Taking turns

by Angie

Here is a little clip of Jack playing a game with us. I am really proud of two things in this video....

First, isn't Katie the most patient big sister gamer ever? She demonstrates patience even when things look pretty grim ("Then I wont ever get a turn..") She really wants to let him explore the games, learn to love playing together, and have fun gaming. I was so proud she didn't reach over and take the dice from her brother. Go Katie!

Secondly, despite the fact that he didn't want to, Jack shared. He passed the last die over to Katie so she could have a turn... eventually! Good job buddy! We kept playing after this video, and each time around the table he was a little less reluctant to pass the turn along. He's learning, and we're proud of our little ones.

In case you missed it previously, or for more info on our philosophy about playing games with kids you can check out an archived article about it here. We're all learning to play together, and most of all having fun!

Please feel free to share your proud gaming moments with the little ones in your life, let's celebrate their developing generosity, patience, and good sportsmanship!

Game! Turn!

A sweet story....

Hmm... which one?

Last night Jack watched me play a game with Katie. He sat there having a snack and watching in a pretty mellow way for such a boisterous little boy. When we were done we cleaned up the game and I started getting ready to go run an errand when I felt a little tugging at my leg. I look down and Jack is looking up at me with big eyes, and says "Game! Turn?". It totally melted my heart, and I stopped what I was about to go do to get out a game and play with Jack. After all, my beaming little just barely 2 year old waited patiently and asked so politely, with such a look of expectation and hope on his little face... what else could a mommy do? I grabbed Boggle Jr. off the shelf, thinking we would just roll the letter dice around and look at the pictures on the sturdy cards.

Jack's first word!

The first thing he did was get out some cards and proceed to tell me what the pictures were. "Cat", "Dog", "Shirt", "Car", "Two" (It was a five, but good try buddy!) Then he surprised me, he took the letter dice and instead of tumbling them around or throwing them on the ground, he looked at all of the sides and carefully picked some to display. Then he looks up at me and says "Word!". What?!? I look and the "word" he spelled was "ROLU". Then he looks at me and waves his arm across the tray and says "Read, Momma!". It was one of the highlights of my week, such a rich interaction with my little guy, and it just made me smile and feel all warm-fuzzy proud inside. We played for a few more minutes, then he helped me clean up and put the game away before he toddled off with Elmo and a smile on his face.

Gaming Goals for 2011

Resolutions and a glimpse at the future...

'Tis the season for reflection, introspection, and looking ahead. In the spirit of the season, we decided to post our gaming goals and hopes for the upcoming year, and outline some games we're hoping to play in the next year. We thought it might give you all some insight into what we are thinking about, and also might help us to have something to be "accountable" to and refer back to as the year progresses. Without further ado, here's our goals for 2011!

Katie's Goals:

1. Play harder and harder games, and learn new ones all the time. Like games that are even harder than Settlers of Catan.

2. Learn to read while I’m playing games, especially hard ones. To play the toughest games you have to be able to read, so I’m practicing

3. Play 100 different games with my family.

Games I’m excited to try out this year:

Monsters Menace America, Mississippi Queen, RoboRally, Runebound

 Jack's Goals:

1. Dice!

2. Cards!

3. Un-hunh! Yep.

4. Robot!

Randy's Goals:

Ah, 2011... what will you hold for me? I don't have a lot of gaming hopes, but I think that they're pretty significant. First, 2010 unfortunately had very few roleplaying sessions for me. One hope for 2011 is to play in either a Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 campaign. Yup, I've been missing it. Pathfinder's Advanced Player's Guide has whetted my appetite for that. Additionally, I would like to in either Burning Wheel, Savage Worlds, Mouse Guard, d20 Modern or Shadowrun campaign. Something different. As for board games, I'm making my goal helping Katie fulfil her goal. 100 different games in a year? That girl has ambition! I'm looking forward to that.

 And I have another goal... getting my own game finished and ready for publication. I've had a card game in the works for a couple years. I made a playtestable copy about three years ago, and I (as well as Angie and Julian) thought it was pretty fun. It just wasn't ready yet. I shelved it to work on another project collaboratively that ultimately didn't get very far, and since then I have pulled it out every now and then to tweak some mechanics, make some drawing for cards or add some text. Now, I'm itching to make it something. I'm not going to expand on it right now, but it's a wild west shootup with a quirky theme. I'll share more later.

Angie's Goals:

1. Have a monthly family-friendly board game night, rotating between families. We've been talking about it for a while (you know who you are!), let’s get it going!

2. Start and maintain a regular weekly family board game night with my kid(s). We decided on Wednesday nights, so I'm excited to see this through and get a regular thing going that we can all look forward to. A mid-week pick-me-up and opportunity for us all to focus on family time and not the hectic nature of our typical everyday life. At least for long enough to get a game or two in.

3. Help Katie reach her goal of playing different 100 games. Does anyone know how to put a counter on our blogger page so we can keep track online?

4. Find a game I can play with Jack, and teach it to him. Any ideas?

5. Keep reading and writing about games (books, articles, blog posts). Figure out a way to actually get people to reply to our blog posts and get more involved… (wink wink nudge!)

