Last time we looked at Kids On Bikes we focused on characters and collaborative worldbuilding. This is how things look from the players’ side of the table and is an important part of the game, but today we want to look at the other half of the equation. What tools does the game provide for GMs (on or off bikes)?
Star Trek Adventures is designed for starships warping around the galaxy, chasing down adventure on strange new worlds and contacting new life and new civilizations. One of the challenges in creating a campaign centered on a space station is a feeling of being stuck. What do your players do when you can’t head off into the final frontier? Well, here are a few ideas to consider.
Kids getting in over their heads with some crazy adventure is a genre that has too many classic examples to really list: Stand By Me, The Goonies, E.T., Jumanji, Zathura, and Home Alone just start the list. Then, of course, there are the recent series Stranger Things, The OA, and Runaways which all combine the kid/teen model with the sort of obsessive binge-watching we all know and love today. If you want to harness that sort of power at your gaming table, then Kids On Bikes is the game for you.
There is a tried and true improv method called “Yes, and…” that can make it really easy to make a roleplaying situation more dynamic and fun. The Mythcreants have a good article about it’s use in RPGs and Geek & Sundry has a good article about games that make it really easy to use this option. Chris Perkins uses this all the time in the Acquisitions Incorporated series and it’s one of the reasons those are so much fun to watch. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so read on to up your GM game.
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