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tabletopmonsteroftheweek · 2 months

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Community Monster #2- The Local Supermarket

A supermarket that seems to have appeared… or has it always been here? It's hard to remember. But Jenny next door said its great; the deals are affordable and the staff is really friendly. She's taking her kids with her to it now, and offered I go with too.She was right though, the staff is really friendly… but I cant seem to remember where I parked…

Type: Bubble (motivation: to keep inside things inside, and outside things outside)

Effects:

Entering the bubble creates an identical clone of the person who entered. The original person becomes trapped in the bubble. This clone has the original's memories but it's only motivation is to get more people to enter the bubble.

The phenomenon is centered on the local supermarket. People who go shopping there find that they cannot leave, as the parking lot endlessly loops them back to the store. Everyone who visits is trapped inside, and the store's stock is rapidly running out as panic overtakes the shoppers. Worse, there's more than just customers lurking between the aisles…

Weakness: The people who go missing are taken deep into the store's employee-only area and hooked into a horrific organic computing system, that uses them to maximize the store's profits and consumer exploitation. If the hunters remove all the victims from the system, the store and its clones rapidly deteriorate.

Custom: If a hunters are forced into the machine, they must roll Act Under Pressure to escape. On a 10+, they escape it with no issue. On a mix, they take 1 harm ignore armor the implants dig into their flesh and veins or tear out of them. On a miss, they are restrained and trapped there- the other hunters must free them in order for them to get out. If they try to use any move, they take -1 ongoing until they're freed.

Minion: The Employees

They only wish to keep the supermarket going nice and smoothly. They are overly friendly and seemingly nice, but if anyone attempts to escape they become rabid and almost feral-like. Eventually, they will lead shoppers to the Profit-Taker, a bio-mechanical super computer located in the "manager's office" below the store.

Type: Renfield (motivation: to push victims towards the monster)

Supernatural powers, if any: Stronger than humans, weirdly more durable, superhuman speed

Attacks: Razor-sharp nails (1 harm hand) Thick, rubbery skin(+2 armor)

Harm: 7

Weakness: The Supermarket's main source for maintaining order is its employees. The employees have extra strength and durability, however, are extremely sensitive to heat and flames. This is because they are extremely susceptible to getting fired. Using fire on them causes them to lose their armor.

#monster of the week #motw #monster of the week rpg #motw rpg #community threat #phenomena stat block

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deadofnightcomic · 4 months

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This roadtrip may have gotten a little sidetracked

#anyway read don #dead of night comic #dead of night #original comic #ezra graves #monster of the week rpg #wren vulf #global comix #original character #tiny wren #tiny ezra #margaritaville #rock afire explosion #Billy bob’s wonderland #point pleasant #mothman #pigeon forge

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eric-the-bmo · 9 months

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[John Doe, the Monstrous]

"Keep the wolf from the cattle."

"She's no safer with him than she is with you."

As a witch-cursed monster, John Doe is a man who only wants love; However, despite being confined to a human form, his monstrous instincts still reside- resulting in bouts of violent hunger, ruined relationships, and self-hatred.

After accidentally revealing his nature to the rest of the main characters, John has failed to repair his once-budding relationships with them, and most view him as a source of danger.

(An explanation for the quotes, each image, and the board in a unified picture will be under the Read More, as well as a bit of rambling):

It's been a while since I've made a board like this, and I forgot how strangely enjoyable it is to see it all come together.

There were multiple routes I could've gone for this board: his love for humanity, emphasis on his self-hatred and idolization issues, his violent hunger and how it ties into his want for love, but I went with the flow and ended up with a general board; a vaguely ominous one, with the blow softened by the query if he can be loved.

The quote below the board ("She's no safer with him than she is with you") is a direct line from John's story, where Louis states in a conversation with John he's as much a threat to Song as the current monster they're up against [John didn't take kindly to this statement, since while the monster is acting with ill intent, he himself is at least trying to be benevolent.]

Panel Elaboration: {going left to right, starting at the top row & working our way down}:

The antlers have been on his pinterest board for a while; it's a call to his deer imagery, and of coursse the fact he was heavily inspired by the Not Deer cryptid. He even grew a pair of antlers when he first revealed his more monstrous side.

I think with with how the hair is covering most of the face here- and how it's more of a side profile- only adds to the intrigue of this board. Something about how the lack of clear face only adds to the monstrous/cryptid energy. (perhaps turning away/leaving so others won't get hurt?)

