I love gaming. I love my family. Therefore, I love gaming with my family.

The thing is, my kids aren’t especially interested in a serious Battletech fight (“When do we get to fight each other?” “Just as soon as we finish building our Mechs.” “But we’ve been doing that for an hour!” “I know! We have to make sure they’re just right …”), and my wife glazes over every time I try to explain how awesome Illuminati is. (“AHAHAHAA! The FBI took over the Convenience Stores with help from Congressional Wives and Nuclear Power Companies! Hey, where are you going? Well, if you walk away from the table I’m just going to take your money and put it on my power structure. Why do you have your car keys? Honey? Hello?”)

Luckily, there are a lot of games that are fun for nerds like me and normals like my wife and kids, games like Settlers, Carcassonne, Spooks, Last Night on Earth, Apples to Apples, and classics like Sorry and Risk. But if you’re not as seriously OCD about games as I am, you may not know where to start when you’re contemplating a family game purchase.

Well, this morning, I came across a fantastic guide to family board games in the SFGate, and I just had to share:

The range and quality of board games out there today far surpass anything we may have grown up with as kids, and in spite of the competing allures of online gaming, there is still something elementally satisfying about the roll of the dice and the click-clack of little wooden counters.

Plus, in these tough economic times, can you really afford to go out anymore? Of course not – which is where board games come in. One quick purchase amortizes nicely over many nights of brainy or brainless fun, as you prefer.

Here, then, is our annual consumer guide to some of the year’s new releases, along with a couple of holdovers that I couldn’t resist throwing into the mix.

The list runs the gamut, from Dominion (which Andrew says is fantastic, but I haven’t played) to Sorry sliders, which I’ve seen in the store but hadn’t given serious consideration to until I read about it in this list.

And remember, kids, if you see something you want to buy, go to your friendly local game shop and give them your business. The next generation of gamers (who you’re hopefully helping to create) will thank you when they have a place to play in five years.

I can’t go into specifics about yesterday’s D&D 4E session at Penny Arcade, and I won’t be able to say anything until after the podcasts are released . . . but I thought I’d collect the few tweets I sent while we were playing as sort of an oblique overview:

Remember when you were a kid, and you hardly slept on Christmas Eve, because you were so excited? That was me last n ight. D&D4E FTW! –7:51am

I am currently watching Mike and Scott design my character portrait. OMG this is awesome. – 9:04am

We’ve been playing for hours, and it doesn’t feel like it at all. This is even more fun than I thought it would be. – 12:14pm

Pizza has arrived. This shit just got REAL. – 1:02pm

Sharing parmesan and red peppers with @pvponline, tweeting about it before he can. – 1:12pm

One day, I will sing again The Ballad of Rudy the Undead Hound … – 4:14pm

Best. Gaming. Session. Ever. – 5:28pm

It turned out that my fears about messing up my character were unfounded. I did everything right, and over the course of our session it became clear that I hadn’t made any stupid mistakes in his creation . . . in fact, he was kind of a bad ass. Also, I’m really proud of myself for doing everything old school, with books and paper and a whole bunch of not using a character generator to do all the heavy lifting. Wheaton’s still got it, ladies. (Um. Not that most ladies I know, including my wife, care about this sort of thing or understand why [THING I CAN’T TALK ABOUT] and [OTHER THING I CAN’T TALK ABOUT] was so cool.)

If you listened to the first Penny Arcade Podcast and, like me, thought something like, “Man, I wish I could be part of that because it sounds like so much fun,” I can happily report that we were correct. It was awesome, and I think the podcasts are going to be tremendously entertaining.

So this is why I got to spend the entire weekend making a D&D 4E character without feeling guilty about it at all:

For those of you who enjoyed the D&D Podcasts, we’re recording another session on Thursday. Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics), Binwin Bronzebottom, and Omin Dran of Acquisitions Incorporated make their return to the table, while William “Wil” Wheaton joins as the new hire, playing an unreleased class. Yes, that’s correct: we have a celebrity guest. This is the big Goddamned Leagues, people.

I loved those D&D Podcasts, because it was like listening to me and my friends play in high school. I can’t wait to actually participate in one (I’ve written a backstory that fits into their campaign, even,) and watch Jim Darkmagic set Binwin on fire firsthand. I also can’t wait to find out who the celebrity guest is, because that’s going to be awesome.

I don’t have a character generator, or a subscription to D&D Insider, so I had to create [Awesome Character Name Redacted] the old school way: on the floor of my office, flipping between the PHB and Adventurer’s Vault to make sure I was investing my limited magic item budget in the wisest way, and then double checking to ensure I had applied the bonuses correctly. I hadn’t touched the 4th Edition character creation rules before last week, and I haven’t created a character from blank paper in over a decade, so I’m pretty sure that when I get over to the Penny Arcade Secret Headquarters of Doom to play tomorrow, there may be some serious pointing and laughing at me when I show off my character sheet and my errors are revealed for all to see. I hope they don’t do it in front of the mysterious celebrity guest, because I want to make a good impression.

The process of creating my character, who I guess I can tell you is an Eladrin (because I’ve always thought high elves were cool) and is a new, secret class out of the PHB 2, awakened all these slumbering memories of some of the happiest times I’ve ever had, and I can’t believe how lucky I am that I get to do this tomorrow. It feels too good to be true, you know?

Last night’s Child’s Play dinner raised over $200,000 and my harebrained idea to auction off “have a beer with Gabe and Wil and Kurtz and Khoo and The Other Mike at a bar around the corner after the auction’s over” went for $2900 and ended up being a ridiculously fun after party with Enforcers and Rock Band. Want to know how much beer I drank? One half a Double Bastard. Want to know why it was only one half? Because Sean from Harmonix bumped into me after the waiter put it into my hand and me and my friend Chris ended up wearing half of it. If anyone was wondering why I walked out of that bar, seriously soaked in and stinking like beer while staying completely sober, now you know. Goodtimes.

And check this out: because this week isn’t cool enough already, I’m going to Microsoft in about an hour to finally do a podcast with Major Nelson. OMGINORITE?!

This really is turning out to be the best week, ever, and I haven’t even disclosed the stuff that’s locked behind various NDAs.

I’m an incredibly lucky guy. I need to keep saying that so I don’t take any of this for granted.