Little Wizards

In this blog post I will be talking about a roleplaying game called Little Wizards. If you have no clue of what a roleplaying game is, then go here. Otherwise, come right this way.

Little Wizards is a roleplaying game designed especially for kids. In it you play helpful child sorcerers and mages, running around sorting out tr problems the citizens of Coinworld (the setting of all Little Wizard adventures) face.

Little Wizards has an extremely simple system for figuring out if you can do something hard- for example, to see if you can persuade the Brownies to stop terrorising the village with their troublesome

pranks. First you roll two  six sided dice, add the results together and then add the appropriate trait (more on those later). If you beat the target number the Narrator (the GM in other words) sets you then you succeed!

Now, back to those traits, traits represent how good you are at different things, depending your level of skill at that certain trait you might get  up to a plus 2 to add onto your rolls .These skills come in two different forms, one, normal skills which are body (how good at physical things you are), heart (how good at interacting with other people and animals you are) and brains (how clever you are). However, the real excitement comes with the other type of skill… magic powers!

Don't worry, although they have a different name magic powers work in the exact same way as traits. However, unlike traits, where every Little Wizard will have access to the body, brains and heart traits, with magic powers, each player can choose what types of magic they want to be able to do.

What is it like to GM this game?

Well, I have been lucky enough to have a chance to GM some adventures in Little Wizards and so for the first time I can tell you what its like to be on the other side of the table, controlling all the eccentric characters of Coinworld and the things that go bump in the night.

This being my first experience of GMing a game a was definitely relieved that there was a ton of

helpful hints spread through the book for narrators and even a whole chapter on how to GM a game of Little Wizards. These really helped my entry into the murky waters of the world of GMing but, I wish their had been a bit more advice on what to do when your players went totally of the plot, because they did that - a lot. Also, I wish their had been some advice for making your own tales because although they give you three adventures ready made, you could easily go through these very quickly. In defence of Little Wizards though they do include loads of story hooks and lots of background description for Coinworld, but it would've been quite nice if they could of provide a little more help on adventure creation.

Apart from those few small problems, I really enjoyed GMing this game and I think that I am glad that it was the first game system I ever ran. The adventures that did come with the box were well written and fun, but also made sure that there was a wide variety of challenges so that every single player stayed engaged

My general thoughts

Overall I think that this game is a perfect way to introduce your children into gaming: the setting is imaginative and fun, the rules are simple and adventures are engaging. What I also love about the game is the character creation system, in it, once you have chosen what you want to be good at, all you have to do is roll some dice and look at a table and the rest of your characters backstory, fears and likes will be filled in for you with minimum effort. This leaves more time for playing and less time for trying for wrangle children into making up a character. I would definitely recommend this game to parents wanting something to get for there kids and I would also recommend it to other children looking for there first way into the world of GMing.