So, we have now outlined the first act of our Monstrous Mishaps Story. Our heroes have, hopefully, a more or less seaworthy raft to enter into the race, and our two main antagonist groups have been introduced. Now we need to take a step back and set up some pieces for the race itself.
Firstly, the judges. There’ll be three of them, starting with Mrs. Frederica von Fjomp of the Committee for Maintaining Pleasantness in Gooberville. She’s a prim and proper middle-aged woman who likes everything to be neat, clean and official. She’ll take a liking to the lawyers, who are equally bland and boring, especially that nice Mr. Harris who never contradicts her (mostly because he is often unable to speak due to his Mister Cellophone Outsider Bane, but never mind). To make Frederica an especially tough sell, we’ll make her the target of Joachim’s Hell’s Fury Jerkass Bane. We can say she cut in line at the supermarket last week, and this is of course unforgivable! He needs to punish her somehow or he’ll be docked GP at the end of the Story; at the very least, he should try to push her in the water or something.
The second judge is Mannfred Mope, the Town Elder. Mannfred is really just in his fifties, but everyone swears he seems older – in fact, sometimes when you glance at him from a certain angle, you could swear that there was moss growing on him! This is because he’s a Grouch, a sort of Monster who embodies the idea of the immortal who’s crossed oceans of time. What that amounts to is that he disapproves of everything, especially things that prevent him from taking long naps. He’ll probably award extra points to whichever team makes the least noise.
The third judge is teenage malcontent Stanley Snottnowse, chosen representative of the senior class of Gooberville High. This is actually the result of a prank on the part of the rest of the student body, because Stanley hates everything that’s lame and boring, and few things are more lame and boring than the annual Race of the Rubber Duckies. He’ll sulk through the whole proceedings but may take a shine to any team that cheats blatantly and entertainingly. Barry and Siegward, being at least aspirationally antiheroes who scoff at civilised rules, may get his vote.
As for the rival teams, we’ve already been over the lawyers and their vessel, the Billable Hour, at some length. They’ll run a clean race and observe all the rules in the book, though they may loudly call foul on any miniscule breach of those rules the players might be guilty of. If the players sabotaged the Billable Hour, Bonefatius will use his Ice Ice Baby power to freeze the water around the raft, effectively sealing any holes. This will, however, so exhaust him that he goes catatonic for the rest of the race, with his colleagues being hampered from having to drag his inert carcass along. That said, they are probably the team most likely to win if the players don’t stop it – two out of three judges are predisposed to like them, and after all they’re supreme go-getters.
The Slayers Barry and Siegward are fielding the Ship of Theseus, a model trireme with a long of Styrofoam oars that may be used to hit competitors over the head with. They’ll cheat at every opportunity, and Siegward’s abilities as a Lout actually makes him a decent sailor. They are also not trying to win, only make the players lose; if they can sink both of their rafts at once, they’ll call that a victory. On the other hand, they suffer from the drawback that no one else likes them enough to be on their team, so they’re strictly a two-man operation.
The town’s premier fast-food dive, Papa Pastrami’s Pizza Palazzo, is joining the race on the Extra Cheese, formed like a slice of pizza with rubber pepperonis. Papa has Mama Pastrami, Figlio Pastrami, and Cugina Piccola Pastrami with him for the ride. None of them are great sailors, but they are hoping to make up for it on style by loudly singing opera at every opportunity, especially when their competitors are trying to concentrate on something.
Finally, the Gooberville chapter of the Bitter Losers Club (remember that one? I’m actually considering renaming it The Mildly Ashamed Boys, but it feels a little overly convoluted…) have listlessly thrown their hat in the ring with the Just My Luck, a vessel whose crowning glory is a giant plastic head that will spurt gushing tears and make a sobbing noise (“boo hoo hoo! Boo hoo hoo!”) when someone is working the pump. The Losers aren’t trying to actually win, as that would be against everything they stand for – they just want a chance to complain about their miserable lives to a ready-made audience. That said, if the players, the lawyers and the Slayers sabotage each other enough that neither of them wins, the GM should absolutely have the Losers beat them, just for maximum humiliation.
All right. That should give us plenty to work with. Next time, we’re dealing with the first stretch of the trek down the river.
My Monstrous Mishaps Quickstart Story has so far featured melancholic store clerks, stampeding mall rats, overly friendly dogs and elderly gentlemen turned inept barbarian heroes. Now we rejoin our hapless heroes as they return home, hopefully with their needed supplies (and maybe even their intact dignities, but I wouldn’t bet on it). So how do we make restoring a raft an interesting scene?
Well… let’s say that the players’ in-need-of-some-TLC used raft, the Noodly Appendage, is haunted. In fact, having been made into the image of atheist meme “the Hovering Pasta Beast,” it has been possessed by the spirit of that strange creature. Now, the Hovering Pasta Beast is a deity that seeks to make you stop worshiping deities, so that spirit is deeply perverse and contradictive. As such, when incarnated as a raft, it becomes a raft that doesn’t want to be sailed. It’s a landlubber per excellence, and it’s going to fight back against any attempt to put it in the river!
In Monstrous Mishaps, this is called a Haunting, and it has a bunch of possible abilities called Phenomena that I have also added, in a simplified form, to the Quickstart. Let’s say that the Noodly Appendage has three Phenomena: Illusions, which lets it cause one person to see something that’s not there, Poltergeisting, which lets it move a material object, and Weather Control, which lets it, well, control the weather. All of these can only be used once every couple of hours or so, so the Haunting tends to be as tactical as possible with them.
Thus, the Noodly Appendage will wait until the players have put a fresh coat of paint on it, at which point it will use Weather Control to cause it to start raining. It won’t be able to do it suddenly – rain clouds take a while to form – so if the players are actively stating that they’re vigilant for rain, they might head it off in time assuming they can pass a Basic Camping Challenge (so Bradley could do it easily, and Zelda or Marissa with the expenditure of a Grit Point). Anyone who isn’t as outdoorsy as all that will just be told that, well, there are some dark clouds, but who can say?
If the players are caught in the rain (and without even any piña coladas to go with it), they’ll need to scramble to get some tarp over the raft. Some Doom powers might come in handy here; Winnie might use her Nose for Gold power to get drawn around the corner to where the neighbours have some sheets drying on a clothes line that might be used as a stopgap measure until more watertight alternatives can be produced, or Joachim could use Tools of the Trade to declare that he had previously prepared for this very eventuality by bringing a supernaturally resistant length of fabric. Failing that, the players will have to run and flail as best they can. Fitness Challenges to race up the stairs to their respective apartments might come up, or Keenness Challenges to find those sheets without the use of supernatural instincts, or Camping Challenges to declare that of course you were rugged enough to have anticipated this problem. Whatever they do, the Haunting will try to interfere at the least opportune time by using Poltergeisting to temporarily animate one of its plastic tentacles to wrap around someone’s ankle or fling off a cover that someone has placed on it.
