I'm about to start Game Mastering for a group of kids/young teenagers (10-14 years old) at a local kids club. The players have some tabletop boardgames experience, never played an RPG; however, they (and their parents) do want to try. As I was quite active as a GM during my high school and university times I want to introduce them to the hobby.
We're gonna play in a superhero/supervillain setting, with the players being superheroes or some guys with special powers, much like metahuman from the Flash/Arrow universe.
There will be two or three other players.
For the system we're about to use, I'm thinking Savage Worlds. It allows for pretty fast-paced action, I think. (Was considering Fate, as it's my personal favorite, but I doubt we could get started fast enough with the concept of aspects).
I have several questions / concerns though.
How long should the first session be? I don't want to make it too long, but at the same time - I don't want to lose anything. I'm planning on bringing a few pre-generated characters with me, so that we don't spend the entire time creating characters. I was thinking to plan for 1,5-2 hours for the whole game - some short introduction, like showing them what the game is about and presenting them the "freedom" of choices they have, then the actual adventure - 2-3 scenes, with the last one being a confrontation with some "super villain". Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it's too little time to fit all of that.
Would it be better to plan this first adventure as a "one shot", then have them create their own characters, or start a mini-campaign with those characters? Would it be good for them to continue playing characters that they haven't created from scratch?