Welcome to Father Geek, a website dedicated to any and all adult role models who teach children important life lessons through their geeky passion and hobbies by way of play. Better parenting through games and geekiness is our slogan and our goal.
Father Geek reviews games from the perspective of Child Geeks, Parent Geeks, and Gamer Geeks. Put another way, all games are reviewed with new players, non-gamers, casual players, and gaming elitists. Father Geek believes games are an excellent medium to teach children (and adults) important social and cognitive skills. The game becomes the medium of the lesson and the game play the teacher. By participating in the games with children, parents and educators can further support the skills being taught, share in a positive experience, and obtain a deeper personal connection with all those involved. Plus, games are a lot of fun to play!
Father Geek invites you to join us on our epic quest of raising children and follow along as we do our best to not mess them up. Father Geek also encourages you to share your own stories, tips, and tricks. WE ARE NOT EXPERTS (cannot stress this enough, according to my lawyer). There is a lot we can learn from each other, though. Perhaps, together, we can raise a Nation of Geeks who will bring about World Peace, free Internet, and Twinkies that actually cause you to lose weight!
Meet the Father Geek
 Editor in Chief, CEO, Lead Writer (read: Only Writer), Board Game Fanatic, and Father of Three, Cyrus has always enjoyed board, card, miniature, role playing, and video games, but didn’t get back into the hobby seriously until early 2000. Once he did, however, he was hooked. He now plays board games with anyone and everyone he can, but enjoys playing with his children and wife the most. Video games continue to be of real interest, but not as much as dice and little miniatures. As he carefully navigates the ins and outs of parenting, he does his very best to bestow what wisdom he has and help nurture his children’s young minds. It is his hope and ambition to raise three strong, honorable men who will one day go on to do great things and buy their Mom and Dad a lobster dinner.
The Legendary Beginnings of Father Geek (as voiced by James Earl Jones): One day, Cyrus woke up and realized, “Hey, I bet other people want to hear about what I do!” To which his wife hit him with a pillow, complained that it was 3 AM, and he should go back to sleep. Sleep he did and ponder this thought… When next he woke, he rushed to the kitchen table and scribbled down a few notes. That lead to more notes and more scribbles until finally, after about a day, there was enough coherent scribbly thought to actually formulate a plan of action! And on that fateful day, my friends, Father Geek was born! Cyrus goes by the handle fathergeek on Board Game Geek. You can also check him out on CyrusKirby.com (his ego knows no bounds) and About.Me. In many respects, he’s as crazy as he sounds, if not more so. But Cyrus is no expert, despite what he tells himself in the mirror during his morning affirmation ritual. So, he called some friends to join the party. This collective group of parenting and gamer ninjas became the Father Geek staff! Their members include the following… |
Past Father Geek Authors
While Father Geek is now run by one guy (Cyrus), it started out as a group venture. Listed here are the Founding Geek Fathers (so to speak) that helped Father Geek get off the ground. Their time, attention, and passion helped fuel the project and make it what it is today. They are no longer active participants, but their spirit remains and constitutes the bedrock on which Father Geek was built and continues to grow.