The road illuminated by headlights is actually in reference to his backstory- upon turning into a human, he ran out onto a road and ended up meeting what would eventually become his first (and, currently, only) friend. The woods were also his primary hunting grounds as a monster, and can be seen on the edges of the road.

John's story mainly takes place in a suburb; Additionally his monstrous nature and instincts fully showed themselves during the Season One finale, when he was searching for a monster at midnight- so the time of the image fits great.

As mentioned before, the question of "but who could love me?" ties into John's core belief (that he cannot be loved if people know he's a monster) and one of his core character traits (desire for love and company). To me, this line, in tangent with the rest of the violent images, implies his sense of self-hatred.

As for the teeth: While John is inspired by the Not Deer, there's been a continuous trend throughout the story (and his official playlist) of associating him with dog/wolf imagery. Additionally, nearly every attack John has done has been with his maw.

John's second method of harm would be his claws; He hasn't used them much, but I wanted to include images for both of his attack methods- this could also be symbolic of his attempted self-restraint. Truly, I just needed to fill this part of the board up.

The term "witch-cursed" was used to describe John earlier in this post- around three years ago, John, as a monster, had attempted to attack a witch who was practicing a ritual in its woods. Her ritual backfired from its attack, resulting it being bound to a human form. This spiral of stones in a forest clearing is meant to be the ritual setup for the spell she was trying to attempt.

Finally, the bloodied sidewalk steps are meant to be for the scene in the Season One finale in which John attacked Song in a frenzy by attempting to tear out her throat. I feel like the image of blood adds to the image of him being a dangerous creature; if it weren't here, the message probably wouldn't have been properly conveyed.

His story's hiatus is ending tomorrow, and I'm looking forward for his tale (and subsequent suffering) to continue.

"He's a bit of a tragedy, isn't he?"

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somanyfuckedupiftruebooks · 2 years

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Hey so are there any TMA fans out there who play the Monster of the Week RPG (by Michael Sands/Evil Hat Productions)? Or vice-versa, any MOTW players who are fans of The Magnus Archives? If so, would anyone be interested if I wrote up a bunch of TMA-inspired mysteries and released them as downloadable game resources? (They would be free obviously.)

I've already run a hunt based on Jane Prentiss's statement for my players, and now I am working on a hunt inspired by Angela the Flesh witch from Piecemeal. So if there's any interest I might start working on a whole series of premade hunts/myteries that Keepers could freely use.

I'm not thinking about translating the entire series into a campaign or anything, because honestly I don't think TMA's cosmic horror/tragedy narrative would actually work in the context of an RPG which is fundamentally based on being able to beat the monsters in a fight and save everyone (although hey, if you think you can do it I would love to be a player in your game). But damn if the series isn't full of a bunch of scary monster ideas that I, a lazy Keeper, would have a lot of fun making my players hunt and kill for my own amusement.

#my posts #any feedback on this idea would be appreciated #motw #motw rpg #monster of the week #monster of the week rpg #evil hat productions #tma #the magnus archives #magnuspod #magpod #the magnus archives is a podcast

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nice-try-skinwalker · 10 months

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Tumblr seems to like art and OCs so here’s one of my old things I made when I had absolutely 0 experience: a character I played in a Monster of the Week game, Isaac a Spooky who instead of getting cool magic powers is haunted by visions and sees ghosts

#monster of the week rpg #motw #monster of the week #oc artwork #ttrpg art #motw oc #motw art #digital art #art

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dnallohleoj · 1 year

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I've been following a LOT of Monster of the Week podcasts recently, of varying quality, but there's one thing I've come to believe after listening to so many.

Keepers. If you want to get 6 seasons and a movie out of your game with your players? Let them reset their Luck when they change Playbooks. Nearly every Playbook has a condition that lets you change it, and there are some story beats where it'd make sense either way. But that's not worth much if they're just as close to Doom as they were before.

Let them reset their Luck. It's not unfair to the players that choose to keep one playbook if all your players are on the same team. Which they should be.

#motw #monster of the week rpg

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anim-ttrpgs · 28 days

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Why I Dislike PbtA Games, and How Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is Their Opposite

@tender-curiosities

It is no secret that I hate PbtA games.

Though due to a recent misunderstanding regarding another post, I’m going to preface this post by saying that this is going to be a very opinionated post and

I do not seriously think that PbtA games are inherently bad, though I may sometimes joke about this.

While I do often question the taste of people who make and play PbtA hacks, I do not think poorly of their moral character.

