Me and My Monster

[Crackerjacker]

Your a kid with a pet monster. Dont think cute little things that come out of little plastic balls, think the old BoogieWoogie children's show (about the monsters and toys that live under a bed) or the Disney movie, Monster Inc.

You dont need to stat your kid, just the monster.

Monsters are consisted of, statwise, qualities and things. Each quality and thing has Scary or Nice attached to them, which accumulates to determine wether the monster is overall Scary, Nice, or neutral. Wether the quality is nice or scary may affect it's price.

Starting monsters have 10 points to buy qualities, and automatically get two "things" though they can purchase more for 2 points each as qualities.

Wether the monster is Scary, Nice, or Neutral is determined by counting the number of nice qualities and things versus scary qualities and things. If they are within 2 of each other they are Neutral. If they are more different, the higher one dictates the kinda monster. If it is a Nice monster it automatically gets the Nice megaquality, if it's a Scary monster it automatically gets the Scary megaquality (I havent figured what these do yet, but they have both good and bad bits)

Qualities-
big: nice (1 p) scary (2 p)
small: nice (2 p) scary (1 p)
talk: nice and scary (2 p)
extra eyes, heads, or tails: nice and scary (1 p)
appearance: nice and scary (2 p)
fangs and claws: nice (1 p) scary (2 p)
wings, gills: nice (2 p) scary (1 p)
fur: nice (2 p) scary (1 p)
scales: nice (1 p) scary (2 p)
extra "Thing": 2 points, doesnt have quality attached (see below)

There should of course be more qualities, but thats my general thinkng right now.

Nice Things:
Gaurdian (protective of it's kid)
Curious (as said)
Petlike (acts like a domestic animal)

Scary Things:
Fighter (likes to fight)
Likes to Scare (as said)
Hungry (a voracious monster is scary...)


two sample monsters, a Neutral and a Nice.

Szlyzbarts

qualities:
fangs-scary
claws-scary
appearance-scary
wings-nice
talk-nice

nice things:
gaurdian

scary things:
fighter

Nice:5
Scary:4



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Lumpy

qualities:
big-nice
talk-nice
fur-nice
appearance-nice
fangs-nice
extra thing
megaquality: Nice Monster

nice things:
petlike
curius

scary things:
hungry


of course this is only a fragment of what would be a simple system still, but I think it's an interesting start.

[anonymouse]

Inevitable question: what do the kids + monsters do?

There's a thread that was recently sticked above, which basically has you write up a part of a session of play and see what sort of things the characters are going to do, and what kind of mechanics you might need. I strongly urge you to read that and go from there.

[tldenmark]

Are you familiar with Little Fears?  I'm not familiar enough with it to make a comparison with your idea, but on the surface they seem alike.

I love the idea, though, but it seems some of the qualities mentioned are cliche'. This could be a good or bad thing, I mean cliches' are good for providing familiarity. But this idea is something you could really push to the extreme and be very creative with.

What are the motivations of the monsters (beyond just protective or hungry)? Why are the kids non-entities? (have no stats?).

Just some questions that immediately popped up to me.

[Crackerjacker]

Well, for artistic purposes from the beggining I liked the idea of having the kids as "nonentities" as you said. It in my mind increases the subtle terror of your monster turning around and eating you, and your dependance on your monster, when you cant look at a sheet that says that your good at throwing rocks or running and hiding. I think most of anything the kids could do is simple enough to just be roleplayed out without any task resolution system.

And Ill get with the actual explanation from which this all comes soon.

and, just as a quick thought, it was kinda originally meant to be cliched, deriving from childhood favorite books of mine like the one about a kid who drew monsters (one of which came to life and ate his psychologist) and a series of storybooks about a kid who was friends with all these dinosaurs, fictoinal and real species, that existed hidden amongst our modern day society. However the idea /might/ make a turn to be a little bit more horror-like, in which Id probably get rid of some of the cliche.

[Doctor Xero]

This reminds me a tad of Pokethulhu and Cute & Fuzzy Seizure Monsters but
without the pocket monster twist.  I would be interested in seeing
where you go with it.

