Monsters and Other Childish Things Bigger Bads
Monsters and Other Childish Things Bigger Bads
Monsters and Other Childish Things Bigger Bads
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................. 4
CHAPTER 1: FIDDLY BITS..........................................................................................6
Pushing and Shoving .............................................................................................................6
Helping Hands ........................................................................................................................7
New and Revised Extras................................................................................................8
New Extras.....................................................................................................................8
Tweaked Extras..............................................................................................................9
CHAPTER 2: THREATS..............................................................................................10
Threat Dice Pools...................................................................................................................10
Threat Actions........................................................................................................................11
Threat Qualities and Extras..................................................................................................11
Hurting a Threat..................................................................................................................12
A Menagerie Of Menace.......................................................................................................12
Escaped Ebola Monkeys...............................................................................................12
Snakes! Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?.....................................................................13
The Collapsing Building Is Now On Fire.....................................................................13
MIB Grab-Squad..........................................................................................................13
Excruciator Hatchlings.................................................................................................14
Robo-Bees.....................................................................................................................14
The Mean Kids..............................................................................................................14
Traversing the Treacherous Nighttime Rooftops of Our Fair City..............................15
Possessed Toy Factory...................................................................................................15
The Seven Stars Secret Kung-Fu Brotherhood.............................................................16
The Goo That Ate the Cafeteria...................................................................................16
The Luchacabra Fighters..............................................................................................17
CHAPTER 3: FARNESS..............................................................................................18
Come Over Here and Say That! ..........................................................................................18
Default Farness......................................................................................................................19
Getting Closer (Or Farther).................................................................................................20
Playing Chase . ......................................................................................................................22
CHAPTER 4: BIGNESS............................................................................................... 25
Bigness Ratings......................................................................................................................26
Bigdiff: Using Bigness...........................................................................................................27
A Huge Example....................................................................................................................28
CHAPTER 5: WEIRDNESS......................................................................................... 31
Who Are These Weird Kids?................................................................................................31
Wait, Weird Skills? Thats Not in the Core Book!..............................................................31
Weird Skills are Creepy.........................................................................................................32
Where Do Weird Skills Come From?.................................................................................32
How Do I Make My Own Weird Skills?.............................................................................32
Yeah, Right, So Whats the Downside?...............................................................................32
What Was That Thing About Being Caught Between Two Worlds?...............................34
All This Sounds Totally Rockin! Superpowers and a Monster Friend?.........................35
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Enough of Your Blither-Blather, Show Me How This Actually Works!..........................35
No, Not Black Leaf!...............................................................................................................35
Is It Really As Simple As All That?......................................................................................36
DEDICATION.....................................................................................................................95
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Wow.
Yeah.
That thing is pretty big.
You know whats the worst thing about something that big?
I can think of a few things. . .
Yeah, but SHINY. I do not ooze gunk, except from my warpglands, and thats totally rad gunk.
Introduction
Well, I dont leak gunk either.
Why?
I just discovered something even more horrible about a
creature that big than how easy it is to see its goopy pores.
What?
The size of its dumps.
CHAPTER 1:
FIDDLY BITS
USEFUL STUFF FOR MONSTERS
Here are a few tweaks and nuances to the Monsters and Other Childish Things core rules, stuff
that is already implicit but not explicit enough. Itll be useful later on when we get to the titular
(hush, youit doesnt mean that) big, bad GIANT MONSTERS. Theres stuff about range
and distance, and stuff about stats for menaces and dangers that arent exactly characters but
are more than just a difficulty number to beat with a roll. Combined, it all lets you know how
hard youll have to run to escape the dreaded Mecha-Rooster, and if you climb onto his leg,
how hard itll be fighting your way past his razor-sharp feathers and mecha-mites to get close
enough to sock him in the vulnerable mecha-giblets. Sometimes, a giant monster is more a
place than a person.
EXAMPLE
Benny McAlyster is having a pretty lousy day. This morning he completely blew a
geometry test because he forgot to studythe Order of Horus tried to banish Mr.
Crocker to the netherworld (Im not even from there! Whats up with these guys?)
. . . again. Then at lunch, Benny saw Mindy Mezlowski talking and laughing with that
jerkwad from the field hockey team. Then when he got home, he discovered that his
parents had been replaced with really unconvincing replicons with plastic hair, and
there was a black van covered in antennas across the street. So when the MIB zap-andgrab team comes for Mr. Crocker just before bedtime, Benny is having none of it.
The MIBs are trying to jab Mr. Crocker with a weird gizmo that paralyzes him,
and so Benny decides to put himself between his buddy and a zapping. During the
HELPING HANDS
Sometimes you want to do your friends a solid rather than do your foes a hurt. If this is your
intent, then Declare it as usual and roll the appropriate dice pool. Perhaps you shout some useful factoid (like, His weak part is his bladder sac! Kick him in the bladder sac!) and roll Brains
+ Remember. Or perhaps you feint an attack with Hands + Punching so your monster can get
a more solid slap in with his spiky tail-knob.
The character youre helping adds dice equal to your rolls width to their dice pool next
round.
The only restriction is that
monsters cant do this. This is a
kid-only trick. It has something
to do with human empathy and
egalitarianism, but has even
more to do with a monsters
sometimes very distressing inability to tell the difference in
shoving a friend out of the way
to assist their Dodge skill and
shoving a friend out of the way
to assist their Achieve LowEarth Orbit Without a Rocket
skill.
EXAMPLE
Back to Bennys bad day: Even while the MIBs are zapping him, Benny is trying to
help Mr. Crocker out. He decides to grab hold of the MIBs and make it easier for Mr.
Crocker to bite them real good. Benny rolls his Guts + Wrestling and gets 3x8. He
throws three dice to Mr. Crocker to bulk out the monsters multiple-action, bitey-bite
surprise. Two crashing snaps of Mr. Crockers jaws follow, and Benny finds himself
wrestling furiously with two sets of legs attached each to half a torso.
Benny then wonders briefly if being friends with Mr. Crocker has made him weird,
because his first thought on seeing the MIB innards is, At least they have some color
other than black and white.
NEW EXTRAS
Big: This Extra plugs into the Bigness rules found on page 26. Bigness is a special-case Extra
that has to be taken for each separate location. If you do that, it lets the monster operate higher
on the Bigness scale.
Bounce: If your defensive roll beats an attacks Width and Height, in addition to gobbling
the attacks dice safely, you can also bounce it back and inflict an attack on your attacker equal
to his or her own roll. Each additional rank of Bounce allows you to either reflect another
attack or bounce it back with one of the attackers Extras. So, if you get nailed by a 2x5 attack
with Gnarly x3, and defend with a 3x6 that has one rank of Bounce, you can deliver that 2x5
attack right back at the other (very surprised) monster. If you have four ranks of Bounce, you
can do that with all three of those Gnarly ranks too!
Immunity: Each rank of this Extra makes a single monster location totally immune to
something fairly specificfalling, fire, piercing, the judgment of otherseven if its done by a
monster or some other force that can hurt monsters. For all-over immunity, take this in every
hit location. If the GM raises an eyebrow and goes Hmmmmm when you suggest immunity
Sweet: Each rank of Sweet increases the Width of a successful roll for a Useful power when
determining how well you do. Its like Gnarly but for stuff that doesnt do damage. This doesnt
improve your chance of getting a successyou still need to roll a set before you get to be
totally Sweetbut it makes successes that you do roll that much nicer. Sweet also doesnt affect
Width for the purposes of initiative. If you want to be quicker, you still need Wicked Fast.
Splash: Each rank of Splash lets a power hit a second adjacent hit location on a target thats
roughly the same size as you (the same level of Bigness; see page 27). If you hit a targets
12 location, and have one rank of Splash, then it also hits the 34 location. With five ranks
of Splash you can hit six locations in one blastthats a whole person! (With monsters thats
not as sure a thing, what with their tendency to have more limbs than is generally considered
decent.) If theres any choice to be made between available hit locations, the target gets to pick
where your attack splashes. Splash damage does not ignore any Toughness the splashed locations might have, so its not quite the same as how damage will carry over if it hits a location
without any more dice.
TWEAKED EXTRAS
Awesome: What if you want more than two levels of Awesome? If the GM is cool with it,
you can keep buying Awesome. Every two ranks lets you flip another die to whatever you like
after you roll, and any remaining single ranks let you set one before the roll. So, five ranks of
Awesome let you set one die before the roll and two dice after. Be careful not to spend too
much on Awesome, thoughif you can flip more dice than you have, youll be in trouble unless your monster is mainlining a Relationship.
Spray: As written, Spray doesnt scale and can be really dominant. Heres a less macho version: Each time you take a rank in Spray, you can use one additional set to spam your declared
action each time you take a rank of Spray. So to use two extra sets (up to three total), youd
need Spray x2.
Chapter 2: Threats
CHAPTER 2:
THREATS
BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO GOOD PEOPLE,
OR, MENACE, PERIL, DANGER, AND
A THOUSAND BIOGENIC MURDER-HAMSTERS
These rules were first introduced in a sidebar on page 32 of The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor, and are presented and expanded here because theyve proven very useful and
should be available to all Monsters GMs whether they run Candlewick or not.
Sometimes, kids and monsters find themselves tangling not with another character but
with a dynamic and dangerous situation. Its not just a single obstacle to be overcome with a
simple roll, but something requiring the added complexities of a full-blown conflict. Anything
that can inflict damage on kids and monstersbe it a burning building, a hallway full of laughing peers, a swarm of angry bees, or a gnarly nightmarecan be handled as a Threat. Threats
give the GM an easy way of managing complicated menaces and giving them meaningful game
effects.
Threats aint the same as characters, and in many ways are there to suggest to players a
course of action in the scene.
10
Chapter 2: Threats
TO ME, MY MINIONS! FORM A MEATY BARRIER WITH YOUR BODIES TO
PROTECT ME!
You can use a Threat to describe a bad guys squad of minions and goons. One of the classic jobs of a horde of faceless
scrubsother than being squashed in appalling numbers by the heroes to show how heroic they are (and by heroic we
mean able to squash a whole lot of faceless scrubs)is to protect their malevolent bossman from being fed a righteous
and much-deserved knuckle sandwich.
These guys throw themselves in the path of acid sprays, warp-grubs, fists, ugly insults, and big hunks of rock. They use
their actions to defend their boss, and make no attacks or efforts to defend themselves, or they employ a suicidal charge,
rolled like a Useful monster power, which limits the heroes from attacking anyone except them for Width 1 rounds. While
theyre getting stomped into an oily goo, their boss legs it to safety. I bet that wasnt in the employee manual or mentioned
in the orientation when they started working for Evil Co. Yeah, the health plan is great . . . if you live long enough to take
advantage of it.
But then, even if you get squished, you can join the exciting growing field of Post-Mortal Security Specialists as part of
your bosss new cybernetically augmented zombie horde.
THREAT ACTIONS
The GM always declares the intentions for any Threats in play before anyone else, regardless of
the Brains + Out-Think totals. Unlike most characters, every set rolled for a Threat is used, so
it can do the same Threatening thing multiple times in a round without even trying hard.
If a Threat has more than one declared action (attacking and defending, for example), then
it drops a die from its pool as normal for multiple actions, but it gets to use all the sets rolled
for either or both of its declarations.
THREAT QUALITIES
AND EXTRAS
All Threats have the Attacks quality. Without Attack, theyre not much in the way of Threats.
For some Threats, thats all they do, but some situations are trickier to deal with.
With Defends, the Threat can make defensive rolls and gobble attacks, defending itself or
others.
With Useful it can do
other things, pretty much
just like a monster power
(as described on page 43 of
Monsters).
What about exotic
super-dangerous threats,
like swarms of radioactive
hyper-intelligent bees? The
GM can add Extras to a
Threat, just like a monster
power. They work pretty
much the same way here as
they do for monsters. Gnarly
makes the threat more dam-
11
Chapter 2: Threats
aging, Tough makes it harder to beat, Wicked Fast means it resolves quicker, etc. Be careful
with these: Since you keep all the rolled sets for a Threat, a little bit of Gnarly goes a long way.
And since they dont have hit locations, a little bit of Tough protects the whole Threat.
When throwing together a Threat (either on the fly or during your pre-game prep), consider a little bit about what the mechanics will mean for that Threat. A bunch of demonicallyanimated toys are going to have a different way of using the Area Extra than Doctor Doomguys Cadre of Crack Commandos.
Also consider what the Qualities mean for a given Threat. The dumb violence of a collapsing mine should get different Qualities than the coordinated aggression of the Fabulous
Luchadore Leagues Vengeance Squad.
HURTING A THREAT
Threats dont really have hit locations. Any successful attack reduces a Threats dice pool by the
damage done.
And on the subject of attacking threats, what would you use to do it?
Here, creativity is explicitly to be rewarded and encouraged. Threats can be defeated in
all kinds of ways. One kid might use his Hands + Punching to deal with a crowd of mocking, crowing kids, laughing at how funny his mom dresses him. Another might use Face +
Putdown to smack-talk them back. Still another might simply run away, using Feet + P.E. to
escape their taunts. The end result is the same: They inflict damage on the Threats dice pool,
representing how close they are to beating it, and how much its ability to hurt them has been
reduced.
A MENAGERIE OF MENACE
Threats are a little fiddly, so some examples might be in order to gently ease the concepts into
your brain like a very polite fluke-worm.
ATTACK: They jump around and bite and scratch, but only if roused. Mostly theyll try and
run away until they get angry about being shoved into a sack.
DEFEND: Hitting one monkey among dozens is pretty tricky. Theyre nimble and noisy, and
dont understand your puny human insults.
USEFUL: They can do all the things youd expect lab monkeys to be able to do: climb, run, open
doors, and infect your loved ones with the GAMMA-7 strain of weaponized hemorrhagic fever.
12
Chapter 2: Threats
ATTACK: They can bite and they can squeeze, and its as bad as you can possibly imagine.
DEFEND: Theres just so many of them, punching and kicking at them seems pointless. Something that burns and explodes might work better.
USEFUL: A single snake does snaky things. A thousand snakes make people quiver with nearinsane fearand possibly throw upwhile holding them immobile in a roiling snaky mass.
THE COLLAPSING
BUILDING IS NOW ON FIRE
Whose bright idea was it to use fire on the snakes? Oh, right, mine. Well anyhow, now the
building is on fire.
ATTACK: Burning chunks of stuff fall on kids. If their monsters are around, the smoke and
lack of good air wont be a problem, but getting burned worse than forgotten fish sticks in a
deep-fryer will be a concern.
MIB GRAB-SQUAD
While Agent Taupe and Agent Beige direct the action, the Grab-Squad piles out of the antenna
vans. They wear plastic biohazard suits and blank-faced gas-masks. They carry pinch-sticks
and canisters of sticky foam. They swarm all over you and your bug-eyed buddy, heedless of
how easily the thrash of a tail spike or tentacle sends them flying through walls.
13
Chapter 2: Threats
DEFEND: The Grab-Squad wont defend itself, but it will defend any MIB agents on hand for
the capture.
USEFUL: Theyre all about being Useful. They make good use of this Quality to bind up kids
and monsters (tying up their body bits), limiting their ability to escape, and generally steering
them towards the open doors of the antenna vans.
EXCRUCIATOR HATCHLINGS
Somebody ate a whole bowl of the suspiciously bitter candy in Ms. Pales office, and now theres
enough wriggly tentacular horror to fuel the nightmarish literature of a legion of pasty early
20th-century pulp horror writers. And theyre coming up out of the potty, right now and the
smell is even worse than when Dad is done in there on Enchilada Casserole Night.
ATTACK: Oh yeah, they do this. Their little barbed tentacles are like getting scratched by a
thousand slimy cat claws, and they smell so bad you want to throw up. When they crawl all
over you, your sanity says, Dude, I quit. Im not paid enough to handle this crap.
DEFEND: Theyre aggressive, but skittish. Theyll wiggle aside if they start to get squished.
USEFUL: They can squeeze through really tiny openings (like human ear canals), but arent
big enough to wear their own skin-suit yet. Though if a lovable, scruffy-eared puppy came
close enough . . . well, if Scraps starts to look at you funny, you know why.
ROBO-BEES
Whats better than bees? ROBOT BEES! You know why? Because Robo-Bees have more SCIENCE! What began as a noble answer to the collapse of native honeybee populations and
falling crop pollination became a twisted example of science run madMAD!when the
cackling inventor realized that helping farmers might be noble, but ruling the world is much
more fun. Fly! Fly my striped mechanical minions! Sting, sting, sting!
ATTACK: Theyre really good at this one. They swarm, engulf, sting, and suffocate.
USEFUL: The Robo-Bees can fly around and send back pictures and signals to their evil
overlord that he can watch on his big screen in high-def, or on his fancy new UltraPhone that
he constantly takes out to show how hip he is. Jerk.
14
Chapter 2: Threats
ATTACK: Relentlessly, but not with fists or pointy sticks. The Mean Kids sneer, whisper,
spread rumors. They mock and laugh, ridicule, and denigrate.