If Lisa is around, it will also use Illusion to send a vision of warning. Once everything has settled down, Lisa will therefore earnestly insist that the Hovering Pasta Beast has forbidden the raft from being launched. Since Lisa also talks to her dead grandma regularly, the players may be justifiably skeptical. If Lisa has gone off to sulk or is otherwise not available, one of the players can have the vision instead, but it’s probably better if they can’t be sure whether it’s something real or Lisa just being weird again.
If they do consider the possibility, Winnie has enough of a Weirdness Level to vouch for it being very possible that the raft is Haunted, and to suggest that an exorcism might fix the problem. Klaus, Joachim or Marissa could do the same by spending a Grit Point. Either of those people can also come up with an exorcism ritual, but in Monstrous Mishaps, magic always has a price. Thus, to work a ritual that banishes the spirit of the Hovering Pasta Beast from the raft and keeps it from causing trouble during the race tomorrow, the players must accept the following:
They need to hold the ritual at exactly the stroke of midnight, and it will involve a lot of yelling and shouting – they will not be popular in the neighbourhood afterward.
The one holding the ritual will suffer for it; he’ll spend the rest of the night vomiting pea soup, even if he hasn’t eaten any pea soup the day before or indeed ever in his entire life. This will cause him a sleepless night and make him start tomorrow with 3 Health Points and 3 Stamina Points less than he had during the ritual (and without restoring any of either from a night’s sleep).
The ritual will draw heavily on the caster’s will; Klaus, Joachim or Marissa will have to spend 3 Grit Points to cast it, while Winnie (having a better Hocuspocus Score) will have to spend 1. Zelda or Bradley can’t even attempt it; they simply don’t have anywhere near the kind of mojo it will take.
What the GM will not tell the players is that there is a hidden, fourth cost: the ritual will banish the Hovering Pasta Beast, yes, but as a final “miracle,” it will cause anyone present at the casting to spontaneously manifest fake beards, eyepatches, and big black hats with skulls on them whenever they’re not looking. These decorations can’t be permanently removed, but will disappear if removed and then reappear on the players again a short while later. While they don’t necessarily get in the way, they will result in subtracted style points during the race, since the judges don’t see what dressing up as pirates has to do with pasta beasts (the players can however get around this by educating the judges on the exact lore of the meme and passing a Lawyering Challenge).
As a further complication, the night will not pass quietly even without any exorcisms being performed. Starting at nightfall, Nutty Elmir, the town’s resident crazy religious guy, starts yelling in a megaphone at odd intervals. The subject of his outbursts are varied, ranging from the finer points of Latter-Day Church of the Holy Hollering dogma to his renditions of popular show tunes to the latest sports result; his intention is just to keep the players awake the whole night and thus in bad shape for the race, the lawyers having slipped him a fiver for the service. He switches position between each rant to make it harder for the players to find him and shove that megaphone down his throat, possibly resulting in a number of night-time chases through the neighbourhood. This of course also means that if the players start making a ruckus at midnight for that ritual, the neighbours will assume that they and Elmir are in cahoots. Note also that Marissa may not be present to help deal with Elmir, if she wants to spend the night indulging her bad habit of sleeping on super-soft beds at the mall.
All right. That’ll do. I will now allow myself to take a break for a week, and I’ll hopefully be back in two weeks to outline the race itself. Time to tally up all those Modifiers!
Continuing my effort at building an introductionary Story for my most eminent roleplaying game, Monstrous Mishaps, today I am going to sketch out a visit to a law firm. The worthy solicitors of the law firm of Connive, DeSieve, Bamm-Boozle & Harris are competing with the players for the honour of winning the Race of the Rubber Duckies, and the players’ friend Olive will insist on trying to sabotage their raft. If the players agree to help her, this scene will play out.
The offices is a two-story building with glass walls, looking a little like some giant urban lumberjack chopped down a skyscraper, leaving a stump. The firm’s name is emblazed above the front entrance, along with its motto, Innocent Until Proven Unprofitable. There is a yard in the back, surrounded by a wire-net fence. There, the lawyers are working on their raft, the Billable Hour. It is shaped like a giant watch, with hollows at the 12, 2, 5, 7 and 10 marks for passengers to sit in.
Getting to the raft requires either climbing the fence or making it through the offices. The latter option has the obvious drawback that you are fully visible while climbing, and the lawyers can and will sue your shorts off for trespassing if they spot you. Going through the offices takes a little more doing but lets you potentially stay out of sight. You’ll need to pick the lock, break a window, or otherwise gain access first, but it’s not exactly Fort Knox; most people will be able to get in. Passing through the somber legal halls will however require you to deal with the office mascot, Feegle the Legal Beagle. Feegle isn’t a fierce guard dog by any means, but he gets very excited at meeting new people and will bark happily and try to knock them over so he can stand over them and lick their faces. The ruckus may well draw the attention of the lawyers. If Klaus is present, things are of course a lot easier – he has the keys to the offices, and Feegle is used to him and so will only greet him with a dutiful wag of the tail.
Having eyes on the raft, the lawyers need to be absent for a moment so the players can work their dirty scheme. There are three of them working on the raft – senior partners Miranda Bamm-Boozle and Angus Connive, along with the secretary Shirley Shine. From time to time, one or two will leave to pick up more supplies, go to the bathroom, make a call threatening to sue someone, or similar necessity, but one always remains with the raft at all times. If the players are willing to make this a nightly raid, the raft stays in the yard under a tarp, but the lawyers will watch it in shifts all through the night. Some sort of diversion will thus be required.
Sabotaging the raft takes some finesse. If the players just smash it to rubble, the lawyers will complain to the judges of the Race and be allowed to race using a regular rowboat, with bonuses to make up for the loss in style points. Since they’ll be a lot more competitive that way than when trying to pilot their homemade monstrosity, the raft needs to be messed with in a way that allows for plausible deniability. Drilling some holes in the barrels and then filling them with saw dust is an option, and so is emptying the cans of sealant the lawyers are using and replacing it with common oil. Zelda or Bradley will have the easiest time thinking of such methods, though Klaus might also come up with them in a pinch.
If Olive tries to sabotage the Billable Hour on her own, or if the players let her take the lead, she bungles it completely. Her plan is to climb the fence and ritually sacrifice a spotted gerbil before the raft, thus inflicting a dire curse on it. However, not only does she get spotted by the lawyers, but the gerbil bites her hand and makes a break for it and just the wrong time (and the spell wouldn’t have worked anyway – Olive only believes that she’s a great sorceress). The lawyers complain to the judges and the players’ team gets demerits (and a big fat lawsuit later on). On the other hand, if Olive’s sabotage plans are forcibly vetoed, she will sulk for the rest of the Story and point out at every setback that all this could have been avoided if the players had just listened to her. Thus, the players need to in some way humour her, either by suggesting she perform an equally ineffectual spell from a distance (she’s likely to believe a claim that a player has found an alternate incantation, especially if they can show her a believably yellowed parchment scroll containing it), or by going through the effort of cheating competently.
