Enttropy

Oh and tips to keep them engaged, well you need to read the room and identify which parts of the game they enjoy the most and the least, and the reason behind that.

Give them what they want and make all of them participate. With adults it also happens, but it’s way more prominent with kids: some will talk much more than the rest, and some will be ashamed or have shyness to let themselves go. You need to kindly guide the shy ones into the spotlight and reward them for participating.

Also, when you narrate the places and events, ask them to complete your idea. For example: “As the group follow the trails, a vendor interjects them and tries to sell them micro-hamburgers, but Player #4 doesn’t loose focus and realizes that just around the corner, drenched in the glow of the neon lights from the skyscrapers, is the vehicle that Mr. Jenkins gifted to the group… What does this vehicle looks like, Player #4?” Do this every now and then for places, NPC descriptions, the smells and sounds, etc. Make them have as much agency as possible in the world building, instead of just having them react to your dice checks.

Hell yeah! Your daughter is a crunchy-gamer in the making! I can relate to her in the sense of her wanting to play things with a solid structure that she can study and master, to keep her engaged. I think that she will enjoy Savage Worlds.

If 5e is rules-heavy, then SWADE is a rules-medium system. The slowest part is making a character because the system is universal and there are a ton of options, but as a DM, you can curate the options for your players. Also, there are Savage Settings and one of them is “East Texas University.” Teens will be able to relate to the school setting but “rad-idfied”. They get to role play as university students who then solve mysteries, join fraternities, hunt monsters, drive and modify badass combat cars, etc.

Also, maybe it’s time to introduce the kids to Cyberpunk RED. It’s not hard to learn or teach and the game itself is fairly lightweight.

Otherwise, for the smaller, Index Card RPG or EZD6 can work. Both are super streamlined and they retain that D&D feeling. Also, games using the LUMEN system can give the kids a nice dopamine rush. The creator basically states that his system is meant to make players feel like Overwatch or Diablo characters. In contrast with 5e, in which players often hoard spells and powers for the “right event”, LUMEN makes everyone use their spells and special skills all the time in fast paced combat that resolves super quick. Check out ”Nova" and “Light”.

And personally I don’t like them, but you can also show them the FATE and Ironsworn/Starforged systems to broaden their horizons and make them experience a different perspective which they might love.

When I bought my iPad Pro I imagined I’d have this thing filled with gigabytes of handwritten text but that’s not the case at all. It’s not even the feeling of pen and paper that makes not want to use the iPad… it’s the immediate access to write and read what I want, that only a notebook and pen can provide. The iPad is filled with other apps and distractions, it heats up when you rest your palm on it, there’s always this anxiousness of balancing brightness and battery life.

Also, with handwritten messages you can convey so much more that it’s impossible to do with typed text. You can determine how fast or how methodical the person was while writing. You can convey emotions by how much strength you use or by the size and kerning of the letters, and also, a lot of the personality traits of the writer are mirrored on their calligraphy.

And yes, typing with a keyboard is so much faster, which enables me to ramble, which I often do I and I just did.

I adored the original XBOX but when 360 and PS3 dropped, one was a literal toy with everything stripped down and sold as proprietary extras, and the other was an amazingly powerful and open entertainment system with state of the art tech from out of the box.

Then yeah, the exclusives sealed the deal for me.