DEFEND: Turning around and punching the bully in real life usually results in him punching you back, but the Mean Kids dont respond well to attack, and will often resort to defensive
snubbing and disdainful retreat.
USEFUL: The Mean Kids arent really much use at all, but theyre pretty good at forcing their
victims into bad situations or limiting their actionssay, making it clear that they would not
be welcome at the party when Tobys parents go out of town.
ATTACK: This is where the menace hidden in the rooftops comes from: loose roofing, pokey
TV antennas, unexpected drops, and walls topped with broken glass. Dashing heck bent for
leather across the roofs in the dark is just asking for a bruising.
USEFUL: The rooftops are really tricky, and could impose limitations and steer actions.
EXTRAS: Wicked Fast x3.
15
Chapter 2: Threats
auditing the place. He immediately found a whole lot of fat that could be cut. Unfortunately,
most of the fat was under the skin of the factorys workers. Including someone you know and
really care about.
ATTACK: The plastic casting machines squirt molten flesh-colored plastic and the halfformed dolls reach for you, their little voices saying, MOMMA . . . MOMMA . . . MOMMA
... DIEEEEEEEEEE. Its as much an attack on the mind as on the body.
USEFUL: Lots of little doll hands, out-of-control industrial machines, forklifts, and the copy
machine in the office are all at the Black Goats disposal.
USEFUL: Theyve got the martial arts choreography and wire-fu of a Yuen Woo Ping movie,
and the dialog of a bad American dub. On the plus side, their soundtrack is by the Wu Tang Clan.
ATTACK: This is pretty much all the Goo does. It grabs and squeezes, and lashes out with
slimy tendrils of wilted salad and over-boiled hotdogs.
USEFUL: The Goo isnt one of the great minds. But thats fine; the Goo creeps, climbs, and
engulfs, and its resume makes up for its lack of formal training with a lifetime of experience.
16
Chapter 2: Threats
ATTACK: While they can attack, hurting their foes isnt their major goal; they want the monsters they fight to say, Chupacabras are the boss of me!
DEFEND: Those nimble little guys sure are quick, when theyve seen some of their fellows
mushed.
USEFUL: They like lock holds, bouncing their enemies off the ropes, and doing crazy aerial
combo moves. Most of these end up pushing and shoving enemy monsters around or immobilizing body parts with half a dozen little masked Mexican monsterettes.
17
Chapter 3: Farness
CHAPTER 3:
FARNESS
I CAN MELT YOUR FACE FROM
ALL THE WAY OVER HERE
In basic Monsters and Other Childish Things were pretty abstract with range and distance,
especially in a fight. The working assumption is that monsters (especially monsters) can figure
out a way to hurt the other guy even if their abilities arent specifically about spewing acid or
shooting beams of ruby light. The monster with huge super-strong arms could lob a car, or the
monster who can knot space like a hippies hemp bracelet could bend an enemy into a pretzel
of folded space-time so he punches himself in the left kidney.
This system is based on relative distance. It isnt really all that important exactly how
many feet apart two characters are, or how close they are to the walls or the innocent bystanders (unless it is ... and thats your call)whats really important is how close they are relative
to each other, and only then, when you really need to know it.
18
Chapter 3: Farness
Remember, what this scale measures is the relative
distance between two characters (or a character and something important) in a scene. Its a deliberately abstract way
of tracking range, and can take into account both actual
distance, but also how much junk is between the two characters, stuff that limits sighting, targeting, and whatnot.
DEFAULT FARNESS
FARNESS
1 - Up In Your Face
2 - Just Out of Reach
3 - A Stones Throw
4 - A Long Shot
5 - Way Out There
6 - Going
7+ - Gone, Baby, Gone
19
Chapter 3: Farness
HOW FAR CAN HIS PUS GLANDS SQUIRT?
Farness adds some wrinkles to combat, and to monster combat especially, and makes monster abilities related to movement especially relevant. But as written, theres no mechanical allowance for ranged monster abilities. Heres the fix.
By default, monster powers (and ranged weapons) can be used out to Farness 2 in an action scene. Outside of the scene,
the dice-pool based distance is used, but in an action scene, with all the chaos and yelling, the effective range is less. This
gives monsters a bit more reach than regular people, but limits things a little bit.
The Area Extra lets you hit everyone within a Farness of your target equal to the number of Area Extras the ability has. It
shoots out to its maximum Farness, hits a target, and then explodes from there. If my Cloud of Flaming Skulls ability has
Area 2, then I can hit everyone who is Farness 2 or less from the guy I nail with this power. The glitch with Area is, of course,
that you cant decide who gets hit and who doesnt get hit inside that blanket effect. Also, if the Area Extras total more than
the Default Farness in the scene, then everybody whos not explicitly farther away gets blown up by the exploding skulls. As
a general rule, if it goes boom, use with caution.
For monster powers (and mundane weapons) that go father, use the new (predictably named) Extra:
RANGE
Each rank of Range the weapon or power possesses adds 1 to the Farness at which it can effectively be used. So, one rank
means a monster can use his power out to Farness 3, and four ranks means the monster can use his power out to Farness
6. Outside of combat, add twice the number of Range Extras to the monster powers dice pool when referencing it on the
Monster Might table found on page 44 of Monsters and Other Childish Things; otherwise, youd end up with a power that
worked farther away in a fight, but closer up outside of a fight, and that would be ridonkulous.
Because you buy the Range extra with dice from your monsters body part, it means that powers you can use far away are
going to be a little weaker than those you can use up close, and that adds a layer of tactical decision-making when building
your beasty, and when playing him in a fight. Balancing your monsters abilities to make powerful attacks, close attacks, far
attacks, and to move around in a fight becomes more relevant, and so give it a little thought when using these rules.
DF you decide on: perhaps things change, the roof falls in, a bunch of students crowd around to
watch the fight, or some walls get blown out. Let the players know when this happens.
GETTING CLOSER
(OR FARTHER)
So what about moving closer (or running away like a big wuss)?
Movement is pretty simple. Once you know how close you are to someone else, either because youve been keeping track of it, or you resort to the Default Farness, you can move 1 Farness step for free when your action resolves (based on the Width of your roll, as per normal). If
your action fails, you can still move, but you do it after everyone else has resolved their action
(ties are broken by comparing Feet + P.E. or the monster power dice pool).
If you want to take an action and move faster, then you roll the relevant dice pool (be it a
monster ability or most likely Feet + P.E. for a kid), then you move the Width of the roll in Farness steps. A Width of 2 means you can move 2 steps rather than one. If you want to move and
then kick somebody when you get there, then declare a multiple action normally.
Its possible to maintain your distance from an opponent by moving away from them as
they move closer to you, but remember that your free movement happens on Width of whatever other action you roll, so it might be possible for an enemy to step close, sock you in the
eye, and only then let you back up to restore the previous distance.
20
Chapter 3: Farness
EXAMPLE
The remaining MIBs decide that running away very, very fast and leaving their
dignity to be trod into the earth is the better part of valor after seeing Mr. Crocker
spit out two licked-clean pairs of sunglasses. The Default Farness in this scene is 2,
and so thats how far they start from Mr. Crocker.
Mr. Crocker finds he has a taste for MIB (Theyre crunchy! Like meat chips!), and
so hes going to use his Bouncy Legs 8d to chase them. The MIBs are using their Feet
+ P.E. total of 6d to leg it. Mr. Crocker additionally decides try a multiple action with
his Big Belly 8d to swallow one of the MIBs if he can catch them.
Mr. Crocker has to cover 2 Farness steps, and has 7 dice to roll (for his Bouncy Legs
8d, dropping one for the multiple action). The MIBs have to cover 5 steps to be totally
gone from the scene; its unlikely theyll be able to do this, but they might keep Mr.
Crocker at a distance.
Everyone rolls...
Mr. Crocker: 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5 (3x3 and 3x5! Mr. Crocker licks his chops as he bounces
towards the black-suited snack food).
MIB 3: 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (no sets . . . poor, poor MIB; and he only took the job to pay off his
college loans . . .).
The Farness started at 2, and Mr. Crocker easily covers that with the 3x5. His player
decides to use that for the movement because it beats the best Width the MIBs can
bring, and that means hell catch the MIBs before they start runninghe covers the 2
range steps, and now hes Up In Their Faces.
Looking at what the other MIBs have rolled, Mr. Crocker decides to gobble up the
guy who seems to be moving the fastest before he can get away. Thats MIB 1, and just
as he starts to sprint Mr. Crockers jaws snap shut (with the 3x3, also faster than the
MIBs movement), and
the monsters belly
gives a satisfied rumble.
Mmmmmmmssssgood.
MIB 2 now moves, but
because Mr. Crocker
covered 3 Farness
increments, he only
manages to put 1 step
between himself and
the bouncing crocodile.
Heres the math: the
Farness started at 2, Mr.
Crocker covered 3, MIB
2 rolled well enough to
21
Chapter 3: Farness
let him move 2, and so that leaves ... 2 ... plus 2 ... minus 3 ... carry the 1 ... divide
by pi ... delicious, delicious pie ... equals one Farness step. At the start of the next
round, thats the Farness separating Mr. Crocker from MIB 2.
MIB 3 didnt put any distance at all between himself and Mr. Crocker, so hes also at
Up In Your Face distance.
MIB 1 is now ... well ... even closer than that.
This is Agent Eggshell. Agent Eggshell calling Control. Come in, Control.
This is Control, Agent Eggshell. What is your status?
Currently engulfed in BEM digestive sack, Control. Have located several items of interest.
Report, Agent Eggshell.
Have identified the upper portions of Agents Chalk and Off-White, along with two
partial automobiles, a big screen television, seventy-two institutional cans of pudding,
and gallons and gallons of digestive slime.
Agent Eggshell, confirm you have located pudding.
Pudding confirmed, Control.
Identify the type of pudding.
Thirty-two cans of chocolate, twenty of vanilla, five of tapioca, five of rice, and ten of
butterscotch.
Report acknowledged, Agent Eggshell. Your service will be recorded in the Gray
Book. Please initiate Protocol Sleepy-Time Happy Pills.
Initiating. Protocol Sleepy-Time Happy Pills successful. Geep. Gurple. Snurp.
Your name will be among the Honored Forgotten.
Urp.
PLAYING CHASE
Heres another way you can use the distance rules we just described: you can use them to run
complicated and crazy monster rooftop parkour chases.
If catching somebody
isnt really all that important
or worthy of a full-blown
conflict, then leave it in
the realm of the simple or
the contested roll: roll and
compare, with Width deciding who gets caught or who
escapes, and Height how
elegantly and neatly its done.
But for a complicated
and dangerous chase with
lots of jump cuts and shaky-
22
Chapter 3: Farness
CHILDREN FLY FOR FREE!
In a chase, a monster can carry his kid, even if hes got no explicit carrying stuff body bit to do it with. Riding on your monster buddys back is pretty much half the whole point of being friends with a monster. This means the kid benefits from the
monsters moving around abilities, and her hands and attention are free to do other stuff, like shout insults, throw rocks, or
flinch violently away from gouts of fire.
If things get really bumpy (or the guy youre chasing decides to deliberately make trouble), then the kid might have to
roll to desperately keep his grip, because no self-respecting monster is going to let his kid fall off and eat pavement... at
least, not without a Motivation roll. No Yog-SoSoft! Keep running! You escape!
Cant you feel the pathos?
You came back for me.
Yep.
I told you to keep running! We needed to catch that guy!
Yeah, I know. But my people have a saying: leave no man behind.
First, I think its the US Marines who say that. Second, Im a girl.
Yeah... and technically, the literal translation of my peoples expression is never leave good meat for the ungrateful enemy to gnaw but you lose the poetry that way, and its really about loyalty and camaraderie and junk. Its hardly at all about
cannibalism.
Im once-again in awe of your peoples way with words. Lean down so I can hop on.
Sure, dude, just dont fart on my exoskeleton this time.
Again: GIRL. And I never fart.
Take it from the guy who sleeps under your bed. You, dear friend, fart.
It works pretty much the same way with cars and people riding in themthe driver makes rolls, but everyone else gets
the benefits of riding along. The chase rules are more about running (or flying or burrowing or squirting through wormholes) than about mad car fights, but itll work pretty well. See page 10 for more on using the monster building rules to
apply stats to things like trucks and trains and giant robots.
cam and guys walking across the street carrying huge plates of glass for monsters to smash
through ... for this, you run it like a conflict and use the Farness mechanics.
In this setup, Farness is still the relative separation between the chaser and the chasee, but
rather than range for the purposes of launching distance attacks, its the lead the runner has on
the chaser. Its not about how fast theyre going, but about how much lead the runner has on
the chaser and whether she can extend that lead into an escape before the chaser closes it and
catches her. Actual speed then becomes something cool to throw into the descriptionsand it
also takes into account supernatural forms of movement, like that unsettling ability of monsters who wear sports masks to suddenly appear right behind someone running full-tilt even if
the monster never seems to move faster than a plod. Farness is strictly a measure of how close
the runner is to being caught.
Movement works the same as above; each round, the chaser and runner can move 1 step
closer or farther apart for free. So, if both are trying to do something else, then they keep pace.
If one tries to alter the Farness between them, its resolved and the Farness changes by their
Width. Remember that the timing of movement can sometimes be really important, if the
chaser can grab the runner before the runners movement action kicks in, for example. Thats
why the complex conflict rules really serve the tension in a chase scene well.
But running isnt the only thing you can do in a chase. You can throw stuff, drop stuff,
spray slick grease on the ground, set fire to the walls, knock over a stack of nudie magazines to
distract, scream threats, lob rocks, hurl insults, or do the opposite, and leap, crawl, dodge, and
scurry away from these threats. What were talking about here is the full range of normal conflict options (and the new ones described in this book on page 6 under Pushing and Shoving
and Helping Hands).
23
Chapter 3: Farness
An attack that inflicts
damage on an opponent
can be all kinds of things in
a chase. Make them crash
through something to try
and reach you; leave them
gasping for breath as you
put on a punishing turn of
speed; or shout dire threats
about what youll do to
their bike if they dont stop
running away. The damage
inflicted here might impair
your opponents ability to
keep chasing or keep running: try to hurt their Feet
if youre running, their Hands if youre driving, or their Brains if youre flying alien mindsaucers. Itll also make it harder for them to do other stuff, like lob junk in your path, or spook
herds of dinosaurs into stampeding at you.
Defense actions work normally, gobbling dice used to make damage-inflicting attacks.
Monster powers (and regular kid skills) can be used to limit the opponents options. You
cant use Pushing and Shoving or a monsters Useful powers to automatically escape or catch,
but you can use them to steer your opponent into trouble, away from help, or otherwise where
you want them to go. This assumes the chaser has some way to keep up at all; running away
from a guy whose legs are caught in a huge steel bear-trap isnt a chase, but it sure is ungentlemanly. Likewise, if your monster can teleport to Venus anytime she wants, then Joe Flatfoot
the P.I. isnt going to be able to even think about tailing you.
If the runner can increase the Farness to greater than 6, then hes gone.
If the chaser can decrease the Farness to 1, then shes caught the runner and what happens
next is what happens next. You only hope she wants to kiss you and make you play house. She
might want to kiss you, lay eggs in your abdomen, and then make you play house ... where
you are the house.
You probably dont need to keep track of the Default Farness in this kind of scene, because
knowing how close you are to getting away or getting caught is the point. If another scene turns
into a chase, then you can use the DF from that scene as the starting distance between chaser
and runner, or just call it arbitrarily based on what makes sense.
24
Chapter 4: Bigness
CHAPTER 4:
BIGNESS
MY PAL LEVIATHAN
Hepcat?
Believe that I say this with love, but if you keep saying
hepcat, youll never be cool. Ever. Even if you were frozen
in a glacier for a thousand eons of time, you wouldnt be
cool.
How about daddy-o?
...right up his...
...seriously, dont say it...
...booM-BooM Chute.
His...?
BooM-BooM Chute.
You use the phrase BOOM-BOOM CHUTE seriously, and you
think saying HEPCAT means Ill never be cool?
Yep.
25
Chapter 4: Bigness
BIGNESS RATINGS
Heres where we really justify the title of this book. Monsters so big they have boogers bigger
than Great Danes. This brings it all together, the Farness rules and the stuff on Threats. When
Combine-R is stomping towards you on his tractor legshis arms made from grain threshing
machines reaching out to get all agrarian on your buttknowing how fast hes coming is pretty
significant. How likely are you to outdistance something that can cover half a football field in a
step?
Likewise, if you manage to leap up onto his legs then Combine-R becomes less an antagonist and more a location. Those big threshing blades become a hazard you have to negotiate before hopping from his elbow to his control linkages while leaping away from the robot
scarecrows that infest him like lice.
So how do we meaningfully handle crazy disparities in the scale of different characters? If its
you and your friends (and their monstrous friends) teaming up against the Arisen Mognarch or
The Burning Hot Giant Man Made of Wicker, then this system will give you and the GM what you
need to keep everything straight.
