[The Myan Hotel] Monster encounter mechanic

[Dangerboy]

Hello, Everyone.

I'm trying to find a way to generate monsters for a horror game I'm designing.

The layout of the game is that one player (the GM) controls the hotel and the monsters in it while the other players (the PCs) try to acheive a goal and at the very least survive.

Right now at the start of his/her turn, the GM rolls a die and draws the top card of his/her Monster Deck. The die represents how many points go into a Monster Pool that the GM uses to bring the monsters into play. The GM decided if he/she wants to 'buy' the Monster he/she's just revealed or discard it and not play a Monster this turn.

My problem with this is I'm worried that at some point, the Monster Pool won't be neccessary; the GM will have so many points in his/her Monster Pool that he doesn't need to worry about it. To make it a little easier, I could separate the monsters into weak, mderate, and hard decks, bt I don't want to make it harder than it already is.

Is there a way to generate a random monster without using a chart?

[TonyLB]

Why not give the GM a hand of five or more cards that he can be holding in reserve?  If he has too many cards in his hand he needs to discard something.  He can play as many monsters as he can pay for.

[Dangerboy]

Why not give the GM a hand of five or more cards that he can be holding in reserve?  If he has too many cards in his hand he needs to discard something.  He can play as many monsters as he can pay for.

Since I'm trying to not overburden this thread with more than one mechanic, I didn't mention that the GM has an Action deck and an Action Hand to useon Monsters he/she already has in play. I like you diea because it gives he gm more than one monster to play a turn meaning he can bring out a strong monster from that 'Monster Hand', or 3+ weaker Monsters, but Considering everything else a GM needs to do, I don't know if having a Monster Hand and an Action Hand would overburden him/her.

To mesh the two ideas, how does this sound?
On the GM's turn he/she rolls a die and draws the top four cards off the Monster Deck. Let's say the weakest monster has a Cost one and the strongest a Cost five. Any Monsters not brought into play are discarded.

Is there a way to rape this (in the case of less-than-reputable GMs)?

[TonyLB]

So put them in the same hand.  Munchkin (and its many spin-offs) do that.  You draw from two decks and dump them into one hand.  I've never noticed that it makes for particularly more handling time.

The "four off the top" thing requires a little less GM brain-sweat, but has two downsides (that I see).  First, it reduces the GM's ability to plan.  Second, it means that you'll go through your deck four times as fast, which means revisiting cards with greater frequency.  I don't know whether that would be a problem:  How big is the Monster deck?

[Vaxalon]

Well, let's try listing the strategies.

1> Play weak monsters at first, saving up points, then play a bunch of strong ones if the PC's look like they're going to escape.

2> Play the strongest monster you can, as soon as you can.

See what these strategies do to play.

Maybe you want to take control over what monsters appear out of the hotel's hands.  Turn over a monster, it comes out.  Boom.

Another thing you can do is the "what if" thing with the dice.

What happens if the DM rolls a 1 or a 2 three times in a row?  Do the players pretty much automatically win?  How about if he rolls a 5 or 6 three times in a row?  Will they automatically lose?

[daMoose_Neo]

Resident CCG Designer Geek Chiming In:

Make it all one deck~ Its not overly difficult, balance issues can be fixed with some good card design.

Look at some CCG design to see what that can do for you. CCG players all the time have to deal with these questions: "Do I play this Spell/Effect now or later, do I play 1 Powerful Monster or 3 small ones? Is this ability important to me now or do I want to hold off when I know it will be more effective?"

I know Twilight has some elements I'm looking at expanding into a rudementary RPG system for one-shots, so what you're doing is the opposite: find CCG rules that work for an RPG.

[GregS]

I might add a "base" value for each monster that is added to whatever the die roll is, and then have the value of the pool returned to 0 each round.

