Definitely Wizards
A downloadable game
Definitely Wizards is a rules-light comedy/fantasy TTRPG about pretending to be a wizard created for ZineQuest3. All you need is a few friends (including a GM), a few d6's, a way to take notes, and a few hours to play.
Play as a party of non-wizard magic users in a world where only wizards are permitted to use magic. Players must complete the Wizard Certification Practical Exam, a series of increasingly difficult chambers with puzzles to solve and/or monsters to fight, in order to become licensed wizards. The core of the game is a balancing act- use your natural, non-wizard powers to survive the test, but not so much that you give away your secret.
This digital version includes the original 12 page rule book, plus a slightly abridged version you can print on a single page and fold into an 8 page mini-booklet.
Community copies are free to anyone who can't afford the game otherwise, no questions asked. Thanks so much to all my Kickstarter backers, and especially those who donated extra copies!
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $3 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copy!
A full copy of the game, available to anyone who wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise. Feel free to grab one, no questions asked!
Comments
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Great game. Do you plan to have it translated to other languages?
Thank you! And I don't have plans to translate it, I'm not opposed to the idea but I don't really have funds for that at the moment.
Oh hey hi! Played this game, it was an absolute blast, I could translate it to French for you if you'd like. Only thing I'd require would be the ability to ask you about some clarifications for the translation.
a quick question, on page 5 under "Roll to cast Wild Spells", should it be "AND add 1 to Wild"? Right now it says Or and that seems odd.
I see the confusion, but “or” is correct! If you can explain how you disguise the spell, you don’t have to add to wild since you’re not raising suspicion. If you can’t hide the spell, then you would be more suspicious and you have to add to wild.
ohhhhh, that makes sense now!! Thank you!
Why is this on opposite sale? Its more expensive, why??
Fun answer: Good observation! It is more expensive by 75 cool cents, because I made it and I can set the prices however I want. Hope that helps!
Nice answer: If cost is an issue, feel free to take one of the community copies! It gets you the exact same thing as paying, but for free! I will restock if copies run out again at any point.
Real answer: I am moving, and I'm transitioning between jobs, and my last job was at a nonprofit that paid bad so I don't have savings, and also 19 other stressors that would go away if I had money, so here we are.
Fair enough! I thought this was a limited deal as part of the summer sale.
My brother and I played it one evening in co-op, and it was amazingly fun. Both the brainstorming session beforehand and actually playing the game itself were a blast. I'll certainly play it again. Thank you!
Fantastic game! Just played this yesterday with some friends and it was a really good time. The rooms are super easy to generate on the fly and made a lot of laughs for us all. The little booklets with the spells and main info on it was also super helpful when playing, since everyone didn't have to keep everything in their heads for what spells they could do. I'm looking forward to playing it again!
me and a couple of friends played this. The whole friend group absolutely loved this, and most of them where on the floor laughing hysterically after one of my friends casted darkness (a racoon turning of the light). I love this game and would definitely run it again 10/10.
would love this as a box game if this is posible, with some more refiend cards for props and magic classes, and maybe some custom made counting dice. i would a 100% buy a thing like that
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I have thought about doing a reprint of the game, so I'm glad to hear there's interest!
Absolutely incredible romp. It provides a nice, low-stakes environment for you and your friends to joke around, without any pressure to perform. 10/10, and mark my words, I will play it again.
Laughed ourselves to tears as orphans cheered on the bloody final wizard battle. Incredible work. Such a fun time. Cannot recommend this enough.
OBSESSED!!! That’s so cute omg!
Played this with a small group of friends for just a silly night of fun. We got exactly what we wanted.
This was such an easy, no prep, lighthearted game that I used to introduce one of my partners to ttrpgs with. There was so much laughter throughout the game.
Would recommend!
A friend and I played this as a DM-less game over a couple of hours, and it was a blast.
I do think it's probably better with some advanced planning, as the wacky premise made collaborative story telling a little harder than other games I've done. The art is great, the non-wizard options are hilarious (we were each different familiars in trench coats who didn't know the other wasn't a wizard), and the magic options allow for creativity while guiding players.
Would recommend!
Okay I may be one of your biggest fans... I love this game with the deepest parts of my soul and I got a shot recently to run it for my siblings and partner and had a BLAST! They adored how freeing character creation was and my partner had it as his first non DnD 5e TTRPG experience and has been in love since!
I'm always looking for more opportunities to run this game since it just lives rent free in my mind all the time! So thank you for creating such an awesome game!
Also featured it on my TTRPG exploration podcast!
https://therpggoblin.buzzsprout.com/2055426/12602627-definitely-wizards-pass-as-...
I am so glad you all enjoyed playing, and doubly glad to hear you’re having a blast GMing!!! I’ll definitely check out that podcast, I’m excited to hear what you have to say!!
