Style and Tone

Night Knights is a game about duty. About fear, and overcoming it. About love. About childhood. About imagination. About trust.

The general tone of the game is heroic fantasy, on a small scale that feels large. Monsters are very real, but they can be fought; the night is dark, but the dawn will come. Some themes might occasionally veer towards horror, but on the whole this is a hopeful setting, one where victory is possible with your friends and allies beside you.

The game will take place entirely within the House, and while the family is home the toys are restricted to Jordan's bedroom. For your (generally) pint-sized characters this is an inconveniently expansive mansion, with plenty of terrain to traverse and everyday dangers looming around each emourmous corner.

The fun of the setting is driven by the juxtaposition of the familiar and the alien, as the toys repurpose household items into armaments and defenses. Nothing is as it seems… for example, the gateway to a world of monsters tucked under the bed!

Night Knights is expected to be primarily a PvE game. The players are all on the same side - as Jordan's toys, their duty and purpose is to protect their child. Characters can obviously disagree with each other, and have competing ideals or personal goals, but ultimately, everybody should be working for Jordan's benefit. This is not to say that you can't play an antihero - it is perfectly viable to be “doing the wrong things for the right reasons”, or perhaps be some sort of “monster demonologist”, attempting to siphon power from the monsters to use against them, uncaring of the consequences - but you should have good intentions in doing so.

While it is by no means a requirement, some people find it useful to have an idea of goals for the character ahead of the game, or it might be goals that you have for your character (which might differ from what the character wants). This section is just to give you a rough sense of what sort of things you might be able to achieve during the course of the game:

• Protect Jordan - fight back against the monsters and Nightmares, or support others in doing so, to keep the child safe.
• Discover more about the monsters - either to figure out their weaknesses and defeat them, or to delve into their magics to discover ways to harness their powers yourself.
• Find a way to stop the Nightmares - Find or develop long term solutions to protect Jordan's sleep against the Nightmares.
• Be the best toy you can be - Climb the ranks to become Jordan's favourite toy, craft masterful weapons or tools, or lean hard into the nature of your toyhood.

This game will be for you if you enjoy working together towards a shared goal. The GMs will develop personal plot for you based on your character creation decisions and actions in game, though the main focus will be on the overarching story.

The game will focus on resource management and strategising as a group. PCs will all be working together on a common goal, but this doesn't mean everyone will have the same solution or follow the same path. The overall tone will be positive, but there will be potential for failures, setbacks and character death on the way. The PCs will probably win in the end, but they might lose good toys along the way.

We have drawn inspiration from a huge number of different media sources. Here are just a few of our top picks:

• Toy Story (Film)
• Bluey (TV show)
• The Lego Movie (Film)
• The Barbie Movie (Film)
• Small Soldiers (Film)
• Night at the Musueum (Film)
• Hilda (TV show)
• The Borrowers (Book/TV show/Film)
• The Indian in the Cupboard (Book/Film)