I am slowly, but surely, falling in love with our house. It’s been such a long (at times completely demoralizing) process. The road ahead still feels so very long. But all I know is I look around at things beginning to take shape, and I feel myself sinking into a happy place I haven’t been able to find for a very long time. 

For instance, today I walked past my dining table. And my first thought was “I have a working dining table.” My second was “…and I can walk past it!” For those who don’t know my last house, it has good square footage, but is broken up into tiny little spaces, as was the way homes were built at the time (to be able to close off rooms to heat as needed). Even a modest dining table doesn’t fit in the dining room, and when we added French doors to have access to our back yard, we turned the dining room into a makeshift office for me for years. This way a table or desk against the wall didn’t block walking to the back doors. 

When we bought our gaming table, it took up a full 1/3 of the living room because we couldn’t use it effectively in the dining room. When in place, it left about 20 inches of space on either side to squeeze by. For a time I even used it as my desk, and we didn’t get to use it at all as a gaming table. That plus low ceilings and small windows, it always has felt a little oppressive, darker than we’d like, and pokey. It’s been a lot of shifting around and making it work. For 21 years. 

I love my old house for so many reasons, and for a young couple—sans pets or kids—in their 20’s, who mostly went out dancing/partying and dined out, it worked fantastically. But as I grew up, my interests changed. Now I am someone who owns three dogs (and fostered more and wants to do it again), loves to cook and entertain large groups, loves epic gaming…that was not ideal.

Now I have the dining/gaming table in the middle of this beautifully spacious great room. I can walk right by it. LIKE WITHOUT SCOOTCHING. Tall ceilings. Expansive windows letting in so much natural light, I don’t even put on lights until the sun starts to set. I can walk right past my dining table into my kitchen, which has an embarrassment of counter space compared to my not-quite 10X10 kitchen at my old house. I used to have to use my stove as prep space because I had about 2 feet square of counter to prep on that wasn’t taken up by drying rack or necessary small appliances.

I’m sure I will discover limitations here. I am sure I will clutter it up in time. It won’t always be this shiny and new. But I look at it and see a culmination of a design process trying to solve so many “problems” we had in our old house and…it’s beautiful.

A tale of adapting a game for its audience.

My little sister is in town and we got to spend a couple hours together with her two young boys at our new house we’re moving into. Right now most of the games are in boxes, and there are mounds of them in the living room. The boys—who are 4 and 6–saw the pile of games and were astounded. I offered to open some boxes and see if I could find a box with games good for their age. They haven’t played much more than Monopoly in their house, my sister told me (I’m gonna fix that!).

I opened the first box, not knowing what was inside… They gasped and grabbed at Marvel Legendary that was right on top. Oops. I tried to explain it wasn’t a great game for them just now, but they would brook no refusal. So I started by pulling out cards to let them look at them, accepting they would make a total mess of our carefully organized box (filled with many expansions, so very full, and very reliant on the dividers. That went out the window immediately.)

“I WANNA BE SPIDER-MAN!” 

“Well, that’s not quite how it works”, I stumbled. 

“OOOOH WOLVERINE! I’m Wolverine!”

I hemmed and hawed, trying to guide them to a different game, but it was a losing battle. So then I decided to embrace the challenge. I excitedly told them they are recruiters for SHIELD, and their job is to assemble a whole TEAM of heroes to battle the villains (so far, a light description of the game). You don’t play any ONE character, you get the PLAY THEM ALL!

I explained the “scratches” were like attack points (one brother kinda gets this, he is JUST getting into the edges of Pokemon), and the stars were like “money for recruiting”. I made up a simple list of rules on the fly about what they could do on their turn, and then I played game master, flipping up a random enemy for them to battle, complete with loud BAMS and BOOMS when they defeated an enemy. I impressed upon them that they had to work together—their first co-op game, awwww!—and they would pool resources to help defeat the villains. They did a great job with that.

As they got more comfortable, and the older one started stopping to read the additional text on the bottom, I introduced a few new rules. Just simple ones that made it feel like the game was getting more complex and the villains more determined to beat them. At the end of every game, they begged for another game. I would rotate a market of heroes for them to recruit, and the villain pile they were trying to get through, keeping the game fresh.

So basically I made up some rules on the fly that made it accessible for kids their age and experience level. And they rocked it! Sure, the youngest was mostly interested in accumulating wealth, and his older brother was doing most of the fighting, but they were both grinning from ear to ear, practicing counting and addition and multiplication. The older brother was starting to ask keen questions about iconography. I feel confident if given a little time with him one on one, I could have had him playing the full rule set. 

In the end, they made me promise when they are in town again that we’ll play it again. “Sure buddy. We have 500 games, though. So maybe next time you will want to play something else.” But I know next time when they ask to play it again (and I am betting they will), we can build toward the full rule set and get them smashing the villains in no time. And in the meantime, I am sending my sister my Geeklists geared toward mixed age family fun.

Have you ever created new rules or modified them for the age or ability of the players? What is a fun memory you have of this for you?