Roached!

When I got home last night, my copy of the brand new parlor/storytelling/role-playing game The Shab-al-Hiri Roach was waiting for me.

I'm pretty excited: I've played an earlier version of the game, but on first skim-through the finished product looks really great.

Why I like the game:

1. The game works really well with folks who have never played this kind of thing before. It is a very easy game to get up and running. I would whole-heartedly recommend it to any fans of the horror genre in general and Lovecraft in particular.

2. The mix of Lovecraftian horror and academic satire is really its own thing. I mean, it kind of has a Re-animator vibe, but compared to most games of this type, it is an original work rather than an attempt to capture the feel of another piece of pop culture. (It is one of the only games I've ever played that I think could be adapted into a good movie, or, even better, a good off-Broadway musical).

3. It plays out in one sitting, like your standard board game or parlor game. This makes it the perfect game for playing on short notice.

4. It rewards players for coming up with really evil and nasty and funny ideas.

And now a geek confession: I was really, really, really psyched that I got a shout out in the acknowledgement section for my playtesting efforts. In reality, my contributions amounted nothing more than (a) playing the game a bunch of times and (b) telling the author that he shouldn't change anything. However, I think it is ridiculously cool that my name appears, at all, in such a terrific game.

(Oh, and here's a very nice post on the actual game. And here's a post about me actually playing the game).