While I am going to call for PbtA to be used less as a base for games in the future, I’m not saying that the whole system and all games based on it should be destructified. It’s good for what it’s good for, but unless you’re doing that, I really think you should use something else.

Now that that is out of the way, here’s what I have to say about it.

My first experiences with PbtA games were pretty rough. Monster of the Week was not the first, but it was one of the first ‘indie’ TTRPGs I played after having previously played mostly only D&D3.5e and 5e. I really appreciated that the use of 2D6 over a D20 meant that the dice results would be more predictable, and I really liked the various “classes” I was seeing. (At this time, I didn’t really understand that they weren’t really “classes” at all, though I think I can be forgiven for this because many people, even people who like PbtA games, still talk like “classes” and “playbooks” are interchangeable.)

I was very enthusiastic to play, until it came time to start actually “making” a character, and found that I couldn’t “make” a character. I wanted to make a nuanced, three-dimensional PC who was simultaneously stereotype-affirming and stereotype-defying, with a unique backstory and dynamic with the other characters—but when I went to actually fill out the character sheet for basically any “class”, I found that most of the backstory and most of the personality for my character was being set for me by the playbook. It felt like the only thing about the character I really had a say in was their name, and that two PCs of the same playbook would actually turn out to be almost identical characters. At the time, I thought this was very restrictive and very bad design.

Later, now that I understand the design intent behind it, I still think of it as very restrictive, but I think of it as very bad design for me, not inherently bad.

When I play a TTRPG, I want more freedom in who my PC is. That doesn’t mean I want less rules, in fact having more rules can often increase freedom, but that’s a different post. I want to create original, unique characters, that I won’t see anywhere else. If it’s a class-based system, I want that class to barely touch the details of my character’s backstory or personality, so that I can come up with something original and engaging for why and how this “Fighter” fights. This means that two level-1 Fighters, despite having almost the same mechanical abilities, will potentially be very different people.

PbtA games don’t let you do that. In a lot of PbtA games, you’re not playing your own original character, you’re playing someone else’s character, that every other player that has picked up the same playbook before you has played. It’s more like “character select” than “character creation.” I think I could liken it to playing Mass Effect or The Witcher. Every player may pick a few different dialogue choices in those games that change the story, but we’re still all playing Shepherd or Geralt. No one is going to experience a new never-before-seen story in Mass Effect or The Witcher, which is very much a factor of them being video games and not TTRPGs, and therefore limited to the amount of code, writing, and voice-acting that can go into them.

This anonymous asker who sent a message to @thydungeongal seems to feel pretty similarly to me about PbtA games, and @thydungeongal's response is a very good response about how people find this appealing.

I have more respect for PbtA now than I did, but I still don't like it because to me it seems to play so much against what I consider to be the strengths of TTRPGs as a medium, much like how video games like The Last of Us and David Cage games play against the strengths of the medium of video games, and I will never like it. But other people clearly do, so to each their own.

Then another reason I don’t like it is because I think it’s oversaturating the TTRPG space. I’ve referred to PbtA before as “indie D&D5e”, and i do think that’s a reasonable comparison, because in much the same way that you always hear “D&D5e is a system that can do everything”, I think a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the PbtA system is a system that can do anything. It’s kinda the système du jour for indie TTRPGs right now, and many iterations of it make it clear that many designers do not consider how PbtA differs from more traditional TTRPGs, and how it is specialized for different types of TTRPG gameplay. Just like how I feel PbtA isn’t playing to certain important strengths of TTRPGs, I think that many—maybe even most—PbtA hacks don’t play to the strengths of PbtA. But this isn’t really PbtA’s fault, that comes down to any individual indie TTRPG developer on a case-by-case basis. And the cure for that is something I’m always saying: If you are going to be a writer, you have got to read lots of books. If you are going to be a director, you have got to watch lots of movies. If you are going to be a video game developer, you have got to play lots of video games. And if you are going to be a TTRPG designer, you have got to read and play lots of TTRPGs. That and you have to understand that TTRPGs are specialized. Even "agnostic" systems like PbtA are somewhat specialized, and therefore might really not be a great fit for the game you’re trying to make.

That and, to get more subjective again, there’s like an ocean of them, and I don’t even like the ones that are actually good.

Now that I’ve talked about how I don’t like PbtA games, I’m gonna talk about a game I do like: Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. Obviously, I like it because I’m the lead writer for it, but I would also like it even if I wasn’t the lead writer for it, because it’s just my kinda game. Eureka is the opposite of a PbtA game. I wrote it to play to what I feel are the strengths of the TTRPG medium.

