King Torg (All Hail King Torg!) is hungry, and he has a job for you: to go to the nearby human town and bring back the freshest, tastiest, plumpest human babies you can find to sate his gourmet palate. If you don't, he will eat you—after all, the meat of a fellow kobold is pretty tasty as well.
Kobolds Ate My Baby! is an independently published humorous role-playing game from Ninth Level Games, based around its BEER Engine. The players assume the roles of kobolds, small furry creatures considered to be cannon fodder by practically everyone, including other kobolds. Dangling at the bottom of the villainous food chain as they are, their chaotic attempts to scratch out survival frequently collapse under the weight of their own stupidity.
The game pokes good-natured fun at many fantasy role-playing stereotypes, and encourages boisterous, ludicrous behavior among the players. The first edition of the game was printed in 1999, followed by the third edition on 2001. The Super Deluxx edition was published by Dork Storm Press in 2005.
All Hail King Tropes!
- Black Comedy: Considering half the game focuses on kidnapping babies for a feast and the other focuses on the hilarious ineptitude of the player characters, this is a given.
- Bloody Hilarious: One of the complications that kobolds face in this game is that babies are considerably more explosive than normal. Also, there's a chart specifically for horrible baby deaths. There's another for horrible player deaths.
- Cannon Fodder: The kobolds in general are numerous and stupid enough to count, but the player characters themselves are the stupidest members of their tribe.
- Chaotic Stupid: The kobolds in general, with a special emphasis on stupid.
- Eats Babies: The entire kobold species.
- A Fête Worse than Death: The plot is kicked off when King Torg (All Hail King Torg!) announces that he's throwing a party the next day, and the feast won't be complete without human babies. The pantry, alas, is bare of babies, and if you can't get any, you will take their place as the main course.
- Impossibly Delicious Food: To kobolds, babies are this — that's why King Torg (All Hail King Torg!) wants them for his feast. This is even mechanically reflected in the rules — if a kobold screws up while holding a baby, it's very easy for them to lose control and just eat the baby. And kobolds screw up a lot.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: This is half the point of the game (the other half being kobolds dying horribly).
- I Taste Delicious: All kobolds by default have the quality "Tastes Like Chicken", and yes, they can potentially even get distracted by their own deliciousness. This goes double for kobolds with the flaw "Tastes Like Baby".
- Made of Explodium: Babies. Yes, babies. For that matter, kobolds can have the flaw "Explode Into Chicken Feed".
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Kobolds consider other kobolds to be the second tastiest after human babies.
- Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are small, furry, stupid, evil humanoids who eat babies. They're also perfectly happy to eat each other should babies be in short supply. Their stupidity often causes them to die in droves, something they compensate for by being very, very numerous.
- Phrase Catcher: King Torg (All Hail King Torg!) will always be hailed. It's even in the rules (technically a house rule, but very commonly used).
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Kobolds with the 'Winning Smile' perk can make intelligent foes pause by flashing a smile that makes them squee at the adorable little fuzzball.
- Running Gag: One of the house rules is that every time King Torg's name is mentioned, all players must immediately shout "ALL HAIL KING TORG!"
- We Have Reserves: Possibly the only thing that keeps kobolds from going extinct is the fact that there's a lot of them.
