My kid wants to run the game.
Let them. A kid who can read the adventure out loud can run it, because most of what a Game Master says in Brave and Bonkers is already printed in the module, and the rest is asking what everybody does. The rest of this page is written to them: what the job is, what to say when they do not know an answer, and what to print before their friends come over.
For the grown-up who found this page first
Your kid is asking for the job that sounds hardest at the table. It is mainly reading the adventure out loud, which they can already do. Sit nearby the first time, take a hero yourself if you want one, and let them run it.
The rest of this is for them.
So you want to run the game
Good. You do not need to have played before, and you do not need to be the best at rules.
Your job is not knowing everything. Your job is telling your friends what is happening, asking them what they do, and using the dice to find out how it goes. You are not playing against them. You play every single person in the world they are walking around in.
The words are already written down
Open the adventure and you will find text in boxes. You read those out loud exactly as they are printed, and you will say more of those words than your own all night.
Underneath it, the adventure says what the monsters do and what number to compare a roll against. Nobody at the table knows those numbers except you, so you never have to pretend you memorised anything.
When you do not know the answer
Say “roll and let us find out”. It is a real answer and you are allowed to use it whenever you want.
If somebody tries something the adventure never thought of, decide fast and say it like you mean it. Being wrong about a rule does not matter. Stopping for four minutes to look it up is what makes people wander off and find a snack.
When your friends go somewhere you did not plan
They will, usually in the first ten minutes. Somebody will want to make friends with the monster, or climb the thing you thought was scenery, or go back to the village to buy a goat.
Say yes more than you say no. If you are not sure how it turns out, ask for a roll. If they walk off the edge of what the adventure covers, let them find something small and boring out there, and they will come back on their own.
Getting your friends to actually turn up
Do not start by explaining the rules. Ask if they want to be a wizard for an hour on Saturday.
Print all seven hero sheets before they arrive and let them pick when they walk in. Choosing a hero is the part that gets people interested, and it always runs long, so do it first.
Three friends is a good number, and five is loud.
What to print before Saturday
- All seven hero sheets, even if three friends are coming. Everybody picks out of the whole seven, and it covers you when somebody brings a brother.
- The How to Play page on the back of each sheet, so people can look things up without asking you.
- The adventure you picked. Read it once before anybody arrives.
- Nothing else. You need dice, pencils and a table, and none of those come out of a printer. A 3D printer could do the dice, but that is a whole other project and your friends are coming on Saturday.
You will need somebody’s printer, so this is the part where you go and ask a grown-up.