I'd want to know how kids and monsters relate, who plays what, player-game master
interaction, game mechanics, experience point system or its equivalent, and
what the assumed adventure focus would be.

Doctor Xero

[anonymouse]

You still haven't talked about what the players do. Do they:

* fight crime?
* go on journeys of self-discovery and battle their monsters against others?
* hunt down McGuffins and other such widgets?
* something else?

The idea of the "main character's" abilities being unimportant, and placing all the mechanical emphasis on some weapon/accessory, is really great and all (I personally want a game where sure I'm playing this swordsman, but I don't care so much about my Strength as I do about my sword's stats and attributes). But you need to have some idea of what to actually do with the idea.

Cos until that point, there's nothing at all to comment on. Need some context.

[Crackerjacker]

Im thinking that gameplay only occurs when no adults are around. Like when mom is out shopping and left you alone for fifteen minutes with nothing but her big mean cats (2 of them) around to "keep you company", or thats what she thinks. Your somehow able to outrun the frightening canines and just barely reach the closet, where you open the door, because only when YOU open the door is the Monster there. With the help of your monster you creep down the thick white carpeting of the upstair's hall, where you arent suppose to be. Cold wood and glass tables and displays of pictures and statues and everything cold sterile and grownup forms a sharp edged labrynth for you to carefully step around. Your monster slithers between table legs or perhaps just walks by casually like the grownups are able to. Carefully, carefully you go down the stairs, climbing down one of the oversized grand staircase steps at a time. At the bottom of the stairs you cling to the wall, knowing that /they/ are in the den, waiting. They can hear you, because cats hear better than people do. Your teacher told you that. They hear and see things you cant, and in the case of your mom's two fat spoiled persians they seem to grow, big, big as dogs when she's not around. In the living room the tv is left on, the Jungle Book is playing, and a flash of the yellow and black of Shere-kan is on the screen. When you hold your breath and are very, very quiet you can hear the cats...theyre praying. Chanting the names of great and terrible cats from Junglebook, Secret of Nymh, and strange names you couldnt pronounce if you tried. They want to eat you and take your place, wear your clothes and become the new son, get ALL of your mother's attention and love. They do, they hate you. You almost freak out and break your silence when your Monster starts slithering up your pajama leg. Shocked and pumped with adrenaline you stand still for the longest moment of you life, as it crawls up your shirt and holds on to your back, hiding in your PJ top. It's there, waiting and watching, to help you through this. One step, two step, red step, blue step, you march in a memorized rythm across the hardwood hallway and face the den. There they are, the FatCats, sitting there, as big as rotweilers, bigger than you. Their fluffy tails swish back and fourth over the carpet as they look at you with their humanityless, hungry little red eyes. You scream, drop to your knees, and bow your head, and in that instant the monster, your Monster, jumps from it's hiding spot in your shirt and leaps into the faces of the evil twin felines.

And of course if your monster got hurt or hated you or got lost, or just left, then you'd be all alone... Kids like this might grow up mute, be mistakened as autistic, and usually lead sickly and predestinedly short lives. Or worst, what if your monster went crazy and wanted to get you, to hurt you, and everytime you were alone it would be there... Or perhaps it would just eat, and eat, and eat until there was nothing left to eat but..you.

perhaps this kind of gameplay might work for it. I dont know, Im making it up as a go along.

Another thought is an old thing of mine. The idea of an entity, a Buddy, who is kind of like the analouge of the classical devil for children. The tempter, the older male father figure to replace your own drunken and angry father. Buddy, maybe he tries to get you to do things, bad things, in fact, you probably dont need hte monsters in this type of scenario. Perhaps the idea of Buddy tempting your little kid into doing more and more heinous acts (see the Good Son?) saying that they will make your parents love you, or make things better, or be fun, that could be a game in itself. But right now were talkinga bout monsters. So how about the whole cat type fiction thing. Would that work as the kidn of tone and scenario types for this kind of game, or is it way off? I cant really decide, Im just adding it to a pile of possibilities.