Smaller characters are harder to hit but easier to hurt. Bigger characters are easier to hit
but harder to hurt. Theyre slower to react but faster when moving. Its sort of a lot to keep
track of. Do bigger creatures have bigger dice pools sometimes, and smaller dice pools other
times? What if two giant creatures of the same general scale tangle?
Heres how you do it.
Everything has Bigness, a measure of which scale of action the creature or thing fits into.
Kids and their monsters almost always have Bigness 1, meaning that their actions and their
major challenges and concerns are on the kid scale. How about bigger stuff? Thats where the
Bigness scale comes in. The bigger the Bigness, the bigger the monster.
Bigness has some direct effects on monster actions, which well discuss below. Bigness also
modifies how monster powers work according to Monster Might (see page 44 of Monsters and
Other Childish Things). Each rank of Bigness multiplies Speed, Range, and Mass.
BIGNESS RATINGS
1 2 3
26
Chapter 4: Bigness
BIGNESS 1 (NORMAL SIZE)
Kids and their monsters, pets, family, friends, most stuff they think is important. x1 Speed/x1
Range/x1 Mass.
BIGNESS 2 (BIG)
Really big animals like elephants and dinosaurs, and trucks that turn into robots. x2 Speed/x2
Range/x10 Mass.
BIGNESS 3 (BIGGER)
The biggest animals, like whales. This is about as big as an all-natural, 100% meat creature can
get, and then only in the ocean. On land it takes mojo or bones made of ultra-calcium (thanks to
all the ultra-milk) to get this large and not collapse under the crushing weight of a physics buzzkill. Our favorite super-ape King Kong fits into this Bigness rank. x4 Speed/x5 Range/x100 Mass.
BIGNESS 4 (BIGGEST)
Huge, building-stomping beasties of this scale are big enough to sit around the house when
they sit around the house. The shiny, growing, monster-fighting heroes of the Science Patrol,
Ultraman and his Ultrabuds, are Bigness 4. x8 Speed/x10 Range/x1,000 Mass.
BIGNESS 5 (BIGGEREST)
Only the most ginormous monsters achieve Bigness 5. Theyre creatures which can credibly be
said to be civilization killers if they decide to stomp humanity back to the Stone Age. The all-time
greatest and most super-sweet monster, Tohos Gojira, and his gallery of foes would be Bigness
5, which makes you wonder why theyre always attacking little Japan. Fitting inside such a small
country must be like trying to dance in pants two sizes too small. Itll make your butt look huge,
and moving around comfortably is a trick. x10 Speed/x100 Range/x10,000 Mass.
27
Chapter 4: Bigness
WE COULD HAVE PROM IN ONE OF HIS NOSTRILS
What about a monster so huge its more like scenery than an arch-enemy?
If the BigDiff is 3 or more, instead of running it like a fight between the whole giant monster and the smaller characters,
everyone can jump onto one of the big characters locations and stage a scene therea fight, a chase, whatever. See the
movement and range rules on page 19 and the Threat rules on 10, and combine them.
The location where the smaller characters are riding is treated like a Threat with dice, qualities, and Extras as normal, and
with additional dice equal to twice the BigDiff. Its then handled in play just like a Threat, while the real action goes down
on the scale of the characters atop it. Getting swallowed sometimes works this way, and you can stage scenes inside the big
critters innards.
Moving around on the back of the giant monster means treating the critters hit locations as if they were BigDiff Farness
away. If the BigDiff is 3, then traveling from Combine-Rs Legs to his Head would mean covering three Farness steps with an
appropriate means of movement.
In this mode, the giant creature is treated more like a dangerous location or set-piece than a distinct entity to be bested.
The way it works out, bigger characters hit harder and are themselves harder to hurt.
Theyre also faster on the straightaways, but smaller characters are quicker to act. Smaller characters are also better at hitting bigger characters (because theyre biggerits hard to miss), and
at dodging their attacks (because theyre so tiny). If youre teeny and hes big then itll be easier
not to get hit, but if you do get hit itll suck more. Even worse, because the stuff youre getting
hit with is so big, it splashes over into other hit locations. If youre a kid and get hit in the Guts
by a Bigness 5 Mega-Squid then its damage will roll over to four other hit locations (so basically,
all of them) and inflict +4 damage! Youll get squished so flat youll have to change your name
to Matt.
Remember, BigDiff is the source of most of these modifiers, not Bigness itself. If King Ug
and Mi-GoJirra (both Bigness 5 creatures) tangle, then you can ignore the BigDiff modifiers
theyre on the same scale. While the city might suffer horribly, theres no need to track size mechanically between the creatures. But if M-Force sends out a team of Spirit Rangers to try and
use Bigness 1 monsters to fight the really big monsters, then the kids and their monster friends
might be in for some serious troubleat least until the Essence Engines wind up enough to
power them up to the next Energy Level.
A HUGE EXAMPLE
The agents of the Monster Investigation Bureau finally realize that trying to take Mr. Crocker
with conventional means is a losing proposition, so they call in heavy support from their contacts in the Military Industrial Complex. The boys from the MIB and the boys from the MIC
dont always get along, but they share a few funding streams in the public/private administration model. So one quick call to General Stormy Stern, and theres a black-bag tactical team
in a warehouse downtown ready to deploy a Thunderbolt 10 A.P.E. infantry force enhancer (in
other words, a big robotic gorilla suit). Piloting the A.P.E. is specially cross-trained Sergeant
Agent Cornsilk. Programmed into the A.P.E.s pheromone targeting system is a stinky reptil-
28
Chapter 4: Bigness
ian smell, like the snake house at the
zoo (or a certain Egyptian crocodile
gods bathwater).
For over a week, all is good (for
a particularly exciting and perilous
value of good) for Benny and Mr.
Crocker.
And then, on the way home after school one day, somebody throws
a car at Benny. A sturdy Swedish car
whose exceptional safety standards
and robust diesel engine make it
quite heavy.
Sometimes, its good to be
friends with a monster.
Mr. Crockers big belly is way
bigger inside than out, easily big enough to swallow all that fine European craftsmanship.
Which, with a tidy roll, he manages with style, even if the space-warping gulp makes onlookers
mildly queasy.
Then, from its loudspeakers, the A.P.E. speaks: CEASE AND DESIST ALL SUPER-,
PARA-, SEMI-, AB-, and UN-NATURAL ACTIVITIES IMMEDIATELY, AND SURRENDER
FOR PROCESSING!
To which Mr. Crocker answers, Bring it.
But when the A.P.E. lumbers out from behind the Gas n Gulp, Mr. Crockers nervous
swallow is made more noticeable by the plaintive bleating of a car alarm from somewhere in
the depths of his extra-dimensional innards.
The A.P.E. has Bigness 2, meaning a BigDiff of 1. It looms over Mr. Crocker even when he
stands up straight and doesnt slouch. When they start fighting, here are the advantages each
will have:
MR. CROCKER
THE A.P.E.
When the pain starts raining down, Mr. Crocker is going to have an easier time targeting
the A.P.E. in specific places (because of the Awesome) and dodging the A.P.E.s attacks. Unfortunately, if the A.P.E.s attacks land, theyll do +1 damage and splash over onto an adjacent hit
location. Worse, while the A.P.E. is easier to hit, it takes 1 less damage whenever Mr. Crocker
manages to lay one on. The gator is in for a rough time.
29
Chapter 4: Bigness
AND ILL FORM THE LEFT ARM!
Giant robots.
Oh yeah, we got that covered.
You can use the monster creation system to build mecha, power-suits,
and giant robotronic mayhem machines. In most ways, theyre just like
monsters. Some may have brains of their own, and in that case dealing
with them is almost identical to dealing with monsters, except their Personality and Favorite Thing will likely reflect their programming or directives. OBEY ALL EXECUTIVES OF MEGA-DYNA-TECH CO., or for lactoseintolerant mad inventors, DESTROY ALL CHEESE.
But what about a mech thats like a big vehicle without a brain of its
own? Something that has to be piloted around, and whatnot?
Somebody has to drive it.
That could be a guy in an instrument-encrusted control chair, or a kid with
a remote control, or a monkey genius doing kung-fu in a 3D sensor field, but
somebody has to tell the mech what to do. When a piloted mech is doing
stuff, you always roll the LOWER of the dice associated with the bit youre
using or the drivers STAT + SKILL combo (which depends on the mech,
and is set when the thing is built). The mechs dice are still used for tracking
damage, and for determining how much stuff it can affect, but its actions are
limited by its technical constraints and the pilots skill.
The exception to this is when Relationships are added into the roll.
These are dropped on top of whichever dice pool is being used, because
the above-and-beyond motivation they represent allows a pilot to exceed
both his and his mechs limitations.
Thats all a little confusing, so how about an example?
EXAMPLE: Martie Duke234 Pooley used to spend all day pwning newbs in
Bronze Star Recent Warfare when he was recruited by Project BLACK BOOK. As
it turns out, all those ultra-realistic battle sims were a combination of training program and screening process. When BLACK BOOK identified Duke234
as a perfect candidate for their Tele-A.P.E. Program he ended up in the back
of a black van playing Bronze Star for real. He pilots his remote mech with his
Hands + GameBox Epic Win dice pool of 8d; but if he fires up the Tele-A.P.E.s 6d
weapons pod to spray a room full of shoo-spiders with high-velocity narcotic
paintballs, hed only roll six dice because thats the weapons pods total dice
pool and its lower than his own dice pool. (These controls suck!) But if he
busts his Tele-A.P.E. into the room and discovers his parents goobed to the wall
by shoo-spider web, he could add his My Lame Parents 3d Relationship to the
weapons pods 6d pool.
Now, what about all the other stuff monsters have going for themlike
the fact that ordinary weapons dont bother them?
Well, thats something of a judgment call depending on how you want to
use mechs in your game. If you want them to pose threats to monsters, then let
them ignore the normal advantages that monsters have when facing strictly mundane foes. If you want monsters to be able to rip
Gammaton-7 a new fusion-chute, then leave those advantages in place. Id recommend going ahead and giving mecha a pass on
these things because theres nothing really mundane about giant robots anyway, and because Monster vs. Robot is such an iconic
theme, resonating strongly with our geeky souls.
What about small robots that combine into big robots?
Each smaller bot becomes a hit location in the bigger bot, which must be one or two Bigness ranks larger than the
component mechs. Use the largest dice pool from among the smaller mechs to represent the dice pool of the larger mechs
bit, and assign it a hit location number based on the big mechs body shape. The players roll the dice that their individual
mechs contribute to the big mechs abilities when they come up.
30
Chapter 5: Weirdness
CHAPTER 5:
WEIRDNESS
WHY ARE YOU SO STRANGE?
Your friends have cool monsters and they have crazy adventures and stuff. What do you have?
Other than the symbiotic infection with superhuman Mi-Cells which lets you jump over cars,
and shoot atomic fire from your mouth? Other than that? Yeah, nuthin. Being a Weird Kid
sucks.
Heres an optional set of rules a GM can present to players who arent keen on managing
both kid and monster or who want to play a character whos a little different than everybody
else. This stuff is entirely up to the GM. Hes the gatekeeper, and hell need bribes of tacos and
orange cream soda to allow anyone to pass through. In some games, the GM might offer one
Weird Kid slot, and let his players fight over it. In other less savage groups, it might be an option floated for anyone to grab. But its the GMs call, because Weird Kids work different from
Kids with Monsters, and they have a different impact on play, and the mechanics give them a
different sort of trajectory.
31
Chapter 5: Weirdness
WEIRD SKILLS ARE CREEPY
Readers whore familiar with The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor will notice some similarities between Weird Skills and
Creepy skills. This is because Weird Skills are basically the same as Candlewicks creepier version, with some tweaks and the
added torn between two worlds stuff. The Weird Skill rules are backwards compatible to Candlewick too, if you want to
add some more crunch to the Orphans unusual capacities and unsettling abilities.
The notion of Power Sources could make an especially interesting one to export to Candlewick; if Orphans could discover
the true source of their Creepy skills as another level to uncovering their personal mysteries, it could add a whole new level
to the revelatory mechanics. This could work through Revelation, if the roll which triggered Illumination was a Creepy Skill
roll. Rather than find a Relationship, the Orphan comes to realize the true source of his creepy powers. . . .
see how fast the murder of crows could fly in pursuit of the bully who stole my Danger Patrol
Atomic Commando. (Its an action figure, not a doll!). Eight total dice of monstery might
means the crows can hit 256 miles per hour on the straightaways. Danny Thick-Neck is in
trouble.
Weird Kids also have a little bit of monsteriness, and have the same advantages as kids
with monsters when it comes to dealing with monsters. When they punch a monster, the
monster feels it, and when a monster hits back it doesnt automatically turn them into goo.
When a Weird Kid uses his Weird Skills on regular people, thoughwell, it can get pretty
messy. They have the same option as monsters for ignoring mundane defenses and doing Scars
instead of regular Shocks, like ordinary kids.
32
Chapter 5: Weirdness
monkey paw in the attic asks
themselves. Well, the more
Weird Skills you have, the
easier it is for people to spot
something weird about you.
The difficulty for people
to spot your weirdness (if
they have some reason to
look) is 10 minus your number of Weird Skill dice.
So, if you only take 5
dice of Weird Skills, spotting
your weirdness is a Difficulty
of 5.
But Dad always said that
being different was a good
thing, and if we were all the same, then there would be an underwear shortage because everyone would wear the same size. But Dad doesnt have to walk into the cafeteria on Monday after
the mean kids found out about his poisonous spit and extra set of eyes.
If somebody spots your Weird Skills, it means trouble. Best case: its fearful looks and
mean rumors. Worst case: somebody blabs to somebody who blabs, and you wake up to find
an antenna van across the street from your house in the morning, and Mr. Gunderman the
mailman has been mysteriously replaced by the pasty, staring Agent Mailman Taupe. If it is a
regular person with whom you have a Relationship who spots the weirdness, then the Relationship takes Shock equal to the Width of their notice roll.
Worse, when youre trying to make nicey-nice with somebody whos spotted your weirdness, then you have a Difficulty to your rolls (usually Face, since its mostly talky social stuff
were discussing) equal to the number of Weird Skill dice you have. Yes, this includes Quality Time rolls to fix shocked Relationships! Theres reason you keep your Clueless but Loving
Parents as clueless (and thus loving) as possible.
This unease lasts until you smooth things out with Quality Time (fixing the shocked Relationship). Strangers stay freaked until you do something about itsay, convincing them that
while they thought they saw flying saucer men and a car full of rogue super-soldiers beating
the snot out of each other in the middle of the day, what they actually saw was swamp gas and
weather balloons... beating the snot out of each other in the middle of the day.
Those of you whore really good at math may have noticed something if you have 10 dice
in Weird Skills, theres no difficulty to spot them, and the difficulty to convince freaked out
people that youre not going to eat their brains is 10!
And if you ever get more than 10 dice of Weird Skills, then it gets even kookier. If you
have more than 10 dice people a bonus to their roll equal to the difference (Weird Dice 10)
to spot the weirdness, and you get a penalty that big to your dice pools to patch things up. Just
give up, kiddo; when things get that bad, theres nothing to be done but to retreat to the hills
and find a nice cave to live in.
Even if you dont start with all the weird dice youre entitled to, they are still yours, and you
can add them to your character any time you like. But once you have them, youre stuck with
them. If you want, you dont even have to have any when play starts, and can manifest unexpected and mysterious powers spontaneously under stress. Yay, you didnt get crushed by that falling
crane! Oh no, your little sis saw you melt it with eyebeams, and now she hides from you!
33
Chapter 5: Weirdness
DUDE . . . SERIOUSLY? THE MORE I SCREW UP MY FAMILY,
THE MORE AWESOME I AM?
A certain kind of player might now be thinking, Im going to freak out my whole family FOR GREAT VICTORY! It seems like an
awesome scam, right? Earn some XP, buy a Relationship, then shock it into oblivion to increase your Relationship with Goro
the Elder God, because Goro lets you turn into a blob of liquid shadow and ooze under the door of your cell at Juvie Hall.
If youre so inclined, then go for it...
What?
Seriously, do it. No, my devious smile means absolutely nothing.
Really, trust me.
Also, as the former president of Nigeria, I need your help and bank account number in order to hide money from evil
rebels. Ill make it worth your while.
Alright, you caught me. The thing is, if youre doing this sort of thing, then youre really giving the GM tons of stuff with
which to mess with your character and make things crazy and complicated for her. Think about whats happening inside
the story. This really weird kid keeps making friends... and leaving them all terrified and mentally unstable in order to get
more powerful.
Does that kid sound like a nice kid? Like a hero? Ha! Hes probably got a big chair with buttons on the armrest and a
white cat to stroke while laughing maniacally and plotting to take over the world.
Im not telling you not to do this, rather Im telling your GM to use it.
Also, dont forget how useful regular old Relationships are. Weird Relationships can only help with weird things, while
regular ones can help with anything.
34
Chapter 5: Weirdness
NO, NOT BLACK LEAF!
What happens when I totally run out of regular Relationships?