All right, this is shaping up. Next week, I will attempt to deal with the players’ attempt at putting their own raft in order, which will include dealing with the raft’s own opinions on the matter. Stay tuned!
Continuing with our Monstrous Mishaps quickstart Story, it’s time to send the players off to buy some paint for their raft, that being the one thing not available at the Wood I! Hardware Emporium. So instead, they have to make the pilgrimate to the Mastodon Mall…
Introduction: At the opposite end of town from the Wood I! Hardware Emporium stands Mastodon Mall, an enormous glass-and-steel eye sore surrounded by acres of parking lot. Colourful advertisements deck the sides to shout out the needfulness of the various junk being peddled inside. Mad throngs of consumers, high on the heady drug of Capitalism, congregate here every weekend to impulse-buy their way towards bankruptcy. Inside, the stores are spread across layered balconies over a central court. The air is filled with the merry ruckus of children whining for ice cream, teens squeeing over the latest fashion, and people shouting into their cell phones.
Technically, getting paint is the job that Lisa Ludlock, the Slew’s human friend, takes upon herself, but if they just send her out to do it she’ll get distracted and come home with a number of “just the cutest!” new purchases but without paint. Nor can they tell her to let them handle it, or she will get very offended that they don’t trust her and sulk and mope for the rest of the Story. Dealing with people being completely unreasonable is a pretty major part of Monstrous Mishaps, it must be said.
When the players enter the mall, there is a call over the PA system that the Time Stands Still stopwatch store on level 4B has declared a sale for eight point seventy-three percent off on all last quarter’s model. This causes a surprising number of people to rush for the store, resulting in a stampede that the players will have to dodge or push through as best they can to avoid harm. If anyone thinks to examine things, they’ll notice that the PA system has some Hocuspocus on it that makes discounts announced over it absolutely beguiling to anyone who already have negligible sales resistance – this does not include the players or even most GMCs, but it does include enough to cause these mad rushes from time to time.
Lisa immediately claims that the spirit of her Grandma Greta insists that she’s had a bad shock, and nothing will satisfy Grandma but for Lisa to enjoy some relaxing mimosas at the Palmy Oasis bar on level 6D. Again, she’ll be very offended if someone suggests that Granny mind her own business, nor is she receptive to the idea that she go enjoy a refreshing adult beverage while the players handle the paint-buying – it will just take a few minutes, she claims. Of course, if she gets her mimosas she’ll spot a shoe store next, and once she has new shoes she’ll want a pedicure at Pampered People Palace on level 2Q, and if the players don’t put their foot down at some point the mall will end up closing before they ever get their paint. Sweet-talking Lisa into being moderately useful without getting her in a snit about it can be done with a Schmoozing Challenge, with Modifiers for good roleplaying. Alternatively, someone might buy the paint and then claim to have found it in a corner of the garage later on so as to spare Lisa’s tender feelings.
Regardless of whether the players get carried along with Lisa’s shopping spree or make a beeline for the paint store, they quickly run into the Slayers Siegward Trout and Barry Hussel. Siegward is a previously well-to-do gentleman fallen on hard time and Called as a Lout (think a barbarian hero), so he has long, stringy grey hair and tries to look like an elderly Conan the Barbarian, but his basic fussiness and insistence on good manners keep getting in the way. Barry is a dry-skinned, humourless pointdexter who thinks that everyone is scamming hard-working people like him, and has thus become a Wimp (a trickster archetype) to work hard at scamming them right back.
Anyway, the Slayers bluster for a bit to let the players know that they’re in the race too, then they part, though Barry will shadow the players (rather ineptly – a Limited (3) Keenness Challenge to spot him in the crowd) while looking for an opportunity to do something sneaky and underhanded. We can have another customer stampede here to establish it as a running gag.
Once in the paint store, the players can pick out the paints for their raft (which I think should actually be Flying Spaghetti Monster themed – let’s name it The Noodly Appendage instead). They’ll also run afoul of Wilson the Mall Cop, who think they look shifty, especially if the players picked pregens with low Respectability scores (specifically Marissa or Winnie are both weird enough to invite harrassment, and Zelda has a shaky enough reputation from all her crashes that she might not be quite immune to it either). While he’s bugging the players, Barry will try to drop a paint brush or something in a player’s pocket, then claim he saw them steal it. Here he’ll spend a GP to maximise the impact, but he’s still trying to do something very tricky, so it’s another Limited (3) Keenness Challenge to catch him in the act. Still, it will actually work at anyone but Marissa (none of the pregens have a particularly good Keenness Score), unless the players smelled a rat earlier and kept an eye on him.
The players will have to either talk their way out of trouble, make a run for it, or let one of their number take a rap and get escorted to the police station and thus be unavailable to help with the raft-building the same afternoon. If they run, a third customer stampede can be either helpful or troublesome in their attempts to dodge Wilson.
With or without paint, they’ll eventually make it back to the parking lot, where they’ll have to find their car in a timely fashion, possibly risking being run over by over-zealous people coming or going. If they talked their way free of Wilson, or even got Barry in trouble in their stead, they’ll be confronted by Siegward. He’ll challenge one of them to a saber duel (with whatever implement they can get hold of in a hurry serving as a saber) for “dishonouring my boon companion by failing to get tricked by him as a decent Monster would.” The duel is just to “first blood,” of course – Siegward might be a Barbarian, but he’s not very good at being uncivilised. If Barry is still around while a player is dueling Siegward, he’ll try to spill the players’ paint while they’re preoccupied.
All right. That’ll do for now. It establishes the mall, which Marissa might need to break into (probably having to avoid Wilson again – he might be on a double shift or something) to indulge her need to sleep on the Ultra-Slackinator 6000, and also brings in two more of our villains. It’s looking like a lot of Keenness Challenges, which is maybe not ideal, especially since there is not much variety among the pregens as far as Keenness Scores go; I’ll see if I can’t reframe some of the situations as requiring something else. Still, it’s decent. I might be getting back into the spirit of coming up with MM situations.
I am continuing my efforts to get this sample Story ready for the Monstrous Mishaps quickstart. I’ll try to be more regular with it going forward – one post every other week, and some actual forward momentum on each one. Wish me luck. This time, let’s deal with the players’ trip to the hardware store to buy materials for fixing up their raft.
The Wood I! Hardware Emporium is Gooberville’s premier (and only, thanks to some aggressive business practices) source of tools, building materials, survivalist gear, and all things rugged. It’s located in a big, square concrete building just off the freeway. A giant picture of a hairy, lumberjack-like man flexing his muscles decorates the otherwise plain exterior. Inside is an intimidating, saw-dust-smelling maze of giant, towering aisles full of bricks, planks, and sundry arcane construction equipment. There are no signs or labels, the emporium working on the principle that if you’re not manly enough to know every single item on sight, you are not manly enough to shop there.
