glyphpress.

com
Under
the bed
what are you so afrai d of ?
a game by joshua a.c. newman
under the bed is 2005
joshua a.c. newman of the glyphpress
i made it in adobe indesign cs2 on my
apple macintosh powerbook g4 1.25 GHz
it uses the centaur font, but this is din
this is the second edition
it only scares you if you want it
48
(this page fruitfully left void)
What the Game
is About
The protagonists in this game are
Toys: stuffed animals, trucks, dolls,
sticks shaped like people, or a favorite
stone. They are each responsible for
the well-being of the Child that owns
them, but they are not responsible for
the well-being of each other; quite
the contrary, in fact: they are in
competition for the affections of the
Child and will do anything to gain it.
2 47
Each Toy is made of two
things:
Characteristics, like Brave or Weak;
and Favoritism. Characteristics are the
tools the characters use to defeat the
challenges that spring up to confront
them. Favoritism is the likelihood
that a given Toy will be chosen by
the Child to confront such a chal-
lenge. The more Characteristics
the character has, the more likely it
is that the Toy will have traits ap-
stuff that really mattered to them.
And then the savior of all games came
to the front: the players. Put in a situ-
ation where they can talk about stuff
that matters to them, thats what
players do.
So, thanks for nishing my design.
Thanks for talking about stuff that
matters to you, cuz that stuff, man, I
couldnt make it up.
-Joshua A.C. Newman
46 3
comes to mind is something they,
themselves, were afraid of, something
that theyre rationalized away and
were told wasnt real, but never really
confronted: being forced to choose
between favorite toys. Being locked
in the bathroom. Abusive parents.
That dark space under the stairs with
all the bones.
Its what I wanted Under the Bed to
confront, and I thought Id failed. I
couldnt gure out how to write a
rules that would push players to say
ite the Toy is, the more likely it is to
be the one to confront the problem
and the more likely it is to survive the
encounter if it fails.
Characteristics...
are represented by cards. Your Toy
starts with three, chosen randomly,
and can choose to gain more as
the game continues. They are often
open to interpretation by the play-
ers does Quick mean smart, as well
as fast? That will come clear in the
course of play.
4 45
Much of the time, the player will
use every Characteristic they have.
Thats ne.
Favoritism...
is your rank among the Toys. Your
Toy starts with one. It is represented
by tokens of a unique color, one
color for each player. As the game
progresses, your Toy might gain Fa-
voritism, and will get more tokens to
represent that. When a new Round
comes about, all the Favorite tokens
are thrown in a hat. Someone then
An Afterword
Or: My Sinister Plan
Under the Bed isnt about toys at all,
and its not really about monsters. Its
sort of not even about children. Its
about the players.
This interesting thing happens when
adults play Under the Bed: the game
applies pressure to the players to
Quick! Say something that threatens
a child! and the rst thing that
44 5
Hes a graphic designer living in
southern New England where he has
done book design for the award-win-
ning Dogs in the Vineyard by Vincent
Baker and Mountain Witch by Tim
Kleinert. Both those games are better
than this one. Buy them, too.
He loves talking about game design
and the other important things, and
you can do it with him on the fora at
glyphress.com.
draws a Favorite token from the hat.
The more Favorite tokens you have,
the more likely your Toy is to be
chosen. Eventually, everyones tokens
will be drawn in the Round and those
Toys that are more Favorite will get
to go more.
When your Toy loses a conict, it
loses one Favorite token, making your
Toy less likely to be chosen next time.
When you have no more tokens in the
hat, your Toy is Lost and you create a
new one with new Characteristics
6 43
from materials available within the
context of the story youve created.
Favoritism also gives you the power
to create Opposition for the other
Toys. The more Favorite you are, the
greater and more complex the chal-
lenges you make for other characters.
Make sure everyones Favoritism token has
the same characteristics by feel! No ones
tokens should be any larger, rougher,
or harder than anyone elses. This re-
ally matters. The glass beads you
The designer
Joshua Newman has been playing
role-playing games since he got the
Red Box D&D set in 1983. He quick-
ly found the limitations in the system
and has spent the subsequent decades
making games, some of which are
better than D&D.
In 2003 he discovered the Forge at
indie-rpgs.com, threw out his precon-
ceptions, and started writing games
that did what he wanted.
42 7
the glyphpress
The glyphpress is a small design
house devoted to quiet and powerful
design in independent media. It can
be found at glyphpress.com.
can nd in craft stores are good for
this because theyre all pretty much
the same size, though maybe necklace
beads are more standard. If you dont
do this, the same person will always
come up rst, which will make the
game difcult and boring. Youll
need six per player.
8 41
The Child
The Child is the sum of all the
characters actions, so no one can
exclusively play the child. However,
when its your turn, you can say
that your Toy, the Child, or some
combination of both are acting. For
instance, if your Toy can t through
a window, everyone comes through if
you can, no matter how big the child
or other Toys, or how incongruous
it seems.