Well, this depends on the group. Sometimes, to make it really edgy and intense, this means you lose your character. He
becomes an NPC, and in all probability, a villainous one at that (perhaps redeemable through the heroics of the other characters, but lost to you for at least awhile).
This character yoinkage aint for everyone, and some people will be rightly ticked if a character they like gets swiped. If
they have XP, then give them a session to spend the needed 2 points to buy a regular Relationship die its a sort of classic
story too, the monstrous outsider finding a love to save him from oblivion and mobs with pitchforks and torches.
Some groups might just shrug and go with it. Weird Relationships arent as good as regular ones (theyre limited in what
they can be added to), and if theyre lost then theyre just lost, and dont convert into anything. You also cant buy them
with XP, and have to first buy regular Relationships, and then convert them (by being a big creepy freak, say) into weird
ones. All this could actually suit the group really well, because itll certainly mean interesting play.
35
Chapter 5: Weirdness
FEET Weird Skill: Monstrous Motion 3d (Useful: Run Really Fast, Useful: Jump!),
Defends.
Both have a total pool of 7d, which lets her lift 1.6 tons or run at a comfortable 128
miles per hour. Her Inhuman Might can be used to attack, and like monster powers, ignores
mundane armor and can inflict scars if she wants (which she usually doesnt want!). She can
also seriously sock out monsters with it. Her Monstrous Motion can be rolled to Defend too,
evading attacks of all sorts.
Because she has 10 Weird Skill dice, theres no difficulty for an observer to spot something
weird about her (if they have a reason to do so... like after seeing her toss a 200 pound MIB
agent through a plate glass window). Worse, if somebody is freaked about how weird she is,
then shes got difficulty 10 when trying to be nice, charming, or persuasive with them without
relying on fear.
During a family outing to the skating rink, shes recognized by Lt. Adrian Fisk of Project
BOOK (an A.P.E. Pilot and avid amateur ice skater). Fisk dashes across the ice, his standardissue zap stick at the ready, his voice loud as he calls in . . . Subject Codename LIZARD
PUNCH spotted! Mary is forced to beat the snot out of the eager officer, and do so in full view
of her Parents. They make a Brains + Notice roll and yep, they do notice something strange
about their petite daughter kicking around a grown commando like a hackey-sack. This
shocks the Relationship down to zero, and now Mary has to fix it with Quality Time but with a
difficulty of 10. Talk about aaaaaaaaawkward.
36
CHAPTER 6:
AGONIZING
ANTAGONISTS
So, youve slogged deep enough to finally reach the big payoff (or, you cheated and skipped the
other stuff). We keep talking about giant monsters, and so here ya go! As an added bonus,
well throw in some regular size monsters and people to further complicate the lives of hapless
kids, and to confound helpful monsters. Mecha Mi-GoJirra is a big enough pain (big being
the important bit of that description) without you also having to deal with your clingy new
S.O.s neediness or the hippie lady your Dad married without first consulting you. Though, if
you dont head off Mecha Mi-GoJirra, dealing with your complicated relationships might not
be a problem anymore, but then you have to deal with making complicated funeral arrangements.
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: Dude, one more bowl of wheatgerm or one more namaste! and youre going to crack.
You know how the gym teacher has that huge bulging vein in his forehead that throbs with
anger and hate when you cant do chin-ups? You can feel one starting to pop out on your own
head. When your folks split, that was bad enough ... when your Dad got hair plugs, a convertible, and a new hippie girlfriend, it got worse. When they announced their engagement
after taking a cruise (during which, you had to stay in another city with your aunt, and share a
room with your cousins who smell like pee), it all started to swirl the bowl. The only thing that
got you through the wedding ceremony outside under the sun in a field of wildflowers (other
than copious amounts of allergy medicine) was the consoling mumblings of your squamous
MATH FAIL!
You may notice that some of the monstrosities and menaces below have more than 5 dice per hit location number, as is the
standard when building monsters from scratch; this is entirely intentional. Some of these guys are really ancient and experienced, some are abnormally nasty, and others were designed by a designer who breaks his own rules with reckless hypocrisy.
37
GRADE LEVEL: Any, but shell present a different kind of problem as her stepkids get older.
When theyre young, the issue might be the problems of being displaced in a fathers affection,
forced to give up ones room, and comfortable habits. As the kids get older, then their friends
might start commenting on the (HOT) part of her description, and dude, thats just not cool.
Regardless of how she torpedoes the happy home, when her old life starts to catch up with her
in the form of druggies, gangsters, and federal agents, the kids might have some real problems
to deal with, especially if theyve managed to reach an accord with her, or worse, become genuinely fond of her.
38
AGENT C. OCCUPANT
Im deep cover, kid. Strictly black bag wetwork and recon,
assassination, and counterespionage. Im the one who cut the
deal with Saddam against Iran, and then suckered him when
we invaded. What? Iran? Its in the Middle East. You ever read
a newspaper? Jeez, kids today. Anyhow, how about a couple
of bucks so I can get loaded... er... get something hot to eat?
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: Oh man, dont make eye contact... dont make eye contact... dont make eye contact...
ah snap, now hes talking to me again. C. Occupant is this homeless guy whos always lurking
around, and hes got a head full of R-rated stories that nobody should be telling little kids. Stuff
about wars, and about contract murder, and about alien replicons used to replace major political figures and TV celebrity chefs who got too close to the truth about whos really in charge of
reality. And who is it? Well, he never seems to get to that part of the story, or his eyes get vague,
and he wanders off in a fugue, mumbling to himself in special forces code-speak like the kids
who play too much Bronze Star Recent Warfare Elite Edition online do. But just when you were
about to write Occupant off as a total crackpot, you saw him wipe the floor, Bruce Lee style,
with half a dozen black-suited guys with ear-pieces and dull expressions, and another time you
saw him stick a broken bottle into an Excruciators gibblies. The dude has skillz, and so perhaps
all the crazy stories he tells might not be so crazy after-all ... except the one about the Zucchini Soldiers that France is supposedly growing on vines.
REAL DEAL: Agent C. Occupant really was an ultra-deep-cover superagent working for...
somebody. He cant remember. His memory is a garbled mess, partially because he underwent extensive personality
implantation for his various
assignments, but mostly
because he drinks Old Man
Snapps Hand-Blended Sippin Whiskey by the gallon,
and pounds his head against
walls to stop the voices
screaming at him. But when
the fog clears, hes heck on
two legs, and could scissorkick James Bourne in the
face while judo-chopping Jason Bond into unconsciousness. He took his name from
39
MODUS OPERANDI: Agent C. Occupant will corner anybody wholl make eye contact, and
tell them crazy stories, or quiz them with half-remembered recognition phrases. On THURSDAY, the OWL and the COCONUT, are HAPPY to have TEA with the ICE CREAM TRUCK.
Anyone who responds in kind with their own nonsense phrases will find him quickly assuming theyre allied agents, and hell start requesting current operational parameters. If
he encounters the MIBs, itll be a brutal free-for-all beatdown. Colonel Brodie Block will say,
WHAT THE SAM HILL HAPPENED TO YOU? YOU USED TO BE THE BEST! AND NOW
LOOK AT YOU, SOLDIER! YOURE A DISGRACE! And C. Occupant has no idea why.
Funny thing about Agent C. Occupant: if you tell him its part of an operation, hell do just
about anything. Once he accepts someone as his Control, hell help with any caper, no matter how
extreme (though hell need a talking-to about restraining his knife-edge kill reflexes ... not unlike a monster, come to think), even say, bathing, shaving, and dressing up in your Dads clothes
for a parent teacher conference that could prove . . . embarrassing, given how distracted youve
been of late. Occupants Face Stat is lousy, but thats partially because hes dirty and drunk most of
the time. Some detox and a shower will bump him closer to super-agent levels of charm and wit.
But if Agent C. Occupant gets it in his mind that youre a traitor, double-agent, or enemy
operative . . . well, its hard to forget how many extra joints those MIBs seemed to have in their
arms and legs when Occupant was done with them. Arms should not bend in that direction
or rather, in those directions. At some point, C. Occupant received special training in exotic
forms of eldritch kung-fu, because when he punches a monster, it hurts. Hes got the advantages a kid has when dealing with monsters, and isnt going to get instantly hamburgered should
things turn ugly.
GRADE LEVEL: Agent C. Occupant is gentler with younger kids; hes much less likely to
decide a 3rd grader is a secret agent of F.E.A.R. or whatever. As kids get older, they start to
present a more credible threat, and so Occupants agent-instincts start tagging them as such.
But really, hes mostly indifferent to age (much to the horror of parents, who get to hear some
of the stories Occupant will tell their kids).
40
CLUELESS S.O.
Are you like going out with somebody else? Youre always like
sneaking away and like doing stuff with somebody. Who is it?
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: Jeez Louise, why is everything
so complicated? Youre finally officially
(and in front of other people!) actually
going out with somebody who isnt
an imaginary Canadian you met on
the Internet, and now if they find out
that your best friend can swallow a car
and look through walls, theyre going
to freak out big time and dump you
like a wormy cupcake, likely in public
in front of all your shiny new popular
friend-like peer group.
41
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: If he werent so
pathetic and eager and keen
and (lets be honest) helpful,
theres no way youd even
hang out with the Eager
Hostage, but hes always
willing to bring donuts for
those late-night stakeouts at
the cemetery, and he always
has a pen and paper when
somebody needs to take
notes. Yet, when the Hairy
Horribles raid your fort,
who do they find? The Eager
Hostage, captured again.
42
GRADE LEVEL: Sidekick works best with older kidsJunior High or High Schoolbecause hes younger and runtier than most of the kids, and especially precocious as he assists in
any way he can.
THE GRUMPS
Harumph!
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: You woke up feeling...
just not good. Everything
was sort of irritating, and
you were tired like you
stayed up too late reading
or playing GameBox again.
Breakfast was cold and
soggy (or seemed so), Mom
was snappy and short-tempered (or seemed so), and
even your monster buddys
usually hilarious banter
made you tell him to shut
up. The bus to school was
worse: loud, long, and you ended up having to sit next to
the kid who always throws up. From there, the day just
got suckier and suckier... though, perhaps if you thought
about it really hard, youd see it wasnt actually objectively sucky beyond the ordinary suckiness of all school
days, but ... it seemed suckier somehow. And everyone
around you seemed like what they really need is a good
monster-bite.
43
MODUS OPERANDI: The Grumps will latch onto a kid or his household, and then just make
things more irritating and unpleasant. The GM can do this with a subtle shift in how she describes things: Moms short tempered, the bus is hot, somebody scratched a favorite videogame
disc. This can begin in the background, becoming more and more pronounced until its obvious that something is going on. Players will pick up on the cues easily, and roleplay their kids
appropriately. With luck, this will lead to some monster fights, misunderstandings, complications, and recriminations before the Grumps are even discovered. The trick here is to make a
kids life irritating.
GRADE LEVEL: The Grumps care not for age or grade; theyll inflict their brand of lameness on anyone who catches their eye (the criteria for which is often as obvious as He has a
disgustingly sunny and optimistic disposition or Its Thursday and shes standing there).
APPEARANCE: The Grumps (when they can be seen) are a legion of little bent-backed
old men with sour faces, slouching around in a cloud of gray fog which makes their numbers
impossible to determine. They smoke little dirty cigarettes that smell subtly of cheese, garbage,
pee, mold, feet, and farts. Theyre all about the size of action figures, and even if some get
squished, the others hardly look excited about it. In fact, they look weirdly satisfied when their
fellows get turned into icky gray paste because it seems to confirm what they thought about
life all along: it sucks, and then some giant purple insect turns you into a greasy stain on the
carpet. Harumph.
PERSONALITY: Grumpy, predictably enough. The Grumps are sarcastic, mean, and lazy.
Theyd be clinically depressed if they didnt have so much energy for being unpleasant to others. Spreading around the grumpiness doesnt make them happy, exactly... it does make them
SATISFIED though, sort of how taking a really huge poo can feel like an accomplishment. The
whole legion of Grumps have one worn-out old heart to share among them, and the one carrying it stands straighter, smiles sadly, and makes heart-breaking pleas for mercy or forgiveness. These are total lies, of course; just because he can feel wan and sad rather than gray and
grumpy doesnt mean hes not still a total jerk.
WAY TO HIDE: The Grumps are invisible, and their vaguely stinky gray fog messes with
the minds of kid and monster alike, making them even harder to spot. Noticing them is a
trick, and they can do their subtle ugliness for awhile before somebody thinks to do an active
search for them with monster-senses. Sometimes, its during searches for other things that the
Grumps get spotted, and then that just confuses matters when they play the role of the crimson
sardine.
FAVORITE THING: Ruining peoples day, and making them feel irritable, mean, snappish,
and jerky.
44
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: OK, so it was sort of a pain
trying to keep your monster buddy
secret. All the lies and kooky
shenanigans. The trouble in school.
The nights spend burying his
LEAVINGS so nobody wound find
out. But when you compare it to
the stress of being out in the open,
a kid with a monster for all to see...
well, perhaps finding a place to dispose of MIB legs in the middle of
the night was better than attracting
the attention of fanatical military
hardcases like Block, especially when they seem to communicate entirely by YELLING ALL
THE TIME.
REAL DEAL: Colonel Brodie Block, a much-decorated vet of the second Secret War and the
Pluto police action during the Nixon administration (Only Nixon could go to The Dread Plateaus of Leng!), has seen an awful lot of the ugliness the cold unfeeling universe has to offer. Hes
fought for his country and his species (AMERICAN!) for decades, rising to command Project
BOOK, the Governments answer to the unnatural and creatures with tentacles who refuse to
stay in the oceans where physical features like that belong. Block is a hardcase, a vet, and a man
who likes huge cigars, shiny boots, short hair, big science, and yelling at everyone. Hes tall and
Midwestern, in his fifties, with a gray crew-cut, and lots of interesting scars. He doesnt wear his
dozens of medals (because he likes to be able to stand up straight).
Project BOOK liaises occasionally with the MIBs (BUNCH OF PASTY MEATPUPPETS!), and has more than a few Mad Science Teachers in BLUE BOOK (GOT TO KEEP AN
EYE ON THE CRACKPOTS IF YOU WANT TO STAY THE SAME SHAPE ONE DAY TO
45
GRADE LEVEL: Say what you want about Colonel Brodie Block, he doesnt discriminate
based on race, region, creed, or age. One of his close advisors is Becky Archer, a nine-year-old
super genius and roboticist who designed some of BOOKs best war-toys (before they were
farmed out to the lowest bidder for manufacturing ... STINKING BUREAUCRATS GOT NO
IDEA HOW TO FIGHT A WAR!). Likewise, when it comes to kicking butt, hes not going
to let a little thing like age stand in the way of delivering a nine-ton rump-punting to a bunch
of elementary school kids. Hell send his robots and his mechs to beat their monster friends
into a gooey heap of pain, and then crate them up and ship them to some lab under a mountain (or more likely, in this era of budget cuts, the basement of a University science building
BOOK partners with. Almost all the secret under-mountain bases got closed in the last round
of military downsizing ... HOW DO THOSE STINKING BUREAUCRATS EXPECT ME
TO PROTECT THIS COUNTRY WITHOUT SECRET BASES UNDER MOUNTAINS?).
46
MONKEY ALIENS
FROM PLANET K
You have unmasked us! But you will not winnot while we
control the power of MECHA Mi-GoJirra!
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: Who are those guys in the 70s suits with the sideburns and the really unconvincing accents? Its not just the clothes that make them weird. Some teachers at school are worse fashion
victims. Its more how theyre always sneering evilly, like theyre so much better than everyone
else. And how they tend to break out into maniacal laughter. And how they all seem to work
for the same new company nobody has ever heard of. And how theyre always muttering Puny
humans! under their breath. And how when theyre angry, its like for a split second theyre
not people anymore, and their faces are replaced by the coal-black mask-like faces of angry,
angry monkeys.
REAL DEAL: The Monkey Aliens from Planet K are an aggressive species of furry black
space monkeys: big and bipedal, strong and ruthless. Planet K is a cold, dark world circling a
dead star, and their species is dying. They came to Earth to steal our resources, our water, our
rich supply of monsters and other paranatural space-event vortices. They want to pollute and
poison our planet to make it a comfy new home for Monkey Aliens.
There arent many Monkey Aliens, most having died out on their own world, and those
that survived are ruthless and cruel. Theyre willing to do anything to prepare Earth for when
their vast moonship arrives, carrying all the survivors of their homeworld and all the things
they refused to leave behindtheir favorite furniture, their space-CD collections, their army
of robotic murder machines to destroy all puny humans.
47
The advance force of Monkey Aliens who operate on Earth arrived via D-MAT Portal, a
one-way and limited-use interplanetary teleporter carried on a robotic rocket probe. They have
been specially prepared to blend in with humanshence the wardrobe and the sideburns (all
their data was from the 1970s). They are hidden by the use of polymorphic photonic mildew
colonies which infest their skin and project the image of a regular human over each Monkey
Alien. Well, approximately a regular human. When angered, injured, killed, or just feeling like
letting it all hang out, a Monkey Aliens true monkey face is revealed.
