This post originally appeared on the previous incarnation of this blog on December 11, 2022 For today’s review, I’m going to be talking about a game system rather than a novel or a single adventure. Additionally, I’m moving outside a system that I’ve played with the friends in my gaming group and to a system that I picked up specifically to play with my daughter, who is four years old.As a gamer dad, I was extremely proud when my daughter found a set of dice at the local Barnes and Noble and asked me to buy them for her, in addition to asking that I teach her how to play with them. She’s sat in on some of my own games and seen my chain mail dice bag before.My usual assortment of games aren’t really geared toward either the one-on-one play that teaching her to play entails or to creating stories involving conflict more in line with the tastes and temperament of a toddler.Amazing Tales is an RPG system, written by Martin Lloyd, meant for sitting down and telling stories with your own child. The entire system is designed around that premise of telling a story with a child. The mechanical rules of the system fit on a single page. Most of the rest of the book consists of either advice for the parent or sample settings for the parent who would like to use one.OverviewAmazing Tales fits its mechanics onto a single page, making it easier to share with a younger child than something like Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, one of the variations on the character sheet involves boxes to draw pictures in for a hero’s skills. So your kid doesn’t even need to read yet for you to share the fun with them.The BookThis is one I own in PDF form, though there are both a soft cover and hard cover available. It is 96 pages long. Like mentioned before, the actual rules text is contained on one page with the rest of the book containing advice for the parent playing the part of GM for their child and sample settings and story hooks for all different genres of stories.I especially love that each setting contained in the book has multiple full page, full color art pieces that you can show off to get a picture into a child’s mind when you’re picking a setting, or just need to give a better description than you can do with words. There are even some two-page spreads of art in here.The book itself does a lot of the work to inspire stories that can be shared with the kids in your life.The MechanicsThe mechanics of Amazing Tales can be summed up easily, you roll a single die representing one of four skills from the chracter sheet and try to roll a 3 or better. One skill is assigned a d12, one a d10, one a d8, and the last a d6. So even on the low end, the chosen target number still gives a better than even chance of success to the hero.The game suggests, and I concur, that it’s a good idea to place each die on the character sheet and describe the dice in terms of the skill attached. “This is your Being Brave die.”Character CreationCreation of a character is done by coming up with a name for a character and then deciding their four skills with a conversation involving “What are they best at?” Since four skills are going to stand in for all actions requiring a roll, the parent may want to either make suggestions to broaden the scope of a child’s idea or alternatively just err on the side of broad interpretation in the meaning of what a skill means during play.I really like this model, it’s great for just sitting down and jumping right into the story you’ll be telling with a minimum of prep or fuss. Also, it gives you the parent a good idea of what challenges the kid is looking for.SettingsLike I said earlier, much of the book is actually taken up by suggested settings for adventures, in case you need a little extra inspiration at game time. The included settings areThe Deep Dark Wood, a place filled with fairies and talking animals, straight out of the best fairy tales.Magical Kingdoms Long Ago, a place filled with knights and wizards, not unlike the settings most of us played our first games in.The Pirate Seas, a place where nautical adventure awaitsAdventures in the Stars, a place where aliens and robots roam the galaxyEach setting includes art to set the mood, suggestions for character tropes a child might play with, story hook suggestons for parents, and twists for each of the story hooks to make a story your kid will remember.There is also advice in the book on how you can design your own setting around the types of thing your kid would like to see. Like dinosaurs. There is an excellent piece of art in this book with a T-Rex carrying shields, and that is the story I most want to hear.Personal ExperiencesI’ve played through games with my daughter a few times using Amazing Tales and each time has been completely different but it’s been a blast for both of us.The first time, we played a space setting where her character was a robot dog. The dog was tasked to get a shipment of money to a planet full of sick people for use as the treatment for the sickness. Not to use to buy the treatment, she was very clear that the money was the cure for the sickness. That mission turned into a failure when her ship came across space jellyfish and the entire story devolved into chasing after the jellyfish like SpongeBob.Our most recent run involved one of the pre-made one-page adventures the author has made available for free on DriveThru RPG. My daughter played an elephant who was best at “Rolling Dice”. That skill evolved over the course of the story as she started noticing other objects in the room and incorporating them into the story. Frida the Elephant turned into a sticker mage who would reach into the great big bag glued to his trunk and pull out stickers to be placed onto objects for different effects. With his bag of magic stickers, Frida saved Princess Melody from the Hungry Spider Witch (who is described like a Drider). The Spider Witch was dispatched by the biggest bath Frida had ever seen, summoned forth from a river.As a parent running this game, you really have got to walk in knowing you have no clue whatsoever where this game is going to take you. Even if you sit down and have a plan, that plan is going to go right out the window the second something catches your kid’s eye and takes over their imagination. Of course, as a parent that probably won’t be new information.OverallI really like this system. I’m actually tempted to run this one-on-one for the adults in my gaming group if we have cancellations.It’s a nice simple system designed around improvization and reaction and just going with the flow to tell a story as it emerges at the table. The pass/fail mechanic with the skills being tied to dice size makes it really easy to just hand a die over when a roll is called for rather than needed lengthy explanations about how to do things.And, it’s a game I get to play with my kid and watch her cheer when dice come up with their maximum. That doesn’t get old.Whether you are a parent looking to introduce a kid to TTRPGs, or just looking for a fun twist to bedtime stories, or even if you’re an adult looking for a fun way to add a game to your rotation without much prep or work at the table, this one does a great job at letting all the hijinks and shenanigans come out. And hijinks and shenanigans make the best stories.Prices and Where to Purchase(Note: Links are not affiliate links)PDF Copy:$5.95 at DriveThru RPGSoftcover Book:– $24.95 at Amazon– $22.95 at DriveThru RPGHardcover Book:$33.95 at DriveThru RPG
