Free Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share by Chris Anderson, Ken Denmead Page A

growth—he is getting more active (adding to physical health, aka constitution), gaining physical agility (improved dexterity), or learning life lessons (developing wisdom).
    Complexity can grow as the levels go up (and the child gets older). At the tweens, for example, your child could earn the skill/ ability to have his own cell phone, plus the cost of the plan to pay for it. Your child can also use the character sheet to track money (like how much gold an RPG character has) and budget, so then he can spend it on new items to help him earn more eps or money (the child saves up to buy a lawn mower or power washer to run his own neighborhood business). It’s really a matter of how far you and your kids are willing to take the metaphor of the game system. They may, at some point, rebel against the idea of using a game system to manage their lives. Or they may revel in the structure. As with all things relating to the parent/child relationship, your mileage will vary, and you know your kids best.

THE RULES
    This system is patterned rather significantly on D&D and a few other RPGs I’ve played over the years. The key factors for your child’s “character” are Attributes, Race, and Class. Using the blank character sheet included in Appendix B (which is also available as a downloadable file at www.geekdadbook.com ), help your “player” create his character, thinking a lot about what his own strengths and interests are, and crafting the character in such a way that will optimize the results from doing things he would already be expected to do—yes, help him min/max the character if you like, or keep him balanced if you want to encourage him to do a broader range of activities. Since you’ll ultimately control the challenge rolls your children will make and the experience point value of the challenges they face, you can still adjust the “game” based on how they craft their characters at this stage. If they maximize certain attributes in the hope of making successes easier down the line, you can always set a higher challenge rating to balance. Just don’t tell them you’re doing it—you’d be likely to hear “but that’s not fair!”
Character Attributes
ABBREVIATION—NAME
    STR —Strength (affects Combat challenges)
    INT —Intelligence (affects Magical challenges)
    WIS —Wisdom (affects Willpower challenges)
    DEX —Dexterity (affects Agility challenges)
    CON —Constitution (affects Endurance challenges)
    CHA —Charisma (affects Performance challenges)
Challenge Modifiers for All Attributes
SCORE—MODIFIER
    6 ......... -4
    7 ......... -3
    8-9 ....... -2
    10-11 .... -1
    12-13 ... +0
    14-15 .... +1
    16 ........ +2
    17 ........ +3
    18 ........ +4
    Players start with 12s straight across, and 5 Attribute points to distribute. For every gained attribute point, they can also move an existing point from one Attribute to another. For example, if a starting player wanted to max out his STR, he could use all 5 of his starting points to raise the 12 to a 17, and then move an additional point from INT (making it 11) to STR to end up with an 18. Said player could still move around an additional 4 points, say from INT to DEX, ending up with the following Attributes:
    STR: 18 (+4 to all Combat challenges)
    INT: 7 (-3 to all Magic challenges)
    WIS: 12
    DEX: 16 (+2 to all Agility challenges)
    CON: 12
    CHA: 12
Character Race
    Use the classic D&D/LotR races for this to keep it simple.

    Feel free to make up your own additional character races based on what your kids may want (girls may enjoy Faeries, boys may want Ogres—or vice versa!), but always make sure the balance is +10%/-10% for the experience from contrasting kinds of challenges they may face).
Character Classes
    Depending on the class, the character will earn one additional skill point every third level in a focused area. Skill points can be used to acquire a new skill or to increase the character’s rank in an existing skill.

    Again, feel free to add or edit