The Monkey Aliens must take special precautions to survive in Earths dangerously pure
environment. All Monkey Aliens smoke three packs a day, and in this age of no smoking,
they stand out. When fighting the Monkey Aliens, the question Do you smell cigarette
smoke? should make you pay attention. Their diet consists almost entirely of refined sugars,
saturated fats and cholesterol via pre-packaged snack cakes, from which they also extract
vital artificial colorings and preservatives. They regularly sleep in beds lined in soil taken
from toxic waste dumps and old glow-in-the-dark clock factories so they can get their daily
dose of low-grade radiation. If you see a glowering guy dressed for disco stuffing his face
with a Big Barn Double Cheesy, an Amish-Sized Spud Sack, and a Great Chug-a-Lug while
smoking and laughing mockingly as he reads a copy of Green Lifestyle, you might have
found yourself a Monkey Alien from Planet K. Or just a regular, fashion-challenged human
jerkwad.
Monkey Aliens often find work as environmental consultants and promote projects
which will bring the Earths environment in line with their requirements.
MODUS OPERANDI: The Monkey Aliens infiltrate human organizations, working their
way to the top with a ruthless ambition that serves them as well in the corporate world as in
their home jungles. They further their schemes to poison the Earth and to capture and study
any weird or otherworldly creatures they encounter. Their advanced technology includes star
metals hundreds of time stronger than steel; supercomputers; video game systems offering
48
OMNI-WATCH 5D
A big, clunky, retro-looking watch with all sorts of unexpected special features.
HANDS Zap! 2d (Attacks).
BRAINS Magneto-Kinesis 2d (Useful [Move Stuff Around with Magnetic Fields]), Hack-o-Matic 1d (Useful [Automatically Hack into Electronic Machines]).
BASILISK SHADES 5D
A pair of shiny, gold Elvis sunglasses
FACE I Am Cooler Than You 2d (Useful [Make Others Think Youre the Coolest]; Attacks [Make Others Feel So Bad
About Not Being Cool, They Want To Die]), Freeze! 2d (Useful [Paralyze a Target with a Neural Feedback Loop).
ROCKET CHUCKS 5D
These sneakers look like an ordinary pair of Chuck Taylors, except the star emblem looks more like a black planet orbiting a
dead sun. Also, theres a certain funky footy smell. They let a Monkey Kid fly or, if hes inclined, deliver rocket-assisted kicks
to the giblets.
FEET Woosh! 2d (Useful [Fly!]; Defends; Attacks).
bloodier and higher-res games than anybody else; and, held in reserve, fearsome robotics technology based around a process called bio-mechanization, through which they can quickly
build robotic duplicates of living creatures. But they dont trust thinking machines, so no
artificial intelligence drives these things. Even when they build a replicon to replace a specific
human, it must still be remote-controlled by a nearby Monkey Alien.
49
GRADE LEVEL: The Monkey Aliens have a hard time telling one human from another
(they keep notes and have unflattering nicknames for humans based on obvious physical
features), but recognize that little humans are usually young ones, and bigger humans are adult
ones. They have dismissed the danger posed by little humanshaving, in their outdated survey
of Puny Earth Culture, missed all those kid-takes-out-the-burglars-at-Christmas movies. They
consider children amusing rather than threatening, which means they like to be cruel to them
rather than simply zap them until theyre charred outlines on the wall. Theyre more likely to
zap a cherished toy or family pet and then laugh at a childs tears, while utterly failing to recognize that some children have friends who can reach through time and poke an unwary Monkey Alien in the back when he was only five songars old and taking his first walk out on the
petrified limbs of Home Tree, sending him teetering off the edge so his grownup self vanishes
in a puff of logic.
So the Monkey Aliens present another one of those cases where theyre more likely to do
you some sort of horrible injury the older you are. Growing up is hard enough without creeps
like this waiting to make it harder.
An interesting thing has started to happen for the Monkey Aliens, thoughtheyve started
to have kids on Earth. These young Monkey Aliens, by a total coincidence, end up in the same
grade level as the players kid characters. Adult and Kid Monkey Aliens conform to the usual
types (dredged from your own hateful memories of school, work, and daily life, or from pages
96 to 112 of Monsters and Other Childish Things), with the modifiers below applied. A grownup
Monkey Alien might be like the Mad Science Teacher with Monkey Alien modifiers, while her
son might be like the Jock with Monkey Alien modifiers.
While adult Monkey Aliens are universally hateful, despising humanity and all its puny
ways, their kids arewell, theyve never seen Planet K. Never stared at the hideous wonder of
the Chasms of Grue. Never wakened in their Home Tree to find their whole family poisoned
50
ATTACK: The Mind-Mites are built to burrow into the impossibly dense skin of monsters the
size of cruise liners. The thin skin of puny humans poses no challenge.
DEFEND: Mind-Mites have simple programming. Attack first, and if they suffer losses, alternate defending and attacking. Theyll attack one round, defend the next, and so on. Figuring
out the pattern requires the same ingenuity and pattern recognition that a kid would use to
learn Tic-Tac-Toe.
USEFUL: Mind-Mites can control the minds of giant monsters, which is pretty useful.
Theyre not bright enough to use more complicated tactics though unless theres a Monkey
Alien around to shout orders at them in the barking guttural language of Planet K.
51
THUNDERBOLT 10 A.P.E
(A.K.A. THUNDERMONKEY)
This is Goodall to Monkeyhouse, Goodall to Monkeyhouse
... enemy engaged, Monkeyhouse. Repeat: enemy engaged.
And ... well, Monkeyhouse, lets just say theyre the ones
flinging the poo this time. And it is on fire.
BIGNESS: 2 (Big)
POV: Is that a ... nah. No,
seriously it is. A giant robot
monkey! OMG, its like
two of the most awesome
things have been combined
into one! And... hey, whys
he knuckling over here so
fast... with the guns... and
the bombs... and the car
about to throw! Its not a nice
monkey at all! Its a mean
monkey!
52
MODUS OPERANDI: The Thundermonkeys are BOOKs heaviest mobile weapon system,
and if the monsters BOOK agents are sent to hush up or wrangle start pushing back too hard,
the 18-wheelers can open up to release half a dozen of these distinctive machines. Theyre
extremely expensivepricier than a pot of gumbo made entirely from Rolex watches, plutonium, the Queens underwear, and Joint Strike jet fighters. As a result, BOOK wont risk them
foolishlytheyre a bossfight for most groups of kids and monsters operating on Bigness 1
scale. Even maintaining an A.P.E. requires a dozen technicians and engineers and tech-shrinks
(to diagnose why the thing seems to be sulking).
There is a variation A.P.E. in development which will be designated the Thunderbolt 20
I.T.C.H.I. A.P.E. (Interpersonal Tactical Combat Human Integration). Its a Bigness 1 A.P.E.
scaled down to operate on the kid-scale more easily (and inside kid scale structures too). The
I.T.C.H.I. would allow a soldier to carry A.P.E.-like firepower right into the homes, schools,
and pizza joints where Americas inhuman enemies like to hang out. The prototype I.T.C.H.I. is
reserved for Colonel Brodie Blocks personal use.
Both A.P.E. variations are piloted mechs (see page 30), and are driven with Hands + A.P.E.
Pilot (or something similar), though Hands + Mad GameBox Skillz would also work.
APPEARANCE: Whats to say? A robot ape the size of a delivery truck. The A.P.E. is only about
ten feet tall when in knuckle-run mode, but can stand on its little hind legs to a height of almost
double this when engaged in biped mode (slower, but its easier to smash stuff this way). It has
two shoulder-mounted weapons pods, a gleaming sensor array in its head, and big steel fists that
look like construction equipment and can punch out buses. The A.P.E.s driver partially wears
the machineit unfolds, in a complicated technical ballet of hundreds of precisely engineered
motors, interleaved armored plates, plasma venting ducts, and onboard plumbing, and most
of the time this works fine, so long as you keep your hands close to your chest while it folds up
around you ... though the current ace A.P.E. pilot isnt called Seven Finger Perez for nothing.
PERSONALITY: The A.P.E. has no voice, but each machine has enough quirks and hinkiness in its systems to constitute a unique personality. The longer theyre in service, the more
system instability builds up, and the more they start to act like people. They begin to personalize their status messages after awhile, and then the status messages take on a decidedly off tone.
In the middle of a battle, when a pilot is expecting this:
[ALPHA WEAPON POD STATUS ROCKETS DEPLETED 105/1000 SOLID-CORE
ROUNDS REMAINING 4.5 SECONDS CAPACITOR RECHARGE TIME DAMAGE 23%]
. . . he might instead see this:
[ALPHA WEAPON POD STATUS WHAT IS LOVE? WILL UNIT DESIGNATED T10APE 6 EVER KNOW LOVE? UNIT DESIGNATED T-10 APE 6 NEEDS HUG FIRING
INCENDIARY ROCKETS]
WAY TO HIDE: The Thundermonkey doesnt really hide when deployed, but it can fold up
inside the trailer of an 18-wheeler truck with all its support equipment, extra ammo, generator
for recharging, and enough room in the back for a card table where the techs can play rummy
and drink that horrible black gunk they call coffee.
FAVORITE THING: The longer an A.P.E. is in service, the more itll start to develop a
personality, and so the more itll start to fixate on one thing, but theres no telling what one of
53
A.P.E. FIXATIONS
54
Die
1
2
3
4
5
Month 1
Blast
Examine
Ponder
Collect
Stomp
Month 2
Protect
Mock
Scheme
Capture
Hoard
Month 3
Good
Bad
Stinking
Old
New
Month 4
Excessive
Unwanted
Prized
Hidden
Secret
Month 5
Electricity
Birds
Kids
Animals
Cars
Month 6
Politics
Religion
Cheese
Garbage
Oil
Play
Find
Comical
Unfamiliar
Tins of Corned-beef
Praise
7
8
9
10
Decorate
Eat
Intimidate
Flee
Hide
Share
Discuss
DESTROY!
Fine
Amateurish
Exciting
Extravagant
Distracting
Boring
Ugly
Beautiful
Toys
Bugs
Philosophers
Poetry
Movies
Romance
Food
Basketball Trophies
Location 6-7: Beta Weapon Pod (6d, Attack [Area Denial Weapon Array], Range x1, Area
x2, Burn x1)
Location 8-9: Piston Powered Smash-Fists (6d, Attack [Smash!], Useful [Big Honkin
Metal Hands], Useful [Knuckle-Walk], Tough x2)
Location 10: Sensor-Studded Head (2d, Useful [Night-Ops Sensors], Useful [Targeting
System], Awesome x2)
BUGNUTZ RELOADED
OK, so I put on a few pounds. I been really depressed.
BUUUUUUUUUUUURPH! Quit staring!
BIGNESS: 2 (Big)
APPEARANCE: On page 87 of Monsters and Other Childish Things, we described Bugnutz
as a big insect thing the size of a garbage truck. Now, were going to do something with that
description. This is a bigger,
meaner, fatter, grosser Bugnutz. A Bugnutz who could
wipe the floor with most
other monsters, if he werent
too busy licking the sticky
goo off the floor instead.
PERSONALITY: As
always, like an affable eager
druggie roommate who
wants his pal Creepy Guy to
quit skylarking about being
liked by humans, and to start
thinking positive about how
sweet the new (truckload
of) GameBox games Bugnutz
brought home are (along with the seventeen bags of trash from behind Cowboy Mings Chinese Feedbag he stashed in the spare bedroom for a midnight snack).
WAY TO HIDE: The transformation is now especially gross and disturbing, but he still turns
into a little louse who hides in Creepy Guys hair. Sometimes, he has a much harder time
staying little, and hes started to take umbrage with how people eyeball Creepy Guy. But thats
always the wayeat one van full of federal drug enforcement agents and you start to think
youre pretty hot stuff.
FAVORITE THING: While partial to garbage, wacky tobaccy, Led Zeppelin, and monster
trucks (which are yummy), Bugnutz is still most interested in Creepy Guys happiness. A clingy
55
KILLDOZER
THE DOZER THAT KIILLLLLLLLLLS
VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
BIGNESS: 2 (Big)
POV: It is not an urban
legend! Bobby saw this giant
bulldozer, and it like chased
him! OK, not all that fast,
but it knew where he lived.
He said in the morning his
front yard was all torn up
with huge tread tracks, and
that he dreamed of being
run over all night long, like
squished. They say if you
stare into a mirror in the
bathroom at midnight and
say Killdozer! Killdozer!
Killdozer! itll come through
the wall! I was going to do
it, but my stupid sister had to
take a shower.
56
PERSONALITY: If Killdozer even has a personality, then its an elemental thing, pure in its
simplicity. Killdozer likes three things: killing, dozing, and dozing. If it can combine these things
into one evening of entertainment, then all the better. Killdozers motivations are a mystery.
WAY TO HIDE: Killdozer quits moving, shuts down, and people say, Who left this huge
bulldozer in my front yard? rather than, ARGH! THE MACHINE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN! BURN YOUR POPCORN MAKERS! TRASH YOUR TOASTERS! FLEE!
AGENTS OF INC
Dont worry. With my trusty Neo-Energizer, this beasty wont
be much of a threat!
BIGNESS: 3 (Bigger)
POV: Did you see that giant
dude in the silver wetsuit
fighting with the lizard-fungus thing over the weekend?
He just popped up out of
nowhere, and started doing
crazy kung-fu on the big lizard! Then when the monster
went down, the guy in the
suit vanished. Poof. I think
he said something about
responsible citizenship and
drinking milk before he
disappeared, though.
57
NEO-NINJITSU 5D
The fighting style of the Agents of INC owes as much to ancient traditions as to modern biomechanics.
HANDS 1d (Attack, Defend, Useful [Tricky Karate Stuff ], Awesome x2)
EPSILON INFUSION 6D
Bathe in the green glow of an Epsilon Source until your cells swell with neo-energy, and with a moment of focus, you can
grow to enormous size!
1 rank of Bigness in each location
SUBCUTANEOUS TRANSMITTER 5D
A teeny node of neo-circuitry implanted in the jawbone lets you transmit on any band, wi-fi, Bluetooth, radio, or cell. You
can call home from anywhere, and not have to worry about your minutes. Its also great for listening in to other peoples
calls and stuff, but a proper upstanding agent of INC would never do that
BRAINS Universal Roaming 2d (Useful [Send and Receive from Anywhere]; Useful [Intercept Other Peoples Transmissions]; Awesome x2)
MEGA SCIENCE-PUNCH
The greatest technique taught to students of Neo-Ninjitsu is the Mega Science-Punch. With it, you can punch well really, really hard.
HANDS PUNCH! 1d (Attack, Awesome x2, Gnarly x2)
58
engage monsters on equal terms in hand to hand combat. The combination of masks, martial
arts, and growing to enormous size has earned the INC its other name: the Inflatable Ninja
Corp. INC agents need to be very circumspect with the use of their Neo-Energizers though,
as they require many hours to recharge, and only grant a few minutes of energization before
returning an agent to his normal size.
MODUS OPERANDI: Agents of the INC are chosen for their courage, good hearts, self
sacrifice, and martial arts. Theyre not typically chosen for brains, wits, or charm, though
most do get by with a wide-eyed earnestness some find endearing, while others find it
insufferable. Dr. Gobi approves all agents before theyre given a Neo-Energizer and suit of
Neo-Fiber, so theyre all cut from pretty much the same cloth: well adjusted, hopelessly naive
optimists who believe the world really is a good place, and that all it needs is big heroes willing to stand up and do whats right. When you see the gleam in their eyes, you can almost
believe it too. The problem with agents of INC is that when they encounter monsters, its
usually over the smoking remains of a smashed power station or military base, and so they
tend to assume anything with tentacles and fangs is up to no good. Kids who run into inflat-
59
GRADE LEVEL: The Agents of INC are pretty straight-shooters, and tend to recommend
milk and listening to parents when dealing with young kids, and volunteerism and exercise
and healthy outdoors activities to older kids. Something about all that Neo-Energy seems to
boil away cynicism, leaving most Agents almost incapable of recognizing kids as the complicated little bundles of defiance and potential they are.
Kids with monsters are an even stickier issue. Monsters are bad. Its right there, page 1
in the Agents of INC Training Manual. Monsters are for fighting. Kids are for rescuing (and
informing about the dangers of absent mindedly nibbling on Styrofoam cups). When the kids
run over an Agent with their parents car in order to save a monster, its almost more than their
poor optimistic little brains can comprehend.
But, with care and patience, an Agent might be convinced that while monsters are bad,
some monsters are less bad than othersand monsters whore friends with kids can at least
have their badness directed to good cause. Itll hurt their brains a bit though, and make them
feel pretty uncomfortable.
COMBINE-R
ALL RIPE HUMANS WILL BE HARVESTED!
