What system to play "How to train your dragon"

[Gorkamorka]

I was giving some thought to what system to run "How to train your dragon" in.

I had more or less come to the conclusion that it would be best to do it in FATE, until I heard Dans Monster and other childish things game.  Now I have started to wonder if that's not the system of choose for that franchise. 

The viking kids are not all that powerful by them self, but they a monster of a Dragon at their disposal.  A monster that adults will try to kill/run away from I they encounter them.

What other systems might be a good match?

[Morbid]

I was going to say Monsters and Other Childish Things as soon as I read the title.  It has a lot of support for the tone of How to Train Your Dragon (the films, at least - I haven't read the books).  As you note, the kids aren't super powerful by themselves, but the monsters/dragons are.  The relationships are very important and monsters/dragons tend to mess them up without realizing it. 

It also makes it pretty easy to customize your monster/dragon to do what you want.  And it's a really fun game in its own right. 

[trinite]

MaOCT would be great if you want to emphasize the dynamic relationships between the kids and their dragons. I could see the non-verbal roleplaying of the dragons being a fun challenge, and an opportunity for comedy.

But if you'd rather tell a more straight-forward adventure story, I'd go with Fate, and have each kid/dragon pair combined together into a single character.

[Daegan]

Monsters is perfect for How to Train Your Dragon.

-You can build your crazy dragon breeds and their bizarre superpowers.
-You can see the relationship rules in the first movie as Hiccup's relationship with his Dad gets used before dangerous scenes to help/encourage him, and how it gets shocked and damaged from Hiccup's sneaking off with Toothless early on.
-The end of the movie is a pretty good example of hiccup taking a ton of scar damage to his FEET location and the resultant permanent loss of 1 die and how to rep it.

[Gorkamorka]

Yeb, I pretty sure that Monster is the right way to go on this one.  At least better then my first idea, GURPS.  (Fate came later)

As anyone tried playing Monsters with actual children?  Does it work, or is it to complicated a system?

[Daegan]

It's a cut down one roll engine, so it's not bad.  Not nearly as bad as GURPS for complexity anyway.  It's not a loosy-goosy as FATE though.

If you're like me and most people I've played with the only things that are gonna give you a little bit of trouble are monster creation and multiple actions, so bone up on those bits and you should be fine.

If all else fails for dragon creation just take the sample monsters in the book and re-skin them.  They've also got a fun one roll monster creation table in the book if you want to just let the dice decide what bizarre mutant dragons show up.  That's also pretty in keeping with the weird designs in that movie.