2023 Day 25: Monsters and Other Childish Things

[picks_at_flies]

You are a child and your best friend is a monster. Lots of children have monsters but as you get older you stop seeing them so much until you no longer see them at all. The trouble with monsters is that they do monstrous things sometimes. So they are always helpful, but sometimes life feels more destructive than it needs to be.





Title image for Monsters

Monsters is a Greg Stolze Benjamin Baugh game which reads very much like a Greg Stolze game so means a couple of things.  <- edited!

1. It uses the one-roll engine. Roll a number of 10 sided dice and look for duplicates. It’s a well tested mechanic that should be great.
2. It has huge amounts of advice on how to play a child, how to make use of your relationships and how to use your monsters.

The main difference for Monsters is that a lot of your dice come from your relationships. You may dislike your mom asking you to do chores, or your dad turning off the TV but if your relationship with them suffers then you suffer. And what are monsters worst at? Yes, maintaining relationships. How do you explain the crayon (or claw) marks on the ceiling?

After that it’s just a matter of taking small person problems and then adding monsters.

Frankie

Frankie loves playing sport, especially cricket. Given the choice of chores or going out in the rain… well you get the idea. Staying still is very hard for her.

Bad thing she did: kicked a football through the school roof, then blamed one of the older children.

Good thing she did: put out a fire in a neighbour’s garage. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she did what she was told then applied a lot of energy to it. (Then got told off for going into a dangerous situation.)

Stats:

Feet - 3

• P.E. 3

Guts - 4

• Courage 1
• Wind 2

Hands - 2

• Blocking 4

Brains - 1

• Notice 2
• Out-think 1

Face - 0

• Charm 2

Relationships

• Parents 2
• Younger brother 1
• Her best friend and trouble-magnet Alex 3

Monster - Mr Eyeballs

The game asks you to draw your monster. Well I can’t draw, but I do quite well with words so that will do for me.

Imagine a furry tree trunk, but blue, and instead of branches there are arms that end in cricket bats and similar. And its eyes dangle from sproingy tentacles from the top of the trunk, and they can be sent flying with one of the bats.

My Eyeballs propels himself along with his unusual limbs.

• Hit locations 1-3: cricket bat arms. 10 dice.

Qualities: Area Defend, Awesome x2, Sharing, Tough.

• Hit locations 4-6: rounders bat arms. Attack. 10 dice.

Qualities: Area Attack, Gnarly, Stun, Tough x2

• Hit locations 7-8: Eyeballs. Useful (works when distant). Share. 9 dice.
• Hit location 9: Changing arms. Useful (shapeshift, movement). 4 dice.
• Hit location 10: Mouth. Useful (speaks). 5 dice.

Mr Eyeballs likes hitting things, which is one reason why Frankie is so good at sport but also why she has a hard time when not playing sport, because Frankie is really quite persistent. Worse, Mr Eyeballs is so good at sport that he is setting false expectations of what Frankie and her friends should be able to achieve.

Mr Eyeballs hides by turning into mundane sporting equipment.

Mr Eyeballs’s favourite thing is, oddly, a slinky.

Opening plot

Finally, because I love the Stoltze plot generators I will generate an opening plot for Frankie and Alex. I roll three 4s, which gives me an Intense competition plot, with some light bad blood, academics and work or chores. This sounds like an important sporting event, so probably a cricket match against a rival school.



Character sheet for Frankie



Character sheet for Mr Eyeballs

https://arcdream.com/home/monsters-and-other-childish-things/