BIGNESS: 3 (Bigger)
POV: Robots are pretty cool ... but tractors? No matter what Grandpa Joe says, theres nothing really cool about working on the farm all summer. Even when that huge factory farm
that bought out all of Grandpa Joes neighbors fired all their workers and replaced them with
robotic satellite-guided AI (Agrarian Intelligence) machines that tend the fields, plant, harvest,
and ship the corn and soybeans without a person even saying boo. But after that big thunderstorm last night, youd swear you saw that big threshing machine prowling around the edges of
Ultra-Agra-Co LLCs fence line, staring at you as it paced back and forth. ...
REAL DEAL: A freak electrical storm did exactly what you would expect to the directing AI
which manages Ultra-Agra-Cos pilot Farm of Tomorrow project: it scrambled its core directives
from Obey Humans and Harvest Crops to Harvest Humans and Obey Crops. So far, the crops
havent said much, so the AIs going with the human harvest until they say otherwise (kids with
plant monsters might want to think about this one for a little bit). To further its new directives,
the AI has fused five pieces of heavy farm equipment into a giant agro-bot. Its heart is a 1900
horsepower diesel engine, its arms are threshers, and its legs articulated planting machines. It is
tons of forest-green mechanized death, just waiting for the word to begin the harvest.
Somebody at Ultra-Agra-Co has noticed the weird behavior at their experimental robot farm,
60
WAY TO HIDE: COMBINE-R de-combines into its constituent parts and lines up in a neat
row like an exhibition of farm equipment sitting innocently in the school yard, or the empty
61
FAVORITE THING: Tending to its duties, and stewarding the land to produce a bountiful
crop (which, given its scrambled programming, means doing things like tainting the towns
water supply with chemicals which make all the adults feel ... romantic).
GRADE LEVEL: The older the kid, the closer to being ripe, according to COMBINE-Rs
warped programming; being young, the worst youll face is capture and imprisonment in his
agrarian gulag. As kids get older, they might find themselves sorted by grade, and then turned
into a dizzying array of products and ingredients.
SAL NATH
... so come on down to Uncle Naths Chicken Shack, the best
golly-gol-durn fried chicken for a billion miles around!
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: You want to get a bucket of chicken for the zombie movie marathon night? I know
pizza is traditional, but that one place has amazing fried chicken. I went with my Dad over
the weekend, and I cant stop thinking about it. Crispy, crunchy skin, juicy inside, special
blend of herbs and spices. Its Uncle Sals special recipe! No, Im not going on and on about
the chicken! Its really awesome. We should go right now, and have some chicken. NOW!
CHICKEN NOW!
REAL DEAL: Uncle Sals Chicken Shack really does fry up a mean chicken. They fry up happy chickens too. And bored ones. Heck, Sal doesnt much care about the mood of the chickens
he fries, so long as theyre cheap, plucked, and in the grease fast. They come out succulent,
and steamy, and every bite is like the first bite when youre really hungry. Start crunching, and
youve gorged your way through three birds worth of assorted chicken parts. Who eats chicken
livers? When Sal fries them up, everybody eats them, thats who.
Sal has been a local institution for decades. Kids parents remember going to Sals when they
were kids. Uncle Sal is a local celebrity. Sometimes, he even does a guest spot as assistant weatherman on Action Eyewitness News Squad at Six. His seersucker suits and two-tone shoes are as iconic
around town as any of the national chains clowns or royalty or pig-tailed ginger girls. Hes got a
shock of white hair, a ready smile, and a thriving business. But for some reason, whenever a passing
truck makes the ground vibrate a little, he stares hard at the floor, and breaks out into a sweat.
62
63
GRADE LEVEL: Younger kids might pester their folks for dinner or a birthday at Uncle Sals,
while High School kids are perfect for a part-time job there. As an employer, Uncle Sal is a step
above the chain joints, and you get half a chicken in assorted parts and an order of slaw every
shift. Some kids work here for the chicken alone. A really trusted employee might be tasked
with handling the oil distribution. One curious note is just how crazy much monsters like Uncle
Sals Fried Chicken. Even monsters that dont have mouths find some way to enjoy it. If they eat
enough of it, itll temporarily replace their Favorite Thing, which should itself set off some alarm
bells.
64
BIGNESS: 3 (Bigger)
APPEARANCE: Unspeakable. The Doom is enormous, but it is difficult to
describe how big, because
of all the folded limbs, body
segments, hydrostatic fluidfilled sacks, frills, fronds,
folds, and bone. It looks like
it cant remember the difference between its insides
and its outsides. It looks like
a mantis fighting with a sea
cucumber in a giant pile
of raw liver, bones, lizard
parts, and mushrooms.
If you picked a tiny version of the
Doom out of your nostril, youd pass
out for a little bit, and have to go to
the doctor. Other pre-human horrors
from beyond the sane epochs of sunlit
time say, Oh, dude, here comes Ugly.
Dont make eye contact. Oh no, hes
coming over! If the players need a
visual reference eat some cockroaches
and squid and then throw up on the
table and then point to the throw-up
and say, Like this, except gross.
Yet, if you close your eyes, the
Doom smells delicious.
65
the Doom doesnt get his mug of Sacred Broth hes got a throbbing ache in his second and third
brains, and is feeling very cross indeed.
WAY TO HIDE: You kid, surely. The wakened Doom doesnt hide, cant hide, is perhaps the
opposite of hiding. Few objects could be said to have fewer hidden properties than the Doom.
Even the things other creatures keep tucked decently away inside their skins are all hanging
out in the wind for all to see. But perhaps because the Doom is so much out there, so utterly
66
FAVORITE THING: Sleep ... the Sacred Broth of Sool ... founding again the church which
once exalted it ... all are going concerns for the Doom, but what its really going to want to do,
more than anything, is find out what that delicious fried smell is, and get a bite of that. When it
realizes its eating its own rendered excretions, and that theyve been used in some blasphemous
ape-creature sacrament, itll be pretty darned ticked off, and looking to do something about it.
GARGANTUA-MAGO
THE GINORMOUS MAN
BEHOLD! I AM ASCENDED! YOUR GOD! YOUR GIANT GOD! STOP
RUNNING, AND WORSHIP ME! WOOOOOOOOORSHIP MEEEEEEEE!
BIGNESS: 4 (Biggest)
POV: You thought he was
annoying when he became
coach of your football
team: the pasty Canadian
Mr. Mago always did look
at you (and your monster
friend) funny. He always
was up to no good ... The
Canadian politeness couldnt
hide his true nature for long
though, and now hes big
enough to wear the football
stadium like a toque, and
67
MODUS OPERANDI: Gargantua-Mago wants to return from his exile in the wilderness. He
wants to claim his true place as Master of Humanity. Hes almost over his crippling fear of nakedness, at least enough to demand his tiny subjects begin construction of a vast and terrible
pair of mega-chinos for him to wear. Hes coming back, and he wants pants.
Rumors of Mr. Mago might circulate (the truth, hushed up by the likes of BLACK BOOK,
the INC, the MIBs, and Maximega Co. LLC), but when he finally decides to return to civilization, nothing short of an assault force will stop him. Problem is, Mago is now bigger than just
68
C-STAR GUNNER
DONT MESS WITH ULTRA-TEXAS!
BIGNESS: 3 (Bigger)
POV: Chuck Norris learned how to roundhouse kick from C-Star Gunner. C-Star Gunner understands six languages, but only speaks in gravelly one-liners. How do you know a monster has
never fought C-Star Gunner? It still has all its limbs and pseudopods. C-Star Gunner never has to
reboot, because his boots are made of indestructible metal. C-Star Gunner can eat only one, but
chooses to eat them all. Fool me once, shame on me, fool C-Star Gunner and hell punch you in
the face with a giant chromed fist. C-Star Gunner cant hit the broad side of a barnC-Star Gunner hits the whole barn. There is no such thing as global warming; youre just feeling the radiant
awesomeness of C-Star Gunner. C-Star Gunner eats tanks and spits out beautiful wrought-iron
railings. If you spell C-Star Gunner in Scrabble, you win ... everything.
REAL DEAL: Everything in the universe has a perfect, hyper-dimensional ideal of which it is
only a flawed reflection. Even, if you can believe it, Chuck Norris.
The tech officers of Project BOOK call the place where you can find those hyper-dimensional ideals Code Name HIGHGROUND. The Subhumanoid Sook-Priests call it OOOGLRCH-UCK. (Rough translation: Big Scary Shiny Place That Smells Like New Cars. Very
rough translation.) The Neo-Physical Philosoticians of INC call it Ultra-Space.
Everything in Ultra-Space is bigger, wilder, and, frankly, way more awesome than in our
own Lame-Space. For example, in Ultra-Space, horses are dinosaurs, and dinosaurs ascended
to the heavens to do battle with star armadas of Ultra-Pirates. Everything is biggereven
things which are already really big.
69
APPEARANCE: A fifty-foot robot Ultra-Texas Ranger, with a shiny platinum star the size of
a lunchroom table pinned to his woven steel jacket, and a battered titanium Stetson shading his
cool blue photo-receptors, half-lidded against the Ultra-Glare. Slung at his hip is an enormous
revolver (the Piecesmaker) that shoots uranium salt-water rocket bombs (but after one or two
dagnabit! incidents with irradiated shopping malls, he uses it with care around Lame-Spaces
squishy inhabitants). He used to smoke log-sized Ultra-Cheroots, sometimes lighting UltraDynamite from them, but hes run out of both, and trying to find a cigarillo in Lame-Space
made from a quarter ton of first-cut sulfur-syruped tobacco proved really frustrating. Also,
Lame-Space is pretty down on smoking. This baffled C-Star Gunner until he discovered the
shocking truth: in Lame-Space smoking doesnt make you cooler, more sophisticated and more
attractive to girls. Lame-Space smoking instead makes you smell bad and then die.
Its been a long adjustment period for C-Star Gunner.Cut off from Ultra-Space, and unable
to acquire another Megasaurus to ride, he carries his enormous saddle with him in the hope
of one day meeting a suitable replacement thats not actively trying to stomp Des Moines into
rubble.If shown modern pictures of what Lame-Space scientists think Lame-Space dinosaurs
looked like (big chickens, some of them with feathers), hell shake his head slowly and say,
Now, that just aint right.
PERSONALITY: C-Star Gunner is a stand-up guybotone thatll punch you in the face
without much hesitation if youre up to no good.Hed normally throw you in the Ultra-Pokey
after that, but the distinct lack of Ultra-Pokies in Lame-Space means hes got to come up with
more creative solutions for the sort of varmints and outlaws a fifty-foot robot cowboy typically
deals with.
Hed prefer to keep a lower profile than he can manage, and is somewhat baffled by sites like
www.c_starfacts.com which enumerate hundreds of outlandish facts about him (C-Star Gunner
doesnt eat food, he eats victory!), and is confounded by how one or two of them arent even true.
Hes used to the vast scale of Ultra-Space, and sometimes the whole of Lame-Space Earth
feels like one, small grubby frontier town.He has trouble with the notion that different nations
have carved up this teeny little space. Generally, he just ignores such things and depends on his
marvelous grasp of Primitive Hu-Mon Languages to get by. (And also, on his ENORMOUS
ROBOTNESS.)It helps that hes hugely (har, har) popular in most places, and comes in person
to answer letters requesting help.One day hes duking it out with the Mosquito Mummies of
Bangladesh, and the next hes delivering great justice to the Soggy Carrot Men and breaking
their vegan cannibal conspiracy.
70
GRADE LEVEL: C-Star Gunner treats most humans about the same, with a tip of the
hat and a polite Maam or Sir.Hes a little vague on the differences between Lame-World
people.Most of them seem to be made of badly designed meat, and the very few robotic ones
are primitive, evil, insane, or really self-important.C-Star Gunner might be a robot of few
words, but that doesnt mean he likes to listen to some idiot drone on all day about his CORE
DIRECTIVES TO DESTROY ALL HUMANS!!!
WAY TO HIDE: C-Star Gunner doesnt hide, he just strides off into the sunset until you need
him again.
FAVORITE THING: Seeing justice donewhether its right and proper at the hands of a jury,
or rough and crude at the end of a rope.
NICO BATSO
MYSTERIOUS MASTER OF THE MALEVOLENT MARSUPIANS
MWAAAAA HAAAA HAAAA! I have taunted you with the traditional laughter. You have escaped from the Room of a Thousand Spikes. The forms have been obeyed, the rituals enacted
with care. Now it is time to get unconventional. The meal
you ate yesterday at 5:35 P.M., before you even suspected my
existence,contained a deadly but very slow toxin. Even then,
I knew we would be facing one another today. There is no
antidote. I have you IN MY POCKET.
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal, but with access to Wombattle Mechs and BIGPIG living death machines)
POV: Oh man, youve been reading the Internet, havent you? Word of warning: gullible
people should stay away from the Internet because if you dont, the nice prince from Nigeria
will have all your money. Nobody but a Class 1 Nut would claim theres a seekrit conspiracy of
eeeeeeevil marsupial-people invading human society in an effort to destroy their evolutionary
enemies, the hatedplacental mammals (i.e., you and me, the dog, a squirrel, and the horse you
rode in on). Its kook fodder. Its bull-pucky.
Or so one might have thought, before the new family moved in down the street.The girls
pretty cute, and that Australian accent is proving very popular in school.
71
REAL DEAL: Nico Batso is a big guy, but he does a good job of looking inconspicuous. Looking normal. His cover is that of a scientist and astrophysics lecturer at the local college.Perhaps
he also does some guest speaking in a (mad) science class.Its almost perfect.Almost.
Youd have to look hard to see how his big smile fails to reach his eyes. Its easy to mistake
that glimmer of barely-restrained anger and disgust for the twinkle of good humor. But make
no mistake, Nico Batso hates you and your whole infraclass of pouchless mammals.
The Marsupians evolved from marsupial stock in isolated parallel to modern humans.
They were a peaceful, empathetic folk with great hair, a race of artists and deep-thinkers way
too easygoing to stand against the big mammalian jerks with their fancy-schmancy placentas.
They were driven from their homes, harried, harassed, and nearly exterminated.
Thats the story Nico Batso tells his followers, anyhow. The reality of the decline of the
Marsupians is more complicated and less dramaticbut trying to raise an angry secret conspiracy to destroy a whole species is tough work if complex environmental transitions and
cyclic climatic change destroyed our people! is your rallying cry.
The funny thing about the Marsupian Menace is that most people wouldnt care if they
found out their neighbors wife had a pouch on her belly and sometimes craved ants and grubs.
They dont look all that different from humans. Theyre a bit rounder and a bit cuter, in a fluffy
sort of way, and many have Australian accents which guarantee theyll be liked in the United
States. The American mind rebels at the notion of an evilAustralian accent. The very normality
of the Marsupians is something Nico Batso curses daily. If only his people had the disturbing
biological superpowers of the Subhumanoids!
Batso has been forced to use guile, to infiltrate his people into human military and technological programs, overt and covert, and has been stealing ultra-black military technology for decades.
The time approaches when the carefully-hidden caches of battle machines will emerge from their
burrows and lay waste to the world of Man, replacing humanity with the true owners of the Earth.
Batso is above all else, a traditionalisteven if hes making up his traditions as he goes
72
GRADE LEVEL: The older a kid is, the less sinister Nico Batso seems. Once they hit high
school, kids see all grownups as a conspiracy of secretive, power-hungry enemies. And anyway,
teenagers are too calloused by life, too busy trying to look cool, to notice that Batsos grin seems a
little too wide, suggesting half-remembered cartoons about a whirling, toothsome creature. What
was that guy called again? Heck with it, got to text C.J. back about tonight. ...
But theres something about the thick shell of smiling harmlessness that doesnt fool little
kids. Batso creeps smaller kids out. As a consequence, he works hard to distract little kids with
candy and jokes. When that fails, he works hard to stuff them into sacks and make sure they
dont get the chance to meddle in his affairs.
Most monsters, like most teenagers, cant tell theres anything weird about a Marsupian.
Marsupians are close enough to human that the usual differences in gender, color and fashion
sense override something as inconsequential as an extra pair of teeth or a hidden belly pouch.
Wait, Im confused again. Are humans the ones with or without the pouches?
APPEARANCE: Batso smiles big, he talks big, and hes really excited about the gravitational
lensing of quasars. He makes learning fun. His Australian accent fluctuates a bit sometimes,
depending on how hes gauged his audiences reactionare they buying the Aussie rube
routine? Should he dial up the Dundee a bit? A bit less Outback? The red, round cheeks and
rumpled hair conceal a mind able to plot the downfall of Mankind before breakfast, and then
outline it into a step-by-step process anybody could follow. He makes learning fun, remember.
This includes learning to destroy all humans.
When hes working, its brown suits and no ties. When hes relaxing, its cargo shorts and
bowling shirtsan ensemble mathmatically provento deflect any suspicion of super-villainy.
When hes leading his followers in their Great Work, he goes in for shiny, silver jumpsuits and
stiff-collared capes. But because hes not an idiot, the capes have safety clasps which come
unsnapped if some meddling kid feeds the end of one into the threshing gears of a city-wasting
magma torpedo.
