Forbidden Island has been around for awhile–long enough that I kind of forgot that it was a game I could review! There have been iterations since, but Forbidden Island remains my favourite of the GameWright cooperative “we’re all going to live or die together” games suited for children. Today, my students pulled it out to play during their social-emotional time, and I was immediately transported back to when my own children couldn’t get enough of this game. 

Winning multiple awards and even coming in as a Spiel des Jahres finalist in 2011 (losing to Qwirkle, which is no shame!), Forbidden Island clearly had people’s attention. Today, it is still a great game, with plenty of qualities that make it a go-to for families and schools. It is inexpensive, with pleasant and high quality game pieces. Kids need to work on strategy and talking amongst themselves as they share treasure cards to come to a positive conclusion. Also, as I’ve found out more than once, GameWright has fantastic customer service, and has even sent me new game pieces when ones went missing after particularly rowdy game days. 

The premise is simple. You are attempting to rescue treasure from the “forbidden island” before the water overtakes it–or you–and escape with it. Kids easily get into the idea, and the disappearing tiles cause just enough stress to keep players completely in the game. Unlike some other children’s games that last about 20-30 minutes, I don’t see kids wandering away or losing attention. They are completely engaged in the concept and the game play, shooting ideas back and forth. 

Game play is similarly accessible. Each player picks a role that gives them a special ability. Players take turns engaging in up to three actions – you can “shore up” sinking tiles, move, grab a treasure by turning in four matching cards, or pass a card to another player. When actions are completed, the player gets two treasure cards. They then draw the appropriate number of “flood” cards based on the water level marker. If the player draws a “Water’s Rise!” card, the game gets much harder. It also gets that much more exciting. The stack of drawn flood cards is shuffled and placed back on the top of the deck, increasing the likelihood that those particular tiles will “sink.”

As we play this game, the kids talk strategy. The one complaint that I have with the game is that it is very easy for an alpha player to take over, but that’s also one of the benefits. You can talk children through correct strategy, and they can work together, but can still be successful by listening to other players. The rule that we have put into place to assure that no student dominates is that the player whose turn it is has final say. They can listen to everyone’s options, and then we have a 30 second timer of silence for the child who is playing to think about what they want to do. In so doing, my children work on all kinds of social skills that are very important.

Although I’ve largely focused on how well this game can be played by tiny humans, this game is great for adults, too. The game scales in difficulty accordingly. It is a good “bridge” game between more common games and more strategy-based games. Every time I’ve played with other adults, I’ve found it interesting how invested everyone gets in the game. There’s an honest level of stress as someone draws a “water’s rise!” card and you have to adjust strategy accordingly. 

Overall, this game has a great deal of challenge for all players. As long as you manage the “alpha player syndrome”, it has great playability among a wide variety of play groups, which, as we all know from my previous reviews, is what really makes a game stand out to me. 

I’m always on the lookout for new games to play with my students that will stretch their minds. Today’s fun board game was MonsDRAWsity by Deep Water Games, created by Eric Slauson. I ordered it on Amazon on sale, and think the on sale price point is probably the right one for this game, given the components included. 

MonsDRAWsity plays 3-8 players, and really does better with 4 and up. You could easily add more, in my opinion, though we kind of threw the scoring rules by the wayside because of how I was using the game in my classroom. The box lists a 20 minute play time, but it’s one of those that you can play for longer or shorter if you so choose. 

This game focuses on one of the creative thinking strategies that we use frequently in my class and that I really love. One person describes a card that no one else can see. The others draw it. Then everyone votes on which is the closest interpretation of the card. I’ve done this with many groups, both of children and adults, and it’s a great way to see how other people think. The results can be very humorous. 

What really makes this game something different than just a thinking exercise is the truly creative artwork. Because I don’t wish to spoil the game for anyone else, I’m reluctant to post any of the cards, but you truly need to think outside of the box to describe these cards. The monsters can be mashups of robots, animals, bugs, humans–really anything. Or sometimes nothing at all. The kids had a great time just giggling over looking at the card itself, and the most common response to a new card was “what the heck?!” 

The other thing I really liked about this game was how practical it was. I have a couple of kids who are very good at art, and some who are still working on basic fine motor skills. Although my kids who struggle in that area were reluctant to play at first, they quickly jumped in when they realized the point was to get as close to the drawing, not the “best drawing”. I’m not great at drawing, either, and my stick monsters certainly helped build confidence! 

Additionally, we figured out how to play this on Zoom with literally no extra steps. I sent the describer into a breakout room and came in to show them the card on camera. Then we went back to the main group. The one brief downside was that not everybody had paper, but the kids worked that out without a hiccup: they decided they just wanted to take turns drawing instead of playing the game the way the instructions described. They did best of three “rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock” and whoever won got to screen share their whiteboard. While that child drew, the others gave advice for how they thought it should go if it differed, or offered encouragement if they thought the drawer was on the right track. Since this is my social and emotional learning class, I often sit back and let them troubleshoot problems, and was truly impressed at how quickly they caught on to how this would work so that everyone could have a good time. 