So, in example ('cause that explanation makes little sense), at the start of the round the GM looks at a monster and has 0 accrued points.  The monster's inherent value is 2 and the roll to put it in play is 7.  Thus, in order to use that monster, the GM would have to roll a 5 or better on his D6.  If he fails, his roll again to activate that monster next round would still be 5.  Why do it this way rather than just have the monster's activation roll be 5?  Because it gives you a greater range for monsters to use and gamers like seeing +'s and -'s on rolls.  Not great reasons, I grant you, but it's the best I've got on the very little sleep I've had.  ;)

[zephyr_cirrus]

How about this: You can combine the monster/action decks into one, and add some cards that represent monster points, and the die rolled represents the number of cards the GM can draw this turn.  This mechanic allows for a more spread out amount of monsters, and the GM will not build up too many points, because he has to balance the number of points cards he has with the number of action/monster point cards he has (assuming there is a maximum number of cards).

[Dangerboy]

So put them in the same hand.  Munchkin (and its many spin-offs) do that.  You draw from two decks and dump them into one hand.  I've never noticed that it makes for particularly more handling time.

The "four off the top" thing requires a little less GM brain-sweat, but has two downsides (that I see).  First, it reduces the GM's ability to plan.  Second, it means that you'll go through your deck four times as fast, which means revisiting cards with greater frequency.  I don't know whether that would be a problem:  How big is the Monster deck?

Putting them in one hand seems fine to me. As a matter of fact to better help the GM, I think that maybe when he draws cards, he can choose which cards to draw (I'll take three action cards and two monster cards this turn).

The monster deck is going to be about 80 cards of about 30 individual monsters.

Well, let's try listing the strategies.

1> Play weak monsters at first, saving up points, then play a bunch of strong ones if the PC's look like they're going to escape.

2> Play the strongest monster you can, as soon as you can.

See what these strategies do to play.

Maybe you want to take control over what monsters appear out of the hotel's hands. Turn over a monster, it comes out. Boom.

Another thing you can do is the "what if" thing with the dice.

What happens if the DM rolls a 1 or a 2 three times in a row? Do the players pretty much automatically win? How about if he rolls a 5 or 6 three times in a row? Will they automatically lose?

You brought up the same problem I have with rolling dice. I just thought of another idea I'll mention later on.

Make it all one deck~ Its not overly difficult, balance issues can be fixed with some good card design.

Look at some CCG design to see what that can do for you. CCG players all the time have to deal with these questions: "Do I play this Spell/Effect now or later, do I play 1 Powerful Monster or 3 small ones? Is this ability important to me now or do I want to hold off when I know it will be more effective?"

The problem I have with that (and it still happens in CCGs) is that sometimes you get "Magic'd", i.e. you have nothing but Land In Your Hand, or in Warlord, you end up with Weapons and Armor when you really need an Action card. I'm liking the 'one hand - two draw deck' idea because it gives the GM more control over his stategy.

might add a "base" value for each monster that is added to whatever the die roll is, and then have the value of the pool returned to 0 each round.

So, in example ('cause that explanation makes little sense), at the start of the round the GM looks at a monster and has 0 accrued points. The monster's inherent value is 2 and the roll to put it in play is 7. Thus, in order to use that monster, the GM would have to roll a 5 or better on his D6. If he fails, his roll again to activate that monster next round would still be 5. Why do it this way rather than just have the monster's activation roll be 5? Because it gives you a greater range for monsters to use and gamers like seeing +'s and -'s on rolls. Not great reasons, I grant you, but it's the best I've got on the very little sleep I've had. ;)

Again, I'm worried about the Dice Gods stiffing the GM. I'm still going to mention that idea I had later on.

How about this: You can combine the monster/action decks into one, and add some cards that represent monster points, and the die rolled represents the number of cards the GM can draw this turn. This mechanic allows for a more spread out amount of monsters, and the GM will not build up too many points, because he has to balance the number of points cards he has with the number of action/monster point cards he has (assuming there is a maximum number of cards).

Again, I don't want the GM to end up with a hand of actions, when he/she really needs Monsters to thwart the PCs. Also, if I'm reading this right, using your example that means it's possible to draw 1 card on a turn and at times possibly not draw a Monster Point Card? Could you give me an example if I misinterpreted that?


What if I stuck with the onehand-two deck idea and give the Monsters... Ambiance Values ( to borrow from Doomtown, Fear). Each monster in play adds to this Value and this value acts like a "You have to be this tall in order to ride" effect. All monsters will contribute to this Value, but only the Stronger one will take away from this value when they're killed. The Moderatr to Strong Monsters will need the 'Fear' to be at a certain level to be played.

