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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.
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| Art by Jackie Musto |
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