As they walk around the building, the players find themselves followed by a trio of men. One of them is white, another is black, and a third is Asian, but their common look of suspenders, grey-speckled stubble, and looks of pompous grouchiness show them to be clearly brothers from other mothers. Their names are Ken, Ben, and Chen, and the emporium is their sanctuary from the evils of young people, womenfolk, liberals, and all that is loathsome and unmanly. The players clearly don’t belong, and the trio intends to make them realise it. Thus, they’ll stomp after the players, glare at them, mutter passive-aggressively among each other, and laugh derisively whenever something goes wrong for them. They won’t initiate a fight, but they’re hoping that the players will so they get an excuse to send them packing.
The only clerk in evidence is a listless-looking middle-aged man in rumpled clothes who is occupied with loudly lamenting his woes to the world at large, punctuated with trumpeting blowings of his nose on a soggy handkerchief. His nametag says ‘Joe,’ though his real name is Nicolaus (his boss can’t be bothered to get him a new one, so he’s having to make do with a used one). “Boo hoo hoo! Oh, woe is me! My life is a tragedy in umpteen acts! Oh, the pain! The pain!” Nicolaus is a man afflicted with a terminal lack of respect – he only keeps his job because his boss keeps forgetting that he works there in the first place, his kids keep telling people that they’re adopted, his wife has eloped with their marriage counceler, and he got kicked out of The Gooverville Bitter Losers’ Club for complaining too much.
The GM should feel free to invent as many more demoralising setbacks as she can come up with – assume that if there is some measure of being unsuccessful, Nicolaus has exceeded it. However, make sure that they are humiliating without being actively detrimental to his health, e.g., don’t afflict him with cancer. If the players start to actually feel sorry for him, he won’t be suitably annoying to them.
Getting Nicolaus to help you find anything is tricky. He only has a faint idea where anything is in the first place, and either way, his work ethic is in shambles (let’s face it, it’s not like he’d be likely to get recognised for it even if he did work hard, is it?). Even catering to his fragile ego isn’t as effective as one might think, since he assumes that anyone who flatters him is setting him up to fail. Intimidating him is fairly easy, though of course being scared makes him flustered and thus even less useful.
As the players are exploring the emporium, there is a rumble of engines and a maniacal laughter, and a forklift turns the corner on two wheels, racing down the aisle. The aisle is barely wide enough for it, and it keeps knocking things off the shelves and scraping against the sides, but the wild-haired, goggles-wearing young man behind the wheel doesn’t notice – in his mind, he’s running the Daytona. If Ken, Ben and Chen are following the players, they hide in an empty crate, run for his life, and desperately start climbing the shelves, respectively. If Nicolaus is along, he just stands there, looking like the proverbial deer in the spotlights; he’ll get hurt (and thus be completely useless; even if he just stubs a toe, his pain threshold is at approximately the center of the Earth) if a player doesn’t pull him to safety somehow. The mad driver is a clerk named Gonzales, and the players had better do something to avoid being run down by him. On the plus side, if they can somehow slow him down enough to notice them, he has a better idea where everything is than Nicolaus does.
Once the players have started assembling at least some of the items on their list, they run into town layers Bonefatius Harris and Jean-Claude DeSieve, who are apparently also out to win the race so as to get some free publicity for their firm. Bonefatius is a short, neat man with an egg-shaped, bald head and an egg-shaped, flabby body, impeccably dressed in a spotless pin-stripe suit. From time to time, when the players look at him from the corner of their eye, he appears transparent (he’s an Outsider, which is to say, the universe thinks that he’s a ghost even though he’s still alive). Jean-Claude is tall and was handsome at one point, but now his girdle fights a losing battle against many business lunches, and his golden mane of hair is an obvious wig. They’ll exchange some very cultivated trash talk with the players before going their way, led by their own clerk, Norman. Norman is slightly better than Nicolaus, but he’s not great – he mostly just agrees with the customer about everything and then recommends they pick up the first vaguely related ware within easy walking distance.
The very last thing on the players’ list is a tube of Super-Strong, Super-Lasting, Super-Resilient Super-Glue, of which there is only one remaining in the emporium – and a player manages to put his hands on it at the exact time that Jean-Claude grabs the other end. Frantic negotiation, threats, and a tug of war may follow. If the GM is feeling especially mean-spirited, the tube may have had a leak, coating its exterior with some of its contents – and now both the player and Jean-Claude is stuck on it! Remember that Ken, Ben and Chen are probably still standing around egging everyone on to have a manly fistfight over the spoils. Also, if Klaus is around, his Abhorrent Face Bane is definitely going to trigger here when tempers start running hot.
Things to keep track of after the emporium:
Did the players have to search for stuff on their own? Then they’ll take a severe Disadvantage somewhere down the road, unless they managed a high result on a Nerdery Challenge.
Did they get Nicolaus to help them? Then they’ll take a lesser Disadvantage from his lacklustre assistance, unless they somehow managed to motivate him properly.
Did they get Gonzales to help them? Then they’ll take a minor Advantage later on, since he’s the best option around.
Did they get the Super-Strong, Super-Lasting, Super-Resilient Super-Glue? If not, did the lawyers get it? They’ll get an Advantage later on if the former, a Disadvantage if the latter.
This week, I actually forced myself to do some work on the Monstrous Mishaps quickstart. Not gonna lie, it’s slow going. Part of the problem is that I’m just not in a Monstrous Mishaps mood. MM requires you to be irreverent, snarky, laid back. At the moment, I am feeling painfully serious, sincere and uptight.
But this needs to be done, because the delay is getting ridiculous – I was all set to publish the thing in 2025, and then one thing after another happened and now it’s looking like 2027 at the earliest. And to be honest, a lot of the jokes and references in this thing were dated even when I wrote them down! So let’s take a look at what I have managed to do this week.
First off, I have written the introduction:
Spring is in the air, and in the small town of Gooberville that means that the annual Race of the Rubber Duckies is coming up. Every year in your quaint little burgh, a bunch of people with no engineering or seamanship skills build and pilot homemade rafts down Bouncy Brook, trying to keep their rickety craft together and collect as many as possible of the yellow rubber ducks that’s released at the starting point, while pretending not to sabotage their opponents’ crafts at every opportunity. The winner – determined from finishing time, presentation, rubber ducks acquired, and how thoroughly soaked they got – gains eternal glory, or at least bragging rights for a few weeks.
This year, your Slew has happened to get its hands on a used raft in need of only moderate repairs and you’re determined to prevail. You just need to fix up the raft, ride it to victory, and not get sabotaged by all the people who despise you – how hard can it be?
