Ninja, kobolds, and other games

Filed under: Roleplaying, Short Stories, Strange Horizons
9 Comments

Last night online people kept saying "All Hail King Torg!" So I Googled, and found that they were referring to a roleplaying game I hadn't previously heard of: Kobolds Ate My Baby! In this game, player characters are kobolds (which in this system are apparently short furry critters), and their mission is "to raid towns and villages in search of the most delectable of Kobold treats—Babies!"

It claims to be "the original Beer and Pretzels Role-Playing Game!", but unless it's a lot older than it looks, I'm dubious; I always thought Creeks & Crawdads (from Crustacium (sic) Games, published back in the '80s) was the original beer and pretzels roleplaying game. (For those unfamiliar with it, in that game players took the part of giant mutant crawdads in a post-holocaust future. The very smartest of the characters, the Thinker class, could remember things for about 15 minutes. I never played, but always thought it sounded like fun. Though I suppose it was probably more fun if you drank beer with it.)

Anyway, the same people who publish Kobolds, 9th Level Games, also publish something called Ninja Burger!, in which player characters are ninja attempting to deliver hamburgers from a ninja fast food franchise. The site says the game was the "winner of the RPG.NET Award for the Most Ridiculous Meta-Plot of a Role-Playing Game."

Both games sound kinda like concepts that the Cheapass Games people might have come up with, only applied to roleplaying rather than card or board games. Which leads me to the latest Cheapass game: One False Step for Mankind, "a board game about Gold Rush towns [in 1849] with vast resources and only one thing to spend them on: shooting a rocket to the Moon." See, now, wouldn't that make a good roleplaying game?

Because I'm still in a bit of a free-associating mood, left over from last night, that description reminds me a bit of Stephen V. Ramey's SH story "It Takes a Town," which makes me wonder what games based on other stories would be like. Fortunately, I don't have time to speculate further on that at the moment.

9 Responses to “Ninja, kobolds, and other games”

  1. JeremyT

    9th Level Games has been around only since 2000, but I can remember that I had never heard the term “beer & pretzels gaming” before they arrived on the scene. Then again, I’m only a gamer of 19 years experience. That makes me a baby compared to the real grizzled veterans. Anyway, I thought their Ninjaburger game was their initial product to have that claim.

    Cheapass Games are my personal favorites. Particularly fun; Unexploded Cow and “Before I Kill you, Mr. Bond…”

  2. Rachel Heslin

    We find we need to modify the rules for “Before I Kill You….” Otherwise, none of us really get to build up impressive lairs before our lemonade stands get blown up.

    Formula C- is also a hit in our crowd for a late night, don’t want to exert brain cells type of game (although I think that’s not a branded CheapAss game.)

  3. JeremyT

    What do you change, Rachel?

  4. Jenn Reese

    Favorite “beer and pretzel” rpg is “Bunnies and Burrows,” hands-down. You can only count one-two-three-many — how much fun is that!? A lot of fun. I miss Carmel, my little bunny with the big love of apples.

    Favorite Cheapass games are Bitin’ off Hedz (the drinking game version of my design), Lord of the Fries (Zombies in a fast-food restaurant), and strangely, Devil Bunny Needs a Ham (but mostly because the premise is so ridiculous). Never enjoyed Before I Kill You that much, or Killing Dr. Lucky, or their more popular ones. Though “Falling” is pretty fun.

  5. murky metasilk

    “All Hail King Torg” isn’t from Sluggy? Man, my memory is muddled.

  6. Joe

    I didn’t know there was a game of Ninja Burger. I read the comic strip a while back, and it was amusing.

    Favorite Cheapass games for me are probably Falling and Lord of the Fries. Maybe not quite as high on amusement value, but great playability.

  7. Rachel Heslin

    Let me see, IIRC, we said no attacking lairs in the first round (to allow for buildup), and I think there were a couple of other suggestions we were going to try out next time (whenever that is) but I don’t remember what they were.

  8. Rachel Heslin

    Oh, and not CheapAss, but my husband has been trying to integrate Frag and Zombies.

  9. Nao, the Mistress of Minions

    Elliott, Stephen, and I have played a variant of Kill Dr. Lucky which included all the WizWar cards. All defense cards were played on behalf of Dr. Lucky (after all, we couldn’t attack each other). The amusing parts, as far as I was concerned, were the possibilities of minions and rotating bits of the board. Arguing over which order people should play the defense cards in was silly, too.

    Mwah-ha-ha-ha.

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