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Little Fears
Author: Jason L Blair
Length: 138 pages
Price: $20.00
Publisher: Key 20 Publishing www.key20.com
ISBN: 0-9708689-0-1
SKU: KYP1000
 The first thing you notice about Little Fears, after wondering "Wait a minute, a game about playing children?", is the artwork. The book was laid out by the author as well as the artist hive, and features a number of photographs of children playing as well as some stunning work from artists such as Kieran J Yanner (my favorite of all those who contributed). Although there are some rather poor illustrations, the artwork paints a very clear mood. The pictures and short quotes of the violence inflicted upon our children that grace many of them lends a very dark and mildly disconcerting feeling to the book. If that isn't enough to begin to fulfill the tag-line of "the role-playing game of childhood terror," I don't know what will.
After a piece of a diary that does a good job to give a clear picture of what Little Fears is all about, the book moves quickly into character creation and the rules of the game. Definitely on the rules-light side of the spectrum, the game uses a handful of Stats and Virtues to summarize the characters abilities and then a number of Qualities and Drawbacks that help flesh out each character. The system itself is also rather simple. Normal rolls are just a d6, trying to get below the appropriate Stat, while resisted tasks must exceed the opponent's traits. All of this is couched in a tone and terms that goes a long way to reinforce the feeling of childhood, and the character sheet backs this up. Qualities are listed under "Things I like about myself," for example.
The rest of the book is filled with the monsters of youthful fancy and ideas on what games to run with Little Fears - and how to run them. The Things in the Walls, the Closet Monster and even the seven Kings of Sin and their minions in Closetland are described and some thought and space is given on how to use most of them as well, which is very useful. Unnerving, disturbing and downright horrifying at times, the menagerie of monsters in Little Fears can provide a lot of mileage in the game. This is also where the game almost seems to just fall short of "reaching critical mass" as well.
While the only average monsters were the old standbys of vampires and zombies, some of the monsters seem more "terror" than "childhood terror." Aside from a predilection for children as targets for their depredations, many of the beasts would be just as home in another horror game, such as Unknown Armies. The "maturity" of the terrors that populate the game does a little bit to detract from the feeling of childhood revisited, which is unfortunate. Further supplements may clarify or expand upon what is here and refine it further, but I expect it to be a bit difficult to really recapture that feeling of what was scary to an eight year old. Adults are Blind, as Little Fears would say, and find those terrors to be laughable and silly in hindsight.
The second blemish on the game is in cosmology, particularly how it all 'fits together.' A few unexplained references (Who or what is the Null? Aside from the destroyed Arcadia, are there other spiritual realms aside from Closetland?) add up to a thorn in the side of a cosmology good like myself. It is not clear if this is intentional, to allow or force each group to come up with something of its own, and while supplements will likely have a longer exploration of what the Big Picture is, things are rather murky at the moment.
Despite those drawbacks and a few editing glitches, Little Fears adds up to a very strong game in a pretty package. There is a lot of potential for memorable games of a wide range here. Anything from a bed-wetting, white-knuckled ride of terror to a campy romp through the fears that plagued all of our misspent youth, Little Fears is the vehicle that can bring you there. A unique and interesting game, it definitely gets "two thumbs up." Stay up at night reading it with a flashlight under the sheets - maybe it'll help keep the monsters at bay.
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