As you stand in the back yard of the suburban house you share, you think that perhaps the answer is… a little bit harder than expected? The raft, purchased at an oddly low price by your curiosity-dealing friend Lisa Ludlock, is Christened “The Noodly Nightmare” and consists of a tangle of brittle rubber tubes haphazardly flung together around a wooden frame holding four plastic barrels. There is room for six people to ride the thing, but the method of strapping in is so complex that it half amounts to assembling the raft around you. Right now, many of the tubes have come loose or are flopping listlessly around the frame, and the barrels have sprung leaks in several places. The whole thing needs several more coats of bright paint, a new wooden board or two, steel wire by the yard, industrial-strength rubber patching, and possibly hopes and prayers.
You have the rest of the afternoon off from your various places of employment, and the race starts fight thing tomorrow. Time to get to work!
So… this isn’t great. The humour is too forced. The design of the raft is too basic. If I’ve learned one thing from Paranoia, it’s that the more specific a situation is, the more ways there are for it to be demoralisingly wrong! But it’ll have to do for now. At least it’s a starting point.
So, the next thing that happens is that the players will need to get to work. So let’s divide up the tasks. What needs to be done here?
Well, first off, we need a visit to the hardware store to get some wood, glue, nails and steel wire. So we’ll need to write up a description of a labyrinthine hardware store where everything is impossible to find, the staff are too morose and underpaid to be of any help, and a bunch of super-blue-collar guys hang around to scoff at anyone who isn’t as manly as them (and none of the pregenerated characters are especially manly).
Secondly, we need paint. We can say that Lisa the Flake insists on going to get it, but if the players don’t send anyone along with her – which she will be insulted if they do, unless they handle it really diplomatically – she’ll come back after the stores are already closed, without any paint, having been distracted by a sale in a clothing store. In which case, getting hold of paint somewhere else is up to the players’ creativity.
Thirdly, hyper-competetive Olive will want to head over the offices of DeSieve, Connive, Bamm-Boozle & Harris and sabotage the raft they’re building there. She’ll need to be physically restrained to keep from doing so (and of course that’ll make her feel insulted), and if she goes alone she’ll mess up, get caught, and result in the lawyers complaining to the race judges and getting the players demerits.
Some of the pregens’ Banes are going to be in play. Marissa is going to need some kind of sordid desire to act on, related to her grumbling back. We’ll say that she knows that the only thing that will make the stupid thing quiet down for now is if she can spend a few hours sleeping on the Ultra-Slackinator 6000, the high-tech super-mattress on display in Sleep On A Cloud, the town’s premier bedware store. She of course can’t ask anyone’s permission for that because the Guilty Pleasure Bane explicitly forbids it, so she’ll need to sneak off and try to break into the store on her own after hours. We can say that Barry Hussel and Siegward Trout will make an attempt to sabotage the players’ raft during the evening, so that the other players can deal with that while Marissa is off doing her own thing. If she denies her Bane, or tries but fails to satisfy it, she’ll lose 3 HP to a minimum of 1 before the race starts. That would normally happen in between Stories, but this is likely to be a one-shot, so we’ll bend the rules a little.
Winnie, meanwhile, has discovered that Abigail von Heckning is in possession of the Lower Left Wisdom Tooth of Guzzlin’ Gary, a legendary Vampire from out in Wisconsin. Apparently she got it on eBay solely for the bragging rights, but Winnie absolutely must have this rare and precious relic. Abigail, of course, will be reluctant to sell it, though she might agree in return for Winnie’s help in sabotaging the player’s raft race. Until she gets her hand on the Tooth, Winnie will be distracted and have a Moderate Disadvantage to all Keenness Challenges due to her It Must Be Mine! Bane.
Finally, DeSieve, Connive, Bamm-Boozle & Harris will send Shirley to sweet-talk Klaus into defecting to their team. She’ll lay it on thick, appealing to his company loyalty and the unbreakable bond of bureaucrats, but will also guiltily mention that Mr. DeSieve made threatening noises about lowering Klaus’ low salary if he refuses to be a team player. She won’t hold it against him if he doesn’t do what she says, but she will hold it against him if his team cheats – such as by letting Olive try to sabotage the lawyers’ raft.
All right. That’s a start. It involves all the major GMCs except for Nutty Elmir, who we can bring in later. Next time, we’ll start fleshing out some of these situations a little more.
All right! We have our six pregens for the Monstrous Mishaps quickstart. Time to see what we can put together from them. Monstrous Mishaps is a game where most things are on a very personal level, so the Stories you set up have to come from the PCs to a considerable extent. That’s a good idea in most games, to be honest, but it’s absolutely crucial here.
For a start, let’s see if we can’t tie our Monsters together a bit more, making it clearer that they exist in the same world above and beyond being roommates. Like…
Klaus (and by extension also his Friend Shirley Shine) works as a secretary for the law firm of DeSieve, Connive, Bamm-Boozle & Harris, where Joachim’s Rival Bonefatius is also a partner. Joachim’s Friend Herb Bitterman also sounds like the sort of shifty individual who might embark on half-baked get-rich-quick schemes with Marissa.
Speaking of Marissa, she is is a frequent consultant for Winnie’s business, Awesome Artifacts & Righteous Relics, and they share a number of clients like Joe Gribbels and Therese Teller. That means Marissa also has a lot to do with Lisa Ludluck, who co-owns the sore.
I’m a little less clear on Zelda the maniacal speed demon and Bradley the grumpy nurse, but I guess at least Bradley will see a lot of Zelda when she comes in to be patched up after her latest crash…
Now, then, let’s consider what sort of Story our protagonists might get into. I plumb my inner archive of silly Donald Duck plots and come up with the idea of the town having an annual raft race down the river. Contestants make their own rafts and get graded on aesthetic appeal, time of finish, what percentage of the raft is still sticking together at the end, and (just for some additional silliness) how many rubber duckies they’ve managed to capture of the ones set loose in the stream at the same time the rafts launch. The winner gets eternal glory, or at least bragging rights for a few weeks.
The Slew of PCs have been fortunate enough to get hold of a used raft through Winnie’s business – sure, there was something about everyone who used it previously having horribly drowned, but that’s no reason to pass up on a bargain! Now they need to patch it up and add their own flair to it and then win the race.
So let’s involve some of our NPCs, preferably one from the supporting cast of each PC. DeSieve, Connive, Bamm-Boozle & Harris are also fielding a raft, and will try to rope Klaus into helping them instead of his Slewmates. That gives us Joachim’s Rival Bonfetatius and Klaus’ Friend Shirley, who he’ll have to tread carefully around – we won’t make it quite so unreasonable as her objecting to him racing against her team, but she’ll be easily offended if she thinks that Klaus or his teammates are being “unsportsmanlike.” Add to that Zelda’s Friend Olive insisting on being on the team and cheating outrageously, and we get some interesting tension there. We can add Winnie’s Friend Lisa in the same way – she’ll take on some kind of vital responsibilities in regards to the raft-repair and then forget all about them.
