GIANT MONSTER RPG... maybe

[Prof.Dagon]

so i am a huge kaiju fan and been on a godzilla kick recently and a thought occoured to me... is there an RPG system that would run a giant monster game? savage worlds and gurps come to mind as they can handle almost anything but i would like more options. i was hoping for somthing that would allow for the really crazy ideas easy.

i was also thinking of frankening a few systems together, 4th eddition comes to mind for the combat... maybe find a mech system? i would run the story the same, as most kaiju movies tend to have human characters to move the plot and then the monsters show up just for the fight.

so thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

[Bojan]

Oh, boy, another giant monster freak like me. XD

I was in the middle of making something about kaijus when I ended up with 'Pacific Rim the board game' (look it up in the Workshop, its not RPG but worker-placement, Pandemic type of a game), but in truth, I was loking to make a game in which you ARE the kaiju and fight other monsters (players) and Earth goverments. And that sounds like something you want to make here.

So, I can share some of my ideas I had when I was working on the project:

Leveling up of the monsters:

Every monster woul start like a small (maybe 12 m high) and without any powers, very vulnerable, so at the beginning of the game you would have to attack small villages, boats, city outskirts, energy plants, trying to gather something I called DNA food. Eating people, small animals, toxic waste, you know. XD
Then, as you grow you have a 'DNA growth' tree. BASIC and SPECIAL, one for all the monsters in the game, other depending on the type of a monster you are...
Finally, with more DNA food, eating radiation from the Nuclear plants, you would become that awesome thing like Gojira!!! XD

Combat System:

Well, based on attacking different parts of the monster body with different chances for succesful strike (like in Fallout games) + power strikes and special abilities (depending of what you have 'explored' through your DNA growth tree. Dice based.

There wasn't perma-death in my game, but something called DOWNTIME. Your monster, after you would lose a fight would become dormant, and then goverment would get a hold of you and you would be placed in their special facility. Eventualy, you would awake, wreak havoc and escape, but the goverment guys would have better bonuses when they fight you next time (due to them knowing your weakness)

Game Objective:

Gathering points by destroying mayor cities, teritory control and winning fights with other monsters, braking goverments ('capturing' all territories they have). Game would last set number of turns, so after that time all players would sum their points and see who is the winner (ultimate kaiju) ;]

There was an option to even make a tag-teams between monsters (team play) and something I called Earth Crysis event, where some Alien civilization would try to conquer Earth and all Monsters have to unite to fight them etc...

[Prof.Dagon]

nice, you seem to have gone a diffrent path than i have though.

what i have so far is in the first godzilla movie godzilla was a force of nature (for those who havent seen it i recomend it but warn its alot darker than all the other ones, and the american version cuts most of the darkness out but still is pretty good.) so i was wanting that sort of theme. then i found a video game that provided it, ever play 'Primal Rage'?

for those who dont know it was an arcade fighter that had you playing as giant monsters on a quest to take over the world. if you looked into the story god had left this planet after growing tired of mans sin, in his absence many other gods came to stake claim and now are waring for the planet. (the gods being the monsters you play.)

i was setting up somthing more like that, where each 'country' (was going to meld alot of them together as the bigger monsters would take over territory smaller monsters owned.) and the players would choose one country. they would play as both the monster, and their high priest. the biggest complaint i saw about the new godzilla movie was too much focus on human characters... which i thought was strange because thats MOST of the godzilla movies. the players would play the priest to interact with other humans and develop story, and switch to their monster for combat situations.

and example story could be several terrorist attacks hit one of the players countries, well their giant squid monster cant go investigate that. instead their high priest goes out and does a little digging to find out what country they are comming from... but turns out they are aliens (if that seems strange, watch more godzilla.) and the attacks are a prelude to their own invasion, complete with kaiju.

im thinking of maybe doing two seperate systems for the two styles. grabbing a combat heavy system for kaiju, (i had heard there was a WWF rpg that was very technical and in depth, maybe canabilize that for it?) and then a more skill based system for high priests (vampire/world of darkness with some tweaks for human characters is what comes to mind, but i havent played with them enough to know how to go about that.)