 Meng is an Australian who became hooked on board games at high school, with such classics as Talisman and Diplomacy. Years later, he rekindled his interest while living in the United States, both immersing himself in the local gaming scene and also taking advantage of mail-order to expand his collection to some 300 items. After returning to Australia in 2008, and with little time left after work, study and travel, the majority of his gaming nowadays is with his two young children. Hoping one day in the distant future to teach them to play a rollicking game of Die Macher, in the meantime he provides more age-appropriate fare and tries to discuss some life lessons along the way.Meng goes by the handle meng on Board Game Geek. |
 Brian played many family board games while growing up, but launched a foray into real geek gaming in 4th grade with his exposure to Risk, and then many sessions of Axis & Allies. Gaming in all forms has always been woven into his life with different phases including: video games starting with the Atari 2600, role playing Marvel Super Heroes, launching massive Battletech scenarios, blowing his small amount of bank on Magic: The Gathering, and then finally strategy board games. Settlers of Catan(1997) was his first introduction to the Euro-style game, and he has since been forever hooked. He embarked on a new stage of life in late 2006 with the birth of his first of two boys, and now cherishes the opportunity to learn the game of parenting. His desire is to raise two respectable men who still want to play a game with daddy even when they are father geeks themselves.Brian goes by the handle Vree on Board Game Geek. |
 Karl played many of the games seen in big-box stores growing up, but much of that changed when he was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons in 1982. From there, he was also exposed to “dudes on a map” games such as Axis & Allies, Fortress America and Supremacy. After his grade school gaming friends moved away and Nintendo and girls became more interesting, non-electronic games took a back-seat. Sixteen years later, a co-worker suggested getting together to play a game called Illuminati. This sparked a level of interest that led Karl to want to know more. His search led him to a site called Boardgamegeek.com (GeekDo.com). Eight years and 800+ games later, it is safe to say Karl is pretty engrossed in the hobby as a player and a collector of table-top games ranging from wargames, miniatures, card games, Eurogames and of course, Ameritrash. While Karl began by introducing simple abstract games to his children (Checkers, Blokus, Go, etc.), he has also been introducing his two children to character genres typically cherished by geeks, thereby providing a good base for introducing table-top games to them which carry similar themes to make the play more interesting and story-like. He hopes that by playing games with the children while they are young, they will continue the hobby later in life and still want to play with Daddy even as teenagers and older.Karl goes by the handle kfritz on Board Game Geek. |
 Nate has been a gamer since before he knew the word existed. From his very earliest memories of begging his older sisters to play Monopoly with him, and then crying when they actually made him finish the game, to his moment of Euro game enlightenment with his first play of Settlers of Catan (thanks to Father Geek’s own Brian), gaming has always been his first, best, hobby. Now, with children of his own, he finds himself repeating the cycle of begging them to play with him, and then crying when they won’t let him quit. He hopes that his daughters grow up to learn the joys of rolling dice, gathering resources, building civilizations, leveling their characters, seeing their enemies flee before them and hearing the lamentations of their women.Nate goes by the handle kungfugeek on Board Game Geek. |
 Marty has been a video and board gamer since the Atari 2600 and Uno (both from the 70’s). As a child, he has fond memories of playing all sorts of games with his family and friends. As a parent, he now wants his three sons to have the same great memories of everyone sitting around the table captivated by cards/tokens/miniatures, feeling great about a win, learning how to deal with losses, but having fun regardless of the outcome. Marty didn’t discover the sub-culture of “geek” gaming until 2000 through the Lord of the Rings TCG. From there, a whole new world of card games, board games, RPGs and miniature wargaming was opened up to him and he dived in head first. As his sons started taking interest in his hobby, Marty gladly cultivated their interest and supported whatever games they wanted play. Even his wife, a non-gamer just a few short years ago, now loves the gaming culture and gets “geeked up” as anyone for board game nights and trips to Gen Con. Gaming is now a family event. Less time is spent watching TV and more time is spent sitting around the gaming table strategizing, laughing, learning, and building memories that will stay with them for a lifetime. At the same time, Marty is adding new memories of his own. Marty goes by the handle WolfpackEE on Board Game Geek. |
 Frank was introduced to wargames at the innocent age of 13, and had a share in his first subscription to SPI’s Strategy and Tactics magazine within a few months later. After only a year or two, he had been introduced to Basic Dungeon’s and Dragons, and played some form of fantasy role-playing from then through college. Discovering hobby board games in 2007, he now explores them with his 14-year-old son, their Boy Scout troop, and his regular gaming group. He teaches Chess to elementary students after school, too! Prior to joining the Father Geek Staff, Frank wrote for his own blog, Zwischenzug, where he expressed his belief that all games are educational games in some manner. His experiences have taught him that board games create friendships, build families, and teach social and other important skills to little ones. He is dedicated to helping families and friends find great family games and casual games to play. Frank can be found on Board Game Geek as feldmafx. |
