kid will whisper it to you and have you say it for them, and that works fine for as long as they need it.
The second is sitting through somebody else’s turn. That is the one that decides whether a six-year-old is ready, and it is the one nobody thinks to check. Rolling a die and reading the number off it, which is what parents ask about, takes about four minutes to learn.
If the waiting is a struggle this month it will not be in six, and nothing in the download expires while you wait.
If they cannot read the sheet yet
They can still play, and plenty do. Whoever runs the game is reading out loud anyway, because that is how the adventure is written, and a hero sheet is one page rather than a booklet, so a single read-through at the start tends to stick. By the end of the first fight, most kids are quoting their own abilities back at you.
The pictures carry more of it than the words. Every hero comes in six illustrations, and a kid who cannot yet read the name at the top of the sheet has no trouble telling you which picture is theirs.
The only arithmetic in the game
Two small additions, and both are on an attack. A hero rolls the twenty-sided die and adds the number printed beside their weapon, usually three to five. If the total is high enough they hit, and then they roll damage: a smaller die plus another number off the same line of the sheet.
Everything else is comparing. A save, or anything not printed on the sheet, is a flat twenty-sided die against a number the grown-up names, with nothing to add to it. Damage comes off Current HP in pencil, which is the only figure on a hero sheet that changes all evening.
No number is remembered, because every one a kid needs is printed in front of them. A kid who finds sums stressful can hand the adding to whoever is running the game, which is ordinary at six and seven, and most of them take it back around eight.
How long they will last
The first adventure fills about an hour, which is about as long as a six-year-old lasts before they slide off the chair and under the table. Nine and up will push happily to two hours and complain when you stop.
Adventure 01 has a sixty-minute core and a two-hour version of the same story. Every scene is marked with the parts that can go, so a game can reach its ending early with the story finished.
A six-year-old and an eleven-year-old at the same table
This is the most common family table there is, and it is the one most games handle worst. Two things keep it from going wrong here.
Every hero fits on one page, so the eleven-year-old is not sitting behind a thicker sheet with more options on it. There is nothing for the younger one to envy, which heads off the argument before anyone starts it.
And the grown-up is the turn order, going round the table by seat. Everybody gets a turn every round, so the loud one cannot take three while the youngest takes none, and you are not left refereeing.
Seat the youngest beside you where you can prompt them under your breath. Give the oldest something to be responsible for, remembering what the party came to do usually works, and they will guard it like a job.
Younger than six
Under six, most kids want the story more than the dice, and that is a fine way to spend an afternoon. Sit them on your lap, share your hero with them, and let them tell you what happens next. It spoils nothing.
They are not who this was written for, though. A four-year-old wants to be the dragon, and will still be the dragon at dinner.