Playtesters
Vincent lumpley Baker, Rob The
Baron Wilson, Carrie Bernstein,
Meguey Baker, Michael It Makes
My Brain Hurt Freed, Chris Ang-
strom, Emily Care Boss, Tom Russel,
and Phoebe Mathews.
40 9
at indie-rpgs.com for creating an
environment where we can teach
each other how to make role-playing
games that really work.
Some Toys need the child to act, like
Slingshot or Magic Crayon. The
current Toys player can control the
Child if they want.
10 39
What You Need
to Play
To play Under the Bed, you will need
a deck of Characteristics cards and
around seven dice, all 8-sided. In a
pinch, you can use all 6-sided dice
instead, but that makes it pretty easy
on the Toys. You can get 8-sided dice
at any decent game store. Youll also
need four tokens for each player, all
identical by feel but differently col-
ored or marked.
Thanks
Vincent Baker for being a driving
force behind my game design, Ben
Lehman for being so damned en-
couraging while working on his own
impressive Polaris, The Lovely and
Talented Carrie Bernstein for being
tolerant and supportive and even
enthusiastic, Meguey Baker for some
piercing insight into the nature of
children and mental illness, Emily
Care Boss for jammin with me on
mechanics, and the Forge community
38 11
that you can gain enough Favorite
Tokens to throw lots of dice at the
Favorite.
Creating the
Child and Their
World
Before you start hatching characters,
you have to have some basic agree-
ment about the Child and the world
around them. Some questions you
might want to answer beforehand are:
12 37
Who are the important
characters in the Childs
life?
The primary forces in a Childs life
are social who tells them what to
do, who their rivals are, and what
those characters are likely to de-
mand of the Child are all important.
Sometimes this comes up in play,
sometimes its fun to set up a charac-
ter or two beforehand.
between being the Toy to confront
the rst Opposition and being the
Narrator. If the player wants to play
that Opposition, they dont put their
Favorite token in the hat with the
others. Just keep it out in front of you
like you drew it out of the hat.
Its gonna be hard to unseat the Fa-
vorite. Theyve likely got a bunch of
Characteristics to ght with. If you
dont like the Favorite Toy, you might
want to conspire with other Toys to
give each other easy Opposition so
36 13
if it hasnt been Lost. The player
of the Favorite Toy must keep their
Characteristics, though.
Shufe the remaining deck and lay
out Characteristics on the table, just
like youre starting a new game.
Everyone starts with one Favorite,
just like any other game, but you can
keep the Characteristics from the
previous chapter.
When you start that session, the
player of the Favorite Toy can choose
Where and in what time
period does this take
place?
This will tell you what kind of Toys
and issues are relevant. GI Joe action
gures dont belong in Fin-Du-Sicle
Paris, for instance. This might not
matter to everyone. If it doesnt mat-
ter, it doesnt matter.
14 35
Two questions you have
to answer before the game
starts:
What type of story is
this to be?
This matters a lot and dont neglect
this question. Is this story to be
inspired by Lewis Carroll or Clive
Barker? Are the Toys willing to hurt
each other? How abstract will the
conicts be? Sometimes, a player will
want to confront a difcult theme, so
An Interesting
Variation
So what happens to your Child now?
You can nd out! If you want to play
for longer, revisit the child later in
life, say, a year later. Maybe shes
beaten the witch, but now is a witch.
Or maybe he wants to nd his real
parents.
In your next chapter, a player can
keep the Characteristics of their Toy
34 15
When your Toy wins the game, no
other Toy will ever have the meaning
for that Child that you do, and it will
use your Characteristics to solve all
problems in their life. Your toy has
truly won the Childs heart and mind.
make sure everyones on board with
the kind of story you want to tell.
What are the Stakes in
this story?
What does the Child want to gain or
keep? His innocence? The attention
of her dad? Independence? Self-re-
spect?
16 33
Starting the
Game
Lay out one card per player, face up,
aside from the center of the table.
These are Characteristics that can
be gained by characters in the course
of play.
Put the rest of the cards face down
in a stack. This is the Stack of Lost
Toys from which new Toys will be
drawn.
Ending the Game
When one character has four Favorite
tokens, the Stakes of every conict
that player confronts is that of the
story, determined back at the begin-
ning of the game. If the character
succeeds in that conict, the story
has ended, so make the conict a
good one.
When there are no face-up Character-
istic cards, every turn is like this for
every Toy.
32 17
Get Lost
All characteristics for that Toy are
put on the bottom of the Stack of
Lost Toys and the player draws three
new cards from the top of the Stack
of Lost Toys and describes the new
Toy. The Toy gets one Favorite token
to start with, just like at the begin-
ning of the game.
Give each player one Favorite token
of their own color.
Creating a Toy
At the beginning of the game, each
player draws three cards randomly
from the deck. Check to make sure
that none of the Characteristics are
the opposite of others you have (the
opposite is written under the Char-
acteristic itself ). If they are, trade the
one you like least to other players or
shufe them back into the deck and
draw another. As long as everyone has
18 31
three, any combination of trading is
ne. These are the Characteristics for
your rst Toy. Lay your Characteris-
tic cards out on the table in front of
you. Dont try to keep your Characteris-
tics secret; everyone has to know everyone
elses Characteristics to play.
