Looking for a Great Midwestern Family Vacation? Gen Con Registration Opens Today!

Fun is in the eye of the beholder.

Today at noon (EST), badge registration opens for Gen Con Indy, the largest tabletop gaming convention in the United States!

We've been taking kids with us to this incredible event since Ranger was two, and this year he's old enough (9) to need his own badge.

The spectacle of cosplayers, giant games, and innovative interactive displays bewitch even toddlers. All our kids were agog at pirate musicians, belly dancers, superheros and supervillains. The kids have amassed photos with characters like the Mad Hatter, friendly dragons, the World's Tallest Leprechaun (a very talented stilt-walker), Storm Troopers, Waldo and other characters from our collective imagination.

After our first day with two-year-old Ranger at his first Gen Con, he wanted to wear a costume. Year One he kept wearing generic superhero shirt with a removable silver lamé cape. After that, he was a pint-sized Mario who kept growing. His little sister Scout soon joined in as a wee Luigi. A few years later, she became Lola, from the British children's books, and Ranger was even Lola's older brother Charlie for a day. More recently she and sister Rogue have hit the con as princesses. This year we're hoping to engineer some great game-themed costumed, but I'll save those for a later post.

The seemingly infinite opportunity for hands-on play in venues like the games library, demos in the main hall, Rio Grande room, open gaming, and Indie Games on Demand offer families opportunity to play lots of games together and with new people.

Ranger has been enjoying Paizo's Pathfinder Kids offerings. He especially loves how Scotty's Brewhouse offers a Pathfinder Tavern menu and decor. One of their Pathfinder posters was given to him by a kind manager and remains the pride of his room years later.

Gen Con has always had a great family gaming presence. Publishers like R & R Games, Out of the Box, Calliope, and Blue Orange games have long been dedicated to producing games compelling enough for adult hobbyists, but accessible enough for kids and teens. We were very excited to welcome kids' publisher HABA games in 2014.

As hobby gaming grows in popularity, game publishers like Asmodee, Paizo, Rio Grande, Fireside and Stronghold Games are offering more family offerings. Venerable franchises like Catan and Carcassonne are creating kids' editions. With these changes, Gen Con's main hall and events have more to offer families and parents who are bringing up kids in the hobby.

All these publishers producing family games means more great gaming opportunities in the main hall. We love playing giant games (like Out of the Box's Word on the Street and Calliope's Tsuro) and regular sized games in the Family Fun Pavilion of the exhibit hall.

A great game of Wassalpoag's protoype Echidna Traffic Jam

If you want a gaming getaway with the kids, Gen Con is hard to beat. Its Indianapolis location makes transportation and lodging more affordable.

Jim and I will highlight some of our favorite Gen Con offerings for families in upcoming weeks, and we'll post updates on our Gaming for Good presence at Gen Con.

But now, I need to go buy Ranger's first Gen Con badge. See you there?

Little Packs of Fun: Pack O Game's GEM

Almost actual size.

Any trip out to a restaurant with the Joneses quickly becomes an exploration of what we've just happened to bring along for entertainment. As a family, we often engage with each other as much over games as we do anything else. We like to play together and Adrienne is usually the master of ceremonies or, more appropriately, the game master of these excursions. She has a knack for finding simple portable games that can keep our kids, ourselves, and our friends entertained even through a particularly long wait at a restaurant table or at a side table in any waiting room. Over the years, she's put together a collection of everything from kids' games with handy travel games from HABA to portable push-your-luck dice games like Cinq-o to card games like Cabo.

For these games, portability often outranks playability. After all, it is hard to pack a lot of fun or depth into games that don’t have much use or space for elaborate components. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Witness the explosion of “micro games” in recent years and the meteoric rise of the simple game Love Letter ,  a game of sixteen cards about passing a love letter to a princess. Clever design and well thought out game mechanics can make even the most humble of game components sing in the hands of a gifted designer. Chris Handy is one such gifted designer and his soon to be released Pack O Game line of gum package sized mini-games are further evidence that clever design and thoughtful game mechanisms can carry a game beyond its modest packaging.

I first came across a Chris Handy design, when our community game night received a donation of his game, Cinque Terre, for our game library. Cinque Terre is a delightful game of delivering sets of fruits and vegetables from inland farms to the five coastal cities of the Italian Riveria. The game had a very simple and approachable theme that matched the actions players could choose during each of their turns. All this simplicity and loveliness masked a much deeper game that became readily apparent about halfway through our first play session. Not only was the game pleasing to look at and easy to pick up, it was fun… and challenging. Chris is also known for his horse racing game, Longshot. While I have not played it, by all accounts it combines these same elements; simple and pleasing design matched with remarkable depth.

When Chris put out a preview offer on Twitter to try his one of his new ultra-portable games before their Kickstarter, I jumped at the chance. The Pack O Game lines of games is marked by the design constraint of each game having to fit into a package about the size of a pack of gum (Pack O Game… pack of gum). He had a number of demonstration copies to choose from ranging in complexity from one, Casual difficulty,  to three, Challenging difficulty (I know what you are thinking, “a challengingly difficult game in the package the size of a pack of gum? Yeah, right?” Just bear with me).  I chose to try out a copy of GEM.



GEM is a simple auction game for two to four players that is  played across six rounds and lasts about twenty minutes. Each player is a jewel collector trying to corner the market gaining lucrative sets of gems through properly leveraging their assets. The game consists of thirty cards with each having the dimensions of a very flat piece of gum. Twelve of those cards are Coin Cards, while the other eighteen make up the Gem Cards that the players will attempt to acquire during play. Each card has a green marking at one end with a number inside representing its Invested value (how much it is worth when you spend it in the game) and a red marking on the opposite end that represents its Leveraged value (how much money it takes to recover its value and rotate it to its Invested side).

Each player starts with three coins, worth one, two, and three “money” respectively, face up in front of them with the Invested sides up showing that all three cards can be used to bid on and buy gems during each auction phase. The gem cards are spread, face down, in six random piles in the center of the table. During each round a pile of Levereaged gems is revealed. Then each player bids from their non-leveraged assets, at first coins and later any gems they’ve previously taken, for the right to make a selection from the revealed gems. 

