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Monsterpunk

Monsterpunk by Bailywolf

I always liked the game Nightlife.

It’s a mess mechanically, and is filled with things bordering right on the edge of goofy, but goddamn do I like it… it’s sensibility… it’s lack of pretension. Nightlife is a game about monsters living among and feeding upon humanity, and often looking good doing it. All the classics are represented- vampires, werewolves, ghosts, evil spirits, frankenstines, demons… plus about forty ‘second stringers’ running the gamut from ogres to Japanese vampires or the ever-charming floating-head-and-guts pelagganan.

Anyhow, while it was never objectively as good as Vampire and it’s cousins, I always like Nightlife better. Nightlife seemed to whisper to me, “Hey… being a Vampire kicks ass. Trust me. It totally rocks.” While Vampire seemed to say, “Hey… being a vampire… well, it sucks if you must know. Yeah, you get powerz, but they’ll sort of blow, and the older monsters will still ass-rape you if they feel like it, and you can’t do anything to stop them because you basically suck- FEEL THE ANGST, BITCH!.”

I look through my Nightlife books every month or so, fondly remembering the games I played and ran… and then it hits me today that I could damn well combine my current WUSHU craze with my old Nightlife love, and the resulting monster would rise form the table, throbbing with awesome power, and either destroy me or go forth and do my evil bidding in the gaming world.

I am shameless lifting the basic structure and a couple of amazingly clever concepts from our own most excellent GregPogorzelski, and his exciting DungeonPunk project.

You be the judge of how my mad experiment turns out.

Time to Create, a Monster!

Basic terminology Changes

Chi becomes Guts (thanks to GregPogorzelski for this change in particular). Yang becomes Slash (as in Slash Dice) Yin becomes Flinch (as in Flinch Dice)

Slash and Flinch may be lame. Suggestions would be welcome.

Characters have three Aspects, and each Aspect has an associated type of Trait. Divide 6 points between the Aspects. You have an effective Trait rating of 2 with all things which fall into an Aspect, and points in a Trait add to this. You have 3 points per point of Aspect to add to Traits, none greater than +3. Traits much be fairly specific.

In a conflict, Aspect represents your basic die cap in a given situation (the number of dice you can generate from basic details), and Traits are what you try and roll these dice under. For scab rolls, you roll dice equal to your aspect against a Trait of that Aspect, trying to get as many successes as possible. Here are the Aspects and their associated Traits:

Breed: What kind of monster are you? One of the classics, or something more unique? Breed gives you Edges- supernatural powers beyond the understanding of mortal men. Examples:

• Vampire (mesmeritic gaze, turn to mist, supernatural strength, preternatural constitution, batform, predatory allure, the dead move fast, savage claws, addictive bite, storm control).
• Werewolf (predator’s senses, lycanthropic form, beast-speech, invulnerability, wolf-form, savage claws, longstride, scent emotions, inspire terror, supernatural strength, hellish bad breath).
• Ghost (materialize/immaterial, chill touch, invisibility, poltergeist, dream manipulation, possession, levitation, aura of terror).
• Frankenstein (unstoppable strength, brilliant brain, surgeon’s hands, indifferent to cold, artist’s eyes)

History: How old are you? What kind of experiences have you had? What have you seen and done? What can you do? History gives you the chance to learn Skills- the knacks and abilities you’ve picked up over a possibly very long life. Examples: Deadly Swordsman, Pistol Fighter, Occult Lore, Good with the Ladies, Brilliant Liar, Political Savvy, Computer Programming, Hacking, Skulking in Shadows, Breaking & Entering, Alarm Systems, Blowing Things Up).

Humanity: How close are you to the humans around you? How easily can you get along with them, and form meaningful relationships with them? Humanity is a bit of a trick, because even monsters need a bit of it to get along with each other. Humanity gives you Relationships- with people, ideals, causes, and organizations- which ground you in the social world. By nurturing these Relationships, you can maintain at least a semblance of Humanity. Relationships are also something you can call on for influence and aid in and outside of action situations. Examples: Watch over Mortal Descendants, Member of the 9th Street Howlers, In love with Detective McKinney, Supports the Democratic Party, The Cult of the Black Tentacle).

Now, describe the following for your character:

Tell: something that reveals to a careful observer that you aren’t as human as you seem. Some Tells will be more obvious than others (examples: a Zombie is a big stinky rotting corpse, while a Vampire doesn’t cast a reflection…).

Ward: something that repulses you or shocks your unnatural nature. When forced to directly confront something protected by your Ward, you act with a Trait value of 1. Circumventing or removing a Ward is a -/-/3 Threat (you need 3 successes to get rid of the ward, and act with your normal Trait value… of course, a buddy with a different Ward could help you out…).

