Inspired by the story of a family who read the rules of a game ("Return of the Heroes") to their kids as a bedtime story, I present three bedtime stories for gaming (or gamers') children.
How the Meeples invented Time Travel
Once upon a time there were some little Meeples. They lived in a big box on Mummy and Daddy's shelves and, when the stars were right and the children were tucked up safely in bed, they came out to play.
The little Meeples had a friend who they called Bubba. They liked to play with Bubba, but because he was the biggest and the best at counting they often sent him to the Great Scoring Track on the Other Side of the Table. Bubba liked to count, but best of all he liked to play in the Meadows with his little friends, even though he was so big that it took two of them to beat him at leapfrog.
Sometimes they built cities on the edges of the Meadows where the Meeples played. Some of the Meeples moved to the cities, and others liked to play on the roads that linked the cities together. It's never safe to play on roads, though, and those Meeples were never seen again. (You should remember that when you are out walking.) Others moved to Monasteries and surrounded themselves with wilderness (and sometimes with the wilderness of a city).
These Monastic Meeples liked to study the history of Meepledom. Especially, they liked to learn about the Olden Days, when ancient animals roamed the world. They told stories to the other Meeples of a race of prehistoric Meeples with one hand permanently raised in salute.
These prehistoric Meeples were a pre-agrarian society, and liked to hunt and fish for their food. They would forage in the jungles, and had special rituals to scare away the sabre-toothed tigers that lurked in the wide-open plains.
One day, one of the prehistoric Meeples escaped from his box and found his way into the other little Meeples' box.
The Meeples were so excited to meet him, and the Monastic Meeples wrote down all his stories. He told them fantastic stories of a King and a Count, a dragon, a princess and a fairy, and of a great Castle in a far-off land, inhabited only by Meeples of colours never seen before in the Land of the Meeples. He told them of a tower so big that it could hold all the land in the world. They told him of the Great Blue Bag from which all the land came, and of the Giants who laid it.
The little Prehistoric Meeple was so excited, he ran back to his box to tell his friends. Sadly, he went one box too far and was eaten by two dinosaurs named Jill and Fred, who we will read about in our next story.
A prehistoric love story
Once Upon a Time, there were two little dinosaurs. Their names were Bill and Fred, and they lived near the South Pole, even though they didn’t know it was the South Pole.
Bill and Fred liked to move about and explore their world. As they moved around, they made friends with some of the other dinosaurs that lived nearby. Their special friends were Susan and Jill. They liked Susan and Jill so much that they got married and decided to have some little baby dinosaurs together.
As they all got older, the world around them started to change. This was caused by continental drift, although the dinosaurs wouldn't learn about that until it was too late. Sometimes they would go to sleep on dry land and wake up in the water, swimming for their lives.
There were other groups of dinosaurs that lived nearby, but Bill and Fred and Susan and Jill (who were great-grandparents by now) were shy and didn't know how to speak to other dinosaurs, so they tried to stay with their own family. Sometimes they would graze on the same trees as other dinosaurs, but they preferred to stick together and find lovely big islands where they could roam free.
One day, Jill and Fred were drowned in a freak flood. Their children survived, though, and continued to grow and explore the wonderful world that they lived in, until one day the Earth was hit by a giant meteor and all the dinosaurs died.
Their bones lay buried for many, many years, until one day people found them and started to learn all about dinosaurs again. They found them so interesting that they wrote books about them and made models of them, and even made movies and games about them.
And so, Jill and Fred and Sue and Bill will never truly be forgotten.
My Mother was a Pirate
Once Upon a Time, Mummy was a Pirate. She liked to sail the seas in her
Mummy and Daddy were both very scared of the Dread Pirates. Sometimes the Dread Pirates weren't very scary, but often they would hurt Mummy and Daddy's
There were lots of islands in the seas, and Mummy and Daddy liked to visit them all. Daddy's favourite island was Tavern Island, because Daddy likes to play with cards. Mummy liked Treasure Island best of all, because she got to dig holes and hide her treasure, and mark it with special little flags.
Mummy and Daddy were very good pirates, with very powerful
After they had been pirates for one year, Mummy and Daddy decided to get married, so they went to Treasure Island together and dug up all their treasure and then