Subsequent players can increase the bid (as long as they can pay for it) or pass. After a couple of passes, the highest bidder takes the gem card that they were eying and places it face up displaying the Leveraged side (red) at the top in front of them. The tricky thing is that the bidder doesn’t have to say which card they want. They can choose any one that is left in the pile. Then they rotate the amount of Invested assets in front of them equal to or greater than their bid (you don’t get change) to those card's Leveraged side to show that the player has spent those assets. After all the gems have been acquired in that round, players can spend any left over Invested assets to turn Leveraged gems to their Invested sides. Coins automatically reset each round, but Leveraged gems do not. At the end of the last round, players earn points for every gem on a card that have its Investment side up. They earn two points if they share the majority of any gem type with at least one other player. Finally, they earn three points if they have the sole majority of any type of gem.

I really have enjoyed my time with GEM. We have a demo copy of the game, which doesn’t usually fully reflect on the final production quality of most games. However, even the demo copy is of incredible quality. It is obvious that Chris has put a lot of time and attention into both the design of these games, but also into its promotion and early marketing. He’s paying attention to the small details that make for great Kickstarter campaigns. When I told him that I was impressed with our copy of GEM’s flexible plastic coated cards as we would likely be playing it at restaurants, food courts, and coffee shops, he assured me that the final production copies would be even better. That’s impressive for a game of this size and it helps with the “table appeal” of the game.

I am a huge proponent of “table appeal.” As many long time readers, and our Great Big Table podcaster listeners know, Adrienne and I put a bunch of effort into evangelizing the board game hobby. To that end, we write about gaming with our children and in our community both here and on Great Big Table. We co-host a monthly community board game night to try to encourage members of our community to play games with each other and with their families. I also run a weekly game group that plays in public places where I work and I have been known to set up games in food courts with signs to invite people to come and play those games with me. “Table appeal” is the quality of a game that gets a non-gamer to take a second look and ask “hey, what is that?” And that’s the question that starts a conversation about board gaming that can potentially introduce a newcomer into our hobby.

There are a number of aspects of GEM, and the other Pack O Game titles that lend to that table appeal. First is the size. Generally larger board games or games with a gimmick, like Rampage for instance, pique the general public’s curiosity. They just have to know what it is that they are witnessing. In some cases, like that of toy furniture or functional miniatures, being small can also get us to take notice. Such is the case with these games, People want to know what those little cards on the table are all about. It helps that the cards are beautiful in GEM. The brightly colored gems on a dark background speak to the “ooo... shiny” magpie nature that lives within many of us. HUE, another game from the line, looks like a proper painting from Mondrian when the game comes to an end. Finally it is the motion of play combined with the groans and celebrations of the players that are the linchpins of, at least, GEM’s table appeal. Few people have seen a game where you slide cards around the table and rotate them to confer some action of the players. From a distance, it is intriguing and if one starts to pay attention they will notice people enjoying themselves centered around that very activity.

GEM is a great game. From its portability to its production values to its table appeal to its devilishly clever and challenging game play, it is a great value in a small package. Chris is launching a Kickstarter to fund the production of a commercial version of the Pack O Game line of games. There are a number of backer levels that can get you anywhere from one game for a $6 pledge to all four Pack O Game titles (plus any stretch goal games that get unlocked) for $24. There is also a 48 hour early bird special that will allow you to get these already affordable games for an even better price. You get even more from there, but I will let you explore those options on your own.

Just head over to PackOGame.com to be directed to the Pack O Game Kickstarter. I believe the Kickstarter will launch on Monday, 8/4/2014, and will run for twenty nine days. You can also sign up for Chris’ email list to be kept up to date about news and information related to the Kickstarter over at www.perplext.com. There’s also a video on the Kickstarter page (which I’ll embed here once it the campaign goes live),  where Chris makes his pitch. It’s worth watching.

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Let us know in the comments if you pick up GEM (just a $6 pledge) or any of the other Pack O Game titles. We’re always looking for new games to add to our portable game library. Let us know what games you keep in your car or backpack or pocket that you bring out to entertain yourselves, your kids, and your friends when you are out in public.


***Baby Toolkit is an assortment of words compiled by two geek parents between the requests, interruptions, and digressions that arise in a family of five. Broadcast from the Midwest, our incremental plan for world domination starts here and includes affiliate links to Amazon.com. A small potion of purchases made through those links goes to blog upkeep. We also podcast about board games at GreatBigTable.com. While we received a free copy of GEM (and all the paper jewels therein), we have no financial interest in or agreements with Pack O Games, Perplext, or Chris Handy. Gold star for reading the tiny print! Should I make it even smaller next time?

All In: Cribbage Club and Phone Calls

At a movie yesterday, my friend teased her high-school aged niece that "I will cut you" if she checked her phone throughout the movie.

My movie-buff friend is perpetually amazed that the next generation of her family cannot be separated from their phones for even the duration of a movie.

"But what if one of my friends dies?" her niece joked.

I thought of those calls that, with luck, don't come until much later in life. "Then you definitely want to turn off your phone, and just be here. Bad news travels fast enough."

When I got home from the movie, Ranger met me at the top of the stairs with the phone.

"It's Aunt Gayle." His aunts are mostly family we have chosen. As Jim and I each have one brother, our family tree holds only one aunt for them.

The aunt on the phone has been my friend for nearly 30 years. In her voice, I heard a careful control, and before she speaks I know something has happened.

When I was pregnant with Ranger, Gayle's geography career found itself in a cul-de-sac. She returned to college. A Wednesday afternoon gap in her course schedule somehow transformed into Cribbage Club.

Wednesday afternoons, Gayle's apartment filled with the alluring scents of home-cooking as we all gathered round the kitchen table for cards.

