Anyone who's ever had a remotely normal childhood has engaged in worldbuilding. Essentially, it consists of imagining a world with its backstory, locations and population. It can be basic, like playing with toy cars or having a tea party with dolls, or as complex as RPG gaming.
Michael Harrison over on Wired.com's GeekDad blog has started a series on worldbuilding. Check out the first two posts:
How To Build a World: The Basics
How To Build a World: Questions to Ask
For quite some time I've been mulling over how to share my interest in fantasy and gaming with my kids. My son is still too young to enjoy real RPG games, but he can hear stories. One of these day I also plan to start buying for him some nice fantasy action figures I've seen at Target. As for my daughter, she can also enjoy stories like Narnia, but I'd also given consideration to getting a starter set of Magic: The Gathering. My main concern with that, though, is that it might bind rather than set free the imagination. Also, the cost of additional cards could really add up.
An inexpensive alternative, though it might have to wait until my son is old enough and we would thus have enough players, would be Basic Fantasy. This is a completely free and very well-elaborated alternative to pricey and somewhat plastic game systems like D&D. You can either download the pdf files of the complete books and game sheets from the website, or you can buy low-cost hard copies of the books as well.
Some who read this might not share my appreciation for fantasy, but like the idea of imaginative play with your kids (Monopoly and Scrabble don't count due to lack of imagination!). Maybe building a fort or treehouse is an option. What do you do or might you do to share in an imaginary world with your kids?
See also past posts:
Undefined Desire
Bad Fantasy
.... they were called MUDs or MUSHs or some derivative thereof - not sure what the acronym stood for, but there's still a lot of them out there (never found the one we used to play on, though.)
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