MONSTER RALLIES V: MONSTER PATHS

Most monster rallies I have run, were one-shots or short campaigns where monsters didn't advance. But more recently I have been running them longer and wanted a way to both allow for but control growth, because monsters already have so many disparities, that certain monsters became much more powerful as they consumed human life-force or aged. So I opted to employ paths, like character paths, but for specific characters, not generalized pathways for a type of monster.  

Below is an example of a monster path that I created for the player character Queen of Snakes. She is a hag, and called Queen of Snakes because one of the other PCs who travels with her is a Giant Snake. What I tried to do was expand on existing Hag powers while also creating abilities that fit her title. 

MONSTER PATHS

These paths are meant to be for specific characters, not general monsters. There is no “Vampire Path”, but rather a “Dracula Path”. The GM tailors the specific path to each character based on their personality, description, title, etc., using the existing path powers and the monster abilities as guidelines. For example, a giant snake may ‘level’ every time they eat enough to increase their max wounds. This can also put a cap on different monsters in a rally campaign to keep things a little more even (monsters will still not be balanced, but the disparities won’t grow as ridiculous out of proportion as they might otherwise) 

QUEEN OF SNAKES 

Level	Abilities
1	Summon and Control Snakes, +1d10 Rank in Command
2	Longer Reach, New Pact Power
3	Max Wounds Increase by 1
4	Enter Nightmares
5	Sharper Claws, Max Wounds Increase by 1
6	Summon and Command Giant Snake
7	Enter Nightmares II
8	New Pact Power
9	Max Wounds Increase by 1
10	Freezing Gaze

 

Summon and Control Snakes: Queen of Snakes can command normal venomous or non-venomous snakes using her Command skill Roll. Snakes that disobey lose 1 Hardiness each round until they heed her command. She can summon 1d10 normal snakes every hour, so long as the snakes are native to the area or in the area (so if there are nearby cobras in a Zoo or being kept as pets, she can summon them provided they have a means of escape). 

New Pact Power: She gains a new pact power. This is a reward for her service, and should reflect her current efforts. Each time she gets this, the GM creates a new pact power for her. 

Longer Reach: Her reach extends from 15 feet to 30 feet. 

Sharper Claws: At 5^th Level her claws do +1 Extra Wound. 

Enter Nightmares: At 4^th level, she can enter peoples nightmares and interact with them in their dreams. 

Enter Nightmares II: She can harm people in their nightmares. Any damage they take is real and lethal. 

Summon and Command Giant Snake: She can summon a Giant Snake of Bridgewater (STRANGE TALES OF NEW ENGLAND, 152) once each day and have full command over it for a week on a Successful Command roll. The creature may take time to reach her if she is far from the Bridgewater Triangle.  

Freezing Gaze: Her gaze can turn a person to ice. Roll Command against Wits of the target On a Success the target cannot move or attack for 1 round. On a Total Success the target is literally frozen, and can only be saved by supernatural means or if Queen of Snakes desires to release them. 

 

MONSTER RALLIES IV: MAD SCIENTISTS

Mad Scientists are often at the heart of Monster Rallies. They are an outgrowth of the Frankenstein movies and many of the plots involve monsters seeking the help of those who followed in Dr. Frankenstein's footsteps. So here is a monster entry for Mad Scientist. Originally I wanted to use the expert path, but rallies are not about level advancement and the expert doesn't quite fit. So if anyone wants to be a mad scientist they can choose this option (and the GM can use it for NPCs in scenarios as well). 

MAD SCIENTIST

These are men and women who dabbled in forbidden scientific advancements, defying death, and creating monstrosities out of misguided efforts to make the world better or feed their own ego. Some are cruel and evil, others are compassionate and kind (and it is merely fate that drives their inventions to evil). While their experiments don't always result in abomination, the scales are weighted in that direction. 

Defenses: Hardiness: 4, Evade: 4, Wits: 1

Key Skills: Arm Strike: 0d10, Muscle: 1d10, Speed: 1d10, Persuade: 2d10, Command: 2d10, Reasoning: 3d10, Medicine: 4d10, Forensics: 3d10, Trade: 1d10, Survival: 1d10, Tech: 4d10, Theft: 2d10, Talent: 2d10, Science: 4d10, Places: 2d10, History: 2d10, Institutions: 1d10, Occult: 1d10, Religion: 1d10

Max Wounds: 2

POWERS

Scientific Advancement: Mad Scientists can use their Science and Medicine or Tech skill to achieve an enormous breakthrough. This can be anything from raising the dead, to curing a disease, to creating an intelligent machine to brain transplants or curing monsters. The GM always has final say, and it should be a somewhat focused breakthrough that puts flavor before mechanics (not something broad and flavorless like "I win at everything all the time"). The time scale is always up to the GM. 

