Sylvia Lilith

I’m struggling with a good name for the system. I’m going with #MonsterCore TTRPG for the hashtag so I don’t lose these posts until I have a better one. I'm going to use stock art from deposit photos and shutterstock for this project for the time being, since I am no artist and buying that art is the most ethical way to do art for this on a budget. All art in this post is from Kalleeck on Shutterstock If this becomes something I publish, I'll probably have to kickstart to afford custom art (including getting art for female characters that lets us be as monstrous as we deserve) - and if it gets to that point, I'm also going to need someone to help me remember to breathe because I'll be so excited.

Calling this post Devlog 0 because I want to like, pretend to be formal and professional about it. So for the Devlog 0, I thought I’d start off by talking about the high level goals for this system. Which is sort of like gathering the flavor and make sure I’m hitting the right notes - in other words, if this were to blow up and I’d have the option of hearing about what happened at a 100 sessions of this game, what would I expect to hear in the majority of those tales? ¹

Someone playing something like this as a PC would be part of it

I would expect to see people of all walks of life having fun transitioning into monsters. Being able to cut loose with their abilities in a way that’s cathartic and fun. Some would be struggling with their nature or exploring deep tales of identity, but that would be because that table chose to go that route. Some would be dealing with deep intrigues fighting against SCP style organizations that want them contained, others would be protecting (or fighting against) a world that hates and fears them, some would be just straight up supervillains battling so-called heroes that wanted to impose their idea of justice, but at the end of the day they would all be “having fun cutting loose and being monsters and having cathartic fun.”

That…informs more than you might think. I want everyone to enjoy it, so it has to be inclusive. The fact that I want there to be a variety of playstyles in terms of stories means I can’t make this too setting dependent, the system itself needs to be relatively setting agnostic. For an example, take Dungeons and Dragons. Nothing in the rules mandates you play on Faerun or Eberron or Greyhawk, but it does make the assumption you will be playing in a fantasy setting with mostly pre-industrial technology where powerful magic is possible and there are presumably Dragons to plunge into a Dungeons to explore ². That leaves a lot of room for creativity, but if you wanted to play superheroes on modern day earth, it wouldn’t be the ideal system.

So with this system I can assume that everyone’s playing a monster, which means leaving the rules for non-monsterous characters as something for the dungeon master. In addition, I want the fights to be fun, so that means building the rules in a way that taking damage isn’t too punishing, and to be cathartic, meaning I need to make sure the rules allow the players to have awesome moments but also deal with a risk of failure so there’s tension to gain catharsis from. And the transformation aspect also means I need to bake in a progression system to allow players to develop in their powers.

PCs will have option for humanoid forms so they can still function in stealth - although the transformation will be jarring.

But none of that will matter if I can’t nail the feeling of the monsters, and that’s going to be the most important part. I want it possible for a character to play a humanoid beholder-type thing, another character to play a person who is semi ethereal ghost creature, another player to have their werewolf fursona ported directly in, still another to play a biblically accurate angel, and yet one more to play a shoggoth that moonlights as a retail worker named Greg. I want to give players ultimate flexibility.

There are three ways to do this.

• One is the method used by d20 systems. I make 100s of rules to cover tentacles, wings, claws, tails, ghost limbs, fangs, stingers, ovipositors, pincers, etc etc. This has the benefit of making sure every character feels unique, at the cost of being difficult for newer players and also a balance nightmare for me. I would have to break up the archetypes into classes to make the list manageable, which runs the risk of me missing a major archetype.
• The next is the method used by FATE type systems. I make a dozen rules to cover effect. So instead of buying tentacles, you buy “Attack 1 (Tentacles)” and Skill Enhancement 1 (Grab) and a few other effect to cover everything your tentacles can do, but ultimately what they do is provide flavor for basic abilities. This has the benefit of making sure players can cover everything I didn’t think of and is much easier to balance, but comes at the cost of characters feeling very samey and reducing core parts of a character’s body to nebulous effects.
• The final is the method used by Mutants and Masterminds and…honestly that’s the only system I know of that works like this. In this kind of system you strike a middle ground. So instead of buying tentacles, you buy ranks Extra Limbs. Those extra limbs give you an attack effect, a grab ability, an enhancement to your stability, etc. The ranks impact the number of extra limbs you have. You as the player describe of the extra limbs are tentacles or bonus hands or haunted ghost hands. It still means on the system design level I need dozens of effects, but not hundreds, and means players can cover most but not all edge cases.

I’m leaning towards 2 or 3. I love the idea of 1, but I don’t know if I have the patience to work on something that requires me to think of everything. With 2 or 3, if I miss something during playtesting, I can add it in and it becomes available for everyone, and for something as varied as “transitioning into monsters” it means that players can build the character of their dream, and I can include some “Base Packages” ³ so if you’re new or feeling overwhelmed, you can select the “Dragonic” package and make 3-4 choices from a set list to customize your dragon without needing to pour through everything.

A draconic character in a half-human form might look like this.

One other thing: although I talked about this in terms of attacks above, ultimately this game is going to be about obtaining your ideal form, one that goes outside the rules of what biology or physics normally allows. As such, what you will be buying with your level ups are either body parts or enhancements to body parts. In Mutants and Masterminds for tentacles you’d buy Extra Limbs, but you’d have to buy the attacks separately. In FATE you’d buy multiple abilities to define what your limbs can do.

In this system, the goal is to set it up so you buy tentacles, and then whatever you want your tentacles to do, you do with your ranks in tentacles. So if you want to attack and you have an Extra Limb (tentacles) ability at rank 5, you make the attack using that 5 ⁴ + whatever base ability or skill applies. I don’t want you to be forced to pick body modifications or mystic powers based on what combat skill works best, or what gives you the best benefit in being sneaky, and I don’t want to encounter situations where because I forgot to mention that someone can grab with strong enough jaws to bite, the DM has to say “sorry, your powerful jaws are of no benefit for holding onto something.” If you can think of a way to accomplish what you want to do with your agumentations and it makes sense for how your abilities work, you should be able to use it that way even if I didn’t think of it.

Tune in next time for when I discuss how to make this whole thing semi-setting agnostic and what assumptions about the world this system will make.

1. Other than ‘queer nerds thirsting over each other’s characters and each other’ because that’s every TTRPG ever.

2. I know what you all do with the dragons.

3. hehehe I said Package.

4. How exactly rolls will work is TBD.