Fred and Moe both learned cribbage in the military long before Gayle and I were born. Fred, a loud-talking former postmaster and Gayle's brother-in-law, learned to play in the Army. Gayle's Uncle Moe learned to play in the Air Force and sometimes brought his cribbage board made from part of a cockpit dome.

I was equally thrilled to be able to play cribbage regularly. My dad and Jim's family all love the game, and I quickly fell under its spell. Locally, playing cards usually means Euchre (dubbed Indiana's game), Clabber (a regional 4-handed variation on an old German duo game), or even Bridge. Cribbage opportunities rarely come along.

After lunch, working in noisy teams, we raced our pegs along the paths while telling stories and mercilessly teasing each other. When we took breaks, Moe and Fred would retire to the porch for cigars while Gayle and I served up ice cream in the kitchen.

Moe and Gayle visited us in the hospital when Ranger was born even though they could only wave to him through the NICU window. Cribbage Club continued, baby Ranger would usually nap or sit on someone's lap while we played. Months and seasons passed until Ranger was big enough to start grabbing the cards from the table, Aunt Gayle reached the homestretch of her degree and started an internship that quickly became her next career. Summer had arrived, so the boys (men who retired around the time Gayle and I first graduated from college) were eager to return to their gardens and golf courses.

We periodically played in the evenings or at Gayle's family gatherings. The cigars disappeared from the routine when Fred lost half a lung to cancer. He recovered well and was soon back on the golf course and working in the yard. We didn't see his heart attack coming, and it felled him instantly and completely.

At Fred's funeral, I sat with Uncle Moe and we made jokes about how Fred had gotten both Gayle and I to wear skirts while the red rims of Moe's watery blue eyes hinted at the physical pain of grief. Maybe it was because he was the oldest of our group or maybe it was a reminder of his son lost in infancy, Moe's sadness seemed larger and stronger than the broad Ohio River he crossed every time we gathered together. Baby Rogue sat on his lap as we both wiped tears from our eyes and talked about the best times.

Over the phone I heard Gayle say "Uncle Moe died at home yesterday." Thanksgiving Day. We went through the details, and I promised to call her back.

Though we all had cell phones, I do not ever remember one on the table while we played. Any calls during Cribbage Club were ignored, slightly mocked, or actual emergencies. When we played, told stories, and joked around, for Cribbage Club we were, in the parlance of poker, "all in." And as a result, we all won.

In honor of Uncle Moe this holiday season, please remember to ignore your phones and be wherever you are.

***Baby Toolkit started as a baby gear blog in 2006. Despite a notable lack of babies and a directly correlative waning interest in baby gear, Jim and I keep writing about our lives as geeks, parents, and citizens of the world. For what it's worth, we're Amazon affiliates, though any Amazon links in this post remembering a dear friend would be crass and sort of bonkers. Yet upon writing this, I do think Uncle Moe would find it funny (so here's to you, Moe!). Hold your dear ones close and your technology in cabinets.

Now in Stereo*: We Launch a Boardgames Podcast at GreatBigTable.com

Jim and I have been talking about boardgames for decades, so it's about time we start inviting others to the conversation. While we'll still post written reviews on boardgames here on Baby Toolkit, we just issued our first episode of Great Big Table- our podcast about introducing more people to the boardgaming hobby.  We'll definitely be discussing gaming with our kids and families there, but we're also talking about some community gaming we do with friends, family, coworkers, and at church.

If you have gaming group or are thinking about starting one, please join in this new conversation. If you just want to hear how goony we sound when speaking or some of the conversational torment we like to dish out, well, there's that too.

The podcasts are free and can be individually downloaded  or by subscription. We're not on iTunes yet, but that should happen shortly.

If you have better things to do with your time, we aren't surprised, but sometimes you need to egregiously waste time to really see its value.

*Actually, I think it's mono, so the listener on the left has identical mental loss to the listener seated on the right.

***Baby Toolkit remains the written meanderings of a couple geek parents. Not only are we affiliated with GreatBigTable.com, we ARE GreatBigTable.com.

All Together Now: Tangling with Gamewright's Forbidden Island

Every couple of weeks, Adrienne, Ranger and I (and perhaps a friend or two) launch an expedition to a sinking island in search of ancient artifacts of legendary power. If luck is on our side, if we keep our lines of communication open and if we focus on cooperating, we might unearth The Crystal of Fire, The Earth Stone, The Ocean's Chalice and The Statue of the Wind before our helicopter pad sinks into the treacherous waters of the surrounding ocean. If we don't, we'll be cut off from returning home and forever seal our fates... at least until we reset the board and try again.

"What the heck's going on!?!"  you might ask.

Well, we've been playing Forbidden Island.

Introduction

Forbidden Island is a cooperative board game of daring treasure hunting that pits all the players against the game itself. The players of the game either win or lose as a group. Forbidden Island is designed by Matt Leacock, designer of two other of our favorite board game titles, Pandemic and Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age. It is published by Gamewright, who also publishes another game we reviewed recently and thoroughly enjoy, Rory's Story Cubes (check out our review, To Tell A Tale: Rory's Story Cubes). C.B. Canga's full color art illustrates the exotic locales of the sinking island.

Setup

At the beginning of each game, the players shuffle the twenty four island tiles and place them one by one into the cross layout as illustrated in the Forbidden Island rule book. Next, the four plastic figures representing the treasures of The Crystal of Fire, The Earth Stone, The Ocean's Chalice and The Statue of the Wind are placed in the four open corners of the island.

Forbidden Island includes fifty eight cards that are split into two decks. The red backed Treasure Deck includes twenty treasure cards (five for each treasure), three Waters Rise! cards, three Helicopter Lift cards, and two Sandbag cards. The Treasure Deck is the resource deck of the game, giving players the items that they will need in order to complete their objective. They'll have to watch out, though, as the Waters Rise! cards randomly cause areas of the island to sink and be removed from the board. The Treasure Deck is shuffled and placed to one side of the island layout.