First the Scientist must make a Science roll at regular intervals (determined by GM) and get a 10. Once that is achieved, the Scientist can roll Medicine or Tech (whichever is most relevant) against TN 8. On a success they achieve their desired outcome but with a very serious unforeseen complication that introduces great evil into the world. On a Total Success they achieve their goal, but without such a complication. On a Failure the result is a disaster, with huge ramifications determined by the GM. 

Scientific Achievement: The Mad Scientist has achieved an incredible breakthrough in science before the start of play. This can be just about anything, from Victor Frankenstein making his creature and unlocking the secrets of life and death to Griffin making invisibility possible in the Invisible Man. Whatever it is, it came at a horrible cost which the GM determines. The Mad Scientist can always repeat whatever his advancement was, but to build upon it further he must make more Scientific Advancements. Reversing the results of their achievement takes two successful Scientific Advancements. 

MONSTER RALLIES III: MOB RULES

Mobs are a prominent feature of Monster Rally movies and classic horror in general. I came up with these mob rules for Strange Tales of New England. 

To be clear I am not making a monster rally RPG, but am trying to create a set of monster rally tools for GMs to use in their Strange Tales of New England Campaigns. I may release this material in a small PDF at some point. But I want to post it to the blog so the tools are available now.  

MOBS

Mobs are large groups of people, usually frightened or angry townsmen or villagers, who can pose a threat to monsters due to their large numbers. They take time to build in a Monster Rally adventure, usually when things reach a critical stage. As a general rule, the more terror the population feels, the greater the chance of a mob forming. The GM should roll anytime an incident in public occurs, starting at a 1 in 10 chance and increasing by 1-3 increments each incident based on its severity. 

Defenses: Hardiness: 6, Evade: 6, Wits: 4
Key Skills: Attack: 0d10, Grab: Special, Muscle: 4d10, Detect: 2d10, Speed: 0d10 

Max Wounds: Mobs have a Max Wound equal to their numbers, and can always attack anyone inside their area of coverage. However mobs will back away and not attack when they take 2 wounds from a single hit in one round 

POWERS 

Attack: Mobs have very weak attacks. They roll 0d10 to hit and do 0d10 damage. They can attack multiple targets inside their area but only attack each target once per round. 

Grab: Mobs can grab targets, limb by limb. Their first grab attempt is 0d10 to grab a limb. If this is successful, they can follow up the same round with another grab attempt at 1d10 to grab another limb. If this succeeds they can attempt another grab at 2d10, then another at 3d10, all in the same round. When they have successfully grabbed all four limbs they have control of the target's body. Each round the target can an attempt an escape by rolling Muscle against 4d10. If the target fails, they maintain control and can carry or hold him. If the target succeeds, he escapes. If the target gets a Total Success he does 1 wound to the mob. The target is held in this manner every round until he successfully escapes. 

Tear down Structures: Mobs can tear or burn down any structure in 1d10 rounds. 

Area of Coverage: A mob covers an area based on its size. The GM should use common sense here, but a group of 1000 people might cover 6,000 to 10,000 square feet depending on how densely packed they are. Mobs can attack or grab anything within their area of coverage. 

MONSTER RALLIES II: INFAMOUS MONSTERS

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about running Monster Rally adventures in Strange Tales of New England (or really any horror RPG). I've been thinking about it more and ran another monster rally with my weekly group so I wanted to get some of my thoughts out. 

Art by Jackie Musto 

Before I start, I should mention Strange Tales of New England is a modern horror RPG, not a monster rally game. But I used a lot of monster rally scenarios in play testing (primarily to get as many eyes on the monsters as possible). I did this for Strange Tales of Songling as well, and it was something I found worked very well. But Strange Tales of New England gave me a chance to run Monster Rallies more in the style of the original monster mash movies like House of Frankenstein. 

