We have a card game that we revised the rules for. Each card has a character, a place, an event, or some other element of a fairy tale story. In our version of the game, you are dealt a random hand of 4-7 cards depending on the age of the person and a "they lived happily ever after card" that gives them a goal. The person's job is to come up with a story using all those cards to reach that ending.
I modified that game further. Instead of using the cards at all or generic fairy tale inhabitants, I made a list of characters from fictional works we five Watsons know, a place, and a mission. With only those few elements, we come up with a story.
On a recent long drive, we told the tale of:
- How Legolas and Christoff escaped from the Hundred Acre Wood
- How Sir Robin the not-quite-as-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot and Jiminy Cricket escorted a princess from Uluru to the Sydney Opera House. (It involved a lot of running away!)
- How Princess Buttercup and Bashful the Dwarf stopped the evil wizard of Motunui.
- How Molly Weasley met up with her old flame, Jafar, at WalMart one day and they forgave each other for the misunderstandings and heartbreak that marked their time at Hogwarts (before Molly met Arthur, obviously).
My favorite was Superstar's insightful tale of how Mother Gothel and the young Tom Riddle traveled to the year 2323 to obtain a powerful device that would grant them immortality. They only found one seed that could grow the medicial herb that would cure any ailment, including old age. So Gothel betrayed Tom and sent him back to the orphanage, escaping with the golden seed. And it is because of this story that Tom Riddle was so obsessed with avoiding death and becoming immortal himself, setting him up to become You-Know-Who!
Judging from the kids' reactions, this new one is a harder game, but they enjoy the stories we do come up with more.
My random number generator tells me the next stories will somehow involve Abu the monkey and George Jetson finding a lost dog (Astro?) in Paris, France. We may also learn about how Grand Moff Tarkin and Aragorn sail to the promised land (South Africa?)
