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The Good: The writing is as good as it gets. I enjoyed reading this book so much I read passages from it to my friends, who kept smiling and laughing. The artwork does a fantastic job of backing this up, especially the drawings that look like they were done by little kids.
The Bad: The extensive discussion of what a roleplaying game is (25 pages) was too much for me considering this is a very niche product. One player expressed frustration due to the lower chance for kids to succeed at tasks (including kid things).
The Physical Thing
This 186 page hardcover book showcases excellent production values for its $29.99 price tag. The writing is top notch and does a perfect job of drawing the reader into this fantastic world. The artwork is beautifully evocative of the setting, and the child-like drawings are especially fun to look at. Good editing and good organization make the book easy to read and I had little trouble navigating the product.My only complaint is the amount of white space. There are times when the margins are huge. Combined with the lengthy “what is a roleplaying game” section, there’s less material here than some readers might prefer.
Under the Cover
The SettingIt’s a loose setting to say the least, existing more by implication than anything specifically said. At some point in the past the monsters appeared and no weapon possessed by humanity could do anything about it. Monsters bonded with children and now exist just on the periphery of our reality. Depending on what you want it’s either a setting where monsters are strange and almost unknown to adults or where children with monsters are simply a part of life.
Monsters are unique, horrific, and wondrous. They are definitely a major focus of the game, and monster battles between kids are a common staple to any campaign. The other focus is the kids and their relationships. Having a big scary monster can create as many problems as it solves, and thanks to the monster combat mechanics kids often have some relationships that need mending. Depending on your desires this can result in a light hearted game or a very, very dark game.
The Game
Players build the children and monsters from the start, and while the GM mostly plays monsters in the non-combat situations players regularly control both characters. Before we delve into character and monster creation, let’s take a look at the core mechanics.
Monsters makes use of the One Roll Engine (ORE). In ORE players roll pools of d10s (up to 10 dice) and try to match up the same value. The Height of a roll is the number on the die while the Width of the roll is the number of matching dice. Height tends to determine how expertly the action was performed while Width determines speed and power. A die roll of 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9 provides two sets and actions normally use just one. The 3x5 is faster than the 2x7, but the 2x7 is a more competent result. If time wasn’t important then the 2x7 would probably be better when dealing with skill checks and non-combat activities. In combat the 3x5 is likely to be better since it’s faster (and thereby may get past a slower defense) and hits harder. We’ll take a closer look at combat later on.
Children are built using a pool of points for Stats, Skills, and Relationships. Stats include Feet, Guts, hands, Brains, and Face. Each of these starts at 1 and can be bought up to 5 with the 10 points players have to spend. Each stat represents a part of the kid’s body and also serves as hit points for that location when the kid is in some sort of conflict.
| Example: Ashley “Ash” is one of the 4th graders played in the campaign I ran. The concept is an emo 4th grader. Her Stats are Feet 3, Guts 3, Hands 3, Brains 4, and Face 2. She’s fairly well rounded with a somewhat above average intellect for her age. |
All Skills are associated with a Stat and the system simply has you add the two together to determine your dice pool. While the game includes a bundle of appropriate Skills, such as P.E., Courage, and Remember, groups can easily create unique Skills that fulfill similar rolls with no problems. That’s exactly what we did and it resulted in kids with a little more personality. Players distribute 15 dice among Skills.
| Example: Ash has Dodge 1, P.E. 2, The World is Pain 3, I Know Kung Fu 2, Dark Poetry 2, Computers 1, Being Emo Is Cool 2, and Music 2. This ended up being a nice mix of listed Skills and player created Skills which resulted in a distinct feel for the character. |
Finally, each character has six points worth of Relationships. Relationships are very important to the characters. They can be added to dice pools for a greater chance of success, or given to monsters as a sort of hit point buffer. Ultimately they end up taking some hits and characters must spend Quality Time to try and salvage them. Scenes where the kid tries to impress Dad or play with the dog become an important part of the game. The beauty here is that the mechanic drives the story in a direction that results in roleplay focused on the things most important to the character. Relationships can be lost over time and restored through XP expenditures (probably a common way to spend XP). Higher Relationships tend to be more valuable than a variety of smaller ones, but a larger number of smaller ones are probably easier to integrate into the story.
| Example: Ash has several important relationships. Her main relationship is with her mother (Mother: 2) who cares about her but is just too busy with work to spend a lot of time watching her. The emo kids Ash hangs out with (The Gang: 1) are also important since it gives her an opportunity to vent about things only they can understand. Her little sister and the little sister’s cat have also become important to her (Little Sister and Miss Fluffkins each at 1). Finally, all of the characters shared Ms. Guidance the English Teacher at 1 so they would have a relationship in common to easily pull them together when needed. |
Without making use of their relationships most kids have a somewhat low success chance. Many will have one area where they regularly succeed, but we did observe a surprisingly large number of failures during play. This was the biggest problem we encountered, but whether it was due to a string of bad luck on the part of some players or the need to regularly risk relationships on rolls I couldn’t say for sure.