Overall, this is a really fun game and well suited to both a classroom and to a fun game night with others. It works well with a mix of ages and ability levels so long as the groundwork is laid from the beginning. My only complaint is that the whiteboards needed more than the erasers on the dry erase markers, but that’s always an issue with things like this, and was quickly solved with some wet wipes. 

When most of the role-playing community think about the player base, they usually think of teenagers and upwards. The argument is typically that there is adult content in many of the books and that younger children will not be able to follow the often complex rules. However, children are literally made to play pretend. 

When I first set out to teach my own children role-playing games, I first thought about over-simplifying. I’ve written previously about No Thank You Evil and that was certainly helpful–but we only played this after we’d already played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons! I really think that most people can make roll playing games accessible to kids. For the purposes of this article, I’m focusing on Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, but can be generalized for your role-playing game of choice. My only caveat is that certain worlds and systems are designed to be incredibly dark and not accessible to younger people. You could certainly alter the world to make it more child-friendly, but why? Unless you created the game or have not played any other systems, it’s far easier to use a world that can be made PG more easily. 

New to RPGs Yourself?

For those who have never played before, my first piece of advice would be to familiarize yourself with the rules. Read through at least the Basic Rules, and it’s better if you can pick up the Starter Set or the Player’s Handbook. Read through it. Make sure you understand at least the basics before you introduce the idea to your children. Kids don’t like to think about the rules; they just like to play. There are also a number of guides to help streamline the rules for both you and them once you get started. You need familiarity. But don’t get so bogged down on the specifics of the rules that your kids get bored. Remember that the story is the most important part. 

Once you have achieved basic familiarity with the rules, it’s time to run. I recommend using some of the pre-generated characters at first if you’re not used to the rules, or use “standard array” to get the scores for your ability stats. There are literally hundreds of free and inexpensive modules to use, but you’ll want to choose something quick and fun for kids for your first couple of sessions. Make it fun. This is a game, after all. If you forget some of the rules, no big deal. I also recommend having a cheat sheet for your players. This website also has some great cheat sheets and basic rules specifically designed for younger players or players with special needs.

If you are really stuck, there are a few board games you can play that are basically an introduction to RPGs. Legacy of Dragonholt is a great one, as is No Thank You Evil. It’s out of print for now, but my son started on HeroQuest.

Veteran Gamer?

Gaming with kids is a little different than gaming with your friends. Well, sort of. The side conversations, snacking, general feeling of herding cats–that’s all still there. However, I find that most kids really enjoy the imagination portion and take to it much more naturally than adult gamers. Although there are always some exceptions, they are fast and light with the rules. They have shorter attention spans than most adults, and understand social etiquette and turn taking less well. 

None of this means you cannot game with children. It simply means that you should not expect them to do what their brains are not yet ready to do, and you should expect them to do what they are hard wired to do. Most kids benefit from visual structure that lets them understand things better. Having cheat sheets or more visually appealing and easier to follow character sheets can be helpful for many children. Do not drop them into an overwhelming world. Children think in terms of their immediate surroundings. Even more than adults just beginning a campaign, kids will not care who was the ruling emperor of a neighboring country three hundred years ago. They probably will want to know the specific names of people in the town and what they are up to more than many veteran gamers might. 

Therefore, I tend to build the village and print out or present the map with names of places right from the beginning. I make sure that the NPCs are well fleshed out. I do voices more frequently with kids than I do with adults, in part because it’s much harder to feel embarrassed around children. For monsters, I usually show them the pictures of what they are confronting or stick to things they know (dinosaurs, dragons, zombies, skeletons). 

For Everyone

Switch up action with talking. Make sure your players are all active and participating. Although D&D only gives turn rules for combat, I recommend with a group of kids making other sections turn based, as well. I have also gamed with children with autism to build social skills. Even more visual structure is necessary, and we actually have a timer for that group. 

We also have the “nope” rule. If something is too scary or too much, a kid can nope out. This is an idea unabashedly stolen from Monte Cook Games, but it was such a great idea, I knew we had to use it. We have index cards with an “X” written on them that the child can just hand to me to avoid a big conversation, and I simply help redirect away from that topic. This also works for adults, by the way, and helps keep your table safe and fun for everyone.

I also try to keep sessions shorter than I normally would. Stop while the kids are still having fun and leave them wanting more. If you let things drag or wait until they are bored, they won’t want to come back again. I probably over-utilize the cliffhanger with kids, too, but they seem to love it. 