The great weakness in his disguise is human food. He looks at a nice, tasty chicken leg
with the horror youd reserve for a gelatinous mass of wobbling salty goo. At dinner parties, he
mostly drinks (which makes him rosier-cheeked and even more harmless-looking) and sticks
to salad if he can get away with it.The fact that humans eat other mammals when the world is
literally crawling with delicious insects and grubs is just one of many reasons he hates them. If
he found a fly in his soup, hed probably quietly thank the Marsupian gods for the tiny respite
from the horror of chicken noodle.
PERSONALITY: At heart, Batso is a dark and driven soul. He does evil things because he
feels he must, because his people need a strong leader who will give them back whats been
stolen from them. Hes a mad plotter with his eye on the prize, and that prize is having 99% of
humanity turned into fertilizer on the termite farms, and the other 1% in zoos. When he drops
the Aussie accent, crap is about to get real.
WAY TO HIDE: Batso hides beneath the stereotypical Aussie persona that Americans have
been trained by film and TV to think is adorable.But there are some anatomical differences
73
FAVORITE THING: Over the long term, the subjugation of the human race and its downfall. On the short term, a nice plate of fried larvae like Momma used to make.
WOMBATTLE MECH
Bigness: 2 (Big)
APPEARANCE: Wombat, Combat, Robot. Say that five times fast. Now, say that five times
fast while a thick-bodied, tank-sized war machine with fifteen-inch steel claws and armor
plating comes crashing towards you, heedless of all it crushes. Tongue tied? Ill bet you have
no problem saying, Argh!Run away! When you see a Wombattle Mech, its usually covered in
dirt from its burrow.
PERSONALITY: Nico Batso and his followers have a couple of signature toys to unleash on
the unsuspecting placented enemy when the time is right. The Wombattle Mech is a piloted
robot (see page 30) without any AI or personality, though each one has its quirks.
WAY TO HIDE: A Wombattle Mech burrows into the ground, covers up behind itself,
shields its systems, and powers down. Theyre really hard to detect when dug in.
74
BIGPIG
(BIOGENIC IMPROVED GROWTH POUCH INTERFACED GRUNT)
Bigness: 3(Bigger)
APPEARANCE: Basically, a woman taller than trees. The BIGPIG is an improvement on
MacBIG technology (page 59). Rather than drive the giant brainless clone from inside the
skull, the BIGPIG pilot slides into the protective and warm belly pouch, and theres room there
to transport a crack team of Marsupian commandos too. Because male Marsupians dont have
pouches, all BIGPIG units are clones of female Marsupians. The ones who were cloned are not
super-pleased with the acronym, but are committed to the cause.
LEVI A. THAN
CEO OF MAXIMEGA CO LLC
I like your moxie, kid, I like your go-getter, take-noprisoners attitude. Come work for me. Six figures. Health and
Dental. 401K. Its never too early to start thinking about your
futurebecause if you side with humanity against my new order, there will be no future for you at all.
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
POV: Since that big company moved its headquarters to town, its like everybody is working for them now. Your mom or dad or a favorite teacher quit to go join The Maximega
Team! Even with the economy on the skids, Maximega Co keeps hiring, keeps building.
But like, what do they actually do? They have a huge
factory, but nobody knows
what they make. They have
a giant office building, but
nobody knows what kind
of business they are. If
you ask people who work
there, they get a glassy
eyed smile, and say something like, At Maximega
Co, we work to synergize
technological solutions
to business management
75
REAL DEAL: Levi A. Than isnt human, which at this point, should not be too surprising, but what is a little surprising is just how not-human he is. Hes so not-human that in
his true form, hes about a hundred feet of not-human. Leviathan is the primordial god of
the deeps worshiped by the Subhumanoids, a giant who partakes of weird oceanic biology
like a hungry man at a Chinese buffet. Oh, fins? Ill have some of that! And tentacles? Two
servings, please! Gills? Sure! Bioluminescent lures? Three please! Scales? Ill have all youve
got! Eight-foot glistening transparent glass-like teeth? How could I say no? Yet, he doesnt
look like a shambling explosion at a Japanese fish market. Somehow, he pulls it off, and no
surprise considering that in his human form, Levi A. Than can wear white after Labor Day,
and look fabulous.
Mr. Than realized that the surface world was moving faster and faster, that the apepeople whod taken over were approaching the point where theyd become aware of the Elder
Things pretty soon, just as the previous mortal masters of the Earth had always done, and
just as before, that would lead to a mad scramble among the Elder Things to secure worshipers, get them to build temples, and generally exploit the shell-shocked mortals as ruthlessly
as possible. So he decided to get in on the game early, and establish his own church in the
human world before the other creatures who claimed a similar plateau of immortality and
intellect.
Giving humanity a quick once-over, he realized that what mankind worshiped most was
their symbolic units of exchange. In order to prepare them for the coming age of hideous
wakefulness, he founded a company and began collecting as much of this money as he could.
As he grew more savvy to human business practices, he realized how suited his primordial seagod instincts were to modern American finance in the age of globalization.
Plus, he really started to like his big corner office, his bloodwood desk, his Herman Miller
custom chair, and being called Sir by clueless ape-like employees.
MODUS OPERANDI: Levi A. Than plans to dominate the world of business utterly and
completely before one day at the annual shareholders meeting, revealing his true form and
claiming mastery over the human race. Until then, he uses the hideous biological sciences of
the Subhumanoids to further his ends. Most Maximega Co. LLC facilities house their Human
Resources Departments in hidden underground grottoes half flooded with brine to give the
Subhumanoids a place to relax and kick back after a hard day infecting people with mindnumbing brain parasites, dosing the employees with happy drugs, and brainwashing new hires
with hypno-squids. A visit to Human Resources inspires a bowl-quaking dread in most of the
Maximega Team even if they cant say quite why. Human Resources is great at sorting out
staffing problems by brainwashing the trainable and eating the untrainable.
Levi A. Than funded his corporation with gold and jewels taken from human shipwrecks,
and if the companys profits dont look like theyre going to exceed targets, he sends some of his
Subhumanoids to find some more for a quick injection of cash. If the Fed ever looked closely
at MMCos books, theyd find obvious and badly concealed irregularities which remain hidden
only beneath big piles of filthy, filthy money (or because auditors get a tour of Human Resources before going home...).
GRADE LEVEL: Younger kids are more likely to encounter Levi A. Thans machinations
indirectly ... at least at first. If Mom or Dad or a favorite teacher quits their old job to ...begin an exciting new career as part of the Maximega Co Team! then at first, theyre going to
start bringing home more money, start dressing sharper, start looking at understated Euro-
76
LEVIATHAN
SQUAMOUS FISH-GOD OF THE DREAD SUBHUMANOIDS
BEHOLD! I AM RISEN! NOW THE BEASTS OF THE SURFACE
WORLD SHALL KNOW MY BRINY GLORY!
BIGNESS: 4 (Biggest)
APPEARANCE: Like
every creature in the sea
all mashed together and a
hundred feet tall, except
somehow, it works. Leviathans body is a little whaley
and little sharky and little
like a starfish. Along his
back, waving anemonelike fronts in a thousand
eye-ravishing colors filled
with deadly stinging cells.
His arms and legs are
sort of like flukes, a little
like crab legs, and theres
something a bit lobstery
about some of them, but theyre stippled with color, and move with precision and grace. His
face is vast and fishy, but theres something human about the positioning of the huge eyes,
77
CUTTLEFISH SKIN 5D
Like the peaceful cuttlefish, your skin can morph and change color allowing you to blend into your surroundings, counterfeit designer clothing, and dress out for PE in like three seconds.
FACE Presto Change-o 2d (Useful [imitate clothing]), Now You See Me, Now you Dont 1d (Useful [blend in to match
your surroundings if youre, you know, nekkid], Awesome x2)
PRESSURE BLADDER 5D
In your abdomen is a muscular bladder you use to equalize pressure when youre swimming really deep in the water, but
you can fill it with water when youre walking around dry and squirt it out at firehouse pressures. You can also fill your bladder with a snack for later; Mom always gave you a slurry of half-digested herring to fill your bladder with before sending you
off to the human school to spy on the drylings. But itll hold delicious roasted tomato and chipotle salsa just as easily (just
make sure nobody sees you refilling the bowl at the party).
GUTS Suck it Up, Squirt it Out 2d (Useful [store stuff in your bladder], Attacks [shoot it out hella hard], Wicked Fast x2).
SUBCUTANEOUS SCALES 5D
Were all the same, under the skin (or so they say during the annual school assembly on Tolerance), but this isnt so true with
you. Under your perfectly ordinary human-looking skin is a hard mesh of sharp scales, like off a sharks back.
All locations have Secret Scales 0d (Tough x1)
BLOWFISH SPIT 5D
If some kid hawks a loogie at you, you can hawk one back thatll put him in the hospital. Youve got all these glands in your
mouth and innards that churn out a really gnarly toxin. Get a little on somebody and theyll have a magic carpet ride to tripout city. Get a bit more and theyll have a significantly less magical ambulance ride to the city hospital. Get too much and
theyll have a completely unmagical hearse ride to Sunny Meadows Funeral Home for Those Who Passed Away Tragically
Young. When you get old enough to start wondering about kissing, this is going to pose all kinds of problems.
GUTS Bad Spit (Useful [psychedelic trip-out], Attacks, Gnarly x3)
78
PERSONALITY: Vast and terrible and utterly inhuman. Leviathan has seen civilizations
older and stronger than humanitys rise from the mud and fall back into it. Hes seen the
stars shift, the constellations warping with the passage of deep geological time. His awareness runs on these levels of timea thought a day, a movement a centurybut he can
focus his awareness on the here and now, compressing his vast and terrible intellect into the
human timescale as hes doing now with Maximega Co. When he does so, hes impatient, he
demands perfection immediately, and his anger is powerful but well hidden under layers of
predatory camouflage.
WAY TO HIDE: Leviathan somehow, with a trick of alien biology and monstrous ur-physics,
compresses himself down to the size of a mid-40s business executive, and then uses his
octopus-like color and texture changing skin to make himself look like a mid-40s business
executive with a healthy tan, salt and pepper hair, and ocean-blue eyes.
FAVORITE THING: Power. What else is there, in the end? Leviathan plans to use his army of
human slaves to destroy his fellow Elder Things, and take the Earth for his exclusive use after
bombarding it with enough ice to raise the ocean levels and drown the land forever.
79
MAXIMEGA CO.
SECURITY ASSOCIATES
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
DETAILS: These guys have soaked up the worst Human Resources has to offer in terms of Special
Training Programs and Career Retreats and theres nothing human left behind their eyes. Theyre
not exactly meatbot automatons but theyre close. They all have the same basic personality now:
firm but polite, without pity or remorse. They dont deal well with exceptions to their expected
routines, so sometimes they can be tricked, and its possible to get them to blow a mental fuse and
have seizures if you can figure out their orders and then get them to contradict themselves (also
known as the Captain Kirk School of Computer Programming). Catch them in a logical fallacy in
their orders, and theyll go googly-eyed and fall over. Otherwise, theyre the standard faceless and
nameless jumpsuit-uniformed goon squad any self-respecting megalomaniacal world-dominating
super villain keeps on staff to slow the heroes down while he legs it in a jetpod.
ATTACK: They wear discrete body armor, and all carry handguns (with bigger guns available
in special lockers), shock sticks, cuffs, and big boots. Theyre pretty mean in a fight, because they
wont defend themselves at all; some will try and disable a foe, and others will pound on them.
DEFEND: Theyll never defend themselves, but by default will always defend a Subhumanoid
or Mr. Than himself if theyre involved in the scrap.
USEFUL: They stand around, guarding things, looking for people who dont have the right
color security badges, and dont talk. Theyre not that useful outside their narrow function unless you need somebody to hold down the corners of some garden plastic on a windy day. For
standing there and not moving, these guys are aces.
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal)
APPEARANCE: Like a hunched 8-foot fishman. Theres a little toad around the eyes, and a
little lizard around the legs, but the Subhumanoids are pretty fishy. They sure smell fishy, and
80
PERSONALITY: Cool, alien, and weird. They have totally different body language and
totally dont get human communication at all. Their language is a high-pitched series of
clicks and squeaks almost impossible to hear; a subhumanoid conversation is felt in the
chest more than heard with the ears. It fills humans caught in the middle with a vague
unease and dreadbeyond the perfectly understandable dread and unease of being caught
in the middle of a room full of manfish monsterswhich is perfectly apropos, as most of
the conversation would consist of stuff like, Look at the surface-creatures meaty limbs. If
he doesnt work out as a new associate network administrator, lets eat him. They are utterly
devoted to Leviathan, and the greatest honor any of them can imagine, and the final reward
for a lifetime (spanning a millennium) of service to their god is to be eaten, becoming part
of Leviathans vast and terrible body. The greatest punishment for failure is being eaten by
other Subhumanoids.
WAY TO HIDE: They dont, not really. Or at least, they dont have any special way of hiding
beyond what everyone can do. Theyll lurk, duck behind things, and slide into the water when
nobody is looking.
FAVORITE THING: The Favor of Leviathan. Theyre basically a simple lot, despite their mastery of biological technology, and want nothing more than to feel the loving embrace of their
gods fangs one day.
81
BIGNESS: 5 (Biggerest)
POV: How come my whole town
got replaced by disturbingly realistic statues? Could it be anything
to do with the huge wavy snake
monster thing? I shall ascertain
the situation by looking closely at
it with these binoculars. Focusing.
OK, it seems ... Crackle.
REAL DEAL: When Ultra Gorgon came to Earth from the Galaxy
of Peace (an impossibly distant
galaxy in which all peoples live
together in harmony, bound by the psychic webwork of psychic filaments spun by Ultra Gorgons
kind), she was a diaphanous and luminous being. She came to bring Love and Harmony and
Peace and Free Internet to everyone, but as soon as she began spinning her psi-web, she started
getting hammered with Humanitys psychic waste products and mental Spam; she got sick, and
fell into a coma on a small Pacific island where she was worshiped for decades as a goddess, until
the US Navy evacuated the populace and blew the island to smithereens with an H-Bomb test.
The creature that rose from the radioactive rubble was forever changedangry, cynical, mistrustingher delicate spectral form gone forever, and replaced with a snake-like form longer than an
oil tanker. Ultra Gorgon was born.
She fought the human military, and the forces of Project BOOK and its international
counterparts, sometimes assisted by the unwitting violence of great beasts like Mi-GoJirra.
Always defeated, yet always surviving, she evolved with each defeat, becoming stronger. She
grew a second head, then four, then dozens. Her skin changed from pale and scaly to glowing
gold. During her last battle with Mi-GoJirra, she achieved energy level 3, and she believes, surpassed Mi-GoJirra. She will wrest away his title, becoming Queen of Monsters, and then wage
war on the human species, punishing it for being so hateful, and petty.
MODUS OPERANDI: For one of the greatest monsters on the planet, UGL3G is remarkably
circumspect about the battles she picks. Shes a thinking monster, not just a destroying monster,
and can plan strategy when dealing with creatures able to threaten her physically. But, when all
82
GRADE LEVEL: Ultra Gorgon Level 3 Gold can hardly recognize the physical difference in individual humans; she perceives
the world as a tapestry of scents and psi-signatures. She senses personalities more than appearances, and has sniffed enough immature minds in adult bodies to be completely confused by
how humans mature. Also, she really doesnt care. Shell turn a bus full of little kids into stone
as readily as a battalion of soldiers. It makes no difference to her. The downside to this way of
perceiving the world is that shes struck by the power of dynamic, driven, creative, and exciting
personalities... in other words, the Players kids. The wuzzy-wuggy link that they have with
their monsters makes it ever more profound: shell go out of her way not to squish or statuefy
kids that radiate that kind of force of personality, preferring to study them, suborn them, or
use them against her enemies.
APPEARANCE: Like an enormous humanoid with vaguely feminine silhouette who happens
to be made entirely from snakes. Theres a central mass in there somewhere, from which all the
snakes emerge and attach, but you cant see it. Ultra Gorgons snakes intertwine, interweave, and
form the humanoid body she prefers. The head of this body is also made of snakes, and crowned
in a waving mass of them that bend and stare. Shes an almost blinding gold in color, shattering the sunlight into glaring slices of light. Its hard to look directly at her, and not just because
that tends to turn people into stone. The snakes are blind to visible light, but their white eyes see
psychic energy, and their flickering tongues sift the air, lapping up a farts worth of molecules in a
crowded football stadium, and then being able to point right to the farter.
PERSONALITY: Cunning and furious. Her vast intelligence advises caution, but her hatred
demands action. She often ruins her own plans by leaping into the battle too soon, or revealing herself before the trap is sprung. She hates too much, and it gets the better of her, and if you
know how to play on it, allows her to be manipulated.
WAY TO HIDE: UGL3G discorporates her humanoid shape, becoming a vast wriggling mass
of megasnakes, and squishes and burrows down into the ground, into caves, into disused airship hangars, or any other place big enough to contain her bulk. She can fit through an opening as small as the double doors at the mall this way.
