Bringing up a new generation of dragon slayers

On my regular rounds of blog reading is a site called iSlaytheDragon, which is largely game reviews but also a load of other gaming-related stuff. A couple of days ago they had a nice post about gaming with a 6-year-old.

I won’t try summarising the post here, but it’s a good read. The writer, Jason, is generally against simplifying “adult” games for kids on the grounds that there are a lot of games out there that are aimed specifically at kids, so why tear the heart and soul out of one of your favourite games in order to play with the young’uns? I don’t entirely agree with this, but it is a good reminder that playing some of those kiddie games is not only OK, but a good idea.

There are also some interesting thoughts about getting the offspring to learn games by effectively shadowing an adult and helping make moves rather than actually playing.

Ahh, if you’re interested, go and have a read…

Age Recommendations…are Just Recommendations

Okay, I know this is the second day in a row I have just posted a link, and that this is even to the same site as the first, but GeekDad has a sort of follow-on article to the last one, which I think is even better. This time we have 10 Tips for Teaching Younger Gamers More Complex Games, which includes a load of good stuff, some of which I already do with Miss B. I’ve heard about the idea of swapping sides on demand but have never had the guts to try it. Maybe I can offer that as an option to Miss B at some time, though I suspect she might look on it as cheating and refuse. We’ll see…

I nicked the title from the article, by the way, which you’ll see if you click through, but it’s a good one. Especially seeing as how many age recommendations are just to avoid spending lots of cash on product testing to ensure suitability for children.

Reasons to play games

A couple of days ago the GeekDad blog posted a nice Top 10 Reasons to Play Board Games With Your Kids.

Yup, I can pretty much go along with that. I’d also add (an extension to their number 10, really) that playing games with Miss B has helped me learn a lot about what makes her tick.

Board Games with the Family

A few days ago I stumbled across another gaming/parenting blog, Board Games with the Family. It’s written by a nice guy called Neil, who seems to be doing what I am doing: trying to share the joy of boardgames with his offspring and sharing some of the results with the rest of it. So far the posts have been musings on various aspects of gaming from the amount of control you have in games to dealing with tantrums. Well worth a look.

Raising geek generation 2.0 in a new location

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a little while, but a couple of weeks ago or so one of my favourite blogs was rehomed.

GeekDad has been a staple of my reading for a while now as it seems to be about people like me. Not exactly like me, but geeks are all different, right? The blog covers all sorts of stuff, but they include gaming (roleplaying, video, board, whatever), film and TV (mostly fantasy, SF, supers, and the like), books and comics, computer and tech stuff, tinkery-makey stuff, science and engineering, all through the lens of parenting and doing this sort of stuff with your kids. Great material.

They also do a podcast, which I almost never listen to, but seems good if you’re into that sort of thing.

Well, for several years now, GeekDad has been operating as a blog hanging off the website of tech magazine Wired, but recently, for reasons I am not privy to, that relationship ended and so GeekDad has gone to its very own site at geekdad.com. This means that they no longer have the might of Wired behind them, but presumably it means they can control their own destiny a little more.

So, go on, give them a look, stick them into your feed aggregator, or whatever floats your boat. They’re doing a great job.

Growing Up Gamers

Here’s a nice blog I stumbled across: Growing Up Gamers. It’s basically a mix of reviews and musings on games (largely, but not entirely boardgames) from a gamer family with two young children. I’ve not read it all yet (there’s quite a lot there!), but I’m sure I will do as time allows. Go there and you will find out that Settlers is “twenty-hundred and fifty-nine percent excellent”. Who can argue with that?

The Kid Should See This

A little off-topic, but I’ve recently discovered (via one of the other blogs I read, probably Geek Dad) a lovely geeky parenting blog: The Kid Should See This, which pretty much does what it says on the tin and is full of cool stuff that you just really want to show to the offspring.

By way of example, here’s a great little clip from the BBC showing how awesome goshawks are. Miss B said “Wow!” a lot after watching this. (Sorry, embedding doesn’t seem to work properly here, so you’ll just have to follow that link.)