September RPG Book Club: Monsters and other Childish Things

[Crothian]

For this month we are going to go with one of those small RPGs that makes a big splash. I'm sure there are still many people that don't know of it but there was a good buzz about it at Gen Con and after Gen Con.

Written by Benjamin Lee Baugh

Have you ever secretly wanted to be best friends with a magical unicorn? His name would be Dewdrop, and he would talk to you with his thoughts, and he would carry you on his back away from bullies and parents and kids who don’t get you, and you’d have such wonderful adventures!

This game is pretty much like that. Except — well, Dewdrop is a little scary.

In fact, if you drew what Dewdrop really looks like on your Trapper Keeper, they would send you to the principal’s office, then to the school counselor, and then perhaps to a place with a name like Morning Meadows Home for Disturbed and Psychotic Youth.

Welcome to Monsters and Other Childish Things, a funny, frightening, action-packed roleplaying game about kids and the people who matter to them most — their friends, family and loved ones.

And their horrifying pet monsters.

Monsters and Other Childish Things is perfect for new gamers young and old, and for all gamers who like a little humor with their horror.

Players take the roles of ordinary kids whose best friends are slavering monstrosities from beyond time and space — and that’s already enough to get them in all kinds of trouble with parents, school principals, friends, the Monster Investigation Bureau, mad science teachers, wannabe wizards, you name it. Can you make it through a school day without having to explain why your monster ate the substitute teacher? We’ll soon find out.

http://www.arcdream.com/monsters/

Monsters and Other Childish Things is a very neat game. It mixes horror. laughter, and being a kid very well. Please give it a look and come and participate with the discussion.

 

[Crothian]

THe game is about playing kids with monsters. The writing is really top notch and makes for an entertaining read. The system is easy and different. I like the pairing of the d20 results to get hieght and width.

I think it suffers a little from "What do players do now?" It has a lot of ideas but I think a little focus or ewxamples on what a typical session is like would be useful.

 

[Crothian]

Upon doing another full reading the game seems pretty good. It is very creative. The rules ill take a bit of time getting used to but that is to be expected with any new game. I like the DM and player advice in there but I wanted more and more examples of a session or campaign with the game.

Luckily, though, that's what the other books in the line do.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I'll be running it this weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

It's easily the most fun I've had reading an RPG in ages.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

I've read the core book and Curriculum of Conspiracy and am finishing up Candlewick Manor.

I am very happy the Ennies turned me onto these products.

I fell in love with the writing of the corebook. I told orchid that I wanted to have the author's manbabies. It shows that he is into the same things I am and has my brand of humor.

I'll have to fully see the rules in action before giving a final verdict on them, but they don't look overly complicated and seem to fit the setting. I'll be testing out the character and monster creation rules this week, since I'm working on at least one oneshot.

I was very amused by their suggestion for how to get the players of a oneshot involved with an arts & crafts session at the beginning. Great idea for distinguishing between the child and the monster.

For me, I too was a litle sad at the lack of setting examples in the core. From reading this, I immediately envision elementary school, but the book seems to focus on middle school and high school when giving examples. Guess they figured the elementary school was self evident.

As Crothian said, the way the game is presented, it feels like a very GM reactive game, which works well for me, but not necessarily everyone.

For the other books in the line, I thought Curriculum of Conspiracy was fantastic and really liked the different suggestions of how the game could be run, using the setting. My group doesn't go for prolonged mysteries, but the 'Another Brick in the Wall' suggestion would be right up their alley. Candlewick Manor gives great rules for creepy orphans, but the 'one big mystery' thing is very much not for my group. I'm still very happy I made the purchase, though.

 

[Crothian]

Okay, month is half over surely some other people have seen this great game.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I ran a MaOCT one-shot last Friday at LI Gameday. Overall it went pretty well -- I had some really awesome players that did a superb job of channeling their inner 13-year-old. I knew I was in for a fun evening when, as the story opened with the kids in their tree fort, one of them climbed atop it and declared himself 'King of the Tree Fort'. The others, in a fine display of revolutionary fervor, shook the tree fort until he fell off. The would-be King took a swing at one of the rebels, who retaliated with a comment about his mother, resulting in tears and recriminations. The rest of the game (and the gameday!) were filled with aspersions cast about the moral character of Cory's mom! Whether or not this says something about the emotional maturity of the average EN/CM player, I'll not hazard a guess .


Some thoughts about the gameplay:

1. The character sheets look simple, but are essential. The interplay of damage between monster and child means that numbers are changing all the time, and it can be really hard to keep track of. This is double so for the GM; with six kids and their monsters arrayed against six other kids and their monsters, you have more things to deal with than probably 99% of D&D games. The complexity wasn't apparent to me from just reading the book.

2. Character creation can be difficult to grasp. Normally with a one-shot I'd have pregenned the characters, but for several reasons, I wanted my players to be able to make their own characters. First, with a more traditional RPG setting, it's pretty easy to pregen archetypes that players can grasp immediately. MaOCT, though, is very much about the personality of the characters, and I thought it would be harder for the players to roleplay their character if it were just a pre-printed sheet. Second, the monster creation is free-form, and I wanted to see what the [-]twisted little minds[/-] creative players would come up with.

As this was the only game we were playing that night, and had an open-ended time frame, I thought it worth the time spent to make characters. Many of the players (and I confess, myself as well) had a hard time grasping monster creation. The guidelines in the book are a little weak, and would have benefitted from a more structured format, I think. Also, at first look, it would seem possible to create some really broken (or really gimped) monsters. For future one-shots, I intend to ask the players ahead of time to give me a physical description of their monster, and I'll create it and stat it out accordingly ahead of time.

