RPG Review: Little Wizards
Little Wizards is a tabletop RPG designed to introduce children age 6-10 to the concept of roleplaying games. Players take the role of young sorcerers and mages, exploring the land of Coinworld, a flat world that has a darker parallel world on the opposite side.
The game was originally a French game, published as Contes Ensorcelés by Antoine Bauza, the designer of 7 Wonders and Ghost Stories. The English adaptation features rules updates and additional content by Amanda Valentine, as well as Patrick Kapera and Clark Valentine.
There are a lot of random tables to generate characters, which I think kids will love, defining how you look and your personality. Getting to randomly determine to see how you turn out is a blast for kids. We pulled out some dice, and my daughter giggled her way through all the different personality traits she ended up with.
Players will choose if they want to be a Sorcerer or a Mage. Sorcerers are, like D&D sorcerers, innately imbued with magic, passed from parent to child. Mages, on the other hand, are more like Harry Potter, and attend school to learn the ways of magic.
All characters have three traits: Body, Heart and Brain. You will choose one to be Good, getting a +0 to roll, one to be Better, getting a +1, and Best, which gives you a +2. I like the wording here, because it keeps children from thinking of what their worst traits are, instead focusing on what they’re good at.
Each of the two types of little wizards, Sorcerers and Mages, get to choose two types of magic they’re good at from a list. Each list explains what that type of magic does. Each wizard is also skilled at broom riding. Of these three magical powers, they will again choose what they’re good, better and best at. Each wizard gets to describe what their broom, hat, wand and familiar look like, and they’re ready to play. It’s a very simple character creation method that won’t drag things out and leave the kids disinterested by the end of it. They’ll be excited to get right into the game.
The basic mechanics are quite simple. The narrator determines the difficulty, the player rolls 2d6 and adds the appropriate trait to the roll. If they are attempting to use magic, the same method is used, but intead of using a trait, they use one of their magical powers.
A roll of two 1’s results in Disaster, acting as a critical failure where something disasterous goes wrong. A Brilliant Success is a double 6, where not only does the character succeed, but something amazing happens on top of it. When players work together, whoever is rolling gets a +1 for each other character who helps them.
Players advance by gaining Lil’ Points, which are gained through play by completing tasks, working with others, and making other players laugh, among others. Players can spend Lil’ Points to improve traits, powers, or gain new powers. Players can also begin to learn Skills. Players and the narrator will make up what the Skill is called, such as Mountain Survival, Running, or Juggling. When a player uses that Skill, they will reroll the dice on a failure, so they have another chance to succeed.
The book has many examples of play throughout. The Narrator’s chapters are really great at explaining what a Narrator does in a very straightforward way, so that when your children are ready to run the game themselves, they can be given clear and concise rules for how to do so.
The book contains three separate adventures set in coin world, exploring different themes, and each with a distinct style. In one, Brownies have broken into a chocolate factory and tampered with the machinery, causing anyone who eats the chocolate to act strange. In another, the players visit a mountain town in the Malayak Mountains and must go recover the town’s treasure from the snow monkeys who have stolen it. The final adventure takes place at a mysterious mansion, playing with the private investigator at a giant mansion trope.
Little Wizards is a delightful little game that works great not only for kids as an introduction to roleplaying, but has enough depth to entertain the adults around the table as well. It would also be great to use to introduce fans of Harry Potter to roleplaying as well.
Through March 15th, Little Wizards is on sale at DriveThruRPG for 40% off.
You can pick up the physical book at Crafty Games’s website here.
Gamerati sent a copy of Little Wizards to Dice Monkey for review.
