A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Yuletide Journey

Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Yuletide Journey by Brian Benoit and Justin Halliday is a role playing game supplement published by Hero Forge Games for use with the Hero Kids game system. Hero Kids is aimed at children from age 4 to age 10. This is a six encounter adventure with a normal difficulty rating.

The supplement is available from RPGNow at the regular price of $2.99 and is also available at a reduced price as part of the Hero Kids – Complete Fantasy PDF Bundle, which is how it was purchased. This is also one of the adventures available in the print on demand compilation softcover Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure Compendium.

The PDF comes in a landscape format with 22 pages, one of which is the colour front cover. There are two versions of the PDF, one of which is a printer friendly version that lacks the parchment-style page backgrounds. This supplement also comes with a third PDF; this has two pages, one of which is a letter to the children from Odin and the other has three equipment cards.

The supplement starts with the standard list of what is needed to play the game; the core rulebook, d6s, pencil and eraser and printouts of the various monster and hero cards, stand up minis and encounter maps.

It follows with a brief overview of the adventure, which starts before the midwinter festival of Yuletide and requires the children to go looking for the missing Odin-Father. The Designer’s Notes says that the adventure explores the pagan myths and traditions of midwinter festivals that predate the spread of Christianity, but for a Christmas, rather than Yuletide, feel, Odin can be replaced with Santa and Sleipnir with Rudolph (undoubtedly some parents would object to the use of pagan mythology).

It starts with an introduction to the adventure. The first encounter sees the children performing ability tasks to test their knowledge of Odin-Father; success reveals bits of knowledge, greater success reveals more knowledge. Should no character succeed, some knowledge will still be divulged.

Next the children have to pass several tests for the elves who know the location of Odin’s house to show that they are worthy.

Next up is an optional combat encounter, followed by the difficulties associated with climbing up a mountain and another, non-optional, combat. Finally the children arrive at Odin’s house to find him in asleep, drugged. In this final encounter they have to find a cure and administer it.

This is followed by a full page map of the Brecken Vale setting, two pages of encounter maps, which duplicate those from the GM’s section but larger and without labels, one page of three monster cards, a page of stand up minis, a page with two hero cards and a final page with two equipment cards and more stand up minis.

Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Yuletide Journey in Review

The PDF is well bookmarked although one minor error was noted, with the fifth encounter lacking a main bookmark for it, which was not a major problem as all the other parts were. Only the printout pages lack bookmarks but these are not necessary. There is no table of contents either, but navigation is on the whole above average.

The text maintains a two column format and only one minor error was noticed. This supplement does have a couple of illustrations, but these are both duplicates of images from monster cards. The rest is the monster and equipment cards themselves, the stand up minis and encounter maps, which is all that is needed.

Combat plays a more minor role in this adventure that usual (as it did in the previous adventure from Brian Benoit, Fire in Rivenshore). The combat encounters are scalable if there are more heroes. There is a greater emphasis on ability tests, although there is less flexibility with these as generally only one ability can be tested when needed.

Should a GM not want to use Odin, this will require a bit more work than simply changing the names. They will have to change information related to knowledge about Odin to knowledge about Santa for example; not a major change but this will need doing beforehand.

Just as with his previous adventure, this one by Brian Benoit has a different focus to those normally from Hero Forge Games, and it is good to change things a bit. If there are problems with the adventure, it’s with the ability tests being less flexible than usual and the use of Odin and Yuletide instead of Santa and Christmas. The latter may or may not be a problem, being down to personal preference. Hero Kids – Fantasy Adventure – Yuletide Journey can be found by clicking here.