Typically in the past I tended to run these as monster versus monster. Again as an easy way to get players to read the monster entries, help me vet the text and test different abilities. But this year I started running more structured scenarios. Because monster rallies usually hinge on a specific premise, these either need to be something the group cooks up at a session zero or builds off the previous monster rally session. You could also forgo some of the specific genre elements in a monster rally and just have a party of monsters going on adventures. 

In the last monster rally I ran a scenario using a method that begins by following these steps: 

1) Have players each pick a monster from the book to play 

2) Flesh out monsters into more formed characters with goals and background as well as a known monstrous reputation, giving them each three ranks in any skills they want.

3) Settle on a shared goal the party has for the adventure. This should also be a goal they need one another for. Because they are monsters, you want them to have a good reason to be working together

4) The GM creates an obstacle to the goal

5) The GM creates a foe (this can also be the obstacle if that makes sense)

6) GM quickly sketches out scenario details (ideally in minutes before start of session)

This process is really meant to take place in the first 30-60 minutes of a session so you have time to get into the scenario. But if you need more time, you can do it all as a session zero and the GM can prep between (I will say though, I think most GMs would benefit from forcing themselves to run such scenarios with just a few minutes prep before hand, as it really does help you develop GMing on-the-fly skills).

This past session, I decided to do something a little different. I wanted one of them to play a more prominent monster in the setting, something closer to the kind of character who shows up in a Monster Rally. We had three players, so I asked two of them to keep their monsters from the last session (our monsters were a Hag named Ruth, a Skadegamutc named Helen and a giant snake named Ted). The third player would select a major villain from the Gazetteer section (someone who was a powerful entity who haunted a particular area). This felt like a more appropriate way to do a proper monster rally (because in those films they are often seeking a known figure). 

Helen's player decided to take on this role and chose to play the Bennington Monster of the Bennington Triangle in Vermont. I then asked the other players why they would want to seek the Bennington Monster. Since he had the power to shape the local creatures in The Bennington Triangle, they decided a good reason would be to ask him to enhance Ted's mind and give him the ability to take human form (this worked as that sort of thing is a common plot element in Monster Rallies). 

My job was to make a complication. So I decided that last winter, the monster hunter, Vick Bavaro had defeated the Bennington Monster and sent his body to the bottom of Lake Hancock. Then for a foe, I decided to have them hounded by a team of youtube sensation monster hunters led by a competent NPC (someone with path levels). For backstory I figured these characters caught wind of creatures were in the area looking for the Bennington Monster. 

For this I made a character named Aaron Fugue, an 8th level combatant (which seemed like the kind of person who could content with monsters) and gave him a team of seven men (I used the stat blocks for the cultists of the Oblong God as they were similar, but gave them points in ranged weapons as all would carry guns). 

I also sketched out quickly the names of the men and gave them brief character descriptions. The most important one to emerge was his cameraman, Jeff Hussey. 

The party began the session aware that the Bennington Monster was dead at the bottom of Lake Hancock. They also knew it was an hours drive to a trailhead, then an hour hike to the lake. Their plan was to use Ruth's Restoration of the Mind spell to resurrect the Bennington Monster. It was also determined that we needed to give Ruth a more sinister title as "Ruth meets the Bennington Monster" didn't quite have the right ring. So the player decided because she was traveling with a giant snake, Queen of Snakes would be how most people referred to her. 

The third player would be the Bennington Monster but he wouldn't be in play till later, so we let him either be a human servitor or cultist (essentially the lowest type of NPCs one can be in the Threats section of the book) or a very weak monster (like a Luminary Corpse). He decided to be a cultist named Baxter. 

When the players arrived at the trail head they set up camp and noticed a number of other people camping, including the Aaron Fugue youtube crew. Queen of Snakes was able to flirt with Aaron's camera man, Jeff, but this agitated Aaron. Things escalated and Baxter attempted to punch Aaron, but discovered the man knew how to slip it. Eventually people cooled off and went back to their camps. 

At night, Queen of Snakes played guitar and sang a song*, impressing many of the local campers, but also drawing Jeff's attention to her again. He eventually gave her his business card which also gave them the name of Aaron's company. 

Over the evening she managed to get samples of the camera man's hair and blood to brew a love potion, but not without a number of negative interactions with Aaron. As a hag, the Queen of Snakes can control peoples dreams, so she gave Aaron nightmares about Jeff taking over his youtube channel. 

