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Monsters and Other Childish Things: The Completely Monstrous Edition is an expansion on and improvement of the original game released last year by Arc Dream Publishing. It is, in every way, a great improvement on the original as it not only incorporates a bespoke version of the One-Roll engine (ORE) but also includes some of the best-written advice for players and GMs I’ve ever read in a role-playing game.
Before I go on, note that I’ll refer to this edition of the game as Monsters+ because typing the acronym MAOCT:TCME just looks strange, and a good way.
Monsters+ is a game for those of us who dreamed of having imaginary friends who could keep us company when we were lonely or who would hide under the covers with us while we listened to distant baseball games on an old transistor radio or who would have our backs when those bullies came around. Like they did almost every day when we walked home from school unless we were particularly tricky and detoured through over the shallow creek when their attention was turned on some shiny object or the intricate task of multisyllabic words. Of course that ran us afoul of our mother who wanted to know why our shoes and pantlegs were muddy, like I slipped into the creek on purpose trying to get away from another taunt-fest by a couple of Neanderthal brutes and it would have been infinitely preferable to have a real friend who was a lot bigger and a lot meaner and maybe had claws and really sharp teeth to put a scare into them for a change and let them feel what it’s like to have your stomach flip a somersault when they saw you coming toward them because last time they tangled with you they spent a couple hours in the gullet of your best friend Sir Chompsalot and they’re only walking around today because you asked Sir Chompsalot to spit them out and give them a stern warning and he did because he’s my friend and they’re not but they’d better start treating me nicer because if they don't they can just spend more time in that gullet where…
*cough* What? Oh. *ahem*
Yes. Right. Imaginary friends. If you ever had one or wanted one, this is your kind of game.
Players take the roles of school-age children who have rather interesting imaginary friends. Imagine if Maurice Sendak and H.P. Lovecraft took a bottle of tequila over to Dr. Seuss’s house and came up with a kids’ bedtime story and picture book. Monsters+ is what would have come out of it.
Along with a few decades of psychiatry bills.
Inside the Monster
As I mentioned in the introduction, Monsters+ includes a version of the ORE system (whereas the original required you to have another ORE game such as the free Nemesis version or a commercial game such as Wild Talents or Reign) that is tailored just for this game. Combat resolution, and there is quite a bit of combat in this game, is built to be fast and brutal which makes a lot of sense. After all, you’re playing a kid who has a devoted pet monster who is willing to raze a small town if it’ll make his buddy happy. If you’re even remotely familiar with the ORE system, the dice-rolling will be a breeze. Character creation is quick, easy, and fun. Monsters+ also cranked the added content up to a ludicrous level. Not only did Benjamin Baugh give us a great sample adventure to get your players started, but he wrote up enough antagonists, juvenile NPCs, and sample monsters to give your first campaign a very solid jumping-off point.
The art by Robert Mansperger is delightfully creepy, with a definite Edward Gorey feel to it. I very much liked how Daniel Solis laid out the pages and used to art to its best effect. None of the illustrations break the flow of the text and frequently are perfect accents to what is being discussed around it. And speaking of the text, I have to give kudos to Baugh for the overall tone of the book. I like games that are written with a certain casual conversational tone and a little bit of humor. Baugh hit that tone perfectly and I could almost imagine him reading the book out loud in my head. He has a rather pleasant baritone voice, by the way, with just a little northeastern nasal tone to it, sort of like a combination of Joe Pesci and Boris Karloff (who narrated “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”). At least that’s how I imagine it and since this is my review, that’s what we’re going to go with. It’s a good voice for this game. An author who can be serious but friendly in most places and who also drops in the tidbits that make me laugh out loud (and a damage section that’s titled “Great, Now I’m on Fire” will do that) is a welcome delight.
Lastly, but far from least, there are two chapters that put the quality of this game way over the top. Greg Stolze parachutes in to contribute two chapters – one for players and one for GMs – with advice appropriate not only for Monsters+ but for gaming in general. It is some of the best advice for being a good player and a good GM I’ve ever read. Stolze, with his experience, could have gotten away with a more lecturing tone but he opted for a comfortable conversational style. He assumes nothing about what we do or do not know about gaming and writes in a very straightforward manner about what brings him and those he has gamed with pleasure at the table. I found myself reading them a couple times on my first pass through the book and made a couple notes of my own, for my own edification, in the margins as I’ve read them again. They both include a lot of solid and practical information that may seem obvious to the experienced gamer but would be worth reviewing, if for no other reason than to read Stoze’s take on both sides of the GM screen.
