Showing my age I guess, but two things occur to me; 1. RPG stands for Rocket Propelled Grenade to my mind so it took a while to crack the context :), and 2. much more importantly don't we have a pretty good product description and field test going on here? Seems like desktop CNC and a load of maple could lead to initial sales at Society for Creative Anachronism fairs later this summer and more general toy fairs post success after...

And I guess I'm showing my age: RPG for me means Report Program Generator, and was what we used to program in (alongside COBOL) back in the pre-PC days. (Cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG_II)

(It was a trip of a programming language-- OpCodes had different meanings, depending on which column they were placed in. Take a look at the sample code in the Wikipedia article.)

Wow, I never thought about CNC/3d printing in the context of the SCA. Produce stuff at low cost using modern tech, sell it at Pennsic [1] for a massive, massive markup.

[1]: For those of you not in the know, Pennsic is a massive war in the SCA which lasts almost 3 weeks, outside of Pittsburgh. Over 10,000 participants and tons of merchants selling overpriced, awesome wares. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsic_War

I suppose AD&D for pre-schoolers would have made it clearer ?

Geeze you are right. Any coincidence that I'm currently building a makerbot as well? hmm....

At first I was a little bothered by the idea of a "preschool dungeon adventure". But on further reflection I suppose it says something positive about our culture that the term "dungeon" has lost it's association with "torture chamber".

That association is comparatively recent anyway, probably Victorian or later.

The meaning of 'underground cell' is apparently from the 14th century: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dungeon

Sounds like a cool idea. It would be interesting to see the rules you're using in addition to the pictures of the dungeons.

Battle system is very simple and not the focus of the game. You need to make it a true obstacle, but the real fun for the kids is completing the quest, opening the treasures, finding all the monsters, etc.

The battles are essentially: Roll to see who goes first, then each side takes turns beating up the other with a six sided die to determine damage.

you know what? my wife is at the living room trying to study and we have a 4 year old son that I have to keep busy today. I am a big fan of RPG games and I really liked this idea, going to see if it works with him :) thank you!

much to my surprise it worked, I mean, after we finished the first maze (it was short just a proof of concept), he wanted to do another one and he really got into trying to save the schoolbus, funny thing was that he rolled the dice over the monsters and then hit them with the dice during the battle, epic!

Glad you liked it! My daughter has a toy robot that has it's own battle song.

heh, nearly the same situation... here... Have to try it out with my son.

Hero Quest and its ilk were good for this sort of thing.

My two sons used to do this kind of thing all the time, minus the printed monsters. They had entire boxes of items that they kept around specifically to help them build mazes and also were very bad about co-opting every video-tape in the house or similar.

Played this with my boys(5 and 3) and they really liked it. Play lasted for about two hours - and they are looking forward to the next. A tip that worked well with them - carry over money and food for the next quest - made them value the coins/food even more!

Thanks!

Have you sent a free copy to Dooce? She's a good start for publicity.

Thanks for the tip. I'll do that.

When the kid gets a little older, Arkham Horror (a Cthulhu Mythos board game) might be something to try. It has all the players working against the "game".

I love co-op games, so thanks for the tip.

The sets they sell in this line are really good and pretty well balanced. Depending on what set you play with, it is a very different game each time.