Monster Academy: What would people want?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:20 am

Ok, so I've talked about my ill-conceived ideas about fantasy high school games before. And started writing material for an AS hack based on Monster High.

I started thinking about it again today, and it's probably the easiest of my several game project ideas. Tides of Shadow needs an entire system built, and a complex one at that, even if just to aid in conversion from D&D. The Cthulhu Gurren Lagann thing needs an entire system, but not as complex. Divine Legacy, and a martial arts game I was inspired to create by some cool d6s, are both going to be based on AS, but need significant power system work due to their very different genres. ...though I may try to make them use roughly similar power systems, and might even try to set things up such that their power systems amount to little more than extra disciplines so that if a group was so inclined, they could have vampires, demigods and zen martial artists all running around in one game.

A game about playing immature supernaturals can be a lot more of a straight forward adaptation, so it makes for a good first project.

That said, I know we've had a lot of discussions about the urban fantasy and school days game genres, and I'll be searching those out and compiling stuff, but I'd also like to get a good list going in one place.

So, for people who would be interested in seeing a game about playing young monsters in school, what things would you like to see?

Already, I'm thinking there might be something along the lines of a system for transformation, as I could see new werewolves joining before they've really gotten a handle on their powers and needing to be able to mechanically represent slowly turning into a full werewolf.

There would also probably be something like the "(X) by Night" section of AS describing supernatural schools in various areas, but then the question is, how big of an area could a supernaturally bolstered boarding school reasonably draw from, given that they're dealing with relatively small populations of supernaturals, that are spread out over fairly large geographic areas, and what areas would people like to see schools in? At the least, it seems like a good idea to have established schools in North and South America, the UK and possibly Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and possibly one in Australia, just for geographic coverage.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 6:33 am

Depending on your types of supers (so probably), a school in Antarctica would be a cool move. Less for actual play, of course, but it'd be a really fun option for intercollegiate events and things. Assuming the schools know about each other and interact.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 7:18 am

Yeah, ideally you'd have the schools interacting in some ways. I mean, the core source material for this is seriously Monster High, which has

Cheerleaders

Called fearleaders, because of course

Edit:Basketball Actually, I guess this is soccer, looking at the shin guards and ball. I was confused by the net bag.

Basketball is called Casketball, because this thing runs on goth parents and terrible puns

Baseball

and tennis, soccer, surfing, football and track, but apparently those are harder to pun. And of course, if the syndicates are footing the bill for the schools, then there's really little reason they can't have arbitrary numbers of athletics teams and clubs to keep young supernaturals busy, including some sports that don't have a direct analogue to real world sports, and there really needs to be a Varsity Monster League, because fucking Mutant League was awesome and I don't even like sports.

So yeah, an antarctic school would be pretty interesting. I could see being sent there as a punishment, since it's so remote, and tying into the idea of ancient horrors being trapped in the ice. If you cause too much trouble for your school, you're packed up and shoved through a fae circle into Grand Inquisitor Torquemada's School For Last Chances, where you spend a lot less time being taught to control your new supernatural traits, and a lot more time learning to do so while fighting off dedicated minions of said ancient horrors.

Edit2: Here we go, casketball:

with an image of the male gorgon who does not look like he sprained something, but rather is trying to hide a very idiosyncratic arousal response from looking at Cleo.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 7:22 am

That's a good punishment for the punishers, too, because there essentially aren't any humans to reveal yourself to if you decide to continue your misdeeds.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:20 am

That is also true. Going into town is a privilege held only by the youths who can manage to not vamp out around the normals.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:41 am

Prak_Anima wrote: with an image of the male gorgon who does not look like he sprained something, but rather is trying to hide a very idiosyncratic arousal response from looking at Cleo.

It says he sprained a snake, and a snake is all bound up in bandage tape.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:44 pm

My initial thought would be 1-2 schools per continent, and then the Antarctic is your reform school.

As the author you write up actual entries on both the us ones, one in Europe and the Antarctic. Just mention the others and a basic theme, but write them later if you've got time.

I'd want 6-8 playable monster races at minimum, but I don't think you can hit a top number.

You also will want a "day in the life of" so you explain what non PC students do, and what your pcs do between adventures. then do some sample adventures for your pcs to actually go on.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:57 pm

I totally want subsystems for monster fictitious sports. Such subsystems should involve face/heel mechanics and possibly some sort of popularity/reknown track that rewards showboating while playing said sports.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 12:46 am

erik wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote: with an image of the male gorgon who does not look like he sprained something, but rather is trying to hide a very idiosyncratic arousal response from looking at Cleo.
It says he sprained a snake, and a snake is all bound up in bandage tape.