I knew i'd LOVE the game but we had more fun than i could have ever imagined haha! And yess I hope you do check it out! :D
Hey folks! If anyone is looking for a way to play this game online, please feel free to use this character keeper I made for Google Sheets.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UV0fcGJw-ZuWCLKOfrSJMKKWsbJZ3SUFA5NSzd8Y...
This is awesome thanks!
This game sounds amusing. Would it be possible to get a community copy for me to include in my student journaling experiment this school year, as well as make adaptations so it can be done via solo journaling? Thanks!
Absolutely, I just refilled the community copies so you should be able to get one! There's kind of already instructions in the back for solo play, although for young students you might need to give more specific instructions.
Thank you! I have a plan to write the prompts for them after they bring the journal back from the last prompt to keep it simple and not stressful for anyone involved. Me or the kids or the parents. Especially the last two!
Hi! I'm planning on being a GM for the first time soon. Is this beginner friendly, both for players and GM? Thanks :3
Hi, thanks for asking! I think it should be beginner friendly as long as you are comfortable with the idea of making stuff up with your friends!
There aren't a ton of rules and most of them are very open to interpretation, so it's beginner friendly in that there isn't a lot to learn, but also you don't have many rules to lean on. I have heard from other people that it was their first time GMing and they enjoyed it, though!
Hello,
Real quick want to ask what's your policy about posting hacks of your system?
Hi, thanks so much for asking! Im okay with you posting pretty much whatever related to the game, as long as you link credit back here!
My friends and I loved this game! It was so fun.
Hi.
I made a module for this game for Foundry VTT so that I can play with my friends. Would it be OK for me to share the module publicly?
Oh sweet, thank you for asking,! That's absolutely fine as long as you credit/link to this page somewhere!
How do you fold the printables into a book?
The printable book is formatted to be folded like an eight page mini zine! I like this video but any instructions for an eight-in-one booklet or one page zine should get you the same results.
A fun little game that definitely lends itself to some very wacky scenarios.
Hey, I love your game, and have added it to GoodReads, as a publication.
here be wizards
I've added you as 'Elliott HT', I can get that changed if you'd like your full name, for instance.
This was an absolute blast tonight. This will be our standard one shot maker for the foreseeable future.
hello! i'm thinking of playin this game with my dnd group (we play virtually) and i was wondering if it would be okay to copy the PDF i already own and send it to them, instead of forcing them to buy it or take from the community copies pool. if not, i 100% understand, but i wanted to check first.
That's totally fine! As long as you're not like posting a link publicly for anybody to download from, or charging them money for it you're all good, thank you for asking though!
alright, thanks so much!
This looks really cool, came here after seeing this on YouTube:
Last Saturday I had my first game session and we really had a blast! We were able to sit around a table again (after playing online exclusively for almost two years thanks to Corona). As we were only three people (yet nobody had played the game before), we decided to give the GM-less approach a spin, taking turns in describing the rooms.
It worked astonishingly well and especially the last room was super fun: A dungeon, objects needed to be organized in a particular pattern, the room had no gravity and an element of the room took control of a player’s mind and made them attack the rest of the party. I didn't even introduce the final challenge here because we already had enough going on:
A dusty skeleton, chained to the dungeon wall, took over the mind of one wizard who started attacking the others ("only one is worthy to become a true wizard. you must eliminate the competition!") while fighting in zero gravity. A chest on the floor contained an old parchment showing the skeleton with a torch in each hand and in its empty eye sockets. As soon as one player managed to stab the skeleton with the last torch (while the other two were still fighting), the skeleton turned to dust, screaming, breaking the spell and turning the gravity in the room back on. It was really a great showdown!
The players also enjoyed the judge, a very, very old scrawny magician with a long beard. A magic clipboard was hovering next to him with an animated quill, which kept taking notes during the exam (it made them a bit nervous, because they weren't able to spot what was being written down 😉).
I tried to use the exact same setup at an online convention a week later (because I'm totally lazy and it worked so well), but the game went a little bumpier this time. I failed to make it clear in the beginning that the rooms were randomly generated and the players kept trying to make sense of the particular room and the setup of the test, looking for deeper connections.
Even though I tried to emphasize that each room was a magical aptitude test, they sometimes tried to find mundane solutions to the puzzles first, before resorting to magic. But I still think everyone had a good time and there were some great, funny roleplaying moments.
Next time I'll either try to prepare the rooms in advance without the random tables to give the whole exam a more natural flow (maybe giving the rooms a common theme) to help people with immersion and role playing, or I will greatly expand the random tables (using a d20 instead) and go wild. ;)
Thanks for coming up with this great little gem!
I'm a children's librarian and run a kids' RPG club at my public library. We played Definitely Wizards last week and had SO MUCH FUN! This photo is from our session. All 12 kids and 3 game guides loved exploring the challenges.