I’ll cheat a little and also play in Joachim’s Enemy Siegward, just because he fits into the scenario – he’s got the money to fund a raft team of his own, as well as having a Lout’s inherent skill in piloting. He can have recruited Klaus’ Enemy Barry Hussel, and together they can be trying to pull every dirty trick in the book. We can have Marissa’s Enemy Abigail van Heckning running around trying to catch the Slew cheating (while ignoring Team Siegward’s abuses, of course – it’s not a proper sitcom unless you, personally, can’t get away with nuthin’ while everyone else do whatever they please!), and Brad’s Rival Nutty Elmir taunting the Slew from the sidelines every time something goes wrong (and possibly trying to work up some sort of “divine miracle” to humiliate Brad and thus demonstrate who’s the town’s real prophet of the Latter-Day Church of the Holy Hollering).
All right, that gives us a rough premise and gives every possible PC some personal stakes in it. Next time, we’ll get into some particulars.
We have at least arrived at the last pregenerated character to create for my Monstrous Mishaps quickstart. For those who haven’t been following along, our previous entries were:
For our big finish, we’re going to go traditional and create a Vampire – or a Moocher, as they are less politely known in Monster World. I figure we’ll make her an extremely lazy woman who uses her people skills to trick everyone else into doing stuff for her and prides herself on never having done an honest day’s work in her life. We’ll call her Marissa Mealey.
As a Moocher, Marissa needs to have an addiction to something – Vampires in Monstrous Mishaps don’t need to suck blood, but they do have to have a bad habit of some other kind to be angsty over. We’ll say that Marissa is addicted to expensive custom mattrasses, elaborate massages, acupuncture treatments, and anything else that can help the bad back she claims is keeping her from working.
Marissa obviously needs to be slick to be able to work scams and cons, so we’ll give her Basic (4) Mindgames and Schmoozing. She’s also nowhere to be found where work needs to be done, which includes being vigilant for signs that some is about to be handed out, so we’ll give her Limited (3) Hiding and Keenness. She’s not got much discipline, but she’s very stubborn about not needing to show any discipline, so she’s got Limited (2) Grit. Finally, her interest in traditional medicine for her back and her habit of selling fraudulent products of other sorts have given a smattering of occult knowledge, enough for Limited (2) Weirdness.
For some reason, I immediately imagine Marissa’s parents as taking her camping a lot as a kid, thus teaching her to properly hate everything that wasn’t comfortable and air-conditioned, so we’ll give her the Forced to Go Camping childhood for +1 to Camping. She was actually a convincing outsider in her teens (hey, she is a Vampire!) so she’s got the Freaky Kid adolesence for +1 to Weirdness. These days, she is a small-time confidence trickster by trade, making her a Criminal, so +1 to Hiding. She’s got another +1 to Camping and Schmoozing from her Breed (Vampires are seductive and quite good with “ze children of ze night”), so she ends up with Limited (3) Camping, Limited (2) Grit, Basic (4) Hiding, Limited (3) Keenness, Basic (4) Mindgames, Basic (5) Schmoozing, and Limited (3) Weirdness.
As far as Values go, Marissa doesn’t like to ruffle feathers – it’s too much of a bother! She also believes in everyone’s fundamentally equal worth, since that means less pressure to do stuff. Thus, she holds to Harmony and Egalitarianism.
For Monstrosity and Dooms, I think I’ll punch it up to the max and give Marissa Basic (5) Monstrosity right from the start. After all, her lack of ambition is unlikely to have granted her any material success, but she’s great at looking dark and mysterious and Vampire-like. I’ll sink the points into Basic (4) Siren’s Voice to make it easier for her to make herself seem trustworthy, and put the last point into Minimal (1) Varg’s Ferocity – maybe being good at imitating animal sounds will impress some people who’ll think she’s One With Nature or some such?
All told, here’s Marissa:
MARISSA MEALEY
Breed: Moocher
Childhood: Forced to Go Camping Adolescence: Freaky Kid Adulthood: Criminal
For her first Friend, we’ll pick the Stereotype, Problem and Discord at random – I think we’ve used pretty much every single one at this point anyway. We’ll go with Alpha, Occult Lightning Rod and High Maintenance, a combination that makes me think of some sort of pushy nightmare customer, a retail person’s bad day incarnate.
MARISSA’S FRIEND #1: THERESE TELLER
Therese is Marissa’s only repeat customer, a woman always in the market for some new dodgy food supplement or pyramid energy regimen. That makes her quite handy for Marissa, but the downside is that the reason why Therese is so anxious for anything to make her life better is that her life is preternaturally bad. A dark cloud of inexplicable misfortune always seems to be hovering over her head, cursing her with odd ailments and strange maladies. She’s happy to accept Marissa’s cures for them… but she’ll also come pounding on Marissa’s door whenever they invariably fail to work, forcing the Moocher to improvise madly to keep the money flowing.
Stereotype: Alpha Problem: Occult Lightning Rod Discord: High Maintenance
For the second Friend, we’ll pick Romantic, Paper Tiger, and You’re Not the Boss of Me. That gives us someone who’s hot-blooded and warm-hearted, but perhaps a bit soft-headed as well…
MARISSA’S FRIEND #2: PEPPER LOVEGOOD
Marissa’s long-time best friend Pepper is on a quest for true love, something that confuses Marissa, since love seems like the definition of doing a bunch of bothersome stuff for no particular reward. This cynical viewpoint has not been helped by her having had a front row seat to Pepper’s dismal taste in men, most of whom have indeed been ne’er-do-wells who have emptied her wallet, enlisted her in their projects, and cheated vigorously on her all the while. Getting Pepper to realise that her latest romance is just as unhealthy as the last tends to strain even Marissa’s skills at argumentation, however.
Stereotype: Romantic Problem: Paper Tiger Discord: You’re Not the Boss of Me
For Marissa’s Rival, let’s go with a Deadbeat (think a stoner-slacker Zombie) who resents Marissa for having it much easier than her. I figure that she’ll be hanging around and staring creepily at Marissa through windows like some kind of haunting ghost, all while looking to “steal her life” in some vaguely defined way. We’ll pick the Approach of Shadow, the Feud of Destined and the Redemption of Tragedy for her.
MARISSA’S RIVAL: SALLY SLOUCH
Sally grew up in miserable poverty and had to work very hard to get anywhere in life. This makes her intensely resentful of Marissa, who, while also miserably poor, seems to manage to avoid working at all. Having been told by a less-than-trustworthy fortuneteller that there will come a time when their fates can be exchanged, Sally is now plotting to bring the right occult conditions about so that she can become the slacker and Marissa the wage-slave… at least when she’s not too tired to plot.
For Marissa’s Enemy, we’ll turn her stats inside-out as usual, and we end up with someone with decent Scores at Asskicking and Paperpushing, the two Legend Abilities for the Dweeb Legend. Dweebs, you see, are a kind of Slayers who like to think that they’re Paladins, so they punch you very hard in the face, but only when it’s legally justifiable. Well, a devoted crusader out to get a Vampire? That gives you a rather obvious idea, I should think.
