My wife had gotten her some Capsule Books a few months back and she decided to introduce one of them to Penny. Penny chose the Disney Princess one and her mother read her the story. Each book had a bunch of thick cardboard cutouts of the princesses as well as cutouts of the princesses dancing with their princes. Penny had a lot of fun moving them around on the included playmat and was having a good time.
But I noticed something about the cutouts as she played with them.
When I looked closer at the cutouts, I realized they were about the same scale as my 28mm miniatures that I use for D&D. Being a big geek dad I quickly grabbed my dungeon tiles and a box of miniatures and asked Penny if she would like to make a map with me. She was quite happy to do so (she always helps build our Seafarers of Catan map) and proceeded to make a castle with some surrounding marshland (we used the The Witchlight Fens tiles). She took her princesses and put them in one of the rooms in the castle.
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| Princesses being put in the dungeon |
The next thing she did (and I don't remember if I prompted her or not) was ask for a bad guy. So being the good dad that I am I showed her my D&D villain box of miniatures. She picked out a few goblins and placed them into the castle and started off her play with a maniacal "Now you're trapped!". I helped her along by showing her a tile of a closed door and placing it in the doorway of the room with the princesses. She quickly started saying "Muhaha! Now you're trapped in the dungeon!" while pushing around the goblins.
I asked Penny next if she needed a hero to save the princesses and she said yes. So I offered her a choice from my hero box of miniatures and she ended up choosing the miniature of Lonnia the Duelist. Her hero then proceeded to beat up the bad guys. No dice rolls, she just swept them all away by waving her miniature (she did take great care to use the sword of her miniature). Afterwards, the princesses all got to dance at the ball in the main hall of the castle. This proceeded for a while with the bad guys continually storming the castle and locking up the princesses only to have the hero bust through the roof/window/wall and sweep all the bad guys away. The princesses would then proceed with their royal ball.
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| Hero saving the princesses from the goblins |
Things escalated in the bad guys favor when she found (or maybe I showed to her, I don't remember now) an evil wizard miniature (Heinrich Kemmler) who proceeded to turn the princesses into wagons (I have no idea why wagons and not something more traditional like toads). This meant the hero had to find a good wizard (an old Empire Amber Wizard) to turn the wagons back into princesses. Additionally the amount of bad guys kept increasing (beastmen were added at some point) so the hero needed some side kicks to help her out (a Reptus Skullbreaker and Thorgram).
Penny was quite disappointed though when we had to put everything away to eat lunch, but it looks like her imagination is alive and well. Her integration into geekdom is coming along quite nicely.