Right, and I'm saying that sprained snake looks like an erect cock.

Krusk wrote:My initial thought would be 1-2 schools per continent, and then the Antarctic is your reform school.

As the author you write up actual entries on both the us ones, one in Europe and the Antarctic. Just mention the others and a basic theme, but write them later if you've got time.

Sounds good. I already know that the Japanese one would draw heavily on Kill La Kill, complete with seifuku because WCL. Not sure what the US ones would be like, though one will be Covenant controlled and have shades of Catholic school. Maybe the other should be a Communes controlled school on the West Coast that's more liberal. There's of course a school in Scotland that is a take that of Hogwarts.

I'd want 6-8 playable monster races at minimum, but I don't think you can hit a top number.

Yeah, I think this is more a game of Steves. I mean, Monster High seriously has this guy:

"Actually my name is Eyera"
"Of course it is."

I was thinking of doing broad categories, like Lycanthropes, Undead (Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires), Artiface (frankenstein's monsters, robots), Leviathans (Deep ones, gargoyles), Mythics (dragons, djinn, demigods), etc. If I want to support as many MH characters as possible, of course, which I would. I would probably have the broad types give characters a number of set powers, so Lycanthropes would have Warform, or something like it, possibly always on if I want to go full-faithfulness, with maybe a line about turning it off being one of the things they learn, Undead have Revive the Flesh, etc.

You also will want a "day in the life of" so you explain what non PC students do, and what your pcs do between adventures. then do some sample adventures for your pcs to actually go on.

Good idea.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 12:47 am

Josh_Kablack wrote:I totally want subsystems for monster fictitious sports. Such subsystems should involve face/heel mechanics and possibly some sort of popularity/reknown track that rewards showboating while playing said sports.

Yeah... yeah they really should, since in the AS version of Monster High, the sports and clubs and such were established by bored high schoolers.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 1:31 am

One thing I'd note is that if you're lifting AS mechanics lunar power sources don't work so hot at the poles, although that could be perfectly fine if you're really rolling with the "We packed you up north because you suck" theme rather than having it be a standard location.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 2:26 am

Well, given that they were sent there by portals, there could reasonably be portals to better places for lunar recharging, for when they need their students fully powered (Cthulhu's cultists are breaking him free, you lot get to go stop them, here's your gun and clip. If you need another, take it from a dead comrade), but yeah, other than that, it fits the punishment theme.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 4:51 pm

So in this game is there going to be any difference in going to a Monster High School in L.A. versus, I don't know... Tokyo? Each place has its own differences in teaching, and I was wondering how the mindset of supernaturals will be based on geographic/socio-politcal veiws. The other thing I was wondering is... "How long will they keep you in Monster High school", I'm not sure if you can just "drop out" without being hunted down or some such. Which makes the School at the Poles, really interesting forms of detention.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 5:53 am

Yeah, I talk about it a bit in the thread I linked to where I started doing the write up. I imagine there will be some major differences between academies based on location and controlling group (syndicate or cult). St. Porcrugos' in Scotland is seriously a take-that expy of Hogwarts, so they really do say "fuck the three r's, here's potions and countering and a shitty sport" and hand out demerits and have houses and shit. The WCL-run school in Tokyo has a distant faculty with a philosophy of "don't make trouble for us, or break the masquerade, but do whatever you want otherwise" leading to an absurdly powerful student council that is effectively a mini syndicate of it's own (with perhaps a "syndicate" of students who oppose the council), and of course has seifuku. A Covenant-run school in New England is modeled after sexploitation horror's idea of a catholic boarding school, and may even have two campuses for segregated sexes. I like the idea of a west coast school run by the Communes that is basically a Supernatural hippie liberal arts college for underage supernaturals, which probably focuses more on theatre, painting and growing pot and wormwood when it's not instilling control over a student's powers and how bad an idea it is to blatantly break the vow.

As for how long they keep you, well, it depends. Given how little chronological age can mean to supernaturals, they broadly keep you until you've met their criteria for graduation. For schools that only care about adherence to the Vow and not popping your powers off, that could seriously be just a year or two, or even a few months (though they probably go year to year and have scheduled "tests," so it's probably a year minimum). For schools that figure they should continue students' mundane education as well as give them a supernatural education, then they probably keep you until you would normally graduate high school (with a possible additional year or two if the supernatural part is particularly large).