MARISSA’S ENEMY: ABIGAIL VAN HECKNING
A petulant suburban brat of the first order, Abigail always longed for a life of adventure, Gothic romance, and having a proper excuse for hanging out in graveyards. As such, it’s perhaps no surprise that she was Called as a Slayer, and she has taken to it with gusto. She is determined to put an end to Marissa’s cursed unlife, but of course she has to figure out a way to do it that won’t get her into, you know, trouble of any kind – otherwise, her parents would ground her! Still, she’s confident that if she just hangs around and bugs Marissa enough, she’ll eventually end up in a situation where pounding an oak stake through someone’s heart will qualify as “reasonble self-defense.”
Special Abilities: Basic (4) Calling, Basic (6) Respectability
Pools: HP 7, GP 2, SP 4, BP 6
That’s it! We now have four full-feathered Monsters to send into the maws of adventure, along with supporting casts to anchor them into the setting. Now I just need to figure out some kind of scenario that could accomodate any particular subset of them. Stay tuned.
Welcome back to my not-quite-weekly series of character creation in my lovingly hand-crafted game, Monstrous Mishaps. As those who hang around here know (there are some of you, right? I’m not talking exclusively to a bunch of net-thrawling bots?), MM is a parody urban fantasy game where the characters are supernatural creatures in human form… light on the “supernatural creature,” heavy on the “human form.” Upholding the dark splendour of Vampyredom when your powers of hypnotism amounts of having vaguely sincere eyes isn’t easy!
Since I decided last time to not go for the obvious archetypes, I’ll forego making this dude a shock jockey vlogger or something. Instead, let’s make him a big, burly nurse. Hey, just because you have a foul mouth it doesn’t mean you can’t be nurturing, it just means that it’s always going to be tough love! We’ll call him Bradley Bulle.
As a health care professional, Brad will need a decent Quackery Score. Quackery is Derived from Camping and Nerdery, so let’s give him Basic (4) in both. Since I picture him as a big, looming guy, and of course he needs to be stubborn to deal with fussing patients, we’ll also give him Limited (3) Fitness and Limited (3) Grit. He’ll need to keep records, so we’ll let him have Limited (2) Paperpushing. Finally, we’ll give him Limited (2) Asskicking to better hold people down while they’re getting their shots.
I figure that Brad was interested in biology from an early age, so I’ll say he was a Bug Fancier as a child and an Eco Brat as a teenager. That gives him +1 each to Nerdery and Camping, for Basic (5) in both, so he’s got some actual professional competence – a rarity in the setting he lives in! As a nurse, I figure he’s effectively a Blue-Collar Schmoe, even if he’s an unusually well-educated one, so add 1 to his Fitness, leaving him at Basic (4). He gets +1 to Dramatics and +1 to Grit from being a Loudmouth, giving him Limited (2) in the one and Basic (4) in the other.
For Dooms, I’ll put a point in Siren’s Voice, just because I think it’s funny if Brad is such an imposing presence that he can get people’s attention by glaring at them from behind. He has to start with a point of Garuda’s Swiftness since that’s his Primary Doom as a Loudmouth, so he has Minimal (1) in both.
For Values, Brad is hard-working and stubborn, so he holds to Stoicism. I think he’s also very practical about morals, thinking that what matters is making things as good as possible for as many people as possible and never mind who has to get screwed over for it, so I’ll also give him Utilitarianism.
After calculating our Derived Abilities and Pools, we end up with this:
BRADLEY BULLE
Breed: Loudmouth
Childhood: Bug Fancier Adolescence: Eco Brat Adulthood: Blue-Collar Schmoe
Next up is Friends. I have no particular ideas, so I’ll just reach into the grab-bag of Stereotypes, Problems and Discords for some that I haven’t used yet. I arbitrarily pick Arteest, The Enemy of the Good, and Big Brother is Watching. Combined with Brad’s grumpy I-don’t-have-the-energy-for-this-crap-so-take-your-medicine attitude, that suggests someone with a… different take on medicine.
Brad’s Friend #1: Frieda Fairweather
Frida is a fellow nurse at the clinic where Brad works, and she’s equally devoted to her job – in fact, she’s a tremendous perfectionist. Her idea of what is perfect, however, run very contrary to Brad’s and tend towards smiles being the best medicine and everyone’s personal lives needing to be micromanaged to ensure “inner health.” This would work out better if she actually had the people skills to be a functional soul-healer, but Brad had to admit (just not to her face) that she sometimes has a point.
Stereotype: Arteest Problem: The Enemy of The Good Discord: Big Brother is Watching
Using the same method for the second Friend, I find myself with Careerist, Paper Tiger, and Smug Straight Edge. Hmm. Perhaps we have room for an edgy Internet personality after all?
Brad’s Friend #2: Sebastian Sajber
Sebastian and Brad attend the same gym and have bonded over their shared uncompromising stance on life. Sebastian has a modest side hustle having exaggerated opinions on lifestyle and politics online, and frequently uses local characters as inspiration for his rants, which has resulted in him having to meet Brad in a more professional capacity as well…
Stereotype: Careerist Problem: Paper Tiger Discord: Smug Straight Edge
Moving on to the Rival, I scrape the barrel a little and find myself with Freak, Attention and Faith. That makes me picture some sort of wild-bearded street prophet yelling at people to repent. Let’s make him a fellow Loudmouth – Monsters of the same Breed butt heads more often than not (especially since having that be canon justifies player groups having diverse characters!).
Brad’s Rival: Nutty Elmir
Nutty Elmir is a local character who is a devoted member of the little-known Latter-Day Church of the Holy Hollering. In accordance with this holy creed, he spends his day walking around town with a sign, yelling verses from the Hollering Bible at people. Brad has gotten on his bad side due to their common ground – Brad just happens to be the town’s only other member of the Latter-Day Church of the Holy Hollering, and he’s taken to shouting back at Elmir and correcting his errors. Everyone else mostly just wishes they’d both be quiet, but they are, after all, on a mission from God.
Finally, the Enemy… which, for some variety, I’ll not make a Slayer but another Monster. A Monster Enemy is likely to be what is called an Abomination, which effectively means, “a Monster who is way way way the hell too into being a Monster, I mean, honestly!” We haven’t seen any Wussbags here until now, and they’re one of my favourite Breeds – they are effectively Lovecraftian entities that have a Lovecraftian neurotic fear and lothing of everything that’s the least bit upsetting – so let’s have one of those.
Brad’s Enemy: X-94-Zeta
X-94-Zeta, as she calls herself, is supposedly a scout for a proud and ancient Alien empire, sent to evaluate Earth for membership in the Galactic Federation. The Galactic Federation is all about peace and harmony and being nice to people, but it’s also got oddly rigid rules about honourable retribution against anyone who fails to be peaceful, harmonic, and nice to people. It only took X-94-Zeta five minutes in Brad’s company to decide that he needed to suffer in the name of cosmic justice.