My favorite part of our club is when all the groups come back together at the end and share their favorite moments from their games because it's always cool to hear about the different scenarios each group ended up in. This game had wildly different stories created at each table because we rolled the challenges on the spot instead of pre-planning them.
A lot of the kids are also looking forward to running the game themselves for parents and siblings after the club. 1000% would play again. Thank you for creating such a lovely game.
Oh! I created printable prop cards and a character sheet for our game. The class and prop cards can be placed right on the character sheet. It was really helpful for our kids to have the cards and a sheet to record their stats (tracking on dice always ends up with fidgeting the values away). A lot of them like to have character sheets to take home with them as a memory token.
The cards were really helpful to get us playing quickly. We only have 1.5 hours for rules, character creation, and playing. I dealt two class cards and two prop cards to each player and they picked the one they wanted, which saved us a bunch of time and decision anxiety.
I was looking at doing something similar in my after school YMCA program for my kids, if you're willing to share your prop cards and character sheets I would really appreciate it! I absolutely love that there are other people out there introducing kids to TTRPGs and this one looks like loads of fun!
Oh, they'll love this game! Shoot me an email and I'll send my sheets! rebecca at toplayishuman.com
This is AMAZING, I’m so glad it worked out and y’all had fun! I am actually also a teacher n I had been thinking it might be cool to try with my kids in the future so it’s great to have evidence!
Definitely try it with them! I gave a copy to a kid who missed our session last week and she's thrilled to try it at home.
Played this with a few friends and had a blast. It's very evocative! Left you a review.
One minor rules point: it's possible for *both* your stats to reach 6. One way is if you have 6 in Wizard and 5 in Wild, then fail a Wild casting roll, which happened to us. Another is if you have a 6 and 5, and then cover for another character's failure (for example, if they're already on a 6 in Wild).
We weren't quite sure what should happen here - one option is that character simply can't cast spells any more! Another is that there's some kind of dramatic magical event and then both stats drop to 2. I'm not sure it's something that needs specific rules, just thought I'd mention it.
(we wound up using the wizard's prop to bring them back down to 5 in Wild)
Thanks so much for the review, I'm glad you had fun! With the stat situation it's a little vague, but I included the props as a way to get out of that specific scenario.
Alternatively, if your group is down for higher stakes you could count it as an instant failure, and that characters magic explodes with enough force for a TPK. Or you could just lock that character out of magic for the remainder of the game. Whatever fits the vibes at your table best!
I just learned that reviews aren't public!? So I'm going to add that here as well.
Played this GM-less with a couple of friends over Christmas. Our game lasted around 2 hours (though we weren't exactly rushing) and was a lot of fun. We thought the art did a great job of setting the mood, and the character creation was a nice mix of simple and evocative.
It's quick to get into with minimal need to prep beforehand - as long as someone's read over the rules for spellcasting it'll be fine. No props or maps or anything are needed, just a way to roll dice.
The system is very light - it helps you generate the four parts of the Wizard Certification Practical Exam, then leaves you to it. This leaves the GM/group to decide how many separate challenges need to be overcome in a particular room, and judge when they've been overcome. We generally went with one successful roll per challenge (since failures often generate new obstacles) and that worked out well, with all of us teetering on the edge of exposure when we triumphed.
It was a great palate-cleanser between our usual longer-term games which are fairly crunchy. Our group wouldn't want to always play such freeform systems, but for a relaxing change of pace (or when some players can't make it) it hit the spot.
Who's it good for? We're all experienced GMs and found it comfortable enough as we're happy improvising and judging the level of challenges. As long as there's someone confident in the group either to GM or to support decision-making, you should be fine. We couldn't judge how it would be for an inexperienced group - I think it'd work well if they're happy treating it as improvised storytelling with the odd dice roll, but some might find the rules too light and want more support in terms of how many challenges, how many rolls, and when you've won.
We actually followed up by using our characters (and the system) to run Overdue, and found that it worked well; highly recommended.
If anyone wants to know how the game plays, I can't promise this is a correct version, but it is a podcast of our game.
https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/one-shots-and-miscellanea/502/13
This game is so wonderful and charming!! I know my friends and I will have a blast playing this. The concept is hilarious and all of the random tables are super helpful. There's so much love and humor put into this little game - it's one of my favorites from ZineQuest 3.
Quite cool and fun. I love it.
I made a few quick splashes of color and art from the main book on the micro-booklet. PM me if you want me to send it along to you.
Not sure how to PM on this site, but I'd love this!
This is so deeply charming and I love what you've done here. :) I also feel like we must have been channeling the same muse, because my twelve page one-shot RPG about magic users causing problems for themselves dropped like last week. Oh to find kindred spirits. <3 Looking forward to playing this soon.
Thank you so much!!! I'll have to yours out, magic users causing problems for themselves is always a good time!