Happy Birthday, Robot!

If you've been following the My Friends are Awesome series at my blog, you'll notice the common thread that most of my friends are gamers of one stripe or another. I'd be happy if Lily enjoyed some of the same the things that I do. I don't want to be the jerk dad who forces my kid into activities I enjoy, but I do want to share with her things I like and why I like them.

I hope she'll try role-playing games with me when she's old enough. I think gaming can promote any number of positive traits in kids, among them imagination, math skills and literacy.

I was thinking about all this when I came across a game called "Happy Birthday Robot!" How can you not love a game with that name?! I want to play Happy Birthday Robot and I'm a grown up! It's not a traditional RPG, but I think the gist of it is that every game begins with the phrase Happy Birthday Robot and then the players roll for how many words they get for their turn and they get to tell part of a story. You then randomly determine a conjunction and then the next player continues the story where the other player left off.

I came across a thread on rpg.net that had some other suggestions. It linked to this this website which lists a ton of kiddie friendly RPGs.

Firefly games had some stuff that looked cute, and despite the name, the studio has no relation to a certain overrated Space Western. (Or Western in Space, if you prefer)

I especially liked Lady Blackbird, which was compared favorably to Kiki's Delivery Service, which is one of our favorites.

Broomstix looked neat too. It's designed to emulate the Harry Potter books.

So, it looks like there are plenty of excellent games out there to chose from when she's old enough to play them. I think that day is a couple years off and we're content with telling cooperative stories and playing pretend right now, but role-playing has been important in shaping the person I've become.