I have printed pictures of the monsters they face so they understand what they are facing each time, and also include pictures of important places. I do not have a lot of artistic talent, and this is for private use, so I will typically just look up pictures online. If I’m planning to post in a location that others can see, though, I will use pictures I have the rights to, or have a friend draw up what I’d like. 

I use map creator tools like Inkarnate to help the kids visualize the immediate terrain. Again, just like with the rest of the campaign, they prefer to think on a smaller scale than a lot of adults, so I have more focused village maps, and often even maps of their homes or immediate area within a village or city. I have a map for my own use that shows the full continent, but I don’t recall ever showing this to the kids; they have never cared to see it, because they simply do not think that way. If they want to see, or if you have a particular child who enjoys that kind of thing, though, that’s helpful to have. Even just putting it on paper is handy if you don’t want to worry about learning new tech or just want something handy to have. 

In Summary

Above all, remember that this is meant to be fun. Keeping things shorter than you would with adults, using cheat sheets to remember the rules, focusing on making sure that the kids feel safe and supported, and having visual guides to what’s happening–these are all ways to get your kids started in role playing games. Have fun! 

One question I see asked constantly on both parenting boards and on gaming boards is “what game can I use to introduce my children to role-playing games safely?” For me, the obvious answer was “Dungeons and Dragons” because I am a long time DM and did not have any qualms about creating a campaign specifically designed for young children and did not have any difficulty walking them through character creation and how to play. However, many other parents are not able to do this for a variety of reasons. Besides,it is also nice to just open up a game and have it explain exactly how to play. Gaming should be accessible, after all. 

My number one recommendation for these parents and gamers is No Thank You Evil. Designed by Shanna Germain and Monte Cook and published by Monte Cook Games, the game itself has a lot of experience behind it. The art work is cute and colorful, designed to engage children and draw them in. It certainly does that! Germain had the game out to be played at GenCon several times, and my own children could not walk past it without wanting to play, even though we had a copy at home. 

The game comes with ready-made characters and easy stats that can be navigated even by non-readers. There are adventures already set up for the Guide to walk the players through. It is pretty much ready to play out of the box. Players create their characters. The Guide tells the story with the help of the players, who describe their actions and use that character’s abilities to impact the story and how it will go. The Guide can also create their own story if they do not wish to use the pre-generated ones. 

Each character has 4 pools: Tough, Fast, Smart, and Awesome. They also have special skills and a companion animal who can help them do things.

As characters describe what they want to do, the Guide decides if it is super hard (8) all the way down to super easy (0). The player rolls the dice. They can choose to “try harder” by using points from one of their four pools until they do not have any more points. If they beat the goal, they succeed. If they don’t, they fail. It’s just that simple. I love the simplicity and the way that it starts introducing children to the idea that they roll the dice and may or may not be successful in their chosen actions. The Guide is encouraged to make it exciting, just like a GM or DM would in another roleplaying game, and the players are able to see how their choices impact what happens. It is easy to use the concepts learned in No Thank You Evil to introduce kids to other roleplaying games because it is so similar, yet simplified so children can understand it easily. 

However, my favourite part of this game is the same thing the game is named for: “No Thank You!” 

Many adult gaming groups have implemented a session 0 where players can discuss things they do not wish to see in the game, perhaps because they find it triggering or too frightening, or just uncomfortable. But it is absolutely impossible to cover every single thing that may come up during game play. Therefore, some groups (including Monte Cook and Germain’s various groups) have developed ways to discretely tell someone that a topic or storyline is too much. No Thank You Evil, taking into consideration that children are even more apt to be frightened by stories, gives each player a token. If something in the game becomes too frightening, the player can simply put the token on the table, and the Guide knows to steer away from that topic as quickly as possible to assure that everyone at the table is having a good time. 

Overall, this game is beautiful, engaging, and a wonderful way to get kids into roleplaying games. Although my own children started with Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, they were equally excited about this game and the way it was written and drew them in. The creators have the breadth of experience from years of game development and being gamers themselves to know what works, and definitely put a lot of thought and effort into this. The roleplaying world can always use new gamers, and this is a great way to get your kids started without needing to know a lot about the games yourself. Similarly, it is so well done that even veteran gamers will have a good time. My kids quickly started playing this by themselves, and that transferred into confidence to GM in other systems for my two older children. I definitely recommend this game to anybody who has children who want to play roleplaying games. 

It was the waning moments of the year 1920, and a young man known as H.P. Lovecraft struck his pen to paper in what, unbeknownst to him, was to become a pivotal action for the future of board gaming. The Picture in the House, the first mention of Arkham proper, provided the precursor to many of Lovecraft’s tales. Now public domain, Lovecraftian horrors abound in books, movies, and games. Many of these fall flat, bemoaned by those consuming them as trite or uninteresting. The sheer quantity alone causes many to turn away. 

