Work / Products and games
Mages & Macrophages
A tabletop role-playing game in a box, designed so parents can run a first adventure for kids aged 6 to 12 with almost no preparation.
Ampersand RPG is a game company I started with two other Brooklyn dads. We make tabletop role-playing games for parents and kids. Mages & Macrophages was our first, released in 2022.
The problem
Parents who want to bring their kids into D&D run into the same walls:
- Too many rules and too much lore.
- Some material isn’t right for kids.
- No time to prepare an adventure.
- Screens everywhere, pulling attention away.
What we made
Everything you need to play is in one box, and the parent barely has to prepare.
- No separate rulebooks.
- Simplified rules, adapted from D&D 5th edition.
- Loot tokens make inventory something you can hold.
- Monster and character cards make stats easy to track.
- The story is written out for the game master, color-coded.
- The map comes as tiles, so players focus on the next room and get surprised.
- Figures and dice included.
The box opens up into the game master’s screen.
Intro video
Storyboard excerpts from the one-minute intro video.
