Five years ago I made up a game to play with my four year old daughter. Now it’s a beautiful book, and thousands of parents are playing the game with their children.
Amazing Tales is a role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons, but with simple, child friendly rules that fit on one piece of paper. Your child makes up a hero, anything from a dashing pirate to a space alien, and you make up a story for them. When your child decides their hero should take a risk you roll dice to see what happens next.
“It doesn’t have a ton of crunchy rules you’d be used to seeing when you open an rpg, and I almost didn’t want to buy it because money is tight, and why do I need a reference if there aren’t a lot of rules, right? BUT, the kids are so excited to have their own book, their own game, that I absolutely recommend buying it. They’ve been reading over it and reading over it and excited to tell their own stories like we adults do on game night.”*
Amazing Tales includes 28 pages of full colour illustrations to inspire adventure, and four complete backgrounds; the deep dark wood, magical kingdoms long ago, the pirate seas and adventures beyond the stars. Each background includes ten story seeds, exciting ideas to get an adventure started.
“I just bought the pdf last night and had our first game with my almost 4 year old twins. Wonder woman and Flash flew into space to save Spiderman, dangling from a planet with giant bean stalks and a blue furred alien with ten legs named deni. We had a blast!”*
To work well for small children Amazing Tales is different to many traditional role-playing games. Here are some of the key differences
| Traditional role-playing games | Amazing Tales |
|---|---|
| Have extensive rules | Has rules so simple a four year old can understand them |
| Limits what kind of hero you can be | Heroes can be anything your child can imagine |
| The story needs to be prepared in advance | Designed to be played with no preparation |
| Can take hours to play | Fit a whole adventure into 30 minutes |
| The games-master rolls dice against the hero’s player | Only the hero’s player ever rolls dice |
| Heroes can be hurt or killed | Exciting things can happen, but the heroes always survive |
Unlike most kids games Amazing Tales is a workout for a grown-up brain as well. You work with your child to invent the world and the adventure, and decide what happens after the dice are rolled.
This is more fun than snakes and ladders.
For parents who are new to role-playing games or gaming with children Amazing Tales has plenty of advice on everything from making magic magic, to keeping fights child friendly.
“I ordered two copies of the standard hardcover for my children and my niece for Christmas, but now that I’ve seen them in person I don’t think I can wait that long. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful! I’ve read through the instructions, they’re very easy to understand and seem to cover everything. I love how the focus is on the children’s creativity and creating a story with them; it seems like the perfect introduction to RPGs.”*
Buy Amazing Tales as a hardback book or PDF from DriveThruRPG
Still not sure? Watch me play a game with my children
Hi thanks foor posting this