[Crackerjacker]

Alright... the nitty gritty of it is that the general idea is that monsters are the sum of their parts. Thats where the list of qualities that largely defines them comes in. And to add depth and add a wildcard to help tip the scales of Nice or Scary to one side or another are the Things, which are bassically edges.

Im speaking about this idea tidbit for the system because thats kinda part of whats driving the background of the game in my mind. Monsters are the sum of their parts, and children are untouchable and undefinable, able to do things in a wide range (of whatever you can think of that you can back a child might) but have great limits on what they can actually accomplish as they are 90% imagination, 9% perspiration, and 1% little person. So you have the actual driving force being a quite quantifiable creature, while the minimal force, the child is the one that is not able to be quantified or even qualifiable. That in essence is the drive of the game.

A child is meaningless and helpless in a place that is one place out of a whole bunch of places that are all too big for him. Their true value is something that cannot be statted so I dont attempt to, its up to the player to find out for him or herself. Its not about finding meaning, its more about looking at the steps behind you and trying to figure out how you did it. The child is the victim of series of circumstances in which everything is sharpened and made larger and less real through the sole fact that they are indeed children.
On the other hand the monster is a very tangible, if not exactly simple animal. Yes it is hard to tell where the Zebra begins and where it ends, but everyone can say that the Zebra has white and black stripes. Monsters are just that, a series of stripes. They are made up of eyes, and heads, and teeth, and claws, and wings and things and even distinct personality traits or quirks, things that all add up to something that is indeed the sum of it's parts- no more, no less.

now to just figure out how this is a playable concept.....

[Daniel Solis]

Possible spins on the concept:

The monsters cause trouble, but no one is going to believe the kid's story that his imaginary friend did it.

A monster is a child's protector, created and assigned by external forces. Sort of a guardian angel to protect against Something Else.

A monster is a child's protector, created by internal forces. This concept was very well-developed in the comic and animated series The Maxx, where traumatic childhood events caused an adult's self-assigned spirit animal to come to life.

The monster is the embodiment of a child's ultimate futility in a world of grown-ups. I remember being so overwhelmingly frustrated by the lack of respect and numerous indignities I had to endure just because I was a child. This fits will with children being non-entities and monsters being given all the stats.

[Crackerjacker]

there are other games that have invisible friends and troublemaking shadows and monster pals that fight other monsters. Instead, I want to go into a different direction with "Me and My Monster".

Hmm...

For one thing, the players must make a doodle of their monsters in crayon. As the game goes on their will be more and more doodles. The GM might doodle the monster in the basement that the child (PC) has to go talk to, and other antagonist NPC's, where in some other cases NPC's like the child's mother, or monsters the player creates when the GM starts describing some scary place or noises or something, would be drawn by the player. Thats another thing- with monsters defined by their parts and a few behavioral things it would be quite easy for the GM to describe a few things and for the player to fill in the rest of the blanks. Then the GM could quickly writeup the NPC monster that he and the player have created.
The main rule of the Doodling Game part of the game is that the player can never, ever, ever, draw themselves, the child. Not even just a stick figure. Just their parents, pets, ect as stick figures and stick animals and things, but no them. The idea is for the player to look /into/ the pictures to see where he is, whats going on.

Also, despite perhaps meeting various monsters, and not all will want to hurt them, the child's only got one monster. His Monster. Other monsters can come and go, and the monstrous denizens of the House where the child lives might change very often, but the Monster that belongs to the child (or that the child belongs to) cannot stray so far. That is not to say that the Monster cant leave. In fact, if something happens the monster may go on a vacation, or a trip, and might be gone for a long time (to a child at least). But in normal circumstances the monster is always somewhere relatively close in the House, such as in the closet or under the bed.

A scenario might start with the child waking up to hearing the tentacles slithering and mutterings of strange monsters under his bed. The classic "if I leave my bed theyll grab me and pull me under and eat me!" type thing. He can talk with the monsters, try to trick them, but ultimately, just Calvin usually needed Hobbes, the child will need his Monster.

The idea is that other children can get over their fears, or have imaginary friends, or just take comfort in the adults around them to help scare the monsters away. However the children that are played in this dont have any of that to take security in. All they have to handle with the day to day monsters is a Monster of their own.