Monsters and Other Childish Things

Feygor

In Monsters and Other Childish Things you role-play a child with a secret friend. That friend being a hungry monster.

So is this amazing or terrible?

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

http://www.arcdream.com/pdf/monsters-quick.pdf

It looks like to me like it could be great or really awful. Has anyone tried it?

Kevin R Brown

Fuck yes, this is an awesome game.

It uses ORE, and the rules are for narration-heavy play, so that should tell you whether or not it's something you'll dig.


...Also, you can destroy enemies by making fun of them so hard that they have to take a trip to the asylum. You can also eat their relationships with others, in a very literal sense.

El Skid

This looks...awesome

Feygor

I was a big fan of HoL and All Flesh Must be Eaten as one time kinda games so maybe I would enjoy this. I also really wanted to check out that Grimm game if anyone has given it a try.

Kevin if you got time can you describe like a scenario or scene from Monsters as I kinda have a hard time getting my head around how great it could be. I imagine a story arc that would involve a trouble some child pysch trying to have the kids receive shock thearpy with the game cumulating in a show down where the monsters eat the pysch.

shaneivey

Hi, I'm the editor and publisher of Monsters and Other Childish Things. I was summoned here by the power of Google Alerts.

I've added several direct links to Actual Play writeups at the Monsters website:

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

Hope that helps!

El Skid

Hahaha...

The power of technology!

Feygor

Thanks for the quick response Shaneivey. From what Ive seen of your game I like it.

Hahnsoo1

This game uses One Roll Engine, possibly the best Pen and Paper RPG dice system out there. It has crunchy probabilities, simple dice rolls, fast action resolution even in large scale battles, and immense detail on resolution of dice rolls. Imagine rolling 1 to 10 dice ONCE and having hit locations, damage, counter-attacks, initiative, blocks, and multiple actions... all with a single dice roll per participant. Can't imagine this? That's how awesome ORE is. It works especially well for Forum games, due to how the dice rolls work.

3cl1ps3

Kevin R Brown wrote: »

Fuck yes, this is an awesome game.

It uses ORE, and the rules are for narration-heavy play, so that should tell you whether or not it's something you'll dig.


...Also, you can destroy enemies by making fun of them so hard that they have to take a trip to the asylum. You can also eat their relationships with others, in a very literal sense.

Go on...

shaneivey

3clipse wrote: »

Kevin R Brown wrote: »

You can also eat their relationships with others, in a very literal sense.

Go on...

Part of the background is that monsters become psychically bonded with kids. Not all monsters, and not all kids, but those are the monsters and kids who star in the game.

The monster and the kid have this symbiotic relationship, where the monster sort of derives psychic nourishment from the kid's emotional ties to others. In the game, a kid's Relationships make him (or her; you know what I mean) better able to face difficult challenges. Monsters have no empathy, being monsters and all, so they don't have a set of Relationship stats like kid characters do. But a monster thrives on a kid's relationships. The kid can pass the strength of a Relationship along to the monster.

When two monsters who are both bonded to kids get into a brawl, sometimes the winner kicks the loser's ass so hard that it literally eats some of that psychic relationship stuff. That screws up one of the losing kid's Relationships. In game terms, the winning monster eats Relationship points from the kid bonded to the losing monster. That kid finds his home life even more screwed up than usual and then has less stability to give him strength when the chips are down.

Of course, in-character, most kids don't think of it in terms of "my monster is this freaking weird scary parasite that feeds on how well I get along with my mom." They just like having a monster who can eat firetrucks, and they figure that the monster always messing around with his life is just part of the deal. Monsters always try hard to improve a kid's relationships, but they kind of suck at it, because they don't understand human relationships at all. The B-plot that's the squicky black heart of a good Monsters and Other Childish Things game is the trouble that comes from monsters trying to "help" their kids.

So when Penny Pruitt's monster friend Bookworm eats the brain of the math teacher who gave Penny a "D," it's because that bad grade is going to bring Penny all kinds of trouble. It's not because Bookworm likes eating brains. That's just a bonus.

Kay

I looked through the webpage, started reading the quickstart PDF, and decided that I needed this game.

Then I found that the cheapest shipping was over $35, as I'm in the UK, and became sad. (I can't buy just the PDF, I neeeeeed hardcopies. I need games I can touch, smell and feeeeeeell.)

I will continue to investigate other avenues of transportation from the US to the UK.