And yeah, for those who won't get the program, they're shipped off to Antarctica and kept until they mend their ways. If they're lucky. There are supernaturals who have been at Antarctica since the academies were established because they pissed off a headmaster, even though they're a couple hundred years old or so (though if they've gotten with the program, they're probably de facto staff by now)

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 01, 2014 6:56 pm

Ok, so I'm trying to figure out how to categorize things for this so that there can actually be characters and rules. Looking at the source material (students only, adding teachers doesn't change a lot, and the actual series is a lot different from the setting implied by the toys) we have the following:

7 Vampires
4 Artificials- including Frankenstein's monsterdaughter, a gingerbread boy she made, a robot, and a voodoo doll-though admittedly, the gingerbread boy and the voodoo doll are of questionable playability
4 Deep Ones- including a lagoon monster, river monster, merman, and a lake monster
2 Gorgons
5 Werecats
2 Mummies
6 Werewolves
3 Zombies
3 Cyclops
2 Elementals- 1 fire, 1 "bone?"
3 Icarid sorts- a Jekyll/Hyde expy, and a couple invisible guys
3 Ghosts
2 Trolls
2 Gargoyles
also...
a yeti
a guy who usually looks like a night elf with tiny antlers, but can change into a horned, furry giant.
a guy with just a big green eye for a head (named Eye-ra, because of course he is)
a genie
a girl based on the Ceryneian hind
a hunchback
a dragon
a minotaur
a banshee
a skeleton
a "boogie (wo)man"
a plant monster
a spider person
a swamp monster
a witch
a guy with three heads
the rock a billy daughter of the phantom of the opera

So, at a first draft, I would probably make the categories something like:
Undead (vampires, mummies, zombies, ghosts, skeletons) (17)
Lycanthropes (werecats, werewolves, metamorph guy) (12)
"Eurekas" (artificials and Icarids) (7)
Leviathans (the deep ones, the gorgons, the swamp, spider and plant monsters and the yeti. So "people with animal or plant qualities," I guess*) (15)
Mythics (Genie, cyclops, elementals, banshee, trolls) (9)
Freaks (Hunchback, three-headed guy, daughter of Phantom. Probably not playable) (3)

This leaves me with the "daughter of the boogieman" (who should have fear and shadow powers), the eye-monster and a witch uncategorized. I suppose the boogie girl could get shoved into Leviathan for the primal nature of fear and darkness, and the witch could possibly be shoved into Eureka, especially if a better term is found.

Anybody got a better categorization scheme?

*Leviathan is including the gorgons, the deep ones, the yeti, golden hind, dragon, minotaur, plant monster, spider person, and swamp monster

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Sep 06, 2014 6:47 am

So, I was thinking more on categorization as I drove my dinner home tonight, and remembered that if this game is meant to be a Monster High game, which it to some extent is, it's really more about playing a Steve, who may just happen to fit into a classical monster trope.

It seems that the way character creation should be handled is by just letting players create a monster by choosing eight powers, a bane material, a suppressor and a distinctive flaw. And occasionally you'll have powers that are always on, like being an invisible boy who is only visible when he wears makeup and clothes. Given that this will generally be a power up (turning invisible simply requires taking your clothes and makeup off, no power point expenditure), it seems that a roughly fair trade off would be another power slot. And then non-luminaries only get a couple powers, so Billy Phaiden seriously just has "Be Invisible," because he spent his other power slot on it being always on. But then, I don't know if that's actually an appropriate trade off. Or whether it's even a big enough deal to worry about.

But yeah, basically players would just say "I want to play a humanoid venus fly trap" and... well, there they'd take a a bunch of Dryad powers, or "I want to be an arachne," and take powers for spinning webs, having six arms, and being poisonous. And then there'd be templates for vampires and werewolves and other classic monsters.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Sep 07, 2014 3:57 am

I'll second your own counter-argument against yourself that the game you're building here definitely seems like it's a game of Steves, so any effort to categorize is moving in the wrong direction. Maximum customization is what you need for your concept, and I have absolutely no clue how to handle the balancing issues that inevitably arise from lots and lots of customization. Good luck with those.