Once the players are satised with
each of their Toys, describe your Toy
to the other players. Im a Luke Sky-
walker action gure, one of the old ones with
the slot in the arm for a lightsaber. My Charac-
teristics are Brave, Foolish, and Quick.
take the top card from the Stack of
Lost Toys. If you cant take a card fro
the Stack of Lost Toys because its
the opposite of a Characteristic your
toy already has, put it on the bottom
of the Stack and draw again.
If the Opposition won the last con-
ict, the Toys player loses one token.
If that was the last token the player
had, the Toy has been Lost.
30 19
If the Toy wins the Conict, the
Toys player selects a card from the
face up Characteristics to add to
their Characteristics or takes another
Favorite token. If you decide to take
a token, dont put it back in the hat
right away. Wait until the hat is
empty, then put it in when everyone
puts all their tokens in the hat.
If youve got four tokens, you cant
take any more because the story is
about to end. You can, however, take
one of the face-up Characteristics or
My lightsaber has been chewed off. My head
has been melted with a magnifying glass, is a
good description.
Conict
On every turn but the rst, draw a
token from the hat to determine
which Toy will confront the Opposi-
tion. The Opposition will be narrated
by the winner of the last Conict.
20 29
On the rst turn, you must rst
determine who will narrate the Op-
position since no one has yet won a
Conict. The player whose token was
drawn rst will narrate the opening
conict and the second token drawn
determines which Toy will face the
challenge. Narration of a conict
means setting up the situation and
Opposition, but not necessarily the
outcome of the conict.
In all subsequent turns, the last winner of
a conict narrates conict that is,
the Opposition has can only be used
once in a conict.
Whoever wins the last exchange when
the Opposition is out of dice, wins
the Conict. The winner says what
how the conict turned out, and then,
says what happens next, and how it
led to another Conict, drawing a
Favoritism Token out of the hat to
determine which Toy is confronting
the Opposition once theyve narrated
the Oppositions Characteristics and
assigned them dice.
28 21
Then go through the process with
each of the Oppositions Character-
istics.
Compare the highest die of the Toy
to the Oppositions die (or the high-
est of the two, if the Opposition has
rolled two). Whoevers is highest
adds 1 to that players roll in the next
exchange.
Each roll the Opposition makes cant
be made again; each Characteristic
either the player who is currently nar-
rating or the player who just won will
narrate the next conict.
The player who owns the token puts
that die in front of themselves. That
Favoritism is staked by the Toys
player on the outcome of this con-
ict: If the character loses the conict,
the player loses that Favorite token.
If the Toy player wins the conict,
the token stays there until all other
tokens have been taken out of the hat
and that player narrates the next
22 27
Conict, not yet knowing which Toy
will confront it. The turns narrator
establishes three things: where the
scene takes place, what is at stake in
the conict, and what the Opposi-
tion is. If the narrator wishes, they
can solicit suggestions from other
players, but doesnt need to use those
suggestions.
The Location...
should be a place with which the
Child is familiar in the rst scene. A
bedroom, playground, back seat,
that Characteristic. That die and the
Characteristic it represents will not
be used again in this Conict and the
Narrator can only one Characteristic
at a time.
The Toy then rolls all dice that can be
used to oppose that, e.g. I Bravely ght
him off, then Quickly run away! , in this
case, rolling two dice for using two
of their Characteristics at once. The
Toys player can reuse these dice for
each exchange in the Conict.
26 23
Favorite tokens, both Characteristics
will both get two dice. Each of those
Characteristics is dened on the y
by the Narrator, e.g. Greedy, or Can
Walk Through Walls, or Knows He Can
Beat You Up Because He Beat You Up Last
Week.
The Narrator chooses one of the Op-
position dice (or two, if the Narrator
has three or four Favorite tokens)
and says how the Opposition is using
it, e.g. Hes Greedy, so hes going to take
your lunch, and rolls the dice for
school, tree house, favorite cardboard
box. Later scenes will stem from
previous scenes, but the rst scene
should start somewhere the Child
is familiar, though not necessarily
comfortable.
In the rest of the game, the location
of the child will be fairly obvious
from the outcome of the previous
conict.
24 25
The Stakes...
in the Conict are what the Child
stands to win or lose, but smaller
than the Stakes of the entire story,
unless youre at the end of the game.
Attention of a parent, the Childs
bike (assuming the bike isnt a char-
acter), and being kidnapped are all
viable stakes.
The Opposition...
is an active force that threatens the
Stakes. It might be an older sibling, a
parent, a monster, another toy, or a
schoolyard bully. The Opposition has as
many Characteristic dice as the Narrator
has Favoritism tokens, so on the rst
turn, its just one. Later in the game,
there will be more dice. When the
Narrator has three Favorite tokens,
they will make one of the Character-
istics that they narrate be two dice.
When the Narrator has four