Welcome to the Family Gamers Podcast! This week, we talk about a few of our favorite role-playing games, as well as what we’ve been playing, backtalk, and Andrew’s most recent “for science!” adventure.

What we’ve been playing:

Bärenpark

Magic Maze

Sticky Chameleons

“Strike a Pose” prototype

Cursed Court – by Andrew Hansen, published by Atlas Games

Stroop

Crosstalk

Ancestree

Viral

OK Play (see our review)

The Grimm Forest (can you tell we’re excited?)

Gave the three-year-old his own account to play Mario Odyssey. Interesting to see how he interacts with it differently than the rest of the family.

News

Gamewright is going to be releasing a sequel to Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert: Forbidden Sky (see the trailer here)

Nintendo Switch JoyCons discounted by $9. (Not a great deal, but the best you’ll get right now.)

Nintendo news: They’re finally launching an online service. New mobile game coming soon: Mario Kart Tour. Working with Illumination Studios (Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets) to make a Mario movie.

The Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Realm: a cooperative game for 2-4 players (It’s a print and play. Download the files from BoardGameGeek.)

Backtalk

* Mini-painting tips. Magic The Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers, and Arcadia Quest are both good places to start.

* @bradsour recommended Dream Home to us, by Rebel & Asmodee. We’re going to check it out!

* Anitra wrote a guest post on MummyConfessions.com on board games to play with very young children.

For Science!

Andrew waxes poetic about Whole30. We both complain about added sugar in everything.

Role-playing games

Children know how to role-play naturally! But you, the adult, may need some help. We discuss different ways to approach role-playing, from no-prep (less structure) to lots of prep (and more structure).

Easiest to jump in: Story Cubes

Untold (which uses Story Cubes to help drive your story)

Robit Riddle (our interview with Kevin Craine in epsiode 29 / the Kickstarter for pre-order)

Plaid Hat Games make RPGs that are bit more involved. Someone needs to know the system, but the game provides everything you need:

Mice & Mystics

Tail Feathers

Stuffed Fables

A more conventional RPG, but stripped down for kids: Hero Kids (we interviewed the creator, Justin Halliday, all the way back in episode 5.)

And of course, many adult-level systems exist for creating your own story: Dungeons & Dragons (we’ve heard great things about the current version “5th edition”), GURPS, Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG (a superhero universe coming soon from Greater Than Games), Paranoia, MouseGuard, Pathfinder, etc.

Final Thoughts

We’re keeping our survey open for a few more weeks. (