One of the joys of running a fantasy game is that the players can really exercise their imagination and do things that simply wouldn't be possible in the real world.

One of the frustrations of running a fantasy game is that the players can really exercise their imagination and do things that simply wouldn't be possible in the real world.

In the real world of the Wands & Warts universe, of course, the Harry Potter stories don't exist. That's the premise of this entire comic, after all. But most of the other things we know and love (such as giant rats) do, albeit modified by the lack of Harry Potter:

• Yuleballs is a serious documentary about the manufacture of baubles.
• Daniel Radcliffe is known (barely) for doing voiceovers for poorly selling computer games, but gains widespread fame after his appearance in the first Futurama movie.
• Rupert Grint is known primarily for Thunderpants.
• Nerdy guys make YouTube videos of themselves wielding nunchuks instead of wands.
• Without the success of Harry Potter to spark interest in children's fantasy, Xena: Warrior Princess was never revived with movies and new series, and remains an obscure short-running TV show.
• The Chronicles of Narnia was never made into a film. Narnia fans never had it so good.
• The major fantasy background that pervades all of Western culture is The Sword of Shannara, despite it never being much good. It was remade recently into a new, updated television series with a bigger budget, high-tech computerised special effects, and edgy writing. And it sucked.
• Throughout the 90s and 2000s, all the greatest Hollywood blockbusters were big-budget Shakespearean tragedies.
• The Comic Irregulars exist and are making a screencap comic based on The Sound of Music.

Vision-Impaired Transcript

Hagrid: Professor Dumbledore and the Minister are coming, with the executioner for poor Buckbeak!
Hermione: We attack!
Ron: Are you mental?! He has a giant axe! All we have are these dinky wands, and a rat!
Hermione: Think of the challenge rating!
Harry: No, we sneaks out the back door.
Hermione: I bet I could hit him with that rat from here.
Harry: We runs for safety!
Harry: We has bigger things to think about. Like Sirius Black.
Hermione: That gives me an idea...
Ron: What was that noise?
Hermione: I just cast Invokus Rattus Ginormous!
GM: You know, next time I'm going to run a game where magic doesn't work...
Harry: Oh mysa...