Review: Knights of the Underbed

Review: Knights of the Underbed, a TTRPG tales of daring toys

Knights of the Underbed is a tabletop RPG where you’ll play as toys and get up to some BIG adventures!  Fight monsters under the bed or dive into dreams to defend your kid from trouble!

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Audience for Knights of the Underbed

Knights of the Underbed by Gallant Knight Games is a tabletop RPG made for all-ages, and I would say it does fit the all-ages mark.  

The mechanics involve rolling d6’s only and checking to see if at least one die met the success criteria, so there’s no modifier addition or different damage calculations (unless you add the optional rules) to act as a barrier for really young kids.

Content-wise, this game is super flexible with its stories, allowing you to tailor the material covered to your group.  You could go on a fetch quest with little to no combat or take on an epic battle that ends with stuffing strewn across the house.  It is entirely up to you. 

Setting for Knights of the Underbed

Knights of the Underbed is set in a world where beloved toys take on the roles of knights to defend their child from bad dreams, shadows in the dark corners of their room, tiny gnomes living under the floorboards, and anything else you can imagine.

In your role as a champion of your child, you may battle the nightmare from a scary campfire story, check out the Sock Market and Dust Bunny Fields beneath the bed, or adventure to return to your child after being left behind on the playground or after a move.

There’s about a dozen (fantastic) pre-made adventures and settings that you can use for your game, and there’s also some great tips on either making up your own stories to GM or creating a collaborative game with all players building the world and setting up.

Whatever you explore or create, though, it’s a world where imagination and reality can blend and where you help your imaginary kid face fears made manifest.  It is a beautiful, and sometimes scary, place to tread, but you and your players are always in control of the story.

Characters in Knights of the Underbed

Your character in Knights of the Underbed is a toy who has devoted themself to protecting their child.  They’ll face anything that comes their way in the name of keeping their kid safe and helping them face life’s challenges.

To make your character, you’ll pick what archetype your kid is, your heritage, some additional traits, and your weapon proficiency.  These will determine the skills you start with along with some additional characteristics like your HP. 

For my character, I picked: 

  • Name: Dolly Heart-Ton
  • Child: Imaginative Kid, granting the Beast-Speaker trait
  • Heritage: Doll, granting the Loved trait
  • Additional traits: Healer, Insightful
  • Weapon proficiency: Light (and I picked a flashlight because I thought it was funny)

This character is based a bit on a childhood toy of mine and Dolly Parton as a tribute to everything she’s done for kids. I really enjoyed playing this character, and there were LOTS of trait options, so it is pretty easy to make a very unique character. 

And, if you’re having a hard time coming up with ideas, the book also provides several premade characters, which, of note, I really liked Elder Fishy, a handed down toy who is now with his original kid’s daughter, and Tuffy & Blankee, a duo who have comforted both kids and dogs and lived to keep on fighting.

Mechanics in Knights of the Underbed

Knights of the Underbed uses the TinyD6 system, which is a d6 dicepool.  When you want to make a roll, you’ll roll 2d6 and see if any of them meet the success criteria. 

You can get one extra die by having advantage or proficiency, lose a die if you have disadvantage or lack weapon proficiency, and use an action to Focus to expand the success criteria.

Other than that… that’s the basics for mechanics, which I really like.  It’s the same mechanic to see if you succeed in tests or if you do damage (which is always 1 point on a success), and, as stated above, there’s ways to manipulate the roll to get extra dice or improve your odds, but they’re not too complicated.  You’ll need to strategize a little (i.e. do you spend your action to focus), but it’s reasonable for a small kid to still grasp and use without getting overwhelmed, which is REALLY important. 

Then, if kids get used to the mechanics or you’re playing with older kids/adults, there’s optional mechanics to add more complexity.  These rules are clearly marked as optional and introduce elements like combat zones, item tracking, crits, and variable weapon damage.  

And this is another part about the game that I am happy to see because, if you do have young or new players, you can introduce each of these advanced mechanics one at a time, gradually creating a more mechanically involved game with each new feature added only when the latest one has been mastered by your players.  

Overall thoughts on Knights of the Underbed

I thought that Knights of the Underbed was well developed in terms of keeping the mechanics light while making sure they blend and support stories that are engaging for players.  I also really enjoyed just reading the character descriptions and pre-made settings.  They’re like short stories that I can read to my kid to help with building hype for the game and great seeds for more adventures too.  

For me, this falls into the “rules-bright” term, coined by Fari RPGs, and I’m geeked to see a bigger book that spent their page count on adventures and characters in a way that supports the GM and players versus having all that space filled with rules (that can overwhelm new players and aren’t always needed to be engaged with the adventure).  That said, I like less crunchy games, so there’s some personal preference in there, but… this is also my “my thoughts” section.

Overall, I had fun with this, and I’d recommend it for folks who like rules-lite games but maybe want a bigger book and lots of story seeds.

Find a copy of Knights of the Underbed

You can find Knights of the Underbed here on DriveThruRPG!

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