How does this sound?

[TonyLB]

The rules idea sounds fun.  It contributes a nice genre trope of nasty monsters being heralded by lesser critters to give the protagonists a sort of warm-up.

If I might point out, in passing, a sacred cow that might make good game hamburgers:  What's wrong with letting the GM get stiffed by the Fortune mechanic?  A game where lady luck smiles upon the players and they manage not only to succeed but to emerge with a stylish victory can be a very good game.

[Dangerboy]

The rules idea sounds fun.  It contributes a nice genre trope of nasty monsters being heralded by lesser critters to give the protagonists a sort of warm-up.

If I might point out, in passing, a sacred cow that might make good game hamburgers:  What's wrong with letting the GM get stiffed by the Fortune mechanic?  A game where lady luck smiles upon the players and they manage not only to succeed but to emerge with a stylish victory can be a very good game.

If done properly, I want to make it feel like the PC are up again st impossible odds. Rarely in Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, Fatal Frame, Halloween, or The Exorcist did you get a sense that things weren't completely horrifying and if you did, it was just to set up the next scare. If anything, the GM should have more control over that than the mechanics.

[zephyr_cirrus]

Well, it would be possible for the GM to draw a hand of only action cards, but you could make some action cards that give the PCs non-biological hazards as well (such as a falling chandelier or something like that).  And yes, it would also be possible not to draw a monster point card when you needed it, but you could introduce either multi-point cards (monster point cards that give you more than one point per card) or free monster cards (monsters that don't cost anything, but are pretty weak).  The free monster cards would allow the GM to still challenge the players without spending the points he wants to save for a stronger monster (he'd just have to use a bunch of free monsters, though).

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not seeing the problem at all. It's merely a matter of card balance in all of these cases. And it's random, so, yeah, if extrememly unlikely things happen, then they will skew the game. That's the "trouble" of putting in randomization in a game.

One thing you might consider is a system like Zephyr's that's used in a line of wargames with cards (Successors, Hannibal, etc). Basically, all cards have a "monster value" in additon to being a monster, or an action, or whatever. What you have to do as the GM, is discard some of the cards for their points to get other cards to work. So you have to decide which card values in the current set are worth more as enablers, and which are worth more as the cards enabled.

This is fairly self-balancing as long as the point values are measured against the power of the card, or you dissociate the two somehow (like the two deck idea).

Mike

[Thor]

In a completely different direction, why not let the players ante up the points for how big a bad they want to overcome. Maybe I have been watching too much Celebrity Poker but the idea of some minimum number of points and a maximum based on how many cool things they have done in the game so far. The players decide how much they want you to throw at them, and see how creative you can get with the resources at hand. Then reward them more for putting more in and surviving. I like the feedback aspects of being able to say "this isn't exciting enough let's kick it up a notch" or My Ranger/ Sapce Captain/ Fuzzy Bunny aint going to survive much more of this lets put the breaks on.

[Dangerboy]

In a completely different direction, why not let the players ante up the points for how big a bad they want to overcome. Maybe I have been watching too much Celebrity Poker but the idea of some minimum number of points and a maximum based on how many cool things they have done in the game so far. The players decide how much they want you to throw at them, and see how creative you can get with the resources at hand. Then reward them more for putting more in and surviving. I like the feedback aspects of being able to say "this isn't exciting enough let's kick it up a notch" or My Ranger/ Sapce Captain/ Fuzzy Bunny aint going to survive much more of this lets put the breaks on.

I could use that as an alternate rule, or maybe a special action card. Theme-wise I like the idea, but I'm trying to keep the feeling that the players are facing near death situations. I'd like this idea more if the players couldn't pull back the horror; it would be cool if the players could increase the horror, one unit at a time, until they found the breaking point. To put it in terms that are familiar to me since I'm a cook: it's similar to salting food- you add more and more trying to find the right amount to bring out the best flavor without over-salting the meal.

I don't quite know how I'd reward players yet, but this is still a cool idea.