Category Archives: games

Kid’s Board Game Win

For our youngest boy’s 4th birthday, the six-year-old picked out a board game for his brother. He thought long and hard over which game would be most enjoyable, spending several minutes in each aisle of the store comparing toys and games. Then he saw a game that really piqued his interest:
“Well,” he said, “Simon does like monkeys, and he really likes other animals too.” I flipped the box over, smiled, and described the contents to him:So… it’s a board game placed in a zoo, where at certain points of the game the players put on animal masks and play hide-and-seek. That decided it, and Daniel could barely wait for the birthday party to show and explain the game to his little brother.

The game really does play well, with mechanics simple enough for 6- and 4-year-olds to play together alone when they want. If you have any animal-loving kids, I would heartily recommend this game.

D&D Tiny Adventures – What’s Special About That?

So, I pretty much made a Facebook account just so I could try out the application “Dungeons & Dragons Tiny Adventures”… and it really is quite fun. You get some very minimal choices, and there is a bit of story element to each adventure, which (as advertised) is tiny. You dump your character after level 10, and get to start on a new “Generation” of character.

Okay, all well and good. At generation 6 you unlock a new class/race thing, the Genasi Swordmage. Doubtless this has some implications for those who are using D&D 4th edition; I’m not. (Heck, I never did pick up the 3.5 ed books; I don’t play at the moment. *sigh*) The Genasi Swordmage has an ability you can trigger whenever you like on an adventure… on his next encounter that requires a d20 roll, he can force it to be a ten.

Gee, that’s SOME special ability there. Just what I’d want to have if I’m worried about my next roll… “hey, GM, can I please be average?” “What? No, I don’t know what my next roll will be for, but… I want to be average!”

The whole concept behind D&D is that you’re playing heroic adventurers… but your special skill is to be average. How overwhelming.