They set out the next morning and things were snowy and frozen. As they hiked towards their goal, Ted noticed a group following them. Queen of Snakes anointed him in flight ointment and he went to spy on them from above the trees. He saw that Aaron and his men were all armed and he was speaking to the camera about hunting a group of witches** and a giant snake.

The party decided to set a trap for the youtube crew by using hitching a ride over the ice on Ted, but laying down foot tracks over thin patches of ice. Then Ted went into the water nearby. 

As Aaron and his men crossed one of the areas the players lured them over, a member of his group named Mike Staskin fell through and Ted gobbled him up. Feasting on Mike's life energy, empowered Ted and caused him to grow in size. 

Because Aaron was streaming when this happened, and the party had been keeping tabs on him by watching his stream, they reported his channel for airing a live fatality and his channel was taken down. 

This is where the session ended. 

*Aaron already knew before hand that something supernatural was afoot, which is why he went there in the first place, but the dream made him think a witch was to blame

**She got a 10 on her roll and greatly impressed the group: Hags have a lot of ranks in Talent 

THE FANTASTIC MAGIC BABY REVIEW

I have a new review of Chang Cheh's 1975 film, The Fantastic Magic Baby HERE. The movie tells the story of Red Boy and his efforts to abduct the Longevity Monk so his parents, Bull King and Princess Iron Fan can eat him and gain immortality. Monkey and his companions must rescue and protect their master. It has very little dialogue and the fight choreography is quite true to the Peking Opera style. This is a very unusual movie which takes an episode from Journey to the West and presents it in the style of Peking Opera. While there are dashes of this in some of his earlier works The Fantastic Magic Baby is perhaps the most unique entry in Chang Cheh's catalog. That doesn't mean it is spectacular. I grappled with this movie and was really not sure what to think of it. There were aspects I loved, aspects I found frustrating, but I ultimately appreciate what he was trying to do. You can check out the review for the rest of my thoughts. 

HATE STAIN

My friend and sometimes co-host on the podcast, jim pinto, has a new Mork Borg expansion on kickstarter. Jim is the maker of 100s of games, and the man behind Postworldgames. His new offering is called Hate Stain. Check out the Kickstarter page HERE for a complete overview but here is a quick description of the project:

Hate Stain is a 70+ page expansion for Mörk Borg that brings hateful cults, corrupted magic, new player classes, and twisted monsters to your doompunk sessions. Back now to get the PDF immediately and claim a printed edition at your leisure. Mature themes. For experienced groups.

The Hate Stain explores the visceral and ever-expanding force of contempt and grief in Mork Borg. Hate is an infection that spreads like a plague, warping minds, bodies, and societies. Cults form around the poison of resentment, feeding on grievances and small injustices, turning them into all-consuming ideologies. The world is marked by the stain of this corruption, a force that twists reality itself, leaving destruction and ruin in its wake.

Players take on the roles of those marked by hate, or fighting against it.

The Hate Stain is my first attempt to make a Mork Borg expansion. It adds hateful cults to the doom and death of Mork Borg, with new spells, two new classes, new monsters, and helpful tips on how to make a hate-based cult.

It also includes rules for how grief and sorrow leads to corruption and how corruption manifests as mutations and deformities.

This book explores how hate manifests in your world and spreads through its own misery. These cults are not bent on death and killing, but in spreading their poison into the hearts of others. And ultimately, into the world. The game even comes with several cults to show you how it's done.

MONSTER RALLIES IN STRANGE TALES OF NEW ENGLAND

One of the methods I started using for playtesting and proofreading games is the Monster Rally adventure. This allows me to take a closer look, with more eyes at the Threats chapter of a book, by having the players assume the role of monsters in a wild creature feature mash-up. For those not familiar with Monster Rallies they are movies featuring multiple iconic monsters, and the first film of this type is usually considered Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). In these films monsters can team up, be pitted against one another, and they also often have more of a silly tone to them (or they are at least capable of veering into comedy and very campy horror). This makes the Monster Rally perfect for an off-the-cuff adventure using a party of monsters. In some of my monster rally playtests, the monsters are fighting one another, but they often have goals and work together. As Strange Tales of New England is in the final stage of layout (I just did my last real proofread), the monster rally has been a useful method for vetting the monster chapter and the gazetteer section. Here I want to talk about one method I recently drew upon to quickly assemble a monster rally adventure that focuses on monsters working as a team. 

