Fastest I’ve read a book in about forever, but also it’s short. Honestly, I was surprised by quite how fast I managed it all the same, since Amazing Tales is a role-playing game sourcebook. See, I had this idea to play D&D with the kids, and then Mary had the idea that maybe we start with something a little lower key and kid-focused, and this is what she found.

And I have to say, it fits the bill. Honestly, it’s pretty clever. First, you pick a genre, which is to say The Deep Dark Woods (animal/fairy fantasy), Magical Kingdoms Long Ago (generic fantasy), The Pirate Seas (swashbuckling, but also probably fantasy) and Among the Stars (sci-fi, obvs). But also it would be pretty easy to take what you wanted from the former two settings and include them in the latter two settings. Or for that matter to make them space pirates.

Then your kid makes a character, which is to say, something that fits the setting. Is it a pirate captain? A robo-dinosaur with jetpack legs? A fairy who is also a princess? Then they get four skills that they’re good at, like Being Brave, Doing Science, Marksmanship, etc, and one of them they’re best at, second best, third best, and last best, and each skill gets a descending die, from d12 to d6. Then, anytime they want to do something that seems hard, they pick a skill, say what they’re doing, and roll. 3 or higher succeeds! And you either tell them how they succeeded and what next, or how things got worse and now what will they do?

It’s a kid game, obviously nothing irrevocably bad happens, but I suppose it could get hairy now and then, and mostly you’re trying to tell a story with them about how things went great. RPG 101, or so? I suppose someday soon I’ll find out how it goes.