[outside] Brainstorming the Monster

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hello all,

I'm trying to get all my thoughts together on what to do with The Monster in my game Outside. What I'd like to happen in this thread is general brainstorming on how to use The Monster or what The Monster is even. Let me give you a little background info, and my thoughts at present. If anything is unclear please ask for clarification.

A rough 3 questions:

It's a game about growing up while maintaining some of your creativity and imagination. Less importantly it's about examining the child's place in society, and hope overcoming oppression. I say less importantly as I only really intend to point at those with color.

Players play children who have wondrous powers at their disposal, they can create worlds and do anything in those worlds. They can also take control of other players worlds for a time. They can do some magic in the "real" world, but it's dangerous if they are seen by adults, especially if it's by a group of adults called The Forgotten. The Forgotten are a group utterly devoid of anything resembling creativity.

Players face other dangers. There are also monsters both human and other. The humans are called The Broken. You know the guy down the street, in the stained wife-beater, who coincidentally enough beats his wife? He's one of The Broken. Monsters are anything that you can imagine. Players can also oppose each other. Then there is one last baddie... The Monster. He's where all the others come from, and is the only thing that can kill a character without the players permission.

There are 5 colors. Black and White are both tokens. Black represents reality and as the player gets more Black tokens they become more grown up. White represents possibility, and is used for magic, including healing. Both Black and White are rated 1 to 10.

Red, Yellow, and Blue give the player a number of twenty sided dice equal to their rating. They are rated 0 to 10. What dice are rolled depends on the players narration. Each color represents a form of abuse and a sliding range of emotional states. Red represents physical abuse, joy and rage. You roll a red die when you narrate with one of those emotions, or using physical force to achieve your ends. Blue represents mental abuse, hope and regret. You roll a blue die when you narrate with either of those emotions, or use intelligence and mental trickery to achieve your ends. Yellow represents emotional abuse, fear and foolhardiness. You roll a yellow die when you narrate with either one of those emotions or use social control, or societal standing to achieve your ends.

Challenges are resolved by all sides declaring over all stakes, then declaring an action that leads to those stakes. Players then declare the color die they will roll. The dice are rolled and the winner is the player (or GM) with the highest total. The total is computed by taking the number rolled on the die and adding the number of dice of that color left. For instance, my character Billy has a Yellow of 6. When he narrates actions that use social control like teasing someone he would roll a yellow d20 and then add 5 to the number rolled on that die for the dice he has in reserve. The winner takes all the dice. The losers lose dice which is essentially taking damage. Since no one dies without their permission damage is descriptive is nature.

That is the base of the challenge. A losing player can choose to increase their stakes. (escalate for you Dog's fans.) They do this by declaring a new action that makes sense that involves one of the colors they have not risked yet. Win they do this it works like before except they get to keep their bonus from the previous challenge. This would mean that if Billy had a Red of 3 and brought physical force into the conflict, he would roll a Red d20 and add 2 for his left over Red, and 5 for his left over Yellow dice.

The last complication is at any time a loser can change the challenge to a magic duel by putting a White token into the pot. Putting a White token into the pot makes the player the new winner regardless of anyones totals. All the other challengers will then have to decide if they want to risk a White token or give. If anyone meets these raising of stakes, then everything is left in the pot, all bonuses for left over dice are reset to zero, all players declare new stakes, then declare new actions that will achieve those stakes,and declare what color die they are rolling. From here it proceeds as with a normal challenge except descriptions can be more colorful and depending on the location players can end up gaining Black tokens. Again winner takes all.


The Monster is the archetype that all other monsters are built on. It is meant to be something that adds a lot of tension to the game when it's in a scene. It can take any form, or no form depending on what is most frightening to the child it is haunting/pursuing. Some mechanics I'm considering for it;

• It eats dice - With players gaining dice and players with small amounts of dice healing themselves to regain their dice there will be too many dice in the game.
• Everytime a player gains a Black token the Monster gets stronger.
• Challenges with The Monster are task based rather than conflict based. So your options are run, win, ignore, or die.
• At the beginning of the session a color is determined randomly between Red, Yellow, and Blue. The player with the most dice gets a visit sometime during that session.
• It can take over settings like players and the G.M

I was also thinking that maybe somehow the players could use The Monster. I'm open to other ideas also.

[Paul Strack]

Some random thoughts.

It eats dice - With players gaining dice and players with small amounts of dice healing themselves to regain their dice there will be too many dice in the game.

I think this is a good idea, but you could make it mechanical. For example, if any of the participants in the conflict rolls a 1, it draws the attention of the monster, which takes everything in the pot. If this happens more than once, the presence of the monster increases. Indirectly, this becomes more serious if the players use white tokens, because more rolls will be involved and the stakes will be larger.

Everytime a player gains a Black token the Monster gets stronger.

What about making black tokens a bonus to the Monster's actions against a character?

