UtB at HBL Birthday Convention

[GestaltBennie]

I got into a game of Under the Bed at HP Lovecraft's Birthday Party, a convention in Vancouver Canada.

We had eight players. The organizer had only played it once, leading to a lot of errors in play, and the impression I got was that the game was that either we were really messing up in play, or the game isn't meant for that number of players; too many players had long stretches between opportunities to play, and we had to cut it short after 3 1/2 hours of play. It was still a good horror game.

We choose a Victorian house in 1900, with an eight-year old boy as the protagonist. As appropriate for HPL, we choose his sanity as the stakes. There was no limitations set on magic or other issues, and the game got *very* surreal.

A boy named Edward whose uncle had died was accompanying his parents to the uncle's estate in the country. With him came several of his favorite toys. The ones involved in the adventure were: A rocking horse, a grinning monkey doll, a stuffed patchwork doll, a porcelain dog, a book of HG Welles' the Time Machine, a broken magnifying glass, a toy soldier, and a stuffed lion.

During the course of the adventure, the poor kid fell out of a carriage and broke his arm, nearly drowned in a freezing stream, was grabbed by a cultist and stuffed in a sack, was beaten up by a bully, dragged by an evil reverend and taken to a reform school, nearly poisoned by his father, had a tentacle come out of a box and brand his forehead with a burning Cthulhu rune, grabbed by an assortment of branches, animated hay stocks, and rock croppings, and was bitten and tortured by various toys as they came to life.

Unfortunately, when his uncle's estate burnt down and a tentacle grabbed the boy's mother and dragged her into the foundation, he went quite insane. After everything the poor kid went through, one might almost call it a "mercy insanity".

There was a lot of surreal episodes that went at cross-purposes, but there was also some nice work by the players at building the Cthulhu elements. The lion, the book, and the rocking horse tried quite hard to protect his sanity, but the last roll fell to the Toy Soldier, who had drawn some of the least useful traits in the situation (and whose player had gone about 48 hours without sleep).

It was a good game, and one I'd gladly play again, though a smaller group of players would be preferable.

Scott Bennie

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

We had eight players.

While I applaud the effort and am happy that a good time was had, I have to quote from the back of the pack: "Under The Bed is a role-playing game for three to six players." What you experienced is exactly what I would have predicted, only you had fun.

When you say "cut it short", do you mean that you decided that you had enough coins on the table, or did you just decide to confront the story stakes at an arbitrarily chosen time, or what?

[GestaltBennie]

We cut the endgame trigger down to four tokens, so the sanity challenge occurred at roughly the 2/3 point.

Quote from the person who set up the session: "I just have a hard time saying no to players." He'd realized that he'd made a mistake.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

We cut the endgame trigger down to four tokens, so the sanity challenge occurred at roughly the 2/3 point.

Quote from the person who set up the session: "I just have a hard time saying no to players." He'd realized that he'd made a mistake.

Ensmalling the number of coins to reduce the scale of the game is perfectly legitimate. There's some formula about ƒ(number of players) = ƒ(number of coins), but I don't know what it is.

A four coin game should last 1-2 hours, most likely about 1.5 hours with the right number of people.

I'm glad you had a good time anyway.