The blue backed Flood Deck consists of twenty four cards, each representing one of the tile cards that make up the island. The Flood Deck is shuffled and placed on the opposite side of the island layout. The island's already started to flood and to represent that, six cards are drawn from the Flood Deck. For each card that is drawn, the players flip the corresponding island tile from its full color side to its blue toned flooded side.

There are six adventurer cards that represent the different treasure hunters that are coming to explore the island. Each adventurer has special skills that let them ignore or break specific rules of the game. Exploiting your adventurers' skills at the right time will be critical to your success or failure on Forbidden Island.

The six adventurers and there special skills are:

Diver: The diver is represented by the black pawn and can move through one or more adjacent flooded tiles and/or sunken tiles for one action as long as he (or she) ends the turn on a tile.

Engineer: The engineer is represented by the red pawn and can shore up two flooded (blue colored) island cards for one action.

Explorer: The explorer is represented by the green pawn and can move and/or shore up flooded tiles diagonally.

Messenger: The messenger is represented by the gray pawn can give treasure cards from their hand to a player anywhere for one action per card.

Navigator: The navigator is represented by the yellow pawn and can move another player up to two adjacent tiles for one action.

Pilot: The pilot is represented by the blue pawn and can fly to any tile on the island for one action once per turn.

During the setup phase, the six adventurer cards are shuffled and randomly dealt to each player. The pawns representing the adventurers are then placed on the island by finding the island tile that has the corresponding pawn icon.

Next, the adventurers are outfitted with their initial gear by drawing two cards from the shuffled Treasure Deck. If they draw a Waters Rise! card, they draw a replacement treasure card and shuffle the Waters Rise! card back into the deck. All cards are left face up in front of the players in order to make it easier to cooperate when completing their player's goals.

Once all of the adventurers are outfitted with two Treasure Deck cards, the group decides on the difficulty level of the game and set's the Water Level  marker on the Water Meter. The closer the marker is to the top, the harder the game will be. For beginning players, the Novice level is recommended which, while being easier, doesn't guarantee a win for the group.

That's it for setup. As you can see, there are a lot of elements that add to the re-playability of the game. The island is going to be in a different configuration every game (with a special note on that at the end of this review). Your group of players will also have different adventurers with different roles and their starting tiles will most likely be in a different starting position every game. And finally, as your group gets better at the game, winning more times than losing, they can start at increasingly difficult water levels.

So, how do you play the game?

Playing Forbidden Island

Each player's turn consists of three phases. During the first phase they can take up to three actions. After they have finished their actions, they must draw two Treasure Deck cards. Finally, they must draw the number of cards from the Flood Deck equal to the current Water Level on the Water Meter. Let's break each of those down. As we look at the basic rules of play, remember the special abilities of each adventurer that allow them to break specific rules during their turns. Players have three actions that they may take.

On their turn, players can move to an adjacent tile above, below, to the left or to the right of their current position. They can make multiple moves during their turn, with each move costing one action. The only restriction for most adventures is that they can't move over or stop on an area with missing, sunken, tiles.

Another option is for the player to shore up a flooded tile. Players may shore up tiles adjacent above, below, to the left, or to the right of their pawn's position. When a player announces that they are going to shore up a flooded island tile, they flip it from it's blue flooded side to its full color side. Each time a player shores up a flooded island tile, it takes one of their three actions.

If two or more players have their pawns on the same island tile, they may then spend one of their three actions to exchange Treasure Cards. Players may not exchange special action cards and they must stay within the five card hand limit. They may exchange as many cards as they have action points remaining as long as they don't go over their hand limit.

Finally, if players are occupying one of the two island tiles that can house each of the Forbidden Island treasures, they can exchange, if they have them, four treasure cards matching the particular treasure in order to capture it. Once captured, they put the four matching Treasure Cards into the discard pile and take the corresponding plastic treasure miniature and put it in front of them.

After spending their three action points, players must then draw two treasure cards into their hand. If they are over the hand limit of five cards, they must discard the excess into the Treasure Card discard pile. The Special Action cards include the three Helicopter Lifts and two Sandbags. A player can play a Special Action card at any time, whether it is their turn or not, and it does not cost any action points.

If a player draws a Waters Rise! card, they must immediately move the Water Level marker up one tick mark on the Water Meter. They then must take all the cards in the Flood Deck discard pile, shuffle them, and put them on top of the Flood Deck. This has the effect of making it more likely that flooded tiles will then sink. Then they discard the card to the Treasure discard pile.

As their last action, players must draw the number of Flood cards indicated on the Water Meter. For each card that is drawn from the Flood Deck, the corresponding island tile is flipped over if it is not already flooded or removed, along with the Flood Deck card, from the game. In this way the island sections first flood and, if they are not shored up, eventually sink into the ocean. As the island sinks away at an ever increasing rate, the players will have fewer and fewer routes to complete their goal of capturing all four treasures from Forbidden Island. If a pawn is on a flooded tile that then sinks, the tile is removed and the player must move to an adjacent tile. If a tile doesn't exist within one space, it sinks into the ocean as well and all the player's lose.

Speaking of losing, how do you win a game of Forbidden Island?

Winning (and Losing) Forbidden Island

As I said in the beginning, Forbidden Island is a cooperative game. Players win or lose the game together. Here's the tricky part. There is one, and only one, way to win Forbidden Island. The players must first capture all four treasures. Then all of the players must move their pawns to the Fool's Landing helicopter pad island tile. Then one player must discard a Helicopter Lift special action Treasure Card to lift the entire team off the sinking island. That's a tall order.

So how do you lose? I'm glad you asked.

There are four ways to lose a game of Forbidden Island. If a set of the island tiles that houses the treasures sinks into the ocean before the treasure is recovered by a player, the players lose the game.  If the Fools Landing tile sinks, cutting off your player's chance to reach the helicopter and escape the sinking island, the players lose the game. As stated earlier, if a player is on a island tile that sinks and is not close enough to another tile to swim to safety, the players lose the game. If the Water Level on the Water Meter rises to the skull and crossbones, the players lose the game.