Combat takes a long time, it seemed. A lot of this can be attributed to the combination of unfamiliarity and the effective number of combatants we had to deal with, but even so it seems to go a little slow. The 'One' system that MaOCT uses can be *very* random, and given monsters with lots of 'Tough', some of the fights seemed to drag out quite a bit.

I'll be running this again at NC Gameday, so this was invaluable experience, and quite a bit of fun as well.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I haven't been able to run this yet, but part of that is because the one person that would be willing to play (my wife) doesn't really have a "cool!" reaction to the premise.

Kid, monster... it's ok, it's just not something that wows her.

However...

One nifty thing about MaOCT is that the premise can be shifted a bit, and has the potential to lead to some rather interesting games. See, what you've really got is A) The character, B) How the character can kick ass and make a difference, C) The relationships that are involved and get messed up. It's kinda sorta got a bit of a parallel in that regard with PDQ (powers Truth & Justice, Zorcerer of Zo, Questers of the Middle Realms, Ninja Burger, and others). In Truth & Justice you can (As Fred Hicks said) "Punch a superhero in their girlfriend". You can model Spiderman and his problems with his girlfriend by having the Quality "Dating MJ" take damage.

I've mentioned these ideas before in other locations, but I'll float them here:

Elric
MaOCT can do this sort of thing pretty easy, assuming everyone is going to have their own Stormbringer. Stormbringer shows up and all kinds of stuff goes wrong for Elric. But he really _needs_ the blade as well.

Supers
It'd be an interesting take on supers in general if the abilities are built/modeled as monsters. Especially if the powers _want_ to be used. Part of fixing you monster is spending time with it, just like with other relationships. So if you get messed up in your super powers, part of fixing them is going to be going off and doing superhero-type stuff.

Fantasy
That kick-ass sword the Fighter has, those spells the mage can cast, that insufferable holier-than-thou religious person sitting across the fire from you... those "iconic" bits that let a fantasy character rock out are done up as monsters. I'm pretty sure that you'd even be able to handle a skill-monkey type like the thief types; their facility at doing what they do is almost supernatural. Some mage's might have their monsters be literal demons that they bring forth, others would treat "magic" as if it were an almost living force, constantly tempting them to unleash it...

But it's doesn't have to be a "single" thing. Instead of just having the kick-ass sword, maybe the fighter has a kick-ass sword, some stylin' armor, that shield that returns when he throws it. The mage doesn't just have to have "magic" and cast spells; the "monster" can be spell casting, along with a Wizard's Staff, a couple of rings, maybe a crystal ball...

Shapeshifters
Yeah, that's pretty easy. It might be an interesting alternative for those folks that are kinda wanting to do a modern/urban game where characters are Werewolves (or whatever) but don't feel like doing the White Wolf thing.

Anime/ Anime High School
It seems like a lot of anime shows feature characters that have some sort of ability, and then they've got all kinds of different stuff go wrong in their lives as a result. Always running around trying to balance things, and keep folks from figuring out what's really going on with them.

Pokemon
You know you want to do it...

Mecha
This one... it'd be a bit trickier. As with a number of other premises, the "monster" winds up being something that others can see/know about. The trick is thinking about what it is the "monster" is doing; in other words, why does the character have/need the powersuit/mecha in the first place. Once you reframe the idea of mecha stuff a bit, it doesn't seem any more unreasonable than anything else.

The Matrix
A few different ways this one could play out. The obvious one would simply be that the monster is the abilities that the character gets once they jack into the Matrix.

Exalted
I only know about this game in passing. The bits of premise I've heard rock, the system makes me want to beat myself in the head with a rock. But all those nifty exalted powers sure do sound like the monster coming out to play...

Shadowrun
Oh yeah, all kinds of different possibilities here. Mages, cybergear, racial abilties...

It doesn't really take much to start thinking about other ways to reframe the premise.

I'm sure at least some people are thinking, "Well, why not just use Reign or Wild Talents instead?"

To me, the ORE (One Roll Engine) system just felt "bleh". It seemed kinda fiddly and it's definitely funky. MaOCT on the other hand clicked for me. I took a gamble in getting it, and part of why I did is because it's (apparently) a trimmed down version of the ORE system in the first place.

Another thing I like is that separation of stuff. There's the character, which has stats and skills. Pretty "ordinary" and basic. And then there's this whole other thing, and that's how all of a sudden the mundane and ordinary is transformed into something extraordinary.

And it's not just "this is how the character rocks compared to mundanes", but also "what does this mean for them as they try to lead an 'ordinary' life." It's a chance to have characters that can tower among mortals (or at least loom a bit), but still be able to explore the "human" side of said characters.

 

[Mistwell]

I am almost done reading the core book, and I gotta say that the concept and rules are good, but the lack of structure and examples is bad.

This book REALLY needed a lot more structure and examples in many places. They slapped on some generic "what is a role playing game" type stuff, as if it is for beginners, while simultaneously writing a book meant for very advanced GMing, with very few guidelines, meant to be used by someone with a lot of experience adapting scenarios on the fly. Even the starter adventure has only broad outlines and vague descriptions.

What I wanted was the type of spoon-fed complete demonstration of how this game is supposed to work while in play. Give me little colored boxes of text to tell the players, with non-colored text for the GM. Give me location to location to location details (or event to event to event details). Describe some of the most likely options players will take, and how to deal with those options. In other words, give me some instructions for building one game so I know at least a little bit how to build my own game later.

 

[Crothian]

The book is very creative and has a lot of potential in there. It seems a little hard to get the potential out on the gaming table. It also seems like a game that depends a little more on players being on their game.