Looks like I forgot to introduce myself.
Hi, I used to be a shoestring budget traveller and had a bunch of hobbies, now I’m a parent, technical writer, and translator living in Japan who sometimes plays boardgames asynchronously. My claims to fame in the boardgaming world are the Mage Knight, Pax Pamir 2, and Napoleon’s Triumph Vassal modules.
Our Bean is a princess. She’s the smallest of the cats we have, but also with the most attitude. Insists on eating her meal in her own bowl, doesn’t like her sisters approaching to snuggle her but will absolutely approach and snuggle them… and she snores like a lumberjack.
We have a cat that looks like that named Lorelei. When she sleeps on the couch on a brown and black blanket I wanna get her a hi-vis vest. Our Bean snores like the ghost of a lumberjack.
Hi peeps, I am not really a SU&SD refugee as much to my embarrassment I only really discovered them recently. (heads been in a hole of parenting for the last 7 years! Lockdown has respawned the interest in boardgames!) I was all so very excited to see there was a forum! I haven’t been properly involved in a proper forum since the early naughties and I was ever so excited…
To then have my hopes and dreams shattered before I could even sign up
Thankfully the current of the wonderweb helped me to drift in this direction and I though I would say hi!
pulls up a chair puts the kettle on shall I make a brew? custard cream anyone?
@lindyinpink! Great to have you here. Have a browse, shout if you need anything.
We have a dedicated parenting thread as well, which someone will magically link to!
Welcome @lindyinpink! You can find the parenting thread @RossM mentioned here.
One of the worries was that with the official SU&SD forums closing, the community would struggle to find newcomers, so I am very glad that you found your way here.
cheers me dears! Thanks for the warm welcome.
I think I may have found the link in a discussion post on the SU&SD site… but don’t quote me it was before the first cup of tea of the day, everything is usually a blur at that point!
Best suggestion I’ve heard all morning 
Bourbon, please - the biscuit, not the beverage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPNLwnMoVoA
I think this one can stay.
I don’t really know… that’s a bit of a hard question as we tend to be drawn to games that we can engage the sproglet in (he is 7). So often more co-op games so he doesn’t feel left out, we are loving forbidden Island and just got forbidden desert so looking forward to cracking that open next weekend!
I tend to like games with a solid theme and story. Just purchased Arkham Horror-the card game on the strength of it being a good story, just waiting until we have a some time to play without the wee one and maybe a decent bottle of wine…
Also husbeast is wanting to get back into D&D so exploring if we can manage a campaign with just the three of us in isolation, wish us luck
I admit to having a weakness for pretty, I like decent art work and games that just make me want to stroke them! I am honestly just building up ones I want to try, mainly by scouring SU&SD videos which lead me to purchase arboreteetium this week, cus it is so pret-tree!!! (oh my goodness what a bad pun!)
There is definitely some great stuff out there for kids and D&D - sorry, say D&D and I feel summoned to respond. 
I’m not sure what edition you are looking at but there is definitely free stuff you can get for the older editions (AD&D 1e) if you need recommendations. Playing D&D with my kids has been awesome. Have fun and good luck!
The recent “Essentials Kit” could be worth looking into (if you haven’t already) as it includes rules for “sidekicks” for bulking up smaller parties.
You can always use play by forum post for rpgs if you need to scratch the itch.
It seems to me that this thread needn’t be only new people; those of you who just got here might like to know something about us older residents. So here’s something of myself (as Kipling put it):
I was born in 1949. Since the late 1980s I’ve been a copy editor, specializing in scientific and scholarly material; I currently work on Cartographica, Journal of Catalysis, Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research, Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, Journal of Posthuman Studies, Molecular Biology of the Cell, and Mouseion, and occasionally fill in on other journals. I was an in-house employee till 2002, when my job was outsourced; since then I’ve been a freelancer.
I also write for Steve Jackson Games, starting around 2000 with GURPS Steampunk; I have something over twenty books out from them. I’ve been playing RPGs since around 1975, when I encountered people playing D&D from the three little tan books, and I started GMing less than a year later. Over the past quarter century I’ve run more GURPS than anything else, but I’ve run a lot of different systems; I’ve run Big Eyes Small Mouth, FUDGE, and Mage: The Ascension more than once each.
I lived in San Diego until 2016, and had accumulated a circle of something like 15 players. In 2016 C and I moved to Riverside, and earlier this year to Lawrence, 1700 miles away, largely because California was becoming frighteningly expensive, though the passage of AB 5 a few months ago made it even more urgent, as it faced me with the loss of all my freelance income. I’m still playing in a Call of Cthulhu campaign and running a GURPS campaign via Zoom; I’d like to try to create a face to face group here, but not while Covid risk remains high.
I’m on the board of directors of the Libertarian Futurist Society and take part in the jury that selects finalists for its annual Best Novel award (for the current list, see http://lfs.org/releases/2020PrometheusFinalists.shtml).
I showed up here a couple of years ago on invitation from Agemegos and was made welcome, as I trust all of you will be.
Second this for the essentials kit, only minus if starting again is no pregenerated characters. But then, my kids at that age enjoyed creating the character almost as much as running the game, the essentials kit has everything else you need and great, bite sized adventures. My kids at that age had a tolerance of about one hour at a time, so make it bite sized chunks and they don’t get hacked off!
Wizards have a load of free pregens available to download: D&D Character Sheets | Dungeons & Dragons
They’ve always got a lot of free content available, but they’ve added even more since the whole lockdown situation started.
My two were 5&7 when we got into gaming. Also started with Forbidden Island. Ticket to Ride worked with a bit of coaching (and using Rummikub boards to hold the cards).
Terror in Meeple City is a bear to set up but great fun.
Have you played Arboretum? It’s nasty
You could always create your own sheaf of pregens. When I ran a one-shot session of Hellcats and Hockeysticks (an RPG based on the St. Trinians films and cartoons), I ran off nine pregens, including one of a clique I made up myself, maffiya transfer students. I left each with two unspent points of skills to let the players customize their own characters, because I think getting to make a choice helps get players invested in their roles; that might be worth trying.