There we go! One more nitwit, with a supporting cast, added to the pile. Next time will be the last character, who will be a smooth-talking Moocher. I’ll just have to think of something suitably ridiculous for her to have a dark, forbidden thirst for…
Hello and welcome back to my character-creation marathon. This week we’re going to create a Klutz, a seemingly regular woman who happens to actually be a very small Giant (who still breaks things as easily as a normal-sized Giant, because the world is unfair like that). Now, I feel like my offerings so far have been a little pedestrian – a timid nerd Creep and a skeevy lawyer Jerkass is honestly playing it very close to type. The two-fisted occult investigator Hoarder was a little better, but still… let’s try to do something different with our Klutz than “well-meaning guy who keeps knocking things over.”
So here’s my idea: instead of being awkward and ungainly, this character actually breaks a lot of things by accident precisely because she’s always rushing around and indulging her need for speed. She loves fast cars, and she considers speed limits to be timid suggestions at best. Let’s call her Zelda Zoom.
Driving, in Monstrous Mishaps, is handled by an Ability called Joyriding. Joyriding is a Derived Ability – you don’t put points in it, you calculate it as the average of two other, Primary Abilities, in this case Fitness (for the reflexes and sheer ruggedness required to operate high-powered vehicles) and Nerdery (for knowing how an engine works). Thus, we’ll start Zelda off with Basic (4) Fitness and Basic (4) Nerdery so she can stay on the road at least some of the time.
Continuing with the theme of a woman who’d fit right into Mad Max, we’ll give her Limited (3) Camping, and of course she’ll need Limited (3) Grit to dare to push the pedal to the metal. We’ll round it out with Limited (2) Keenness to look where she’s going (when she remembers) and Limited (2) Paperpushing to fill out all those insurance forms.
I figure that Zelda was darting around on her tricycle as soon as she was old enough to stand, so we’ll give her Metabolism of a Hummingbird for childhood. In school, she was actually kind of popular as a tough biker chick (a Cool Kid), and these days she’s a mechanic (a Technical Type) to be close to the beautiful engines. That bumps her Nerdery and Fitness up to Basic (5) and her Schmoozing up to Limited (2). Finally, her Breed Abilities as a Klutz are Nerdery and Fitness, so they get further increased to Basic (6).
For Dooms, we’ll take Basic (4) Titan’s Prowess – Zelda will need the Made of Iron Basic power from that Doom to give herself some extra resilience for all those crashes. That means that she has Basic (4) Pretension, meaning a solid amount of respect from her fellow Monsters, but Limited (2) Respectability since the repair bills are really doing a number on her bank account.
For Values, we’ll give her Excellence (she does so love a good race!) and Innovation (you can’t know that this shortcut doesn’t work until you’ve tried it…). All in all, Zelda ends up looking like this:
ZELDA ZOOM
Breed: Klutz
Childhood: Metabolism of a Hummingbird Adolescence: Cool Kid Adulthood: Technical Type
For Zelda’s first Friend, we’ll create someone who’s equally invested in speed and vigour, though in her case it translates into a fanatical devotion to the local woman’s curling team. Call her Olive Oatley. We’ll give her the Sportsfan Stereotype, the Out to Get Me Problem (the fans of rival teams don’t appreciate her heckling) and the Crackpot Discord (… nor does much of anyone appreciate her sacrificing black hens on the curling court to ensure home team victory).
ZELDA’S FRIEND #1: OLIVE OATLEY
Zelda and Olive met on the curling team in high school and immediately hit it off. However, while Zelda likes the sport, for Olive it’s an all-consuming passion, and she’s in a state of holy war with anyone rooting for any team but the one she coaches. As many people whose happiness is tied up with something they have no reasonable way of controlling, Olive also holds to a startling number of private superstitions (that have little to nothing to do with the sort of magic that actually does exist in Monster World).
Stereotype: Sportsfan Problem: Out to Get Me Discord: Crackpot
For Zelda’s second Friend, let’s shake things up a little and make him a fellow Monsters… and for that matter, let’s make him Zelda’s love interest. Friends aren’t necessarily platonic, after all – they can be significant others or even family members, the important thing is that the character wants to stay on good terms with them and that that is sometimes difficult.
We’ll call Zelda’s fellah Gabe Gawdhelpme and make him a Pushover – that is to say, a Werewolf, but one with a tendency to be super-timid and over-eager to please. Let’s give him the Romantic Stereotype, and the Bullied Problem and the The Ball and Chain Discord to represent the troubles the happy couple are facing.
ZELDA’S FRIEND #2: GABE GAWDHELPME
Gabe is Zelda’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. The reason for their rocky path has less to do with Gabe’s personality, which is agreeable to a fault, than with his mother, Gladys Gawdhelpme, and her intense resistance to Gabe doing anything but taking care of her in her old age. Gabe, desperately eager to please both his mother and his girlfriend, keeps drifting out of Zelda’s orbit whenever his mother is especially demanding, only to come slinking back when he spots an opening.
Stereotype: Romantic Problem: Bullied Discord: The Ball and Chain
Since one of Zelda’s Friends is a Monster, let’s further break with standard practice and make her Rival a standard vanilla human. We haven’t used the Parasite Approach or the Familial Feud yet, so let’s go with those, and add the Good Times Redemption for some residual feelings of kinship.
ZELDA’S RIVAL: ZACHARY ZOOM
Zelda’s lazy good-for-nothing brother doesn’t hold any animosity for her, honestly. It’s just that her frequent car crashes and similar disasters is all that distracts their parents – of whom he is dependent for his standard of living – from his disasters. As such, he is all too happy to bring attention to whatever Zelda has done wrong this time, all to get himself another few months of respite.
Approach: Parasite Feud: Familial Redemption: Good Times
Finally, for an Enemy, we won’t do anything fancy. Reversing Zelda’s stats gives us a characters who’s big on keeping her eyes on stuff (since Keenness is opposed to Fitness, one of Zelda’s strong suits), so let’s go with that and give our speed demon a stern, finger-wagging disapprover: a Muckraker, which is a sort of Slayer who’s a natural moral guardian and busybody.
ZELDA’S ENEMY: EDITH CLEBB
Senior citizen Edith lives down the street from Zelda and was Called as a Slayer after being woken up from her midday nap by screeching tires one time too many. Now she’s determined to warn the entire neighbourhood about how this maniac is endangering their children and pets. Which… is perfectly fair, to be honest. Hey, Slayers are the antagonists of the game, but that doesn’t mean they’re always wrong…
Special Abilities: Basic (5) Calling, Basic (5) Respectability
Pools: HP 7, GP 1, SP 3, BP 5
So that’s it! We’re two thirds of the way through now, leaving only our Moocher (commonly known as a Vampire) and our Loudmouth (politely identified as a Harpy). We’ll do the latter next – I think I’m going to make him the world’s biggest, meanest nurse…
