Children With Wands vs Rifts

Compare Children With Wands and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Children With Wands	Rifts
Genre	Fantasy	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	Rules-Light, Family-Friendly, Beginner-Friendly, Cozy, Collaborative, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, CC-Licensed Rules	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
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.	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.
Dice	d20	d20, d100
Complexity	Very Low	Very High
Accessibility	High	Medium
Runnability	Medium	Very High
License	CC BY-SA 4.0 (core rules text)	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Dinosaur Pirate Games	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2026	2005
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.	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.
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.	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.
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.	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.