Eureka’s character creation uses personality traits as a mechanical element of the character, but it does so in a deliberately freeform way. You build your character’s personality out of a list of traits, so who your character is is very much linked to what your character can do, but we aren’t just handing you a pre-made character.

Eureka is designed to incentivize organic decision-making by the PCs, most often by the mechanics of the game mirroring the world they live in. Every mechanic aims to create situations wherein “what will the PC do next?” is a question whose answer can be predicted - it doesn’t need to be ordained by a playbook.

One of my favorite examples of this is, rather than a “Fear Check” forcing the PC to run away if they fail, or “Run Away from Danger” being a “Move” on their character sheet, Eureka opts for the Composure mechanic. The really short version is that one of the main things that lowers a PC’s Composure is encountering scary stuff, and the lower a PC’s Composure, the more likely they are to fail skill checks, and the more likely they are to fail skill checks, well, the less brave they and their player probably feel about them standing up to this scary monster. So if the PC has low Composure, they are more likely to choose to run away. The lower their Composure, the better idea that will seem.

This system really really shines when it comes to monster PCs in Eureka. Most monsters benefit a lot more from having high Composure, but have fewer ways to restore Composure than mundane PCs. Their main way to restore their Composure is by eating people. The rulebook never says “your monster PC has to eat people”, but more likely than not, they’re going to be organically steered towards that by the game and world itself. Sure, they could decide to be “one of the good ones”, and just never eat people, just like you reading this could decide to stop eating food. You technically could, but when your body starts to fail, how long would you? (This is a big part of the themes of Eureka and what it has to say about crime, disability, mental illness, and evil. People don’t just arbitrarily do bad things, it is often their circumstances that leads them down that path until they see little choice for themselves in that matter, and “harmful” people are still just as deserving of life as people who “aren’t harmful”, but that really deserves its own post.)

It has been said that Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually arrives at much the same end as the PbtA game Monsterhearts, and I actually don’t disagree, but it gets there from an entirely different starting point and direction. The monster PCs in Eureka are very likely to eat people and cause drama, but it won’t be because they have “Eat People and Cause Drama” as a “Move” on their character sheet.

Monsters in Eureka have a lot of abilities, which they can use to solve (and create) problems as the emergent story emerges organically.

(Oh and Eureka is about adult investigators investigating mysteries, and sometimes those investigators are monsters, not about monster kids in high school, to be clear. The same “end” that Eureka and Monsterhearts reach is that of the monsters being prone to cause problems and drama due to the fact that they are monsters, though this isn’t the sole point of Eureka, just one element of it.)

You can pick up the free shareware version of this game from the download link on our website, or the full version for $5 from our Patreon.

And don’t forget, Eureka is fundraising on Kickstarter starting on April 10th, 2024! We need your support there most of all, to make sure we hit our goals and can afford to make the best version of Eureka we can make!

Interested in branching out but can’t get your group to play anything but D&D5e? Join us at the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club, where we nominate, vote on, and play indie TTRPGs, all organized by our team with no strict schedule requirement! Here's the invite link! See you there!

We also have merchandise.

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vexwerewolf · 1 year

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Tabletop Roleplaying Systems as DHMIS Stills

Promethean: The Created

Shadowrun

Vampire: The Requiem

Hunter: The Vigil

Shadow of the Demon Lord

Monster of the Week

GURPS

Dungeons & Dragons 5E/D&D One

Starfinder

Call of Cthulhu

Eclipse Phase

Delta Green

Mage: The Awakening

Don't Rest Your Head

Cyberpunk RED

Lancer

FATE Core

Literally Any Warhammer 40K TTRPG

Transformers RPG

Pathfinder

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awkwardtypo · 4 months

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I made custom card decks for my Monster of the Week game! I ended up laminating them so players can use permanent and dry-erase marker to note advancements, stats, etc. (You can erase Sharpie by writing over it with Expo marker.)

I also have a larger, large-print set for a player with low vision (not pictured).

I'm working on making the Publisher file and PDF available as a template.

#monster of the week #ttrpg #motw #evil hat games #rpg #tabletop #gaming

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haveyouplayedthisttrpg · 3 months

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Have you played MONSTER OF THE WEEK ?

By Michael Sands

Most people don’t believe in monsters, but you know the truth. They’re real, and it’s your task to bring them down.