However, one board game stands above the rest as the longest running board game featuring Arkham. Now owned by Fantasy Flight Games, Arkham Horror first edition spawned from Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game in 1987. Today, we are on the third edition, which looks very little like its precursors. However, today I will review Arkham Horror Second Edition, since it is the game that is most recently on my mind. 

Playing Arkham Horror involves a great deal of time, particularly in set up. First and foremost, assure that you have sufficient table space. Spread the board out, leaving plenty of room on all sides. Defeating the Ancient Old One and his monsters is never easy, and requires tons of components! To set up, you will need to lay out the 9 location decks, the gate deck, the mythos deck, the Ancient Old One sheet (and doom tokens, of course), the monster cup, the clue tokens, and the various tokens/markers related to gates. You will also need the various item and ally decks (separated out), the investigator card decks, your sanity and stamina tokens (if necessary-more on this later) and money tokens. 

Each player chooses an investigator card. Here, we have decided that using the sanity and stamina tokens is not for us, and we use a red 10-sided die (d10) to denote stamina and a blue one to denote sanity, with the current sanity and stamina amounts face up. It is just one less piece to keep track of. Players receive their starting items (noted on the investigator cards) and place their character piece at the starting location noted on their investigator card. The players choose an Ancient Old One to battle (each has its own stats and requirements to defeat). 

Clues are placed at each of the 11 unstable locations (red diamond) spaces on the board. These are locations where gates are most likely to open. Investigators are placed at their starting locations (also noted on their cards). 

A mythos card is drawn and resolved, and the game begins with a chosen first player.

Game play is in five phases. At each phase, each player in clockwise fashion completes all necessary activities of that phase.  Upkeep, which includes setting stats by moving their sliders the amount of their focus (unless character abilities dictate otherwise) and any other upkeep needs based on various item or investigator cards. During the Movement phase, each player moves their speed, unless they are in the Other Worlds (in which case they can move only to the next section of the Other World, regardless of movement). If a character is prone, they can only stand up this turn. Next, is the Arkham phase. Each character in a location (not on a street or in another dimension) will draw a card and have an event based on that location. Different locations have higher probability of certain types of events, which are depicted in icons on the locations, but it is no guarantee. Certain locations also have alternative other events that can be chosen, such as the hospital or shop, in lieu of drawing a card. 

Once the Arkham phases is completed, the Other Dimension phase begins, and characters who are in Other Worlds will draw cards for their locations. These are based on colours rather than on actual locations. When they have completed their turns, the Mythos begins, with all monsters moving according to shapes on their tokens, and a card is drawn to determine what Mythos event will occur. This is very rarely good. 

In fact, I have discovered that, when in doubt of the rules for Arkham 2e, go with whatever seems the least likely to be beneficial for the players, and that is likely to be the actual rule. And always beware being lost in Time and Space. Unless you’re a Dreamer. Then go there as much as you like.

Arkham Horror 2e strove to encompass the true essence of Lovecraft in a way at which other games have only teased. Expansions are available which make game play even more difficult and dismal for the players. Therefore, it is one of my favourite games of all time. Although this is an American game by Fantasy Flight, it has as many pieces and moving parts as many Eurogames and requires almost as much to keep up with the game play. Things can turn rather suddenly from “this is an easy win!” to “oh, wow, we’re all dead now.” There are many ways to lose, and only two real ways to win (only one if you choose certain Ancient Old Ones) –either close gates permanently or fight the Old One and win (except the ones where, once they awaken, you automatically lose). 

This game has endless replayability, though expansions certainly add to the experience. Personally, I really enjoy cooperative games that have a high level of difficulty and a high likelihood of loss because I find them challenging and interesting. The writing for the cards and the story within is intriguing for those who enjoy Lovecraft and for those just starting out. My gaming group has also purchased the newer version of Arkham Horror, but it can hardly be called the same game. Many, many rules have been changed. The quality of the pieces is perhaps a little better in the newer edition, in my opinion, but I feel that my game shelf has room for both games. In addition, Arkham Horror can also be played as a single player game. I have spent many sleepless nights embracing the darkness by pulling this game out.

Although certainly not for everyone, Arkham Horror 2e is a great game for the gamer who likes a good story, high replayability, and a true challenge. The game scales very well for a single player and for up to 8 investigators (though time to play increases proportionately). It does have a high likelihood for an alpha player to take over if players are not cautious, however, and remembering that there is no one true avenue for success in this game, and there are countless avenues for loss, will be beneficial in ensuring that everybody gets to have their voice heard at the table is important. The miniatures are fairly high quality and fun to paint, as well.

Arkham Horror 2e is a classic game that has a place on many shelves. I highly recommend this game.