On the horizon- What we hope to be playing this year:

New games we would love to play in 2011 (A.K.A. Angie's Wishlists....)

Board/Card Games: 7 Wonders, Sid Meyers Civilization: The Boardgame (the Fantasy Flight Version), Innovation, Puzzle Strike: Bag of Chips, Alien Frontiers, Dominant Species, Earth Reborn,  Yomi: The Complete First Edition

Video Games:  Little Big Planet 2, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2, Pokemon Black/White, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Portal 2,  Paper Mario 3DS, Sly Cooper 4 (no release date, I’m just wishing…)

As a final 2010 bonus...

Angie's 5 Random Board Game “Top 5” Lists for the upcoming year:

1. Games I missed and hope to try: Battleground Fantasy Warfare, Railways of the World Card Game, Summoner Wars, Steam, Dixit

2. Loooong games I want to get played: Le Havre (with new unplayed expansion!), Descent, War of the Ring (and new unplayed expansion!), Twilight Imperium (3^rd Ed), Duel of Ages

3. Games I want to play more of: Galaxy Trucker (don’t own this one, Julian will have help out!), Space Alert, Agricola (and expansions!), Glory to Rome, Through the Ages

4. New-ish (to us) games that need table time: Grind, Mtg: Archenemy, Memoir 44 expansions, Starcraft, Battlestar Galactica

5. Games that might deserve a 2^nd chance: Evo, Keythedral, Torres, At the Gates of Loyang, Nexus Ops

You may here more about these topics and games from us in the future, feel free to ask questions or talk up any of these games or lists. Also, I would love to play these games with YOU, so if you're local and interested, drop me a line!

That's All Folks!

Thanks for reading our blog, we'd love to hear from you. We know you're out there, so post a comment would ya? Share your ideas and opinions, ask questions, suggest topics, or just let us know you're there! Thanks!

Also, check out a personal list of "gaming wishes" for the upcoming year from our fellow gaming blogger Julian at Cool Factor 5. This is another in the series of challenge posts I keep talking about, and I'm always excited to see how differently the same topic list manifests on these two blogs. It's something we're planning to continue into the new year, maybe with some new twists and surprises added in. :)

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

Meet the Gamers

Who are we? We're glad you asked!

Before we get into the games, we thought we'd take a moment to introduce ourselves. We think we have might have some interesting or useful or funny things to say about the games we play. If you think so too, keep reading :)

This is How I Role(play)

My name is Randy, and mine is the power of irreverence. Yes, that's right... you shall know me by the trail of bad puns, witty jabs and my quirky perspective. A mild-mannered tech support engineer by day, I spend many an evening gaming with my wife, daughter and friends. I am most fond of roleplaying games, but more often I find myself playing board games and card games. I rarely play video games, so don't expect to hear much from me on that subject. I'm looking forward to sharing a few glimpses through my lens on the world. 'Til then... keep gamin', playa!

Too Cool for School

I'm Angie. I’m the wife of “that guy”, the mom to 2 amazingly talented kiddos, and the biggest geek I know. Seriously. I’m currently teaching Language Arts at an alternative high school and the boys there tell me pretty regularly that I’m a super gamer geek who is “even geekier than most of their friends”. That’s right, my super power is that I somehow have managed to be a 31 year old adult woman with the geekiness quota of a teenage boy. Woohoo! FTW! I’m uber-1337!

I’m interested in all sorts of games and strive to try just about anything gamey at least once. I’ve got a whole room full of board games, every video game system I know of, and a growing library of books about games and game design. Can you say obsessed? We came up with this idea for a blog when Katie started wanting to write her own game reviews and we couldn’t figure out how to best share these awesome musings with the world. Plus I’ve got about 1,000,002 ideas about game-related things I would like to write about. I’ve been told recently that I’m both loquacious and sesquipedalian (whatever that means) so you can probably expect mine to be a frequent voice on this blog. Game on!

Secretly... the Flash!

Hi, my name is Katie. I’m 5 years old! I’m secretly the Flash but that’s not what this is about. This blog is about games. I like to play board games like Settles of Catan and Zooloretto. I like video games too, especially Toy Story 3 and Dora and Sly Cooper. I’ve been playing games with my family for like 7 years.  Maybe more than 100 times! I’m going to tell you how to play games, what I like best about games, my thoughts about different games, and some of my secret moves. Also, I can run really fast and be like a ninja.  

“But Jack-Jack doesn’t have any powers!”

At almost 2, Jack isn’t old enough to tell us his thoughts about games yet. So far we’ve seen that he likes to dump games on the floor and “play with” the pieces. By “play with”, we mean crush, smash, lose, and otherwise impair the functionality in the hardest-to-clean-up way possible. He also likes to push random buttons on the video game controllers while we are using them, especially during BIG IMPORTANT moments. He loves putting dice in his mouth and drawing in role-playing books with markers. We know he’s going to be a super gamer, we just don’t know in which ways his powers will manifest yet. We’ll keep you updated!

Stay Tuned!

We're not even going to try to predict how often one of us will:

a) think of something to write about
b) actually write it, and
c) get it posted

BUT we are going to try to keep it fresh. We've got a small backlog of posts already written by Katie that we're going to roll out in the next few days. So don't forget to come back!