The Monstrous Matters Campaign #1

Life's a little weird right now.  I have to admit that the inescapable, fever-pitched, hyperbolic-yet-genuinely-worrisome media coverage of this year's presidential election is bringing me down a little.  Pretty much every day.  And I see it a little more than usual now that I'm spending more time at home, having declined to follow my previous employer to another state in order to keep that job.  So now I don't have that job.  (And it always seems to end up catching up with me psychologically when I'm "in between jobs.")

Luckily, I still have a love for losing myself in fantastic worlds (a passion that never really lets me down)...and so, a few weeks ago, my buddy Father Josh indulged my delusions of storytelling grandeur by playing in the first session of what will hopefully be a lengthy campaign, and one that is kind of important to me...

Because it is THE ONE™.  The Monstrous Matters campaign.  This is what it's all been building toward.  (All of what, you ask?  All of all of it.)

I mean...that is...until I get bored and move onto THE (NEXT) ONE™.  When it comes to dumping a lot of heart, soul, and brainpower into an obsession, this ain't my first time around the block.  But for now...

In this campaign, Monstrous Matters is an organization that investigates and facilitates protection from the fantastic forces that enter our earthly realm through portals leading to and from other regions of the multiverse.  We are familiar with many of these beings...from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, and games with weird dice.  The work of Monstrous Matters overlaps quite a bit with the operations of Department-7 in that "Ghostbusters + Urban Arcana" game that I ran with Josh about...oh man, four years ago...?  (The time.  It flies.)

Rules and Such

The system for the game is probably best described as just "houseruled Ghostbusters."  I went with a set of "Big 4" stats (Might-Dexterity-Knowledge-Presence) and am using +2 bonuses for all Skills/Talents.  Defense/armor value is static.  Health is tracked via Hit Points.

For the first session, we just used 1d6+Attribute+Skill (if appropriate) vs. target numbers (as seen in the old West End Games Star Wars miniatures and LARP rules), although I think I want to go back to the dice pool system.  Rolling a handful of dice is arguably a big part of the D6 System experience, and it was probably a mistake to move away from it so quickly.  (That initial choice was partially inspired by wanting to see how well the stripped-down, just-roll-a-humble-d6 approach works with stats at this scale.)  We also rolled for attributes (d6-1, minimum 1 for each stat [EDIT: We actually used 1d6, treat sixes as fives; my bad.])...which is how we ended up with some characters that are VERY capable stat-wise.  Here's Josh's guy...

I also wanted to have an extra character (controlled by me and/or Josh, doesn't really matter) to make the Monstrous Matters operatives into an actual team, as well as provide strategic options and an extra avenue for exposition.  Who would step up to this challenge?  Well...there's a slight chance that those who read this post will remember a character that was used in that earlier Department-7 game...a gentleman by the name of B.J. Flech, who moved on from a brief career as a Ghostbuster to defend the Earth from fantastic multiversal villains (and giant ants).

B.J. Flech is now retired...but his son Bobby is a new member of the MM team who is partnering with "Fingers" to pick up whatever...uh, pointers...he can.  (Harhar.)

For the opening adventure, Fingers and Bobby were dispatched to the Craggy Gardens area of western North Carolina to investigate a breach in our plane's veil.  The team began the operation with a single, fully charged Uncertainty Gun (to be detailed in a future post) and a selection of magical scrolls.  A level of connected caves and halls has been mapped using advanced radar and sonar (and some AI data compilation)...this gave me an in-story reason to go ahead and introduce the full, unkeyed map of the level, simplifying dungeon-crawling via Zoom.

For the dungeon itself, I'm using Dyson's Delve, which is an amazing free resource and one that you should absolutely consider using for your own dungeon-crawling needs. (Seriously, how many of our lives have been made both richer and simpler thanks to Dyson's work? He's one of the most luminary figures of the OSR, as far as I'm concerned.)

Check this level out HERE

And...well, I guess I should just summarize by saying that Session 1...was a success!  By my standards, anyway.  I had a blast!  Some rats and goblins and a ferret were sent packing with the Uncertainty Gun (yeah, it sends creatures back to their plane of origin; I really do need to write this up at some point...).  The session ended as Fingers and Bobby headed down some stairs to Level 2...

Hoping to have more to share on this soon, as the adventure continues and the specifics of the organization known as Monstrous Matters are established...