This may seem harsh to some of our readers. I won't lie, this can be difficult, especially as you gain experience and confidence and start the game further and further up the Water Meter, ratcheting up your starting difficulty. But I will say that playing, and winning a game of Forbidden Island is an event, especially if your players really get into the idea of being treasure hunters and try hard to work together. When you lose, which will happen (heck it might happen the first couple of times you play and continue to happen off and on throughout the time that you own the game), you will all feel it together. You'll talk about what you might have been able to do differently. You'll commiserate over the bad luck of drawing the wrong flood card at the wrong time. You'll wonder if things would have been different if you had a different assortment of roles. Remember, this is a game for two to four players and you have six special roles that are randomly assigned.

And then... you'll want to set the whole thing up and try again. This game is addictive. And when you win, I'll bet you'll do what every group I've played this game with has done. You'll jump up from your chair and cheer and give high fives all around. You'll rehash the close calls and the clever plays. You'll relish the adventure of it. When's the last time you did that when playing Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit. When was the last time that you played any game that left everyone playing feeling so good.

So, while it is hard. It's definitely worth the effort.

Components and Cost


Forbidden Island comes in a beautiful full color embossed metal tin. Inside, a molded plastic insert holds the twenty four full color thick cardboard tiles that make up the island. There are six colored wooden pawns representing each adventurer. Additionally, there are the Flood, Treasure and Adventurer decks outlined earlier and the Water Meter. Finally there are four color plastic miniatures which evocatively represent Forbidden Island's lost treasures. All of which fits nicely in this lovely tin with the clearly written and wonderfully laid out full color game rules. All of the tiles and cards are linen backed so they should be able to withstand repeated plays for a long time to come.

Given the quality of the game's tin, components, and rule book, you'd expect Forbidden Island to command a premium collector's game price. One of the most amazing things about the game is that it can be had for under $17. On Amazon.com, Forbidden Island currently lists for $13.44.

Conclusion

Forbidden Island is a great game for two to four players. If you have never played a cooperative game, a genre that has gained popularity in hobby games market in the last few years and one that my family particularly enjoys, Forbidden Island is a fantastic introduction to the category. We love this game as a family and here's why.

Forbidden Island can be played with a diverse range of ages and can still engage everyone involved. We have played this with groups made up only of adults and with mixed groups including players pushing their forties and our five year old son, Ranger. The only difference in the play is that Ranger was more in need of suggestions as to which action to take on his turn. On the other hand, these game sessions enabled him to see how adults evaluated a number of potential actions and chose the few that were most optimal. Over time, he's getting a crash course in creative problem solving. He's also learning how to communicate with other people about a problem and learning how to take suggestions for possible solutions from others.

Forbidden Island captures the imagination. If I'm presented with the choice of playing a card game of Uno or going on a treasure quest to a sinking island, I know which one I'll choose ninety percent of the time.

Forbidden Island builds memories. Like Matt Leacock's other, more expensive, cooperative game Pandemic which focuses on ridding the world of epidemic diseases, a win in Forbidden Island is difficult and memorable. You'll tell stories to other's that you inevitably introduce the game to about an amazing recent win or heartbreaking loss. I still remember the time that a group of co-workers won when there were only four (of the twenty four!) island tiles left on the board. It was the last possible turn before the skull and crossbones was reached and a combination of a lucky card draw, plus having the pilot, won the day. It was intense. It was nail-biting. Everyone screamed and  and stood up and cheered with excitement that we'd actually eked out a win. All in a public snack area with passers by thinking we were crazy. And... it was awesome!

You just can't beat the cost-value calculation of this game. Forbidden Island is cheaper than most kids' games (Sorry, I'm looking at you) and is going to be something that your children's children will be able (and enthusiastically want) to play for years to come. It's not a game that you're going to get bored with easily as it has an amazing amount of re-playability built into its very design. Plus, if you start to get so good that your group regularly wins the game, you can try these European edition and fan created alternate Island tile layouts to increase the challenge level. How well are you going to do on Forbidden Skull Island, or the Forbidden Island of the Crescent Moon?

Are you ready for your family's first expedition to Forbidden Island?

Let us know if you are a fan of cooperative games in general and Forbidden Island in particular in the comments. Happy adventuring.

***Baby Toolkit is brought to you by the neurological happenstance of two geek parents in the midst of the  middle Midwest. While we purchased Forbidden Island from our local Borders (R.I.P.), we do periodically receive review copies from Gamewright. We love Forbidden Island designer Matt Leacock's Pandemic, so we simply could not resist buying Forbidden Island when we saw it in a bookstore- especially since I had a 40% off coupon (sorry, Borders). Expect more game coverage as we're going crazy with GenCon Indy 2011 anticipation.

To Tell a Tale: Rory’s Story Cubes

We are a family in love with stories.

We tell them, we read them, and as this blog attests we often write them down and share them in some form or another with total strangers. Adrienne and I have been readers our whole lives. We even turned to stories, in the form of Barbara Lehman’s wonderfully illustrated but wordless books, to help Ranger learn to better express himself as he described the details of the quirky scenes in Lehman’s illustrations.

For the past year or so, as Ranger has passed from a toddler to a preschooler, he and I have begun to play “story games” to pass the time. While we’re waiting in line somewhere or when car trips are lasting longer than either of our patience, I’ll start asking Ranger semi-directed questions similar to what we’ve practiced with Lehman’s books to fill out the details of a free form story. I might ask, “Who is in the story?” or “What should our story be about?” and as Ranger fills in the details, we begin to explore these free form worlds that we create together. It has become such a part of our life, that Ranger will often interject into any long silence, “Let’s make up a story!”

It’s tremendously fun and puts our creativity through the paces. As I hadn’t done a lot of this sort of thing for a long time, I was rusty at first, but persistence has paid off. What was difficult and awkward at first, is now second nature to us both. We roll with any suggestion and seem to be able to incorporate most any idea into at least a semi-recognizable narrative.