FAVORITE THING: Shes torn between two conflicting Favorite Things: the desire to smash
and annihilate, to run mad and destroy all humans without restraint; and the desire to plot and
plan to see a devious scheme come together. These two sides of her personality are in constant
conflict, and shell sometimes blow a great plan to get some destroying in before lunchtime,
83
BIGNESS: 5 (Biggerest)
POV: According to all the PR
squawk, the new Galaxy Towers
downtown were a ... breathtaking celebration of the modern city,
containing in microcosm everything
that is good about it. By everything
that is good they mean a luxury
hotel, four-level upscale shopping
mall, convention center, health spa,
fitness club, office space, and fifteen
separate Starchucks Coffee Houses so
youre never more than fifteen paces
from a Primo-Giganto Mochatini Iced Decaf. Nice, but nothing really extraordinary, right? So
how come theres all those dudes with the earpieces and the weightlifter builds standing around
guarding so many doors with NO ADMITTANCE on them?
REAL DEAL: The Galaxy Towers arent just a four-star hotel, destination shopping experience, spa, fitness club, convention-center, and staging ground for Starchucks dominion of the
coffee market... it is all this, and so much more. When deep in the hidden subbasements, vast
hyper-fusion engines are engaged, and power channeled to the armature secreted throughout
the Towers and the surrounding architectural footprint, a startling transformation occurs
beneath a obscuring curtain of artificial fog blasted up to conceal the change.
PROJECT CODENAME DOMA OMEGA is the governments answer to giant monster
attacks on cities. Monsters like to attack buildings? Lets have the buildings attack monsters!
The twin fifty-story buildings and their ten-story base transform into a gigantic battle-ready
titan, an instrument of American capitalism given the form of a vast art-deco roboknight.
DOMA OMEGA is driven from a control center in a luxuriously appointed corner office
which becomes its forehead when it transforms, allowing the citys final defenders to fight evil
in comfort and style.
84
APPEARANCE: A sixty-story stylized robot warrior with some obvious architectural embellishments if you look closely enough. If there wasnt time to evacuate the Galaxy Towers before
activation, then DOMA OMEGAs body is likely to be dotted with the light from windows,
with, if you look close, tiny screaming people in them.
PERSONALITY: DOMA OMEGA has some AI but is mostly a piloted mech when you get
right down to it, and it doesnt have much personality. But the organization that built and controls it is obsessively perfectionist, controlling, and organized: almost the opposite of Blocks
piratical soldiery from BLACK BOOK. This focus on cleanliness, tidiness, and decorum
finds its way into DOMA OMEGAs design, upkeep, and fighting style too. In battle, DOMA
OMEGA is a fairly static and predictable opponent.
WAY TO HIDE: DOMA OMEGA turns into the Galaxy Towers Convention Center and Hotel.
FAVORITE THING: DOMA OMEGAs simple AI takes satisfaction in order and structure,
pulsing with satisfaction at a well executed strike against an enemy, or the tidiness with which
the custodial staff sweeps its hallways.
85
MI-BEEF 5D
The Mi-Cells form a reinforcing matrix in your bones and muscles. Youre strong enough to throw a can of cream of mushroom soup through a truck filled entirely with cans of cream of mushroom soup, but youve got enough alien fungus in your
system that youd feel really guilty about it afterwards.
HANDS Soup Torpedo Strength 2d (Useful [really like totally strong], Attack, Gnarly x2)
MI-BOUNCE 5D
Springy bouncy fibers spread through your body, especially your legs. These miraculous fibers act like super rubber bands, bouncing
back after every stretch. They let you leap and bound impossible distances, and land with bouncy ease. Basketball tryouts? Oh yeah.
Legs Slam Dunk Jumping 2d (Useful [jump like totally high], Defends, Awesome x2, Immunity [falling])
MI-BREATH 5D
Like the big guy himself, the Mi-Cells infesting your lungs let you blow a cloud of deadly matter-dissolving spores. Beware
seasonal allergies, however. Ah . . . AH . . . AH . . . CHOOOOOOO! OMG you melted Dads car!
GUTS Hellatosis 1d (Attack, Area x4)
MI-BELLOW 5D
You can holler with the ear-wracking voice of the great beasts. Tired of being ignored? Now, youve got a built-in stereo system
with more decibels than a jet taking off. Unfortunately, the only CD youve got to play on it is RAAAAAAAAAAAROOOOOAR!
FACE ROAR! 2D (Useful [be like crazy loud], Attacks, Awesome x2)
MI-BOSS 5D
The Mi-Cells have infected your brain! In fact, theyve mostly eaten your brain. Did you know a human brain is mostly (delicious) fat and cholesterol? Well, those Mi-Cells seem to know. But not to worry, you dont realize its happening because as
they eat a chunk of your brain, the Mi-Cells immediately start doing the same job. A couple of days of headaches and runny
nose (by the way, that aint snot dripping outthats the bits of your brain the Mi-Cells didnt want), youre as good as new...
except your brain is now a psychic receiver tuned to Monster FM. You can read monster minds, and if you squint, change them.
BRAINS I Know What Youre Thinking But Wish I Didnt 2d (Useful [read monster minds], Useful [change monster
minds], Awesome x2)
86
BIGNESS: 5 (Biggerest)
POV: How many giant monsters have their
own theme-songs? Mi-GoJirra is the coolest. Hes just been getting bigger and more
awesome for decades. Dad said he used to
be really small, like the size of a little building or something, but hes gotten bigger and
bigger, and spinier and cooler. Did I say cool
already? No, hes not a good guy exactly. He
does sometimes stomp on a city while hes
fighting a giant animate garbage dump or a
space lobster, but hes just so BIG, you know?
The poor guy cant help it if his tail flattens a
church sometimes. Ive got all the Mi-GoJirra
collectable cards, and I rocked Mi-GoJirra
Showdown on the GameBox, and I started
www.migojirra-heart-heart.org and its the
fifth most popular Mi-GoJirra website in the
world. I even bought a skin sample off eBay
from a guy in Newark from when the army
managed to hurt him a little with a penetrating bunker-buster missile. He said the little
hunk of skin landed on his car. I keep the
hunk of skin in a tank and feed it. Its getting
bigger. One of these days. ...
REAL DEAL: Mi-GoJirra is a gigantic (seriously, we need a thesaurus; how many times
do we start our descriptions with gigantic?)
fungus lizard. Thats a little hard to imagine,
but picture a huge bipedal saltwater crocodile with skin like wood fungus, and great
spines and plates of the same stuff all along
its back. Now, make it bigger than an aircraft
carrier stood on its end. Thats something
like how Mi-GoJirras little brother might
look. Mi-GoJirra is much gnarlier. He came
to Earth from a distant world, carried as a
spore on a comet. Some speculate that the
Tunguska blast was the result of Mi-GoJirra
falling to Earth. In the seas, he found the
nutrients and room to grow and grow, and
the first confirmed (but Top Secret) sightings
87
MODUS OPERANDI: Mi-GoJirras motives are somewhat mysterious and hard to fathom.
Sometimes, he seems little more than a big animal that likes to fight. Other times, he shows
up when humanity needs him the most, and fights to save a city (the bits of it he doesnt
accidentally flatten himself). Uncovering Mi-GoJirras motivations and patterns in his behavior are what hundreds of highly trained scientists are paid to do, and what thousands of
obsessive Mi-GoJirra fanboys try to do because its safer than talking to girls.
GRADE LEVEL: Mi-GoJirra is Friend to All Children. Or ... well ... all the children he
notices. If kids catch his attention, hell endanger himself to save them. Nobody knows why,
but the more adult and grownup you look, the less likely Mi-GoJirra is to leap to the rescue.
I bet you thought that tragic little mustache was a good idea.
PERSONALITY: Somewhat variable. Mi-GoJirra is sometimes aggressive, but not consistently. Sometimes he just wants to be left alone, and sometimes hes driven by curiosity. This
has lead to speculation (on the Internet, mostly) that theres not one Mi-GoJirra, but many.
88
FAVORITE THING: Like his personality, this varies. Sometimes a fight, sometimes his
privacy, sometimes rare minerals being refined in your home town, sometimes the songs of
the moon faeries. Its almost like his needs and wants serve some strange, unknowable plot.
89
CHAPTER 7:
CAMPAIGN JUMPSTART
GO GO MONSTER FORCE ZETA!
Things got really weird without you even noticing. It all started small that night when you
heard a voice from your closet. Hey kid, can you give me a hand? On reflection, the thing
you found in there was still pretty new to the world, and very, very literal. Though he was totally cool about helping clean up the rest of the burglar when he was done with the fingers (his
favorite bit). Its amazing how even something like that can become normal after a little while.
So things progressed. First your monsters, then some other kids showed up with monsters, then there were other things, and mean people, and some fights, and some adventure,
and some trips to other planets (and other dimensions), and it all becomes pretty ordinary.
You figure out how to balance it out against family and school. You quit wondering how
youre going to get your homework done every night, and not only because it turns out your
friend from the closet can do calculus in his head and if he needs to count to a really high
number, has about a thousand wiggly tendrils to count on.
Then, something changes.
The vague secrecy youve come to take for granted vanishes one day. You turn around
after your monster buddy trounces some alien robots or rogue CIA agents or a bunch of
mind-controlled bullies, and see a guy with a fancy new cellphone, streaming the whole
thing live to the internet. Bye-bye kitty. Perhaps you can put the bag over your head.
90
91
THEMES
GGMFZ is all about learning to play on a team, work together, and work for something bigger than yourselves. Kids in the MFZ arent in the military exactly, so they dont have to wear
uniforms or anything, and they still have to maintain the (increasingly thin) fiction that theyre
regular kids going to a regular school (GOL-DURN CHILD LABOR LAWS! THE LAWYERS
WOULD HAVE ME BY THE GIBLETS!). But, theyre on the MFZ team, and theyll meet the
techs, and army men, and supply sergeants, and science people who make it up, and theyll start
to seem like regular folks instead of faceless goons, especially since most will have a sweet spot
for the kids, and theyll look out for them. Hidden in this is a theme about having to shoulder responsibility before you might be ready for it. Step up to the plate and swing, or hope for a walk
Increasingly, as the campaign progresses, the secret of monsters and weirdness is going to
wear out. Itll change from blurry videos of a monster fight behind the Gas-and-Go to a live
footage on CNN of a beast like fifty-million tons of corned beef hash attacking the Superduper
Bowl. The secret is going to get out. Its going to get out BIG.
And then, the heroes of Monster Force Zeta are going to find themselves cast into the spotlight,
and the pitiless engines of the PR machine fire up, and the kids and their monsters find themselves
testifying before Congress (No, Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Cosmonaut Party), signing endorsement deals (When I fight monsters, I need to be comfortable
Stretchmaster makes MY underwear), and fending off fans (fans who build crazy websites and
want to know things like, Can he swallow a whole yak? How about a buffalo? What about a cow
... with horns?). But theres increasingly little time for anything else but the MFZ, because things
are getting stranger, things are getting more dangerous, and it all seems to be leading somewhere.
Somewhere bad. Things are waking after millions of years of sleep. Why? Is there some kind of
shadowy conspiracy behind it all? Pushing the Earth towards chaos and destruction?
Well ... isnt there always?
INSPIRATIONS
Godzilla films, but nothing made after 1980. Gamera, Friend of All Children. Other charmingly cheesy 70s giant robot/monster shows like The Space Giants. Anime from the Kids-DriveRobots genre (the classics being Voltron and Gigantor), and from the monster collector genre.
Sentai showsespecially American knockoffswhich have kids and teens donning the masks
rather than good looking pop-idol types.
92
HOOKS
Here are some ways to build your game around GGMFZ!
GO! GO!
Your first day on the job! Meeting the MFZ crew is a whirlwind of names and nicknames.
THIS IS CARTER! THIS IS BOXER! THIS IS DONKEY! OVER THERE, IN THE CORNER,
THATS BEEFKING! DONT ASK! You see all the cool toys MFZ has inherited from INC
and Project BOOK. You get to meet Agent Grey, the local MIB liaison (who glares as hard as
an MIB is allowed to glare), and then its all alarm bells and klaxons, flashing lights and gigantic video-screens descending from the ceiling. Monster attack!
Without any preparation, without a proper introduction to the MFZ or its policies, tactics, equipment, or personnel, the kids are expected to get out there with their monsters and
whomp butt (or whatever physiological analog serves the attacker as a butt). Its a BIGNESS 2
beasty come for a snack. Compared to the cost of a single Thundermonkey, kids and monsters
are cheap, Block still wants to make sure theyre worth the investment, so hell hold back MFZs
other forces unless the kids start showing signs of getting their butts kicked.
93
WELCOME TO HOLLYWEIRD
A few years in the MFZ, and now things have gotten fairly normal. Weird, sure, but a normal
sort of weird. People know about you, about your monster. Youve done some TV. But then,
during a time of serious budget cuts, MFZ gets word that a famous Hollywood visionary director wants to use monsters in his movies; the ultimate special effect he says, and all he needs is
the loan of some monsters and their handlers for ... oh ... just a month or so. Hes willing to
donate millions to one of MFZs support foundations if theyll come.
But I dont want to! isnt something Block or his Sergeant-Accountants will listen to.
So off to Hollywood and fame in the movie biz. Itll be easy, right? Just stand there and make
sure your monster is on mark, and doesnt go RAR! until the guy with the clacky thing says ACTION! Easy. Totally easy. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Ha ha.
When something gigantic and horrible attacks L.A., the director see another opportunity.
Rather than film monsters fighting on a sound-stage and make
the film shaky in post-production, why not strap cams to the
monsters as they fight the giant
monster, and have shaky-cam
for real? Brilliant! OK, he wont
get that Best Picture nom, but
perhaps he can weasel out a Best
Documentary award. . . .
NO NO! ATTACK IT
FROM ABOVE! I NEED AN
ESTABLISHING SHOT TO FIX
THE PERSPECTIVE!
94
Dedication
DEDICATION
Bigger Bads was created with the direct support of these completely wonderful fans of Monsters and Other Childish Things. This book is dedicated to each of you. Especially the ones who
signed up under those crazy nicknames!
THANKS TO . . .
Aaron
Adam Krump
Alan Brown
Alex Middleton
Allan Goodall
Andrew Byers
Andrew Howell
Andrew Ross
Antti Horelli
Arajski
Bek_g
Ben Sennitt
Benjamin Bryan
Benjamin Hertzberg
Boris Barkovic
Brian Bergdall
Brian Cooksey
Capra
Carl Congdon
Carlos Martin
Chor Kun Xin
Chrclary
Chris
Chris Chambers
Chris Gath
Chris C-Star Gunner Gunning
Chris Sylvis
Chris Zank
Christian Nord
Christopher Ruthenbeck
Christopher Williams
Clay Broeker
Dain Lybarger
Dan Byrne
Dan Spragens
Daniel Fidelman
Daniel Sell
Daniel Siegmann
Daniel Stack
Darryl Green
David Andrews
David Prokopetz
Dawid Wojcieszynski
Devin Doherty
Dustin Gulledge
Ed McWalters
Epimetreus
Evan G. Colon
Evan Lindsey
Fatespinner
Frank Marcelli
Gavin Meakings
Gavran
Greg Cooksey
Heavensgardener
Henry Ulrich
Hotjets
Ian Borchardt
Ilkham
Jacob Boersma
Jake Maas
Jared Hoffman
Jared Kenjamin
Fattmann
Jason
Jayson Rackerby
Jean
Jeff Healy
Jeff Zitomer
Jeremy Redman
Jerry Skld
Jiivonen
Jim Sweeney
Joe Zabrowski
Joey
John
John Larkin
Johnathan Broadley
Jonathan Davis
Jonathan Dean
Jose LaCario
Josh Rensch
Joshua
Justin Unrau
Kai Tave
Karl Sackett
Kent Draeger
Kevin Pezzano
Kevin Veale
lordminx
Lucas
Luke Bailey
Luke McCampbell
Mark DiPasquale
Mark Jackman
Mark Peoples
Mark Solino
Matthew Bielinski
Matthew Brooks
Matthew C H
Winder
Michael Hill
Michael Ostrokol
Michael W. Mattei
Mightyspacepope
Mikloshe
Nathan
Neal Dalton
Nicholas McIntyre
Nicholas Zakhar
Nick Nico Batso
Bate
Noam Rosen
Owen Thompson
Paradoxdruid
Pat T
Paul Mitchener
Peter Sinkis
PetriWessman
Phil Bordelon
R. Keyes Hull
Randall Wright
Reid
Richard Harrison
Richard Starr
Robert Stehwien
Robert Thomas
Robin Ashe
Roger Eberhart
RoninMinds
Ryan Gersovitz
Sean Holland
Sean M Dunstan
Seneca Savoie
Shai-hulud87
Simon Ward
Simon Whorlow
Stacie Winters
Stephen Egolf
Steve Slater-Brown
Steven Fujisaka
Steven Moy
Steven Shaffer
Steven Warble
Sue Lee
Tamoline
Tony Love
Tony Toon
Travis Scott
Trevor Guina
W00hoo
Wayne Coburn
Wraith808
Xander
95