Children With Wands vs Shadowrun
Compare Children With Wands and Shadowrun side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Children With Wands | Shadowrun | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Cyberpunk, Fantasy |
| Play Style | Rules-Light, Family, Beginner-Friendly, Cozy, Collaborative, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, Open Source | Crunchy, Tactical, Combat-Heavy, Heist, Character Building, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Skill-Based, Mission-Based, Urban Fantasy |
| 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. | Roll a pool of d6s equal to attribute + skill, counting 5s and 6s as hits. Meet or exceed a threshold to succeed. Situational advantages generate Edge points rather than modifying dice pools directly; Edge is spent on tactical effects like rerolling dice, adding successes, or imposing penalties on opponents. |
| Dice | d20 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | High | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | CC BY-SA 4.0 (core rules text) | No open license |
| Cost | $$ | $$$ |
| Publisher | Dinosaur Pirate Games | Catalyst Game Labs |
| Year | 2026 | 2019 |
| 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 cyberpunk-fantasy heists with deep mechanical subsystems for hacking, magic, and combat. |
| 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. | Unique cyberpunk-fantasy setting blending megacorporate intrigue with magic and metahuman races. Dedicated subsystems for Matrix hacking, magic, rigging, and astral space. Edge system replaces many situational modifiers with a spendable tactical resource. Decades of published lore spanning in-world history from 2011 to the 2080s. |
| 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. | Matrix hacking runs as a parallel subsystem that can leave non-decker players waiting. Multiple supplemental rulebooks needed for full coverage of magic, Matrix, and rigging. Published books have documented editing and layout issues. |