This sort of thing was easier when I was younger. As a young geek child of the 70’s and 80’s, I came of age slinging polyhedral dice while playing role playing games ( or RPGs). My friends and I imagined adventures in underground lairs filled with traps and monsters, smashing cars into each other, going insane from viewing nameless horrors, and hiding out from “The Computer” during endless story telling sessions of Dungeons and Dragons, the Palladium Role Playing Game, Car Wars, Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia. These “games” were exercises in imagination and storytelling more than winning some sterile objective. I think they helped my writing, encouraged my reading, exercised my imagination and generally improved my overall communication skills.

Ranger’s a little too young for these types of games but luckily there are other games and play activities that are springing up that we happen to really enjoy and that accentuate the story play in which we already engage. One of those play/game activities is Rory’s Story Cubes. Published by Gamewright, Rory’s Story Cubes are nine six sided dice that come in a sturdy magnetically fastened box. Each white dice has a unique black doodle or pictogram on each of its six faces. The pictograms include doodles of a water fountain, a turtle, a bumble bee, a bolt of lighting, a castle keep, fire, and a shooting star. If you do the math, there are 54 images across the die faces. That’s quite a lot of potential story inspiration when you consider all the possible combinations.

The simple idea of Rory’s Story Cubes, is to take some or all of the dice and roll them, and then work alone or together to make up a story that includes elements from all of the face up pictograms. That’s it. It’s a simple activity and, while there are suggested ways to use the cubes, the included booklet also encourages you to use them in any way that inspires fun and creativity. Since there’s no “right” way to do it, kids are free to let their imaginations wonder unhindered by any “correct” interpretation of the images that  they randomly encounter from any particular roll. For instance, one doodle is of an Egyptian scarab as you might find on a pyramid burial chamber wall painting or depicted in an ancient Egyptian cartouche, but Ranger usually incorporates it into his stories as a generic “bug” or a slightly more specific “beetle”.

Some people may be turned off by the randomness of the activity, but I’ve found the activity of making a story (and perhaps not even a good story) from the randomly occurring images to not only be mentally challenging but also very inspirational. I have imagined seeing them being used by writers as a warm up exercise or a way to work through writer’s block. Perhaps teachers could use them in creating writing or speaking prompts for their students. I can just hear high school speech students groaning at the idea of giving a recitation of an extemporaneous story inspired by the fateful roll of the cubes.

I know from experience that the exercise of using the cubes and pushing ourselves to work within their imaginative constraints has broadened Ranger and my general story telling and creation abilities. He’s become surprisingly good at taking a random word or phrase that we may come across and turn it into wonderful little tales. He’s one heck of a storyteller these days. As an example of the types of stories that he now come up with on his own after a couple of months of playing with the cubes, this is my favorite story that he created after I tossed out the phrase “octopus soup” to him in car trip a couple of months back.


Octopus Soup
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Once upon a time, there was octopus soup sitting in a cup on a table. A little girl sitting at the table wanted to try it.

She took a sip and it was wet... and slippery... and yucky. It made her feel dizzy. Then she wobbled off her chair and fell on the floor.

All of the sudden, she turned into an octopus.

When her mommy came into the room, she yelled "Oh no! There's an octopus in my house!"

She picked up the octopus right away and rushed it over to the aquarium and said, "Here. You take it."

When she got home, she couldn't find her daughter and figured out that the octopus was her little girl. So she went back to the aquarium and said, "You have to give me back that octopus! It's really my daughter."

The man at the aquarium said, "Oh good. The octopus turned back into a girl after you left. Here you go... She's a little wet."

When they got back home, the little girl said "I'll just have a peanut butter sandwich."
--------

The box can double as a rolling tray.

Making up stories with anyone, but especially with little kids, is a lot of fun and Rory’s Story Cubes definitely greases the imagination in pursuit of that goal. This simple, portable activity is sure to be a lot of fun for any family, though I wouldn't limit it to just families or kids. I can see it as a great party activity for adults, an icebreaker activity for gatherings, or an improv exercise. It’s a wonderful game to play that we highly recommend. Also, for those that are interested, there’s an iPhone App of the cubes, but there is a visceral thrill in rolling actual dice that is really part of the fun of the whole process. The retail price for the physical Rory's Story Cubes game is $12.99 and comes in a sturdy portable box that is slightly larger than a deck of playing cards.


We’re curious what type of stories that you’d come up with using a roll of Rory’s Story Cubes. Given the rolls in the pictures above, what does your mind come up with? Post them to the comments below.

***Baby Toolkit the sleeper hit blog on a short stretch of a quiet street in Southern Indiana- unless of course one of our neighbors has started a blog (like the clown family down the street- amazingly not a joke). We received a review copy of Rory's Story Cubes from Gamewright. We're Amazon affiliates, so a small portion of purchases made through the Amazon links on the site comes back to us and we use it to pay for connectivity or the downpayment on a Baby Toolkit corporate jet (thanks!).

[Note from Adrienne: Jim's new blog at storiedadventures.blogspot.com hosts even more gaming content.]

GenCon 2010: A family adventure

Long before we started loading the car, I knew Ranger was eager for GenCon Indy.  Last Halloween, when he first donned his Mario costume he said, "Let's go to the Costume Place [his name for GenCon]!"  For the next 10 months, every time he saw his Mario costume I had to explain that GenCon only happened once a year and yes, we would pack his costume.

We worried about how Scout would tolerate the crowds this year.  Last year, she rode in our awesome Kelty Town backpack where she napped a lot.  She was not yet a walker, so her independent nature wasn't insulted by the continuous carrying.  This year, she's a toddler who prefers running to walking and she only endures a stroller for short periods of time.  The backpack offers her a better perspective, but we couldn't imagine her quietly napping between intervals of waving and people-watching like last year.

And her brother wanted her to dress as Luigi.  I envisioned her felt mustache, hat, and overalls staying on for maybe 30 minutes before she demanded something more comfortable.  After filling my bag with snacks, small games, and a girly sundress, I crossed my fingers that her upcoming meltdown wouldn't deafen too many innocent bystanders.

