From Megaten to Monsterpunk

The process of figuring out what to take and what to discard from Monsterpunk's chief inspiration was much more interesting than it was with BCG. Combat in tabletop RPGs is basically playing a multiplayer co-op tactics game where each player controls a single unit. It was a matter of figuring out which mechanics were worth keeping, which ones needed some massaging for an adaptation and which ones to discard. Compared to what I had to do for Monsterpunk, BCG was basically designing on autopilot. This is primarly for two reasons.

First is that the franchise is a lot more experimental with its mechanics. Digital Devil Saga is like a traditional jrpg without demon negotiation or fusion, Persona is a dating sim with simplified SMT mechanics bolted on top and the Raidou games throw real time action into the mix. Even the mainline games have radically different mechanics from title to title, with Nocturne being radically different from SMT 1+2 and IV+Apocalypse being radically different from Nocturne. You could probably take any of those titles and adapt any one of them, but you can't really adapt all of them at once without taking some creative liberties.

Second is that the mechanics that are common to most series are extremely videogamey or simply unfeasible in a co-op multiplayer environment. Press turns are a great JRPG turn-based system but only really work when one player = one team and having 4+ teams running around, each using press turns, would be a huge mess. Demon fusion is flat out impossible to translate in a way that doesn't involve tons of charts and spreadsheets while still retaining what makes it interesting. Giving all PCs a rotating roster of demons that constantly changes as the result of negotiation, fusion and plot means having a ton of insignificant NPCs running around instead of a handful of meaningful ones. Point here is that it's not just that most mechanics are different from game to game, but the ones that tend to stick between games aren't the kind of thing you actually want in a tabletop game.

Do note that I already knew this was going to be a system where most PCs would control and fight with monsters, which was already very difficult to adapt to the tabletop RPG experience while keeping it elegant. Having a system like that that wasn't Pokemon was the entire reason that I set out to make the game in the first place, but I certainly didn't need to make it more complicated than it already was.

What about instead designing around the aesthetics, worldbuilding and general tone of the franchise? Those also change a lot from game to game (purists still argue that Persona is not a 'real' SMT game, after all), but if I cherry-picked a handful of them I could adapt them to a pen and paper RPG, which is more than I could do for the mechanics.

Here's the List of SMT Things That I Decided To Focus Around:

1) Mythology Kitchen Sink
The games feature tons of mythological characters in it, ranging from the well-known to the obscure, but they're not just window-dressing. You can reasonably expect accurate lore from them, which the plot is written around. Satan is a different character from and enemy of Lucifer, Shiva is a god of destruction and rebirth rather than a lady with ice powers, Loki is a trickster instrumental in the fall of the otherwise invincible and immortal Baldur. Mixing so many contradictory mythologies together means sacrificing some fidelity, yes, but so does telling a good story where the PCs get to do anything of relevance and the plot isn't already written in stone. I wanted to cram as much mythology into the game as possible, so I figured I'd go for five factions instead of two or three, which leads us right to...

2) Moral Extremism
In SMT the factions are extremist assholes. The demons, too, are extremist assholes. Even your friends are extremist assholes! The commonly agreed best ending in most games is not allying with anyone but murdering all of them, because most of the people vying for power in these games are up to nothing good. Usually the conflict is between Law (aka God) and Chaos (aka Lucifer), but if you've ever played D&D you know that the Law/Chaos divide isn't a particularly consistent one, so I would have factions focusing on more concrete goals. I have the WAR! faction the SCIENCE! faction the NATURE! faction the ROBOTS! faction and the FUCK DINOSAURS MONSTERS faction! I also added Obsessions to mirror how people who might start out reasonable sometimes take deep swerves into loontown, a SMT staple.

3) Grimcamp Edgebright Tone
The games head into pretty dark territory. It doesn't stop at killing as a way to solve problems, it usually involves brainwashing, slavery and flat out genocide as things that players have to stop or can choose to support. Still, there's moments of levity, from dancing with Mr. Thriller in hell to Charon telling you to go take a number and whining about the queue when you get a game over. The shifts in tone can be very quick: one moment you're watching a teenager try to kill herself to escape a sex offender and the other you're fighting a giant penis demon. First you're dramatically shooting yourself in the head to summon a demon, later you're putting a shock collar on a dog so he can do the same. The tone is only consistent in its inconsistency. Between snarky commentary from named NPCs in most sections and completely ridiculous shit being treated with stone cold seriousness (such as everything about Orgone), I think I've got the tone right.

4) Negotiation Matters
Demon Negotiation is one of the highlights of these games, the quirky conversations you can have with demons (or that your demons can have with other demons) are a big draw into the setting, but the inherent randomness in the system is often a turn off. It is also one of the most frustrating things about the franchise, because you have a bunch of games where talking to others is an actual game mechanic, yet significant enemies simply refuse to do so. I wanted to make Negotiations a big deal in Monsterpunk, so I figured that instead of making one PC the dedicated face of the team everyone would have a Talky PC Skill they could use. Negotiations are relevant in combat not just as a way to finish things but also as a way to weaken enemies, they're a thing that anyone can do but that still feels unique for each PC. I'm quite proud of how this one turned out.

