Running Monster of the Week Games
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| Crab Man Illustration by Luis Perez |
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, monster of the week TV series are
incredibly popular. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons and Supernatural is in its twelfth
season right now. Star Trek the original series and Next Generation were both
effectively space versions of monster of the week. We’ve seen numerous series
come and go that follow this same basic premise, some with an overarching background story and
some not.
Over the course of the evolution of RPGs, one shots have
become more and more popular. Some of this love of one off games boils down to
not being able to find a full time group. For me, I have an ever changing
schedule and a desire to role play as often as possible, so one shots fit my
needs perfectly. The thing about one shots is that they do quite nicely for the
monster of the week formula; a small story that only runs for a few hours where
the players deal with one specific threat until it is removed. Although I’m
going to be talking in terms of pathfinder because that’s my game of choice, I
would be remiss if I do not actually mention the wonderful game Monster of the Week by Evil Hat Productions.
So how do we set up a good monster of the week story for
our players? Our first job is to pick an interesting monster that will
challenge our players, and in Pathfinder we have a lot of choices. Since you
don’t want the monster to be the only combat in your game, monsters that can
create, summon, or mentally dominate minions are usually your best bet.
Creatures that move in groups, like a pack of werewolves, can also provide a
few combat encounters on top of the face-off with their pack leader. If you’d
like to throw your players a curveball try a creature that isn’t evil but just
living off instinct, or trying to survive a hostile populace.
I think one of the great things about monster of the week
campaigns is they have a lot of room for non-combat encounters. Looking back on
any of these shows, investigation tends to be a very strong component to
the protagonists finally getting their man—erm, creature. Laying out clues
that will bring your players closer to the creature in question is actually
harder than just throwing the monster directly in their path.
Let’s take a look at the Dybbuk.
An interesting if underused undead, we need to figure out how to present it to
our players as both a monster and a mystery. Between its Malevolence ability
and its ability to modify memories we can start by having the players come
across a town where people have committed horrible acts of violence but have no
memories of doing so. This sets up a mystery, something definitely out of the
ordinary for our players to get sucked into.
As the players begin to investigate, the angry spirit can
use its telekinesis to hurl objects or even players about. This allows you to have the monster interact
with them with a good chance it can escape without being seen. The Dominate
Monster ability will allow your Dybbuk to force innocents to attack your
players, giving them both combat encounters and moral choices.Hunting monsters will also bring a lot skill checks into
the mix. Tracking, knowledge skills, diplomacy for gathering information, and
sense motive will almost definitely come into use in these types of games.
As
the GM it is your job to leave clues for these types of skill checks. A dybbuk
is a restless spirit, so having it attack people it feels have wronged it in
life is a good start. Gather Information and Sense Motive can help come up with
these things. Putting together what abilities it has is
another thing the players can do and use their knowledge skills to figure it
out. They may take some wrong turns, like guessing it’s just a ghost at first,
but that’s part of the process.
Monster of the week games aren’t for everyone but I enjoy
them myself. I find they’re especially useful when one or two of your main
group are going to miss a sessions but you still want to run. I’ve used these
mini games to great effect and I think you can too.
Have you run a monster of the week game before? What are
some of your favorite monsters to use for these? How do you lay out the clues
for your players?
Like the monster of the week, the CRB will be here every
Wednesday with something new for you to investigate. If you find that your
search for answers in the pages of my blog has helped your gaming then please
consider contributing to my Patreon. The CRB is also out there on social media
ready to interact with you my loyal viewers. You can follow me on Facebook,
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The opening illustration was created by a fine artist
Luis Perez. You can find him on Twitter and on Instagram at luisperezart.
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