After the long drive to Indy, Ranger was so excited to change into his Mario costume.  Scout was far less enthusiastic to change clothes.  We had to park in a nearby mall parking garage and take skyways to the convention center.  When we entered the elevator to enter the mall Luigi was whining in her stroller and Mario was bouncing off the walls.  Then the elevator doors opened to a chorus of "awwwww" spouting bystanders and Jim and I magically transformed into celebrity handlers.  We weren't 10 feet out of the elevator when the first person asked to take the kids' photo.  The photographer was a mall shopper, not even a con-goer.

Scout has strong social instincts and relished the attention.  Ranger can be shy, but as Mario he's unflappable.  As we neared the convention center and met more costumed people, the kids filled with excitement.  Their euphoria reminded me of childhood Halloweens and returning to summer camp.

Within our first hour at GenCon, Luigi was kidnapped by the World's Tallest Leprechaun.  Her casual attitude about towering over all the people surprised us.

The kids got to meet icons of our childhood like Zelda's Link, Alice's Mad Hatter, and the Duck Hunt Dog (with Ratchet) .

They also picked up world-domination tips from the villainous, venomous Cobra Commander:

The next few days were a bit of blur.  Jim and I stayed up way too late trying to solve Puzzle Hunt 9 the night after the family scoured the convention hall for all the clues.  The kids insisted on wearing their Brothers Plumber costumes every day and relished all the smiles, waves, and high fives that resulted.  Ranger climbed and bounced around LEGO Games' giant inflatable Ramses' Pyramid at every opportunity.  We played demo games, tracked down some titles we've been looking for, and people watched.

We also ran from the Beholder, swam in the hotel pool a lot, spent time with old friends, and enjoyed being back in the Circle City for a couple days.  The days were splendid and jam-packed.  We all wanted it to last longer and are looking forward to next year.

Keep an eye out for upcoming reviews of the games Ranger and Jim played.


***Baby Toolkit is the ongoing saga of geeks with kids.  We're Amazon affiliates, so a small portion of purchases made through Amazon links on the site does come back to us and we use it to pay for connectivity (thanks!).

Photos (all but Link): (c) babytoolkit.blogspot.com, 2010 all rights reserved.  The Link photo is John Stanifer's (Link).

Getting Our Geeks Packed: GenCon Indy '10

Today many bloggers with ovaries are packing their bags for a huge national conference. So am I (or at least I will be as soon as I finish this post).

While they're probably looking for their cutest shoes and hip new laptop bags, I'm packing up little capes, felt mustaches, and two pint-sized Brothers Plumber ensembles.

Tomorrow, in Indianapolis, geek vacation officially begins with the opening of GenCon Indy '10. GenCon is a ridiculously fun annual celebration of (mostly) off-line gaming (board games, strategy games, card games, miniature games, role playing games, and live action role playing games).

Popular (non-geek) mythology would claim that this is the time when lonely pallid beings crawl out of their parents' basements to commune with other nihilistic slackers over tables full of multi-sided dice, pizza, Doritos, and Red Bull (Jolt or Yoo-Hoo for the old-school storytellers). This hokey tale is far less intriguing than the truth.

GenCon Indy is a gathering of very smart people with humor and imagination. If your brilliant tech geek is on vacation until next week, chances are good that she is wrapping her mind around some fun challenges while cracking jokes with other quick thinkers. It's not fair though to portray GenCon as a science, engineering, and tech party (though I'm sure one can get good advice on optimizing a laptop or building a laser-based game in any food line), geeks come in all flavors- history, literature, and art geeks abound. I suspect that my summer reading about Georgian England and the creation of the first wide-scale municipal sewer system may come in handy.

GenCon gamers tend to be pretty community oriented in their day-to-day lives. These are the people who have regular parties, volunteer in their communities, and hold the elevator for strangers. The GenCon staff and community are extremely kind to children and their parents, probably because GenCon folks retain more joy and imagination than typical adults.

The come-as-you-are spirit of the convention is really refreshing. I'm pretty sure that I won't overhear any GenCon attendee asking "Does this make me look fat?" because there's just not enough time for that sort of insecure myopia.

Most of the Jones family is pretty excited to return to GenCon (at 21 months, Scout has no recollection of last year). Yesterday Ranger refused to get out of the car when we returned home:

"Buddy, it's too hot to stay in the garage."

"Just get my Mario costume, and we can go to GenCon now."

I had to laugh. And no, he's not still strapped into his car seat.

I am Jim is chomping at the bit to stalk talk with our game designer heroes, and we're both anxious to get some play time on new games and old favorites.

If I don't start packing soon, we will never get to Indy.

***Baby Toolkit is the ongoing saga of a geek family exploring the world. Though posts may appear in the meantime, we will be on vacation until next week. We are Amazon affiliates, so if you shop through an Amazon link through our site, a small portion of the purchase price goes towards paying a portion of our connectivity costs. Thanks.

CirKis by Hasbro: Circles + Stars= Fun

There's a great deal at Amazon* today: Hasbro's new family game CirKis is only $7.99 which is 60% off its standard $20 price.

Jim, Ranger, and I first played CirKis at GenCon 2009. I expected a knock-0ff of Mattel's clever Blokus territory acquisition game; the tiles, the shallow grid board, and even the names struck me as similar. Instead CirKis reveals a very different mechanism and strategy despite the superficial similarities.

In Blokus, players arrange luminescent tiles on a standard grid to acquire as much of the playing surface as possible. At the end of the game the winner is the player holding the most tiles.

With CirKis the grid is a repeating geometry of stars and circles. The tiles are odd polygons varying greatly in size and shape. It takes more discernment to lay tiles, but there are still multiple options for playing each tile. CirKis exercises lateral, spacial, and strategic thinking simultaneously; that sounds complicated, but Ranger really enjoyed playing.

CirKis' scoring is ongoing throughout the game. A player earns points when they complete a circle or star, and the winner is the first to reach 40 points.