Midnight_v · Post by **Midnight_v** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 10:02 pm

I'd like some reborn and some fallen please. Transhumans...They're my favorites Especially, the fallen. maybe thats the daughter of the boogeyman you're looking for, it certainly fits. Come to think of it you can easily have an icarid be a "beast from x-men, but monstrous or whatever." Not a lot of help but that's what I noticed kind of missing.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:10 am

Ok, so there will be a handful of templates that players can use if they want to be something more defined, like a vampire or a werewolf. Unlike AS, there'll just be one kind of vampire, one kind of werething (choose your critter), etc, because it's a game of steves and if you want your vampire to be snake-based rather than bat based, you can just do that. The number of templates will probably be limited to monsters with more than a plurality in MH, so vampires, animates, werethings, and water monsters. There's a plurality of mythics, but they don't really share traits beyond "inspired by a myth."

Another question that comes to mind is "what powers do people want to see?" Walk of Flame and Chasing the Storm kind of cover a couple elements, and Symphony of Silence/Depths of Despair cover ice/water, but outside of fire, elemental attacks are almost purely advanced sorceries in AS, and it's hard to flavour your direct attacks with elements other than fire, if not impossible. Are shocking grasp and ice dagger powers desired?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:59 pm

I'm not sure about electricity, because while a lot of spooky things run on electricity very few spooky things would expect to be able to zap people as part of their default schtick. Cold, on the other hand, is a huge thing with horror. Being cold sucks, and corpses are cold, and cold places very quickly murder people who aren't super well prepared to be living in them, so you get lots of wendigo-type frost monsters in horror. None of those ever made it into the Universal Horror pantheon, but they crop up in mythologies a lot, obviously with much more of them in the very far northern reaches where things are cold all the time. If you're making a horror-themed game of Steves, having some kind of ice attack available to starter characters is non-optional. Electrical, less so. Frankenstein and iRobot work without electrical attacks, Jack Frost needs ice attacks.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 9:57 pm

Becoming a Monster
Rare is the being who pops up fully empowered and in control of all the abilities it will ever have. Transformation is a gradual process, that can take anywhere from a month to a few nights. Generally speaking, it takes as long to develop your full suite of powers as it would take to heal from aggravated incapacitating wounds--and indeed, for monsters who become such by being reduced to this status find themselves gaining powers as they heal.

When a character becomes a monster, they first gain a Power score, marking them as a supernaturally powerful being, and with this Power Score, they also gain their first power. This is always a core discipline power, and should generally be the most core discipline power of the monster they became. Vampires gain the ability to heal from drinking blood--important when you become a monster by being nearly killed--and werewolves find themselves turning into a literal wolf at the rising of the full moon. Three days (or one healed aggravated slash) after that, they gain their second core discipline power.

Thereafter, every time the character heals, or would heal, at least one aggravated slash, they gain a power. The transformation process works exactly like healing, with the same roll being made, the only difference is that, if you're not actually wounded, you gain powers rather than erasing damage. Powers are gained one at a time, even if you would normally heal two aggravated slashes at a time, you only gain one power for that instance of healing.

Gaining power is only part of becoming an autonomous individual in monstrous society, though. There is also control to be learned. While a seasoned monster may be able to toss lightning bolts and command animate plants as easily as one might tie their shoe, to the newly reborn monster, even their most basic powers are truly mind-bending affairs. When a new monster uses any power, they risk a passion frenzy.

Seasoning
Now that one knows what happens to unseasoned monsters, the question remains how to know when one is seasoned. There is of course the taste test, but mechanically, a monster can be considered to longer be a new monster once they have gained their full suite of powers, spent power points equal to five times the number of powers they possess, and has resisted frenzy when using powers at least twice per power they possess.

Gaining new powers after the initial suite does not make a monster "new" again, though it is not unreasonable for a monster to have to learn to control the new power all over again, through spending five power points in using it and risk frenzy when activating the new power until they've successfully resisted frenzy twice.

In the case of powers which are passive or require no power point expenditure, the rules are slightly different. Passive powers threaten frenzy when their benefits are utilized--when actually speaking to an animal in the case of Tongue of Beasts, for example, or when climbing a wall in the case of Clinging. For powers which require no expenditure of points, the power just counts towards the total number of points required to no longer be considered new. A monster with eight powers, three of which need no expenditure of power points, must still spend 40 power points, they just need to be split up between the five which do require power point expenditure.