[Wandering Monsters High School] Three Answers, and Request for Advice

[Kynn]

WMHS is my 24-hour RPG I did earlier this year.  I got some great feedback on it, including an "A" from the fellow who reviews the 24-hour games.  But I'm kind of stuck with a few details.

1. What is your game about?

Wandering Monsters High School is just like every teen movie you've ever seen, except all the teenagers are monsters.  The nerdy guy wants to go on a date with the cheerleader, the jock has to get the artsy girl to tutor him so he can stay on the team, and the rebel risks getting thrown out of school when the bully plants something in his locker.  Except in this case, the nerd is an alchemy-obsessed dark elf, the cheerleader is an iron golem, the jock is minotaur, the artsy girl is a shapechanging blob, the rebel is a brain in a jar, and the treant class bully planted a holy symbol in the locker.

2. What do the characters do?

The characters attend school together, and try to deal with all the stereotypes of fictionalized high school.  It's a residential school, so all the students hang out together between classes and after school, as well as living in the dorms on campus.  Each student has her own goals which she's trying to accomplish, while also complicating life for the rest of the students, because monsters aren't very nice to each other.

The demo scenario (not fully written yet) is a riff on "The Breakfast Club" -- the player characters have all been busted for various reasons and have to spend one day in detention together under the not-so-watchful eye of one of the instructors.  Meanwhile, they've got short-term goals of things they want to get done, such as avoiding getting thrown off the slamball team, locating a hidden recipe in the library stacks, or getting a date.

3. What do the players do?

This is a mostly traditional roleplaying game with one "Headmaster" (GM) running the actions of the game world, such as the other students and the teachers, and adding complications to students' chosen goals.

However, there's an additional factor:  The players' goals are not the same as the students'.  In short, the player does everything she can to thwart her character's attempts to reach her goals; the point of the game is not to "win" by meeting your goals, but rather the journey through increasingly complex hurdles.  To this degree, all of the players cooperate with each other, but conspire against their characters to do so.  The GM and the players work together to add to this complexity.

For example, a jock character might have the goal of staying on the slamball team.  The GM-run coach might require that the student pass the next test which is coming up.  The player of the shapeshifting student journalist says her student can tutor him, but she needs some help first -- she has to get a big scoop on a scandal the homecoming queen.  But the dark elf geekboy is trying to ask her out.  His player conspires to set up something embarrassing, but first he needs help getting the school bully off his back.

Apart from student goals, the structure of the game follows a somewhat standard model of GM-run play, with the GM setting up scenarios ("the first dance", "the big exam", "homecoming", "the big game", etc.) and the players reacting.  Actions are generally resolved using a simple dice mechanic, but success or failure is really secondary to the story, and players narrate their own actions using the dice rolls as inspiration, with input from the GM.

Mechanically, each student has the following:  Grades (from F to A) in Citizenship, Fitness, Hygiene, Occult, Scholastics, and Vocational.  Gifts and Talents which are the equivalent of advantages or racial abilities.  Special Needs which represent drawbacks.  There are no "permanent" skills, but instead you receive bonuses based on your current Class Schedule (and you forgot what you learned last semester, since this is high school).  When making a dice check, you roll 1d6 for the grade point value of the appropriate grade (so, a B in Scholastics is 3.0, so 3d6) and take the two highest dice to give a value between 2 and 12.

What do I need to work on?

Most of it, mechanically, is easy to work out.  I've got a good framework for setting up PCs and NPCs; adding classes, gifts and talents, special needs, magical abilities, and so on.

The harder part is answering questions about "who narrates?", defining a mechanic for supporting your-goal-is-to-thwart-your-student's-goals, and basically building out the parts which don't rely on dice and stats, but on issues of game play involving the goals and role of each player in this process.

This is what I'd like some advice and suggestions to address.

You can download Wandering Monsters High School from http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/WMHS-sdcc.pdf

[Justin Marx]

Hi Kynn,

Have to say I like the game, reminds me of a cool evil version of Hogwarts...

As far as the player-character interaction is concerned, there is very little mechanical to actually reward a player for not satisfying his character's goals. Of course, the goals have no rewards, all that happens is you start a new goal, which means that apart from a hook for a story, the goal itself is fairly worthless. I understand that this game is designed for short term play, but even something simple like XP etc. for completing your goal would add extra incentive.

Also, how does a player deny his character what he wants? Even though in narration he can make his character look silly, he can still do so while furthering his goals. I think, however, in true high school style, the emphasis should be placed on the character's classmates (as in, other PC's) to make his/her life difficult. That should definately be in there mechanically, in that the jock is rewarded by beating up the nerd, to deny the nerd the ability to get the cheerleader, etc. That also makes it super-bitchy... If PC's have to have their goals tied in to each other's at the start of play... may be getting complex, I'm not the expert on R-maps, but definately have conflict built into it from the start.

Sorry if this is a bit vague, I think it is solid game with a great concept, I just don't know what incentives there are for a player to either a) go after his character's goals or b) deny his character from attaining his goals. A system incentive would help a lot, methinks.

[Jason Morningstar]

I like WMHS too.  It's a great idea and ripe for excellent parody.  Anyway,

You want the player to be motivated to complicate her character's life, right?  Characters wants to succeed, but the game must be way more fun when they don't.  I think this is a better approach, because you can't really mandate "player must want character to fail and character must want to succeed".  That seems unrealistic and unsatisfying.  Not every character always wants to succeed, and sometimes you really want them to.

One idea would be to have a sort of duality in the school - yes, you want to get good grades so you can get admitted to a prestigious dungeon when you graduate, but hey - you are a goddamn monster - you also want to be evil.  It's in your blood.  So the metagame objective is to do very well in bend bars/lift gates 101, so you can ace the White Plume Mountain entrance exam (kudos to the player for such a success!) but the in-game motivation is to break stuff and be cool and cause a lot of fright checks and saves vs. death magic (kudos to the character for being so monstrous!).  The "be evil" inevitably complicates the "be smart". 

--Jason

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Kynn,

I had a bit of a twist to the idea I suggested to you previously. It's not very advanced it's simply a carrot on a string that they get a nibble on occasionally. Basically award a character with a bonus that grows as their goal is unmet (to some limit), when they meet that goal the bonus goes away and slowly recharges over game time. If necessary you can balance this to present levels by perhaps removing a few grades from character creation. It's clunky and not necessarily good thematically, but perhaps it can create better ideas.

[Kynn]

Hey Kynn,

I had a bit of a twist to the idea I suggested to you previously. It's not very advanced it's simply a carrot on a string that they get a nibble on occasionally. Basically award a character with a bonus that grows as their goal is unmet (to some limit), when they meet that goal the bonus goes away and slowly recharges over game time. If necessary you can balance this to present levels by perhaps removing a few grades from character creation. It's clunky and not necessarily good thematically, but perhaps it can create better ideas.

Yeah, that's an interesting idea. I had something in mind like this but didn't think it out this far. Good thoughts.