KOBOLDS ATE MY BABY! is a humorous fantasy RPG (of sorts). Put simply, all the characters are bumbling and silly Kobolds. The conception of Kobolds as this appears to be taken from Dungeons & Dragons, which has used Kobolds as the weakest cannon fodder goblinoid race for… well, for about as long as D&D has been around. The basic KAMB! gives you enough rules to play one shots, and MTTKAE extends character creation and gives a small potential of a campaign. To sum up the review below, this game is very funny, cheap, and has no illusions of what it is. It is designed to be fun as the occasional one-shot and is. Each of the rulebooks/pamphlets are listed as costing $5.95, and IMO, it is worth it. The idea behind KAMB! is that the King of the Kobolds has sent you to the nearby human town of East Bumble to acquire babies, which are apparently the tastiest thing known to Kobold-kind.
STYLE
Layout, clarity, and artwork
Kobolds Ate my Baby looks like it was made on someone's home computer equipped with a good printer and Adobe Acrobat. The 'books' are made of folded over sheets of paper that are stapled together, a colored sheet of paper on the outside. 'Pamphlet' is a better word to describe both KAMB! and MTTKAE. As far as the layout of the info inside, it is good, but nothing special. The rules are clearly laid out, and it is easy to find info you're looking for. An advantage to being a 30-page pamphlet is it is a bit harder to have relevant information get buried. The artwork is fun. It is not breathtaking, but it is amusing to see Kobolds getting into mischief. The question now becomes can a 30 page pamphlet be worth six dollars.
"Feel"
This is where you start realizing KAMB! may actually be worth the money. Both books have a light tone and refuses to take itself seriously. It states early on that it's a good game to play while you're waiting for players to show up, or if half the gaming group cancels, but the other players still want to do SOMETHING. The fact that the line under the title says "The Beer and Pretzels Role-Playing Game" says it all: this is not a game where grand epics, catharsis, or character development are supposed to occur. It is supposed to be fun and it is supposed to be silly. This humor comes through in countless ways. Little quips about Kobolds are made throughout it, such as how babies are best in a raspberry sauce. Recipes are given throughout such as Fine Black Pudding (made from the monster of the same name). The way it is written will probably at least make the reader smirk.
Overall, I would say the style is a 3. It is a very low budget item and as a result is not of the best quality as far as a book goes. But, it admits this and also admits that it is nothing but a humor RPG and has a lot of fun pushing that fact. The style is the same for both the Kobolds Ate My Baby! core rules and the More Things to Kill and Eat supplement.
RULES
Character Creation
Characters are made with a LOT of random rolling. This works, more or less, for three reasons. First, most of the possibilities of what is rolled on your skills and traits are of equal magnitude. It is purely preference to say who would prefer to cast spells or be lucky. The fact that you get to choose your attributes also balances this. So if you roll up a PC who needs a good Agility, you can have a good agility. Second, as I'll explain below, individual PCs aren't expected to live very long. I don't care if you're the Uber-Kobold, there is still a darn good chance you're gonna be pushing up the daisies in the near future. Since it's supposed to be a one-shot humor RPG, they get away with character death as an intrinsic part of the game. And third, and this is PURELY my opinion, random rolling allows more 'random' or arbitrary, and therefore more potentially silly, PCs. When people make PCs, they usually design them to have a POINT, even if the player isn't a munchkin. Random rolling makes it a bit more of a grab bag.
As far as what actually makes up a Kobold character, there are six stats: Strength (strength and health), Dexterity (hand-eye coordination), Agility (reflexes & balance), Speed (movement), and COM (natural combat ability). Not that one of the stats is NATURAL COMBAT ABILITY. I honestly am unsure what I think about this. It seems…Odd. But, the mechanics work, so I can't really complain. It just basically admits that combat is an incredibly intrinsic part of the world of Kobolds. All stats start at a 5 and the player gets 5 more points to distribute around them. Characters also roll for equipment, weapons, etc. Most of it is pretty generic, though silly things appear again. It's amusing, for example, to have a dead rat as your ONLY weapon ("Does no damage and smells funny" according to the book), or you have a Cup Of Milk Elemental Summoning. Just my opinion that it's silly, but I think it is. Beyond the attributes and equipment, there are skills and advantages/disadvantages (called traits/bogies). All Kobolds have a standard list of skills, traits, and bogies, and get to roll for more. All Kobolds have the starting advantage of enhanced smell and the disadvantages of fearless (don't know when to quit) and Taste Like Chicken (under the wrong circumstances, other Kobolds will try to eat you because all Kobolds are tasty). The player then rolls for another trait and another bogie. Traits include regeneration, bouncy and (in the supplement) Were-chicken. Bogies includes Kobold in Heat (you hump everything's leg), Animals Hate you, and (in the supplement) Were-Chicken. All Kobolds have the following skills: climbing, hiding, cooking, and tumbling. All of these are pretty self-explanatory. Beyond that, Players get to pick (not roll) 2 more skills. Nonstandard skills range from spell casting ability to setting traps to special bonuses in combat.
You remember how I said that Kobolds just DIE a lot? Well, here's why: Every time your character uses the nonstandard skill, your character gets a Horrible Kobold Death Check. Nonstandard skills are useful, so this is bound to happen a bit. You then roll 2d6 and add the number of Horrible Kobold Death Checks your Character has to the number rolled. If the total is 13 or higher, your kobold died by some horrible means as found on the horrible Kobold death chart. Randomly rolled deaths include spontaneous combustion, cows falling on you, and a random vampire showing up and taking the Kobold as a snack. The player then makes a new PC In short, Kobold characters strongly reinforce that this game is morbidly silly.
System
The actual die mechanics of the game are interesting, because they seem the reverse of how most games do it. Let's say you want to climb a fence. Your attribute for a relevant skill is the target number you need to roll BELOW. As difficulty increases, so does the number of dice you roll. Climbing, a standard skill, is an Agility-based skill. Let's say your agility is a 6. Let's say climbing the fence is average difficulty. That means the player needs to roll 2 dice. If on those 2d6 (s) he rolls a 6 or less, his/her nimble Kobold gets over the fence. In general, it seems to work. Kobolds CAN become scary if they get a stat up to like 8 or 9, but even if the player dumps EVERYTHING into 1 stat it becomes a 10. For all that work, the player has made his Kobold stink at everything except that one stat's skills. And even though the PC would usually make "average" difficulty rolls, (s)he still would have only a 50% chance of making "Difficult" rolls. Kobolds are not designed to be world-shattering creatures of power. They're cannon fodder.
Results
After the adventure is done, the players tally up their "victory points." People get victory points for killing other townsfolk, stealing babies, etc. The GM gets victory points for every Kobold PC he killed. Whoever has the most VPs wins. Yes, someone actually wins this RPG. The Supplement book (More things to Kill and Eat) has rules for using VPs as experience points. Uses include upping skills, improving stats, and getting rid of Horrible Kobold Death Checks.
Overall, I would give the Substance of Kobolds Ate my Baby! a rating of 4. It does everything I would want in a fun RPG, and doesn't try to be any bigger than it is, which I like.
SUMMARY
If you like silly goblin thingies and have a morbid sense of humor (like me), this is a fun game to pick up. The basic book is a funny read and has all the rules you need in a 30-page pamphlet. The supplement has more rules that allow even nuttier things to happen in character creation, and give rules for how characters can survive. If you like humorous role-playing, I recommend this game, even if it is only 2 pamphlets.
Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
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