A Brave is Brave: Learning Through Experience and Failure
Imagine you are 12 years old and on a Spring Break camping trip with your friends and fellow scouts. You spend a week singing songs, roasting marshmallows, learning of the local flora while gathering edibles from the woods, tying knots, and sleeping under the stars. At night the air is cool and the smells of pine and rain. The stars are brighter than you’ve ever seen them before, as if you’ve somehow fallen closer to the sky. And just when you thought things couldn’t be better, a meteor streaks through the sky. You excitedly point out this streak of purple and green against the black backdrop and everyone is in awe. Your scout leader tells you that it is probably the biggest and most beautiful meteor he has seen in all of his years camping. He promises to take the troop on a meteor rock hunt for the next nature outing. At the end of the week, you pack up your camp somewhat excited to be going home to your nice warm bed and Nintendo, but also a bit sad to be leaving this place of adventure.
On the drive back home, your scout leader pulls over to refuel and stretch before completing the drive home. You and your fellow scouts pile out of the car. One of your friends rushes in behind the scout leader in a rush to get to the bathroom when you hear them yell “What’s that?!?”. As you rush over, your scout master is doing their best to shield something from everyone’s view and tells you to get back. Despite his best efforts, you get a good look at the body of the gas station clerk you remember from your stop here last week. He looks like a dried out mummy. As you look around the store, it appears to have been looted and there is no one else driving by or getting gas… What happened here?
This is one example of how Junior Braves Survival Guide to the Apocalypse RPG can start out. It is, in fact, the way I started each of my five sessions I got the opportunity to run at Gen Con 2022. In this game you play as a Jr Brave who learns of the apocalypse after returning from a camping retreat with your troop. It is your job to figure out what happened to the world while you were away and hopefully keep yourself and your fellow troop members alive. It uses the same system as Kids on Bikes (see also: Kids on Brooms and Teens in Space) and it is based off of the graphic novels Junior Braves of the Apocalypse. It is a fantastic option for role playing when you are looking to run something that is light on rules and big on narrative opportunities. The Game Master (GM) sets up the scenes and the characters get to narrate how they feel, what they do, and what they say. Sometimes the GM will have them make rolls to see if they are successful. The GM is also responsible for the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) and running the scout leader as a way to step into the narrative when needed.
I really love how the stats are done for this system. Each character gets one die of a set of dice assigned to each of the six character traits (Brains, Brawn, Fight, Flight, Charm, and Grit). The stat you are best in is assigned the D20, the stat you are worst in is assigned the D4. But just because you are inherently bad at something doesn’t mean that you can’t get lucky and succeed. Enter the “Exploding Dice” mechanic. When you roll the highest value on the die you are rolling, it explodes, letting you re-roll it and add the new roll to your total. You might even get extra lucky and have the die explode again. You can keep rolling until it stops exploding or you meet your threshold for success as set by the GM. I love that the thing you are worst at is also the thing that has the highest chance for you to just get lucky on.
Another really cool feature of the system is the “Brave Tokens”. Each time you fail a roll, you earn a Brave Token which can be used later to help increase a roll by +1/Brave Token. The tokens can also be used for your special character ability (called a Trope). As a therapist, I just adore that the game recognizes we as humans learn from our failures and builds in this mechanic to demonstrate that the more you fail, the more you learn. Seriously, chef’s kiss to the designers on this one. What I learned as I ran this game over and over again is that your scouts will definitely fail, sometimes in hysterical fashion, and they will quickly build up a stock of Brave Tokens. Towards the end, as the action was building, they were able to overcome dice that were worthy of dice jail by spending their tokens and thus overcoming adversity and saving the day (or themselves at least).
From a therapy standpoint, I can definitely see using this game in a campaign setting to work with both children and adults. The mechanics set up some awesome therapeutic learning moments. But I also think that because your characters are young, it gives adults more permission to let loose and play. I will absolutely be talking about this more in another post, but we know that play is a great way to improve mental health across the lifespan. Adults especially can struggle to overcome the stigma of “play is for children” and just let loose without having some type of “adulty excuse” such as I’m playing football for a workout or I’m playing this game to build teamwork cohesion with my work colleagues. If I have any adults reading this right now, consider this your excuse to play more: it’s good for you! I watched many adults really relax into the role of a preteen scout and just have childlike fun - despite the mummy alien apocalypse that was obviously taking over the town. Obviously we should rob the empty store off all its Mt. Dew or dare your friend to jump off the bridge into the water below. What are you… chicken?!?
10/10 would recommend you try out this game. And who knows, maybe you’ll run into me at Games on Demand one day and get to play at my table!