5) Making Pacts for Power
Many of the games begin with the main character signing a contract with an entity, this usually saves their lives when they're in danger thus ending the tutorial. Monsterpunk pretty much takes it for granted that this is going to be the origin story of most PCs. I decided there would be some pure human classes focusing on technology instead of making pacts with monsters early on to add some variety, but otherwise this is the heart of the game and the thing that makes most of its PCs stand out. It being last in the list does not mean it being least in importance.

And I think that's all. What started as making a Megaten RPG ended up being a Megaten-flavored RPG that is better described as "Devilman meets Fallout" instead. BCG is clearly and blatantly SRW, but Monsterpunk is not Megaten. Is that better? Worse? That's not for me to decide.

Next: Changes! What things I'm thinking of putting on the chopping block.

Gimmick Out.

From Point-Buy to Class/Level

There are some very obvious similarities between BCG and Monsterpunk, such as both systems being effects-based, the use of advantages/disadvantages and being blatant videogame ripoffs inspired by cult videogame franchises. But there are also very striking differences, and of these the most important one is that one system is point-buy while the other is class/level.

I'm a point-buy guy. Most of the time when I play games with classes and levels I don't like them. The classes are too restrictive in flavor or mechanics while the levels are the game's fun police telling you that you're not tall enough to do the cool things that you're playing the game to do.

So why would I make a class and level game, then? Because I think it works best for the kind of game that Monsterpunk is. That and because I tried to make it point-buy and it just wasn't working out. You can read more about how that happened here.

Classes and Levels: The Good

There are two primary benefits to going with a class/level system:

It is easier to balance. When you have to make sure that every single power, weapon or what have you works well not just with each other but also doesn't accidentally break the game's balance (or, worse, make it stop functioning altogether) then you spend a lot of time fine-tuning all the numbers and hunting down unintended interactions that could spell the game's doom if left unchecked. BCG and BCZ (particularly the latter) have had quite a few hiccups with powerful synergies that spiraled out of control. In a class-based game you don't have to worry about how dangerous the A+B combo is if I keep option A to the classes that don't get option B. Similarily, if the class with option A is weaker than the class with option B then I can simply make it stronger without worrying about how much that might make the class with option B even stronger.

It is easier to grok characters and make them with. Character creation takes time. This is especially true when you have to do math, such as in point-buy, instead of just going through a checklist which is what you often do with class/level systems. Creating PCs and NPCs alike in BCG is much faster than in any edition of D&D, but it doesn't seem that way because you have to do quite a bit of math, while in D&D you can just pick the guy that swings the sword, choose his kind of sword, pick some feats that make you swing swords better and call it a day. Monsterpunk characters are very easy and fast to make, and in a game like this where most PCs are actually two characters that wouldn't be possible without a class/level system.

Classes and Levels: The Bad

Now there are also some problems present in class/level systems but I think I've managed to sidestep nearly if not all of them. Point-buy systems offer freedom at the cost of complexity while class/level systems offer simplicity at the cost of freedom. Here's how:

Classes don't restrict you from playing the character concept you like. While Monsterpunk classes are more interesting and less generic than "guy with a sword" or "lady that heals", they're still broad enough that you can tweak them to your liking. Furthermore, the game is trivially easy to reskin, so this is not a problem.

Classes don't restrict you mechanically. In addition to having a good 2-3 obvious ways to build any of the classes, you can mix and match them with different monsters to get many more combinations of abilities and allowing you to combine nearly all of them to give your PC whatever you want. The caveat here is that this doesn't apply to Ubermensch classes, which, well, I admit am not super happy about... But 12 out of 16 is a pretty good total! Oh right, also there's dual and custom class systems in the back of the book, so yeah.

The level system doesn't gate you out of anything. Levels make PCs stronger over time, yes, and high level PCs play fundamentally differently from low level PCs (having two Advanced Techs or starting with an Orgone Point is a world of difference) but it doesn't dangle all the cool and fun abilities like a carrot in front of you and tell you that you don't get to use them until you've reached some arbitrary benchmark. It's more like being at the candy store and being told you can get anything but not everything.

Classes and Levels: The Ugly Conclusion

I've written at length about BCG's many issues and of those the ones I dislike the most are how difficult it is to start playing if you're not a mechanically oriented type of player. There's a lot of emphasis in what makes things easier for groups that are picking up the game for the first time, which I think is one of the big draws of having classes. However, Monsterpunk is also an experiment in trying to use a class/level while doing away with all the things I dislike about class/level systems.

Whether I've succeeded or not is up to you all to decide. Ultimately, this is an open beta, and I'm well aware that I'll probably have to change a bunch of things. I don't think I'm going to change the class/level system, but I do think I might have to work more on the custom class system if there's enough clamor for a point-buy alternative.

That's all for today! This and more were originally going to be part of last week's post but I was out of energy like half a paragraph into the class/level chat so I decided to leave that for next week. Not really sure what the next post is going to tackle, it's probably going to be more first impression stuff, I imagine.

Until then, Gimmick Out.