Hey all!
So. I am not sure I've posted about this before on this blog.
But I have been telling my son a fantasy story before bed for several years now. It follows a boy named Liam and his adventures becoming a knight. There is a new bit each night. The story arcs are usually between 4 and 6 months long. The cast has gotten HUGE... maybe a hundred characters all together, spread across a globe. There are ogres and goblins and pirates and skeletons and all sorts of bad guys... and a TON of heroes spread across all of the lands, like Donegal and Taryn and Salvator and Ali and Caitlyn... and a million locations, like Alcatraz and the Greenwood and the Kingdom of Sand and the Great Ocean and Caira and so on and so forth.
My son adores the story, and knows the mythology of it like the back of his hand... "Daddy, if Simon is Sir Gareth's son, does that mean he would have trained with Sir Giles and Donegal, or would he have trained with Lord David?" He knows them ALL, and has memorized every single detail of the world.
Now, because I am a dad, I have to do it better... and so, as each character is introduced in the story, I get my son a lego figure to match. I've been buying them piece by piece from various online dealers to put them together exactly as they should look. It is a bit of work, but it is worth it... when a new character is introduced, at the end of story that night, out comes the figure from some hiding place. My son can play the story however he likes, and he often does make up his own versions of the story as he plays.
Well, I've hit another twist. I figured I should make him a card game of the story. So I've made up a really simple but INCREDIBLY elegant card game, with six decks... each one represents a different faction from a different story arc. The game is a ton of fun, and has the added bonus of allowing you to have the bad guys from one story arc to fight the good guys from a different arc. Characters who have never officially meet can square off. My son has gotten good at the game, and all of the adults in the family have played with him now. The game is REALLY good, maybe the best I've made in that it is super simple and yet has some serious strategy.
Anyway... so I had to laminate all of the cards, and here they are! It looks pretty crazy when you see all of them... MAN, there are a lot of characters in this damn story!
Anyway... thought I would share. If people are interested, I can share the game itself... super simple!:)
6 comments:
Very cool! Nice work dad!
Brilliant! Yes please.
Wow that is amazing!
Best thing I've read in ages! Your son is a lucky boy. He'll treasure this forever and I suspect there'll be grand kids who will pester you to continue the tale :-)
What a fantastic idea. I had three girls before I had a son, and he's almost 2 now. How old was your lad when you started the story? I would love to give this a go myself!
He was... hm, maybe 3 and a half, 4? It was about two years ago, and he is 6 in October. Still going strong on the story... little does he know, but one of the main characters, Donegal, the knight-turned-blacksmith who cared for the main character Liam his whole life, is marked for death at the hands of Lord Tatum!
(But then he will come back when the next story arc kicks off in a few months, when they go to Caira again and Liam finds the Scepter of Resurrection to bring Donegal back, but trusts Lord Blackheart with it, who as the 1000th son of the Wizer of the Dead King of Caira, uses it to bring back the Dead King and the Queen of Skulls. Will Liam, Taryn, Salvator, Ali, and Sir Battier be able to defeat the dead? Stay tuned!
:)
Post a Comment