Monster of the Week is a standalone action-horror RPG for 3-5 people. Hunt high school beasties a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, travel the country to bring down unnatural creatures like the Winchester brothers of Supernatural, or head up the government investigation like Mulder and Scully. This book contains everything you need to tackle Bigfoot, collar a chupacabra, and drive away demons.

A Powered by the Apocalypse game

#tabletop rpg #ttrpg #monster of the week #motw #pbta #powered by the apocalypse #usa #2010s

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tabletopmonsteroftheweek · 2 months

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This one would of been a phenomenon mystery concept, however none of the phenomenon types really... felt right/fit it to me? It's essentially a big building, so it doesn't move. But having attacks is also weird to give it, idk.

The House always wins

People on the Vegas strip have gone missing, many believing that they got drunk and lost their way. The cause? A casino, the High Roller, has suddenly had a influx on winners, taking a trip to the penthouse suite to "spend the rest of their lives" at... or at least the last of their lives.

Monster: Aspect of Greed

Type: Parasite (motivation: to infest, control, and devour

The aspect of greed has taken over an existing casino, turning it into low stake high reward. It draws in new players with its low stakes and, those at are lucky enough to hit jackpot multiple times (which is once-twice daily), they are brought up to the penthouse. There the Aspect infests itself into the lucky winner, slowly draining them until they are nothing but dry husks. However, if they prove their worth they instead become the Staff, where they lead more people into the casino effectively giving it more prey.

Powers:

Addiction

Game Manipulation

Luck Detection

Weakness: The House Always Wins in the end... except when it doesn't. Much like gambling addicts, the Aspect of Greed will raise the stakes if it means the reward for itself is far greater. This will mean that it will take riskier bets, such as self-banishment if it loses a game. However, you HAVE to build up to it- it will not jump straight to that if it were just a normal game. Raise it over time, let it win some, get its ego up before the big bets.

Otherwise, using Big Magic in the casinos that circle around it will banish it out of the High Roller. However, this will mean the party is split as it sends minions out to stop the ritual once it knows what's going on.

Armor does not take into account for either- when it loses games it takes around 1-10 harm ignore armor depending on how high the stakes are.

Attacks:

Life-absorbtion- 2 harm close far ignore armor

It's a literal building (+3 armor)

Harm: 15 harm

Custom Moves:

Let the Games Begin- When the players challenge the Aspect, they will take turns on which game is being played. Meaning, the Aspect picks the game first, then the hunter, then back to the Aspect. It goes back and forth until theres one winner, and the hunter does have a chance to lose. All rolls will be done with Act Under Pressure because they ARE under pressure.

Only one hunter can challenge the Aspect to the game. However, that does not mean the other hunters cannot help in other ways as well. The Aspect's Staff will try to tilt the favor to the Aspect at any given chance. The Hunters not playing will have to keep an eye out and stop them before they do something to make the playing hunter lose. To the Aspect, so long as it's not the one cheating, it's not at fault. It will be annoyed if the playing Hunter uses that logic as well, but won't block it.

Addiction/Just One More Game...- The Hunters can easily fall under the influence of the Aspect should they play its random casino games. In order to snap out of it, they must roll Act Under Pressure.

On a 10+, they snap out of it. On a mix, they leave it alone but the temptation is there... they have -1 forward if they play another game (yes, that includes the challenge against The Aspect.) On a miss, they cannot stop playing, it's way too addicting! They have -1 ongoing while in the casino, including the final battle with the Aspect. Maybe one more spin will get them the jackpot...

Minion: The Staff

Type: Renfield (motivation: to push victims towards the monster)

People under the influence of the Aspect of Greed that weren't turned into husks. They lead people into the High Roller, scope out who has better luck, and then make sure they win so that they can go to the penthouse above. The richer the soul, the better luck they have.

Powers:

Game Manipulation

Soul Sight

Attacks:

9mm (2 harm close loud)

Brass Knuckles (1 harm hands small)

Harm: 5 harm

Custom Moves:

Game Manipulation: The Staff will turn the tides of a game no matter what, mostly subtly.

Bystander: Gamblers

Type: Victim (motivation: to unknowingly put themselves in danger.)

These are just random players in the casino. They do not know what they have got themselves into. They will more than likely refuse to leave with the hunters to go anywhere unless convinced that this area is not safe. Otherwise, they will slowly fall under the influence of the Aspect, continuously playing games until they hit their lucky streak and head up to the pent house.

#motw #monster of the week #monster of the week rpg #motw rpg #monster of the week mystery concept #motw mystery concept

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