With character creation out of the way let’s talk about task resolution and conflict. Simple tasks are resolved by rolling the relevant combination of Stat + Skill and trying to get a match with enough Height to beat the difficulty. More complex tasks may benefit from more Width to get the job done faster, but in general a simple pair is enough to succeed to most tasks and move on.
Conflicts are different. Conflicts can be verbal or physical, and both hurt quite a bit. Players declare their actions and then roll the relevant dice pool, as above, and take turns acting in order of Width. Successful attacks deal Width damage to one of the five hit locations. Damage is either Shock or Scar damage depending on whether it’s more like a punch or more like being stabbed with a pencil, and the type of damage indicates how long it takes to heal. When any hit location is reduced to zero the kid freaks out and the fight is probably over.
For kids words can hurt as much as anything else and one fun (in a dark way) part of the game was arranging social situations where one kid could simply decimate another. This is how the pretty princess can be the scariest kid in the world to everyone else. She’d never throw a punch, but she can reduce even the toughest kids to tears with a few words. Verbal attacks have the added bonus of actually harming the monster attached to the kid, something that is quite likely to provoke a monster fight.
Speaking of monsters, let’s take a look at them. Every monster has ten hit locations and each hit location contains 5 points worth of ability. This allows for a lot of flexibility in monster creation. Hit locations could be parts of a swarm, tentacles, feet, head, a magical tail, or anything else you can imagine. We tried to devote no more than three hit locations to any single body part. This gave the monsters a lot of worthwhile abilities while also playing up their weirdness. Whether it was a big frog butt that emitted Super Stinky Farts for 8d or a unicorn’s tail that Death Touched at 10d every monster ended up feeling unique.
The points for each location can be used to buy Attacks, Defenses, and Utility powers. Each extra capability sucks away a potential die, so a Sticky Tongue that can both attack and, well, do sticky tongue stuff automatically sucks away one die. The rest of the dice can be used to buy various special stuff. Some possibilities include Tough, which subtracts a point of damage per level, Gnarly, which adds a point of damage per level, Awesome, which allows the player to set the value of a die, and others. My group had no trouble building the monsters we imagined.
The dice are just part of the fun. Every monster has something it Loves, often something weird. This gives it character, provides some leverage for the kid, and can be a wonderful source of humor. Our game was more light hearted so we had things like Stalking Famous People (it always followed the principle around and Google Mapped celebrities) and Eating Dainty Cakes. Monsters also have a way to hide, and our game featured everything from turning into a stuffed animal to warping space/time and staring at the child all day long. Several mechanics tie in with what a monster loves, making it an important part of the character.
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Example: Here’s Klaus the Raptor-ish monster.
Loves: Peanut Butter! Hides: Becomes a stuffed dinosaur. Usually stays in Ash’s backpack. 1-3: Clawed feet. 6d+2wd+ Wicked Fast x4. Can run really fast! 4-5: Body. Defense of 9d due to strong muscles and hide. Has useful hands. 6-7: Tail. Provides perfect balance. May be used for Defense at 9d. 8-10: Head. Bite 8d+2wd+ Gnarly x3 Basically Klaus was a very aggressive monster that could dish out the damage but not necessarily take it. The big combat decision for Klaus’ player was whether to go for a really fast talon attack or superior damage from the bite. |
Monster combat is largely the same as conflicts with kids, only there tends to be more dice and special attacks going on. Monsters don’t fight to the death and want to withdraw when any one of their hit locations is reduced to zero dice from damage. The winner in monster fights takes away a bit of the defeated, basically stealing a permanent die or ability. This makes monster fights serious business for the kids, even apart from the destruction they can cause.
Beyond the actual mechanics there’s a lot of worthwhile support here. Many imaginative NPCs, example kids, example monsters, and general play support are all included. Attention is paid to how the game changes depending on the age of children involved, and a lot of great advice is presented to alter the feel of the game accordingly. Those looking for a well written introduction to roleplaying games and GMing will find a solid discussion of it in the back of the book as well.
My Play Experiences
Monsters worked well in play. The game focused on Halloween adventuring and the sorts of problems that kids with monsters might encounter while trick or treating. We started off with the end of a school day and everyone excitedly described how their kid was handling 4th grade math. The smart kid ended up doing the work for the less smart kids, the princess stared at her bloodthirsty transdimensional unicorn, Klaus was eager for peanut butter cups, and Ribbits the celebrity stalking frog monster could be seen carefully following the principle on his rounds.
The kids went home and then got together later as a parent took them trick or treating in his pick-up truck. At this point some social conflict and monster fights began taking place. The little princess had a strong advantage in both and savaged her opponents monsters with cutting words while her hell unicorn rent their monsters asunder. Then there was candy. The adventure continued with more trick or treating, a haunted house, and then the scariest encounter of all: a drunk parent driving the kids home.
The game held up well in both a mechanical and conceptual sense. Everyone was on board with what the kids would act like, and the ORE system easily handled any monster action. While some kids did have trouble succeeding at actions, I think this is because we weren’t risking relationships often enough. The real focus of the game is on those relationships, and by frequently risking them the kids are forced to frequently do Quality Time to fix them back up. It’s a beautiful mechanic and for a longer campaign I have no doubt that it works very well.
