Meddling Kids (2004)

Subtitle: An Introductory Role-Playing Experience

From the back cover:

Mysterious things down by the lake?
Strange stuff going on at school?
Only one person can solve this mystery... YOU!

Meddling Kids is an introductory role-playing game, teaching the basic ideas and concepts for people who've never touched a game like this before.

And it's perfect for kids of ALL ages.

And from the Publisher's sale page:

Mystery on the bog? Haunting in the old mansion? Strange goings-on at the abandoned circus? That's all in a day's work for the Meddling Kids!

Meddling Kids is a role-playing game aimed at players from ages 7 and up, and perfect for everyone. Designed and written to be easily understood, Meddling Kids uses its own unique game system -- The Starter System -- that is planned as a springboard to other, more involved gaming systems. And each adventure should take less than an hour each to play, making it easy for young minds to stay focused.

The theme of the game is simple: a group of kids and their anthropomorphic sidekick friend -- what we call The Wild Card -- have to solve mysteries and save the day. You've seen this model before in countless television series where kids team up with a talking animal, a talking car, an unfrozen caveman, or anything that you can imagine. The players take the roles of the kids and the gamemaster assumes the role of the Wild Card to make sure that the adventure goes the right way. And when the time comes, there are rules for setting a trap to catch the bad guy and solve the mystery.

Jump right into the fun and get the youngest kids started down the path of a great hobby right now! Meddling Kids are here to save the day!

User description:

An introductory level game where you get to play pre-teen or teenage characters running around with an odd non-player character - The Wild Card - solving mysteries and generally meddling into the lives of other people. Think of cartoons such as Scooby Doo. You try to catch the bad guy. There is no real fighting; you are just trying to figure out the mystery and somehow immobilize the person behind it. The police and other officials take care of things from there.

It uses a simple system with six-sided dice: roll 3d6 plus the relevant attribute (and possibly ability) versus a target difficulty set by the GM. If anyone is "hurt" in the game, they simply miss a number of minutes they went over their health attribute by - there is no real wounding or chance of death.

Two supplements were originally planned, but never published.