Graph Paper Games

So right now I'm having a sort of creative blitz going on.  My son begged me to run a mini-campaign using the Pathfinder rules, so I pulled together a small adventure (about 12 encounters).  Once that's done, I have my 4E campaign, the sequel to the one that was run by another member of gaming group.  I'm trying to see if you can do a "sandbox" campaign in 4E. We're 11th level right now, having been quickly jacked up by the previous GM, who leveled us up every three or four encounters.  I'm going to slow that way down to where it is in the rules (one level every ten encounters or so).  My thought was to cobble together about thirty encounters: five 10th level, ten 11th level, ten 12th level, and five 13th level counters.  I'd then get them together in groups of 1 to maybe as many as ten, and then scatter them around the sandbox.  Get some rumors and other adventure hooks and then let the players wander around.  We'll see how it works. In addition

     Like many people who grew up in the halcyon era of paper-based RPG's, I know have young children.  Both of mine are school-aged, and are exposed in some way to my playing roleplaying games.  Finding a way to introduce the fun of using your imagination, as well as developing problem-solving skills, teamwork, and reading ability through RPG's has been, to date, a bit of a challenge.  Most RPG's are geared towards teenagers and my own attempts at doing some "kid-friendly" games have been disastrous. The RPG industry seems to be waking up to this.  Wizards of the Coast created Monster Hunters , a very whittled down and almost completely peril-free version of Dungeons and Dragons .  Troll Lord Games made Harvesters , where the players play farm and woodland creatures anthropomorphizing them into furry D&D-esque characters.      One RPG that I became aware of recently was Meddling Kids , by Pandahead Productions, which as you might expect is a RPG depicting t