Children With Wands vs No Thank You, Evil!
Compare Children With Wands and No Thank You, Evil! side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Children With Wands | No Thank You, Evil! | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Rules-Light, Family-Friendly, Beginner-Friendly, Cozy, Collaborative, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, CC-Licensed Rules | Beginner-Friendly, Family-Friendly, Rules-Light, Narrative, Collaborative, Low-Prep |
| Core Mechanic | To cast a spell, the player says what they want it to do, and the Narrator sets a Spell Range from two values. Effectiveness rates how well the spell suits the task from 0 to 3, and Strength rates how much magic the goal needs from 1 to 20. The range runs from Strength minus Effectiveness up to Strength plus Effectiveness. The player then rolls a d20, and a result inside the range casts the spell cleanly. A roll outside the range still fires the spell, but mis-scaled into a complication. High rolls overshoot with too much power and low rolls fall short. | Simplified Cypher System: roll d6 vs. difficulty number (1–6). Spend points from pools (Tough, Fast, Smart, Awesome) to lower difficulty. Character sentences scale by age: 'I'm a Noun' (age 5+), 'I'm an Adjective Noun' (age 6+), 'I'm an Adjective Noun who Verbs' (age 8+). Every character has a Companion with a one-use Cypher power. Any player can shout 'No Thank You, Evil!' to instantly end a scary encounter. |
| Dice | d20 | d6 |
| Complexity | Very Low | Very Low |
| Availability | Free quickstart | Paid |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | 3 of 5 book tools |
| License | CC BY-SA 4.0 (core rules text) | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | Dinosaur Pirate Games | Monte Cook Games |
| Year | 2026 | 2015 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Families introducing younger players to tabletop roleplaying, and convention one-shots where everyone needs to be making characters and playing within minutes. The cooperative, low-stakes structure suits mixed-age tables more than groups after tactical depth or character builds. | Families with kids aged 5 and up who want a structured, supportive introduction to tabletop RPGs in a whimsical setting. |
| Highlights | Players roll to determine a spell's power rather than its success, so a high roll overshoots the intended band just as badly as a low one. The Narrator announces each spell's range before the roll, letting the table weigh a clever but risky idea against a safe one as an open choice instead of a blind gamble. Spells that miss their range still go off and spawn fresh problems, turning failure into the engine that drives the session rather than a dead end. | Three complexity tiers scale character sentences by age (5+, 6+, 8+), built-in safety mechanic lets any player end a scary encounter, every character has a Companion with a one-use Cypher power, uses simplified Cypher System rules as a gateway to Numenera and The Strange |
| Considerations | Setting each Spell Range is a real-time Narrator judgment of a spell's fit and power, so the game leans heavily on a confident improviser to run well. Casting a spell is the only way to resolve a real challenge, leaving groups who want to settle problems through mundane skill or social play without a subsystem for it. Every child shares the same resolve pool, single die, and short perk list, so characters distinguish themselves mainly by which spells they know. | Designed for ages 5–12 with limited mechanical depth for older players, d6 vs. difficulty 1–6 resolution has narrow outcome range, setting is locked to the whimsical land of Storia, no advancement system beyond the three-tier sentence structure |