Bane: something that harms you which wouldn’t harm a mortal. Breeds lack many of the weaknesses of mortal flesh, but gain some new ones. Contact with a Bane acts as a -/2/2 Threat (you need 2 successes to avoid damage every turn of exposure, and 2 total additional successes to escape exposure to the Bane). If this comes into an action scene, it will add to the scenes base Threat (a 3/1/- monster hunter would become a 3/3/2 monster hunter, for example). Getting hurt by a Bane really sucks, and for each point of Guts you spend to resist Bane damage, you loose 1 point from the Edge of your choice. (examples: vampires fear sunlight, while werewolves fear silver).

Bloody Action

This is still WUSHU, remember?

Anything requiring characters to take action is rated as a Threat. A Threat rating has three parts, noted as three numbers separated by a slash, like so: 1/2/5

The first number is the number of total Slashes you need to take the Threat out. The second number is the number of Flinches you need to avoid harm in a given Turn. The last number covers secondary goals for the scene, and is the number of additional successes (of any type you like) needed to accomplish it. For example, if you are attack a bunch of evil (well, eviler than you anyhow) cultists about to raise an Old One beneath New York, the first number is what you have to get to waste all the cultists, the second number is their potential to hurt you back, and the last number is what it will take to disrupt the summoning. It might be possible to kill all the cultists, but still be too late to stop the summoning, or to stop the summoning and not kill all the cultists.

Splatter Dice

What the fuck is Splatterpunk? It’s the sort of horror without any subtle cuts to hide the mutilation. Anytime a player wants, he can claim as many Splatter Dice as he wants. These should be a different color than normal dice, and are always Slashes. For each die, the player must add some gory details to his narration (beyond any he included anyway because he is a sick bastard)- if anyone at the table pukes in disgust, all these dice are automatically successful. If no one pukes, they are rolled normally. There is a catch though. Indulging in this kind of graphic slaughter ends to erode even a monster’s humanity. Each Splatter Die that comes up 1 knocks a point off the Relationship of the player’s choice. Sorry honey, but every time I look at you I see the hell-bitch I disemboweled yesterday. I have to leave.

Guts

All Characters have Guts- and sometimes they fall out onto the pavement. All the Breeds are basically immortal, and really quite hard to kill permanently, but getting killed temporarily is sort of a pain in the ass. When you have no Flinches to defend yourself with, you have to spend 1 point of Guts to ward off each Slash. If you don’t have enough Guts, then you temporarily die, drop out of the current action, and wake up later on. However, dying is hard on the system, and each time this happens you loose 1 point from a History trait of your choice.

Getting and keeping Guts is pretty important then, so how do you get more Guts when people start trying to pull a Van Helsing on you? You’ve got some options

All characters start with 3 Guts, and between adventures return to 3. There are ways to gain Guts beyond 3, however, though these extra points are also lost between adventures.

Feed: Once per session, you can Feed on humanity (as appropriate to your Breed), gaining a point of Guts.

Splatter: If all the splatter dice you roll in a turn are successful, gain Guts equal to the number of dice. If any fail, then nothing happens (beyond you slaughtering someone, of course).

Catch your Breath: You can sock back 3 successes in combat once per session to gain back a point of Guts.

Kicking Ass: If you roll all successes, and also more snake-eyes than you have current points in Guts, then gain back a point for kicking ass.

Cannibal Buffet: If you beat a Nemesis who is also a monster, you can consume his essence like the right bastard you are. Of course this is frowned upon by the elder types, but fuck those old assholes, right? Gain Guts equal to your entree’s Breed score- multiple PC monsters can divide up this yummy payoff. Any monster who looks at you can tell how many other monsters you’ve eaten this way. Some don’t much care for that kind of thing.

Doing Something Hella Cool: Every player around the table can once per session give anyone else around the table a bonus die, and if that die comes up a success the roller gains a point of Guts AND the person who gave then the die gets a point of Guts.

Using Guts

Obviously, the main use for Guts is keeping your character alive… or unalive.. or nondead… or what the hell ever. But if you want, you can spend a point to re-roll any failed dice in pool (and obviously you can’t then gain guts from this roll in any way shape or form).

What happens if you end up with more than 3 Guts, and don’t want to kiss it by-by at the end of the adventure? You can spend extra Guts to improve your Traits during play. The cost to improve a Trait is your current rating minus 1. For example, to bump a trait up from the default value of 2 to 3, would cost 1 point of Guts. Pretty fly, eh? This is a good way to stay on top of the degrading effects of too much Splatter, getting killed too often, or getting slapped around by your Bane.

RPGnet Thread

• http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=198096

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