The Monster v1.15 YOUR LOOK Skin: artificial, Asian or South Asian, Black, decorated, Hispanic/Latino, Indigineous, Middle-Eastern, white, rotten, bone-white, wet and warm, furry, pallid, ______ ___ STATS Assign each stat one of these numbers: +2, +1, +1, +0, +0, -1; your Meat should be +2 or +1. An important aspect of your character will be the relationship between your Meat and your Cool. You use Meat to be monstrous and do violence and you use Cool to resist the monster inside you. LETHAL ADAPTIONS Instead of getting cyberware, the Monster relies on her super-human abilities. Choose two from below. Leathery Hide: When you make the harm move, subtract 2 from your roll. Subtract 3 from your roll if the harm came from a weapon with the +flechette tag. Heightened Awareness: Choose two senses which your powers have improved. Whenever your enhanced senses help out, you may roll Meat for assess Enhanced Sight: Choose two of the following tags +thermographic, +light amplification, +magnification, +flare compensation. Enhanced Hearing: Choose one of the following tags: +wide- frequency, +dampening Enhanced Scent: Gain two of the following tags: +bullshit-detector, +discerning, +powerful-nose Natural Weapons: Choose one. claws (2-harm hand messy) fangs (3-harm intimate messy feeding) acid spit (2-harm close messy corrosive) soul suck (4-harm intimate slow feeding) Improved Reflexes: You react so quickly that you can almost dodge bullets. If none of your enemies have Synth Nerves or Improved Reflexes, take +1 forward to mix it up. In situations where reaction time is critical, take +1 forward to act under pressure. Predator's Instincts: When you assess in a tactical situation, hold +1, even on a miss. CORE MECHANICS A Ticking Timebomb: You have a countdown clock that represents your Hunger. When a move says to roll Hunger, roll and then add the number of segments of your Hunger clock that you have filled in. The more segments that are filled on your Hunger clock the more of a monster you become. Some of your moves get stronger, but your control of yourself gets weaker. When you begin a new mission: Reset your Hunger clock to 2200 ( ■■■■□□ ) and then roll Harm to Table . If you roll well, you should get flesh from your deal. For each flesh you get, erase one segment from your Hunger clock. If you have any flesh leftover after your clock hits 1200 ( □□□□□□ ) take one [snack] that you can consume during the mission with Be the Monster . Any excess flesh is wasted. When the clock strikes 2100 ( ■■■□□□ ): The Hunger begins to define you. Your monstrous features become exaggerated and you become more and more like the monsters of folktales. When the clock strikes 2200 ( ■■■■□□ ): The Hunger grows more powerful and your humanity wanes. Your body breaks, stretches and snaps into place growing into a form that is more lethal and less human than ever. Take +1 ongoing to rolling with Meat. Take -1 ongoing to rolling with Style. When the clock strikes 2300 ( ■■■■■□ ): You appear absolutely terrifying to the humans, you are one of the monsters of their nightmares. The Hunger makes you unable to focus on even simple tasks but still violence comes easy. Take -1 ongoing to rolling with any stat other than Meat (replaces the -1 ongoing to Style) When you mix it up with a melee weapon you inflict +1 harm. When you mix it up with one of your Natural Weapons , you instead inflict +2 harm. The experience of being this close to turning forever is so intense that many Monsters who reach this point never fully return. The first time you reach 2300 in a session, describe how this experience will change you forever and you may mark XP. When the clock strikes 0000 ( ■■■■■■ ): Roll Cool to try to hold onto your humanity. On a 7+: you hold onto your humanity, just barely. Move the hunger clock back to 2300. On a 7-9: there's a great cost. You lost control and you might spend your life paying for it. Pick one: +owned, +hunted or you've been captured right now On a 6-: you've gone feral. Your mind is gone and you're now a creature that acts only on instinct. The character is now an NPC who may be used by the MC. My condolences. Resist the Temptation: When you try to restrain your carnal hunger for intellectual or social reasons, mark XP and roll Hunger. Note that this roll has an inverted effect like the Harm move, +/-1 modifiers DO NOT affect this roll. On a 10+: Choose one. You fail to resist the temptation, and must do whatever it takes to feed your Hunger. Take +1 ongoing to doing whatever horrible, desperate things you would never do if you were in full control of your facilities and then go do them. You keep control over yourself, but you cannot focus on anything other than your desperate need to consume, take -2 ongoing until you feed and advance your Hunger clock. On a 7-9: the MC will choose one: Advance your hunger clock. You lose your footing You lose your grip on whatever you’re holding You lose track of someone or something you’re attending to Someone gets the drop on you On a 6-: You grit your teeth and bear it. When to Resist the Temptation Both you and the MC should feel free to use this move when the story demands. Call for this move when it will accentuate the struggle between your human life and monstrous nature, call