On Friday I looked at how, with a minimal application of system mastery by the DM, a completely new player who had never even played a roleplaying game before could create a character in just five sentences.

Magical Kitties Save the Day is the newest RPG from Atlas Games: You are a magical kitty. You have a human. Your human has a Problem. You need you use your magical powers to solve their Problems and save the day! The trick is that the Hometown where you live also has Problems, and when those Problems – witches, aliens, hyperintelligent raccoons – are aimed at your human’s Problems, they make those Problems so much worse!

Created by Matthew J. Hanson, the first edition was a PDF-only rulebook designed to be enjoyed by all ages. At Atlas, we believed we could take this hidden gem and bring it to the masses: After an extremely successful Kickstarter last year, we’ve created a boxed set that is chock full of material not only to make the game the perfect introduction for young new players – making it ideal for parents wanting to roleplay with their kids, for example – but also to teach new GMs of any age how to master the game.

That’s why, for example, the first thing you’ll find in the game is Magical Kitties & the Big Adventure: A choose-your-path graphic novel adventure, so that new players can get a taste of how the game is played within seconds of opening the box.

It’s also why, as I looked to develop and expand the 2^nd Edition of the game, that I focused very carefully on character creation with an eye on the principles of fast, accessible character creation I had learned from years of experimenting with open tables. Not because Magical Kitties Save the Day is necessarily designed for open table play (although it can very easily be adapted for it), but because those same principles apply to any game that you want to be friendly for brand new players:

• You want them to be able to start playing quickly, particularly if they’re young players who may have a shorter attention span.
• You want the decisions to be comprehensible without any system mastery, because not only will these players not have mastery of the specific mechanics of Magical Kitties; they may not even have an understanding of how any roleplaying game is played.

(As an unexpected benefit, simple and clear choices also allowed me to repackage character creation into the graphic novel experience, when it otherwise would have proven difficult.)

The first edition of Magical Kitties was already really good at this. So my design focus was on targeting the handful of steps in character creation that still had any lingering friction and figuring out how to ruthlessly restructure them or supplement them in order to eliminate that friction.

The result was the seven sentences of Magical Kitties character creation:

1. You have two Kitty Treats and an Owie Limit of 2.
2. Roll 1d6 to determine your Cute, Cunning, and Fierce attributes. (Table on p. 10.)
3. Roll 2d6 and read them as a two-digit number to generate your Talent (p. 13).
4. Roll 2d6 to generate your Flaw (p. 14).
5. Roll 2d6 to generate your Magical Power (p. 15).
6. What does your kitty look like and what is their name?
7. Determine your human’s Problem by rolling a Problem Source and an Emotion associated with that problem (p. 12), then name and describe your human.

This character creation is lightning fast. I can actually run 20-30 minute micro-scenarios of Magical Kitties (as convention demos, for younger kids, or as quick pick-up games) in which new players can learn the rules, create their characters, and complete the adventure.

…AND NOW FOR THE BUILD

In looking at our seven sentences for Magical Kitties, you might notice how many of those involving dice to randomly generate the character. This, of course, is intentional: In our discussion of OD&D, you may recall, I mentioned how players new RPGs associate “rolling dice” with “playing the game,” and that having them roll dice during character creation makes them feel as if they’re already playing the game (instead of still waiting for it to start). It headlines the fun, and this is even more true for young players.

(Everyone loves rolling dice. Kids just love rolling dice more.)

But you may also recall that random generation is a trade-off: You’re trading speed for the appeal of a carefully crafted character that you can fine tune to be exactly what you imagined playing.

Magical Kitties Save the Day, though, is also designed to be a game that can grow and mature with new players over time. Which is why every single one of those steps in which we use random generation – attributes, talents, flaws, magical powers, your human’s Problem – is designed so that an experienced player can swap it out: They can skip the random generation and instead have complete control over the creation of their character.

Magical Kitties Save the Day! – On Kickstarter July 16th The Art of Legends & Labyrinths #1: The Cleric – Viktor Fetsch Technoir and PvP