Kids, Monsters, and You
The mechanics for making your very own PC and Monster friend are pretty simple. Each PC has Five basic attributes: Feet, Guts, Hands, Brains, and Face (which is not your actual face, but your clever sneakiness and coolness. Think of it at the Fonzie Stat). Each of those attributes have three skills that relate to each one. You get some points to spread around your stats and some to spread around your skills. Each point is a dice that you can roll to do something, so if you put 2 points into Guts, then anytime you need to see how tough you are, you roll two six-sided dice (ORE uses only six-siders, by the way, so we’ll just call it 2d).
Doing that puts you most of the way there. The real fun is coming up, though.
Now you need to pick some relationships and put a few dice in each one. Relationships are what really drive the game because not only are they the things that provide your PC with motivation and interactions but they’re also the mechanical fuel that feeds your monster.
Yep, you read that right. You use your relationships to feed your monster when it needs that extra something to get the job done. The drawback is that when you use relationships for that, it puts them at risk. They can get damaged and will need some tender time and attention to repair them. They can even get stolen and used by other monsters.
That’s when the real fun starts. Boy wouldn’t it be great to not only beat down those bullies but to humiliate their sad little pathetic monsters, too? And wouldn’t Sir Chompsalot be buff once we kicked some butt, took some names, made their faces burn hot with humiliation, and watched him happily chow down on the things they hold nice and close? Why, I bet you that they’d never bother us again, no sir they wouldn’t…
*cough* Huh? Hmm…okay. Where was I? Yeah, the monster.
After that you get to build you monster. Like kids, monsters have stats but unlike kids they’re built building a series of locations: head, tentacles, claws, body, feet, etc. How you get there is easy. Draw a picture of your Monster. No, seriously. Draw the picture and don’t worry if it looks like an eight-year old drew it. That’s how it’s supposed to look. Look at what you drew and identify areas like the head or those big claws or whatever. Then take the points you have and spread them around by making the parts tough or useful or especially damaging and so on. Once you’re done, and it won’t take long, you have a fully-functional monster like Sir Chompsalot.
If you don’t want to go that route, and because this is an ORE game, you also get your very own One Roll Monster Generator. If you’re in a hurry, you can build a PC and his Monster in less than 15 minutes, relationships and a little backstory included.
All you need from there is a GM and a few other players. As I mentioned earlier, Baugh has included a plethora of potential foes and allies along with enough hooks to get you into a game in relatively little time. Combine that with Stolze’s advice chapters and you can have a pickup game running in very little time. Of course, the game lends itself to longer campaigns as well but it’s nice to know that you can do either one with no trouble whatsoever.
You Want This Game! You Need This Game! You Can Buy This Game!
Until very recently, you could only get Monsters+ as a PDF from IPR or other outlets such as rpgnow.com or e23 for $14.99.
Thankfully, the dead tree version was released on March 31, 2008. You can get it and the PDF in a nice little bundle from Indie Press Revolution as a combo for $29.99 at present. That strikes me as a pretty good deal. I’ve had the PDF for a couple months now and I am quite impressed. It prints very cleanly, and works quite well in a three-ring binder. You can definitely go that route until the book arrives in the mail.
Also, Arc Dream is already cranking out supplements for Monsters+. Baugh is working on The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor (for which you can find some tasty teases and reports from some beta testing here. In the pipeline is also a campaign supplement called Curriculum of Conspiracy: Spring Crescent Middle School by Ross Payton. I’ve not head much about that but I expect it will be of the same high quality of Monsters+ and other Arc Dream products.
So, the Conclusion is what…?
I have been thoroughly delighted with Monsters+. Indeed, I’ve spent a lot of time reading through the game, taking my own notes on a new campaign location and making a few sample characters. My ring binder-bound version of the PDF has been a fairly constant companion since I got it. I can’t recall the last time a game held my attention quite so firmly. I’m already planning a couple sessions with my gaming group in the very near future so I can also write an Actual Play review. I’m eager to see for myself how the game flows.
As for how it might play to your gaming buddies I’ll add this story. One of my gaming group absolutely hates horror/monster games. They creep him out and make him very uncomfortable. I pitched the idea of a Monsters+ game to him cautiously and waited for his reaction. I honestly expected either ambivalence or outright rejection. I didn’t get either one. In fact, I got a lot of interest and amusement and it took about five minutes before he was sold on giving it a whirl.
That’s a game with something special. I heartily recommend it.