for this move to remind the table that humans are your food or call for this move when feeding would be so damn inconvenient that we just have to see what will happen. The more advanced your Hunger clock is the more you should be rolling this move. Some guidelines for when you should roll this move are listed below. These guidelines are intended to give stakes to your growing hunger but remember, telling a good story comes first. Roll to Resist the Temptation when... At 1200 ( □□□□□□ ) and later: ...it makes sense as the consequence for a failed roll. At 1800 ( ■■□□□□ ) and later: ...you see a particularly juicy meal that is to your taste. At 2100 ( ■■■□□□ ) and later: ...you smell blood. ...you see any dead body. At 2200 ( ■■■■□□ ) and later: ...you see or smell any living human who is not your friend and who is weaker than you. At 2300 ( ■■■■■□ ) and later: ...you see or smell any living human. CORE MOVES Be the Monster: Whenever you consume human flesh or blood, choose two. erase one segment from your Harm clock erase one segment from your Hunger clock (you can choose this twice) take +1 forward the next time you roll +Meat Flesh Deals: Human flesh is not easy to come by. If you aren't hampered by a moral code, you could hunt, but violence always comes with consequences. You start with one of the following deals but you may establish more later thru the Many Fingers in Many (Finger) Pies move. Choose one Emotional: a person or a group lets you feed off of them or helps you get medical waste at great cost to them. Tapped You'll never go hungry with us: When you roll a 6- on Harm to Table you may tap this deal to receive 1 flesh. Typical Costs: obligations, favors, maintain emotional ties, ____________________ _ Financial: you pay someone at a hospital/morgue/cyberdoc/crime-family to ship their medical waste your way. Tapped 1/3 Tapped 2/3 Tapped 3/3 Running up a tab: Can keep using this deal after it is initially tapped. First, fill in "Tapped 1/3", then "Tapped 2/3" and then finally "Tapped 3/3." The more you've run up a tab , the deeper you are in debt and the more intense the consequences and costs for this deal should be. Typical Costs: debts must be paid, cred, favors, extortion, ____________________ _ Trickery: you take what you need at a mark's expense (their cred, not their blood). Tapped Benefit - Living on the Edge: You can keep using this deal even if it is exhausted. Downside: If you roll a 6- on Harm to Table when you're living on the edge , your mark finds out that you've been screwing them. You will have to set up a new flesh deal and deal with the angry mark. Typical Costs: Maintain the lie, sate your accomplices, suspicious mark. ____________________ _ Violence: you hunt for your food. Tapped Benefit - Eat to your heart's content: When you roll a 7+ on Harm to Table while using this deal you may take +1 flesh. Downside: If you eat to your heart's content , you must tap this deal even if you roll a 10+. Typical Costs: enemies, vigilantes, strong victims, police attention, ____________________ _ Deals are considered exhausted when you have checked all their "Tapped" boxes. Exhausted deals cannot be used for Harm to Table . Each tapped deal has a cost that must be paid before you make use of them again. These might be simple costs: a Monster owes her contact some cred and can't get any more flesh from her Financial deal until she pays up. Or the costs may instead be consequences for your actions: the girlfriend of your former victim is armed to the teeth and tracking you down to try to kill you (note, in this case you don't have to kill her to untap the Violence deal, you can untap the deal as soon as she shows up and causes you trouble because the bullshit she's adding to your life is the cost you have to pay). If you have a tapped deal with a cost that has yet to be determined, at any point the MC may: Make a hard move regarding to the consequences of that deal. The Monster may now immediately untap that deal. Make a soft move setting the parameters for what the Monster must do to untap that deal. Harm to Table: At the start of each mission choose which of your available flesh deals you are utilizing and then roll Cool. 7+: You get 2 flesh for each deal you used. Use this flesh to determine the status of your Hunger clock, as described in A Ticking Time Bomb 7-9: You're gonna have to pay the costs of each of those deals before you can use them again. Tap each of the deals you used. Hated: When you hit the street and roll 7+, choose an additional option. Choose one: Acute Weirdness: You may choose an extra Lethal Adaption. Certified Monster: When you mix it up with your Natural Weapon, you may inflict +1 harm. Cool as a Cucumber: When the Hunger clock imposes penalties on your stats, your Cool is unaffected. Add the following option to Be the Monster take +1 forward the next time you roll Cool. Many Fingers in Many (Finger) Pies: You may choose another flesh deal for Harm to Table Monster Mash: When you mix it up, you count as a small gang. Nightmares Exist: When you reveal the full extent of your monstrous nature to someone new, describe how you reveal this to them, advance your Hunger clock and roll Meat. On a 7+: They get out of your way, right now. On a 10+: Choose 2. On