I played a game of D&D with my almost 3 year old son Finley. It was super fun, and he's MUCH better at in game conversation than I am.

It started because I took him with me to buy some minis. He loved playing with them and wanted to add most of them to his birthday list. I tried to balance shared excitement with a desire to not have to buy a bunch of extra minis because my son mangled them. We left with a couple new monsters, and I spent the ride home trying to explain to my son why a Wrackspawn has no eyes (for the record, he didn't know its name, we just called it a red guy) and whether or not he was a good guy.

Back at home, he was very excited to play this game that I bought little guys for. I said OK, then proceeded to play a whole little adventure without using any guys. Whoops. He didnt' seem to mind, though.

I started by telling him that he was in a small town and a dragon had stolen the princess. No need to get complicated, I thought. I asked what he wanted to do:

Finn-fight the dragon!
Dad-ok, do you want to buy anything before you leave town?
F-a sword. a poky sword (this means a rapier). a purple poky sword!
D-ok, anything else?
F-a zappin thing (i wrote down wand of lightning)
D-ok, ready to go? are you going to take the road, the river, or the forest?

He chose forest, and on his way out of town he was stopped by his friend Tika (yeah yeah, I read lots of Dragonlance back in the day). She told him it was dangerous and that he shouldn't go. He was confused for a moment, and then told her he had to save the princess! I wasn't sure he would even have remembered that. We talked some more and I was really impressed with how he took on the role. WAY better than I do when I'm trying to role play. Throughout the little adventure, he found an adventuring buddy or three, fought giant spiders and found a rifle in one of their webs, hid from boar-riding hill dwarves, and saved the princess. And after many repeated instances of "I want to fight the dragon", he ended up bartering for his and the princess' life with the rifle, which the dragon considered a fantastic treasure. I was so proud of his use of diplomacy to solve the problem, and he can always go back to fight the dragon another day...