At the beginning of the session a color is determined randomly between Red, Yellow, and Blue. The player with the most dice gets a visit sometime during that session.

This sounds awkward, since the pools go up and down. Maybe define the circumstances under which the monster appears (say, two 1 rolled in the same scene), but make the character with the most dice the one it choose to target.

I am also not sure having the monster physically appear in every session a good idea. Familiarity lessens fear. I think it might be better if monster is mostly a nebulous presence (influence from afar) and only actually appears at critical junctures in the child's life.

I'm not sure what to do with your other ideas, so I didn't comment.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Paul,

Those are great ideas! Thanks a lot. Especially using The Monster as a nebulous agent as you are correct that familiarity can be the bane of fear.   

I think perhaps I should have all NPC's remove dice from the game. Part of the design idea is to remove dice so that players spend White tokens to heal themselves. This is to drive tension, because if Black equals White the child grows up prematurely and will not keep their creativity through their adult life. The winner takes all nature of the challenge is to drive tension also, but if someone gets a good run it could remove all their tension as they will have a large pool of dice to insulate their child from danger. This is definitely not what I'm going for. I want the players to identify with their children, and fear for them.

Having The Monster come only at critical points in a child's life is a good idea. Who decides though? I think if the GM decides that could create resentment if the player doesn't agree, so perhaps I need to figure out a reward for the player to call for the Monsters presence at a good point in the story. I could also just give the Player the power to veto The Monster coming if they feel it's not an appropriate time.

Perhaps, besides eatting the dice there might be a Monster counter. Everytime a one is rolled one counter is removed from the Monster counter. If the counter is set with a decent number to start it might be a few sessions before the number gets low and should really ramp up the tension on any challenge.

[Thunder_God]

Perhaps when White=Black have The Monster come. Success results in the child Gaining White and being back in the game, Failure results in The Monster traumatizing the child into growing-up, perhaps describe the child getting a wrinkle, his hair going white or something else to that effect.

Also, your game also seems to thrive on the Competitive module, I suggest looking at Cranium Rats, and a game Ron pointed me to, Apocalypse Girl. TUF(I can't remember what it stands for, too long of a name..) also fits the model.

Perhaps we should start a CSI imprint ;)

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Guy,

White equaling Black definitely would be an appropriate time for The Monster to appear. I read Apocalypse Girl. That's an awesome game. I so want to play the Girl or the Dragon. I'm working on Cranium Rats. Thanks for the recommendations.

[Thunder_God]

On Ten PM GMT(1500 Eastern) expect a revision of my document to go up. You can look at it now, it'll just make a wee bit less sense.
Also, you people just wait till you hear of my new mini-game in mind, "Glass House and Rock".

[Castlin]

What if the Monster was drawn to the use of magic? Essentially, the more white tokens are tossed into a pot, the greater the chance the Monster shows up. That adds another layer onto the decision to toss in your whites. Perhaps something like if anyone rolls a die and it comes up equal to or less than the number of whites in the pot currently, there's some Monster action on the horizon. It might not even have to happen right then (though it could); you could keep the characters in suspense for hours as they waited for it to show.

[Thunder_God]

Or have a premonition of the Monster, mostly colour, but it creates the option for "Botches" during the next scene; where failure costs you 1 White Token, getting it more likely for another premonition, and bringing you closer to White=Black.

[Emmett]

I'm trying to understand the function of The Monster. If I understand it correctly, it comes when you are in danger of growing up. My first inclination was that it would show up when the world became too chaotic from being too creative, like an embodiment of chaos.

Maybe the Monster is a glimpse into what the child will become if they don't turn around? The death throws of creativity trying to warn the child that loosing their creativity will hurt them. A manifestation of their own abilities.

Maybe it is an external force designed to push them from their creativity? As such, maybe The Monster is inherently weak, and can only hope to succeed when the character is also at their weakest.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Castlin and Guy: Thanks for the new ideas. I'll give those some thoughts.

Emmett: The function of the Monster? I guess that is somewhat ambigious. Mainly I was seeing it as something horrible that the Children have to deal with. It's the reason as a child you're afraid of the clothes thrown over the chair when the lights are out. As far as the rule structure goes, it is designed to make the players have to occasionally choose to increase their Black. Since the monster is the only thing that can kill in the game and it uses task based resolution, you can't just write it off if you win a challenge. You either have to completely defeat it, or ignore it and gain Black. Basically it is one part of the death cycle that I'm creating for the game. The other being losing dice and having to spend White to regain your starting total of dice.

I really like the idea of the Monster giving the child a glimpse of what they could become. That sounds scary. I'll have to see if I can think something up for that.

On an unrelated note, my website has started to propagate the nameservers and my pre-playtest pdf is here. It will probrably get updated every few days as I'm trying to have it playtestable by the meetup on April 9th.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Whoops. Change Death cycle to read as "Death Spiral."