a 7-9: Choose 1. They do what you want before you let them go They give you [intel] or [gear] They won't come back looking for you with friends, pitchforks and torches On a 6-: They weren't the only people watching your big reveal. The MC will make a move. One Scary Mother: When you use your monstrous nature to intimidate, you may roll Meat when you play hardball Underground Networks: When you hit the street with a contact that is an outcast even in the shadows, a fellow monster or someone else who is in the margins of the margins of society, gain the following benefits. ignore the penalty from Hated choose one fewer option when you roll on a 7-9 Unstoppable: shot, stabbed, and poisoned, you just keep coming. When you are being scary as fuck and coming at someone, you can advance your Hunger clock to get +2 armor for the rest of this scene. You still get shot and stabbed, bleeding just doesn’t bother you that much anymore. GEAR Choose two weapons : Semi-auto pistol (2-harm close/near loud quick) Flechette pistol (3-harm close/near quick flechette) Assault rifle (3-harm near/far loud autofire) Crossbow or hunting bow (2-harm close/near/far reload) Fragmentation Grenades (4-harm near area reload loud messy) Machete (3-harm hand) Choose two: Armored clothing (0-armor, +discreet, subtract 1 when rolling the harm move) Armored jacket (1-armor) Trauma Derms A sleek ride (choose one: car, helicopter or motorcycle) Choose one: Finger kabobs (1-snack) Mystery meat sloppy joes (1-snack) Leg of man (1-snack) Ribs (1-snack) Bag of blood (1-snack) DIRECTIVES Behavioral: Describe your ethical code. When adhering to your code hinders the mission, mark experience. Intimate: When you put your friend ___ ahead of the mission, mark experience. Masochistic: When you suffer one or more harm, mark experience. Optimist: When you refuse to do something necessary because you insist there must be a more moral way, mark experience. Rejected: When your former membership in ____ hinders the mission, mark experience. Tortured: When you deny yourself human essence for moral reasons and it puts you at risk, mark experience. Violent: When you deliberately choose to use violence to overcome a situation when a non-violent option exists, mark experience. ADVANCES The Monster's advancement table mimics The Antiquarian. Since they were changed by the rifts, they have more power over them than most people do. NEW TAGS +bullshit-detector: You're skilled at smelling the minute changes in body chemistry that happen when a person is being dishonest. +discerning: You can pick out individual scents even when there are a million other smells covering them up. +feeding: This weapon lets you Be the Monster when you attack a human with it. +powerful-nose: You can pick out scents that are not particularly potent and may even be several days old. Monsters in The Sprawl The Monster is a very weird playbook. It's meant to encompass all sorts of monstrous cannibalistic para-human archetypes. Choose this playbook if you want to explore being an outsider, agonize over moral decisions or just have a power fantasy as an unstoppable badass. With their lethal adaptions, monster mash and certified monster moves, a Monster has some of the best killing power in the game. And when it comes to survival, the Monster is downright unstoppable . Of course, a Monster is always a ticking timebomb and as your Hunger grows, you better be ready to resist the temptation or else your party will be on the wrong side of this killing machine. Thankfully, there's some harm to table options but a smart Monster has many fingers in many (finger) pies Killing is not all they can do, with their heightened awareness and a position from the outside looking in, Monsters make good scouts. Successful Monsters know that after violence, fear is their next best tool. A Monster can get what she wants by being one scary mother or revealing that nightmares exist to the uninitiated. Though of course fear cuts both ways, being hated means that the monster is shut out from society, even the Monster's contacts will take advantage of her until she can establish some real underground networks Credit This playbook was written by Scarlet Foal. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://cre ativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. NETHER ZONE I'm not sure whether I should keep the following abilities Mouthful of You: When you Be the Monster , choose three. Outside Looking In: Your position as an outsider gives you insights into humanity. When you are assessing people by observing their behavior, take an additional hold even if you miss. Unflinching Discipline: When you roll to Resist the Temptation, subtract your Cool from the result. Fully Gone Disappearing Act: Whether you turn into a cloud of bats, become invisible or simply go down on all fours and gallop away, your abilities make you a master of getting out of tough situations. When you're trapped, cornered or in a bad spot and you need a way out, advance your Hunger clock and roll Cool. On a 10+: you’re gone, piece of cake. On a 7–9: you can go or stay, but if you go it costs you: leave something behind or take something with you, the MC will tell you what. On a miss: you’re caught vulnerable, half in and half out