Kobolds Ate My Baby!

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Kobolds Ate My Baby!

Designer	Chris O'Neill and Dan Landis; illustrations by John Kovalic
Publisher	Dork Storm Press 9th Level Games
Publication date	2005 (Super Deluxx Edition) 2001 (3rd edition) 1999 (1st printing)
Genre(s)	Fantasy, Comedy
System	BEER Engine

Kobolds Ate My Baby! (also known as KAMB) is an independently published role-playing game originally published by 9th Level Games. The name is a derivative reference to the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance and the famous misquote, "A dingo ate my baby!" The Super Deluxx Edition was still designed by 9th Level Games, but is published by Dork Storm Press.^[1]

The players assume the roles of kobolds, creatures who are often used as weak but numerous "cannon fodder" characters in fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.^[2] KAMB supposedly refutes this role, while at the same time playing up this and other stereotypes of fantasy role-playing. The game takes a generally humorous look at the genre and encourages joking and ludicrous, boisterous behavior among the players, the chief of which is the rule that whenever the name of the kobolds' king, Torg, is mentioned, all present are required to loudly proclaim, "ALL HAIL KING TORG!"^[1]

Reviewer Matthew Pook said that "the game itself is amusingly written, and of course, it includes opportunities aplenty for the Mayor [the Gamemaster] to be rotten to his Kobold players. Just as they will be rotten to each other in the scramble to gain Victory Points. In this, it shares some similarity with Paranoia."^[1]

KAMB is part of an annual event at the Origins Game Fair called the Midnight Massacre, in which large numbers of people customarily play multiple simultaneous games of KAMB and make significant amounts of noise. In 2005, the Midnight Massacre was staged as a LARP.