Art by Jackie Musto

The first step is to give players the rulebook and tell them to peruse the monster chapter with instruction to pick a monster they can see serving as a fleshed out character. This can be opened up to other areas of the book (for example in Strange Tales of New England I can let players pick entries from the Gazetteer that are oriented around a monstrous villain). This can also be determined randomly for each player. 

The second step is to have them flesh out the characters, giving them names, adding 3 ranks to skills (they can pick new skills too if they want), and describing a brief background/character sketch. They also need some general goals. In my last session, one player chose to be a Skadegamutc (a ghost witch) named Helen, who had been born left-handed but was beaten by her puritan teachers to use her right. This led to resentment against all puritans she took to her death and when she rose that was the focus of her ire. Another player was Ruth, a hag, who worked with Helen, because it gave her easy access to human flesh. The third player chose a less orthodox giant snake, a 50-foot long reptile named Ted who was more intelligent than other giant snakes and could write out words with its tail. 

Once this is done, the part decides on a shared goal for which they need one another to succeed. This goal should be pretty specific, and the players must hash out exactly how they know each other, if they are together or if any of the adventure will involve them assembling as a team. In our session, the person playing Helen decided the goal could be they wanted to dig up the body of her teacher, Sarah Jacobs, in order to raise and torment her. To help with this goal, the player who was Ruth, chose a malignant spell that resurrects the dead. 

With that detail out of the way, the GM then needs to flesh out some background around it. First the GM creates an obstacle or obstacles to the goal. I decided an obvious obstacle was the body had been moved from its grave. I drew on a recent news story about a curiosity shop that had been illegally buying human remains and wrote down that the Cemetery Manager at Dartmouth Cemetery sold Sarah Jacobs' corpse to Maria's Curiosity Shop in Salem six months ago. Since the players were based in Amherst New Hampshire, but Sarah Jacob's was buried in Hanover New Hampshire, this would mean a big of trouble. 

After this the GM creatures a foe for the party. This will often be a Van Helsing type. But I decided to have Maria of Maria's Curiosity Shop be a witch who was interested in capturing Helen and punshing her for her crimes. So the body had been purchased as a lure, with the intent of capturing Helen in a Canopic Jar. However simply throwing a party of monster hunters in the mix is perfectly viable. 

During the session, the players went to Dartmouth Cemetery after learning the details of Sarah Jacobs' burial from the town hall archives. This was somewhat tricky because Ted is a massive snake the size of Titanoboa, and it was an hour and a half to get to Hanover. It was decided at the start of the session that they used a large box truck to transport Ted (flying was an option too as Ruth knew how to make flying ointment, but that was too slow). At the cemetery they found the grave was empty when they dug it up, so they broke into the Cemetery office and Ruth searched the computer. She was able to find email exchanges between the Cemetery Manager and Maria of the curiosity shop. So they drove to Salem. But before they left, Helen cursed Isaac Roberts, the Cemetery Manager to suffer credit card decline for the rest of his days. 

When they reached Maria's Curiosity Shop, it was nearly  midnight and everything was closed, but the shop had a light on inside, which they could see through the storefront window. Ted smashed though the window, letting the alarm go off, and found Maria in a backroom office. There he bit her and drained her life, killing her instantly (Giant Snakes drain life-force in the setting). Helen, who was in her luminous spectral form*, went inside and found a set of stairs leading down. Ted was able to sense a waft of death from beyond the door at the bottom of the stairs and indicated this to Helen. She opened the door and walked in, seeing rows of canopic jars on either wall and a giant sarcophagus at the end of the chamber. As soon as she moved towards it, she was drawn into one of the canopic jars and imprisoned. Sirens began to flare as Ted and Ruth waited in the truck outside, realizing Helen was taking too long. This is where the session ended. 

This was a quick monster rally adventure. We spent an hour or so setting up and about 2 hours playing. We will continue the session next week and it happened to fall on a cliff-hanger moment when we ended. 

Monster rallies are fun because there is no strict tone. They can be horror blended with comedy, and they can also be a bit schlocky. It is also a chance for players take on the roles of monsters in a more casual adventure structure. Something I am thinking of doing is coming up with goal lists to help give players ideas. The main benefit I use them for is an easy and fast way to re-read monster entries. But they are a great option if you don't have anything planned but want to do a quick pick-up game. 

 *During the day she reverted to an inert corpse