While Ranger currently needs help playing (at age 4), I don't think he's far off from playing independently. For now, he can happily play with it as a tile drawing toy (which helps develop his placement skills for future game play).

The pieces are strong and plentiful, so this isn't something I'd want scattered all over the living room floor after the lights are out, but the game looks like it should hold up to regular use by children.

We tried to buy a pre-release copy at GenCon, but CirKis was entirely sold out and even the demonstration copies were reserved. I'm actually glad we didn't get one then because I was able to get two for less than $20 with this current sale price.

CirKis is a great game for families and adults. It scales nicely to different ages and abilities; while a preschooler can be involved with assistance it can also be very competitively played by adults.

*Baby Toolkit is an Amazon affiliate, and we make a small percentage off purchases made after clicking through from our site. We're geek parents who LOVE games. We have no extra-consumer relationship with Hasbro or Mattel nor have we received compensation from them or their affiliates for this post.

GenCon 2009: The Family Edition

Wonder Woman, a 15 foot tall pirate, the Ghostbusters, Buddah, Darth Vader, Chihiro, a Gamorrean guard, Jim, Ranger, the Raptor, myself, and 27,887 others attended GenCon 2009 earlier this month in Indianapolis.

As first-timers, we did not know what to expect. Despite the fact that my friends were making GenCon widow plans, I lack the graciousness required to jealously listen to stories about the awesome gaming convention. Our preschooler loves games, so we knew he would be amused; our only concern was keeping him from moving players' game pieces. At 9 months, the baby is very opinionated, but she loves riding in the backpack and her patience can now be bought with Cheerios (lots and lots of Cheerios).

After our first disorienting minutes in the vast exhibition hall, I wondered if I had made a huge mistake in coming with the kids. Polyhedra rarely seen outside of theoretical geometry labs surrounded me like tribbles, gleaming brightly from row after row of plexiglass bins.

My mind flashed back to the first night Jim's cousin brought over Descent. While he laid out the chits, cards, and *blush* statues, I cringed. When he dumped the bucketload of dice required on the table, I balked openly, "Um, guys, I think my ovaries prevent me from playing any game with this many dice." But they needed me for a quorum, so I set aside my derisive comments about "pizza boys" and picked up the biggest battle axe in the deck. I've never looked back. GenCon was no time for second thoughts.

We floated through the exhibition hall on a wave of humanity (and alienity). Suddenly familiar sights started appearing in the booths. Memories of great get-togethers (with and without space colonization and zombie attacks) popped up as favorite titles came into focus. Companies I have long admired offered opportunities to talk with employees, ask questions, meet designers, and try new games.

Ranger loved playing demo games, Jim grooved on the geek zeitgeist, I liked asking about kids' offerings (and getting good answers), while the Raptor contentedly left a Cheerio trail in case we needed to retrace our steps.

Party gamers Out of the Box [earlier review: Apples to Apples] introduced us to some new favorites for kids (and the rest of the family). Playroom Entertainment enticed us with their games for the preschool set. Simply Fun (a home-based consultant company- think Tupperware party) astounded us with their elegantly straightforward Ribbit by master designer Reiner Knizia. Gaming closet favorite Rio Grande came through with a great kids version of Carcassone that works for ages 4 and up (this must-have for Carcassonne fans quickly sold out at GenCon). Winning Moves' Cir*Kis caught both Jim's and my hearts, but we didn't move fast enough to buy a copy before they sold out.

While the crowds (especially in the exhibition hall) were daunting with young kids, the attendees and staff made the kids' experience quite good. People were gracious and generous with the baby and very willing to help our preschooler have hands-on gaming time. On the whole, it seems like the people at GenCon welcome kids more than the average crowd. I wouldn't have wanted to navigate the place with a large jogging stroller (it would just seem rude in the limited space of the exhibit hall), but other parents seemed to do okay with infants in mid-sized strollers.

A few tips for those thinking about taking kids in 2010:

• If you're going strollerless, take along a large comfortable bag (that you can wear) if you might do any shopping. The vender bags tend to have small hand holes, so something you can sling over a shoulder is valuable.

• Toting a lot of small gear (changes of clothes, snacks, toys, etc.) that you want on site, but not on hand? Rent a locker in the morning (seriously, they sell out fast) to use as a home base. The lockers I saw were 75 cents to a dollar and only take quarters. You'll need to pay each time you visit the locker, so you won't want to visit too frequently.

• Kids from elementary school on up could really thrive in this environment. It's exciting and there are lots of games to play. If (or, more accurately, when) we take older kids, I will purchase an unlimited library card ($20) to the GenCon games library. That way kids can try new games and household standards even if there's not much for them in the demos. If we had a group of families with kids going (you know who you are: hint, hint), it seems quite reasonable for kids to game in the library with adults exchanging supervisory time.

• This trip we stayed with our gracious friend in Indianapolis. While such wonderful free housing would be a fine arrangement for adults, the commute to and from nap time was extended. The skywalk connected convention hotels (there are a number to choose from) seem a great asset with young kids. Not only could the wee ones get better naps, pit stops and snack times would be easier too. Plus, while the kids napped, an adult (assuming more than one are in attendance) could go back to the convention halls for some solo gaming. Our kids would love the opportunities to swim in the hotel pool. The zoo and State Museum would become workable side trips (as we wouldn't be driving around town so much). The event schedule runs literally 24 hours a day, so one parent (or both if they alternate childcare) could still participate even after the kids have been put to bed.

• For game-friendly teens and tweens, GenCon seems a great playground. The cos play and LARPers give the con a festival atmosphere that's irresistibly offbeat (4 year old Ranger insisted on wearing a cape after our first visit). Adults seem quite willing to give a young geek a place at the gaming table, so kids with interest won't be relegated to the sidelines or simply shopping the hall.

GenCon was a great experience for our family, and we are already making plans for 2010. I'm sure we'll have more to say on this year's con and the great games and companies we met there throughout the next few weeks.

Photo credit: Gurney5 on Flickr, Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brentnewhall/ / CC BY 2.0