Day 31: Kiyana, Monsterpunk

 And at last, we reach the final day, the 31st day of January. Already one twelfth on the year done, the tide of time is truly all-consuming. Speaking of all consuming, I was planning on creating a level 20 D&D 3.5 character as a grand final, but I'm frankly exhausted and a little sick. This week was a little painful. So instead, I've decided to showcase another indie game that I picked up a few year back, one of the numerous game taking clear inspiration from D&D 4e. I'm pretty sure I could do a full week of character just out of those game, especially if I include the original. Maybe I'll remember to do that next year! Anyway, I went with Gimmick Labs' Monsterpunk, a fairly flavorful post-apocalypse game of Faustian deals and humanity struggling to survive in a world taken over by creatures of myths, legends, folklore and nightmares. The core concept is that at some point people started to make pact with demons, which led to the total collapse of civilization and the appearance of all these other monster types who kicked the demons' teeth in before they could make the situation even worse. Then they took over various part of the world, enslaving the surviving human population as they mostly survive off the ambient psychic energy of humans. While some get that energy by eating people or with some other way of siphoning it out of them, some form pact with a human, joining their lifeforce together for a steady stream of energy. In theory, we're playing one of those human with a pact, working as a strike team for one of the implanted monster faction or trying to survive as independents in a feral monsters infested wasteland and struggling to keep hold of our sanity and humanity. Lose all your humanity and both you and your monster companion will be lost, transforming you into a new kind of monster called a Fiend, your psyche broken and driven entirely by the obsession that was already defining you. To come back from being a fiend or the heal your humanity back up before it reaches that point, you need friends to help you relax and come to term with the constantly awful reality, another reason to form a RPG party.

 Art by zillery on ych.commish.com

Honestly, forming a pact seems like quite the hassle for the monsters, throwing a lot of drawback at them with the only true upside being the steady supply of energy. When I first read the blurb of the game, I was pretty stoked with the idea that the main inner struggle was between the human PC and the monster trying to take over, but the Fiend you risk turning into is much more driven by the human side of the character! It was a bit of a let down initially, but honestly as I made this character I kinda got into it more and more and I'm liking this game's vibes way more now. Let's move on to character creation, a 8 steps process starting with picking our Character Class, there's no attribute no generate here! We see the D&D 4e inspiration right away here, with the classes being separated into Role (Assault, Control, Healer, Tank) and Type (Hybrid, Rider, Solo, Summoner), like D&D4e classes were defined by their role and power source. The role are pretty self-evident, but the type is how the pact with your monster manifest itself. Hybrids are a permanent fusion between human and monster, Riders use their monster as a mount in battle and Summoners mostly act as support for the monster who does most of the heavy lifting. The final class type is another instance where I found that the game design clashes with the intent and vibe on display, as they're human with no pact, no monster, using technology, alchemy or for some reason psychic power to compensate for the lack of monster friend. In a game where the core element, the selling point, the theme is the relation between a human and the monster they were forced to form a pact with so they can survive and fight back, I find the inclusion of these pure, pactless human classes mechanically just as powerful as the other classes a bit baffling. Maybe as opponent that were added as playable in a later book, but as 1/4 of the character option? Weird.

So, 4 types, 4 roles, that gives us 16 character classes of each combination, with more classes available in the Monsterpunk Unleash supplement and some more in their own sine-sized supplement, including the reverse of the Solo type, a Monster with no pact. To keep thing simple, I'm staying with just the core book. Anyway, I knew I wanted to play an hybrid, specifically with a Dragon partner, so I looked at the four hybrid class. The game suggested either the Elementalist (Control) or Siren (Healer) class as the most likely Hybrid result when you form a pact with a dragon, but there's no actual mechanic preventing me from picking Blood Knight (Tank) or Predator (Assault) if I wanted to. I usually default to melee combatant, so as a change I decided to take the Elementalist. Step 2 is to pick our Techs and Feature from the options provided by our class, tech being the equivalent of powers in D&D 4e and Feature being passive effect. I choose thing that I think made sense for a dragon, favoring fire effect over ice effect.  Then step 3 is noting our HP and Speed, then for ¾ of the class there's also picking your monster. There's 12 options for monsters in the core book, though your picking the family of monster your partner is from rather than directly picking the monster. So if you wanted to form a pact with a goblin, you'd take Fairy and then you choose Features and Techs from the Fairy list that works with your idea of goblins. As previously mentioned, I picked Dragon and picked option that work well with Elementalist and with the vibe I wanted.

Step 4 is picking up skills! Everyone gains 3 skills, 1 skill expertise, 1 negotiation skill and 3 language skills. The way skill works here is that you roll 1d0 and must compare the result to a static chart telling you if you fail, succeed at a cost or succeed clean, training with a skill gives you advantage, expertise gets you double advantage, rolling 3 dice and picking the better result. You can also trade in advantages at a rate of +1 bonus of the roll per advantage, the GM can do the same with disadvantage, giving you -1 of the roll per disadvantage. It's a bit unclear from the character creation summary, but you only get 3 skills with one getting expertise. I picked Fortitude and Survival, with Expertise in Perception. My concept at this point is a self-sufficient character, both human and dragon preferring their freedom over the safety that comes with servitude to a faction. Everyone get a Negotiation skill, basically letting everyone getting some screen time during interaction scenes rather than having 3 socially inept combat monsters and one character hogging the spotlight because they're the party's Face. You can also use negotiation as a sort of attack in combat, probably inspired by Shin Megami Tensei where you can just talk with the monsters during fight! I take Intimidation as that made the more sense for a Dragon, but it seems like a better move for a Tank type as intimidating an opponent does gives them advantage against you for a turn! It's basically a provoke move! Seduction is even better for a tank in fact, as it gives all other enemies than your target advantage against you, encouraging them to target you! Chainmail bikini must be all the rage in this universe! We also get 3 languages to make sure our character can talk with our teammates and local NPC, our pactmate and one more language to speak with other monsters and NPC from outside our faction. Now, of course, nothing stop you from picking three languages that aren't shared by your party or your pactmate, aside from the GM looking at you with contempt until you change your mind.

 Step 5 is just writing down Grit, Humanity and Wealth, but everyone starts with the same amount. Step 6 is setting up your obsession, a short-term concrete goal and a long term goal which can be more abstract. The game gives a few suggestion for obsession, along with how lower humanity level would modify your behavior as the obsession takes more and more of your mind, but we can also come up with our owns as there's technically no direct mechanical aspect to it. Still, I pick Bloodlust, which at high humanity makes you a Goku and then more and more of a Vegeta as it trickles down. For the goals, I set "Becoming Strongest Under The Heaven" for a long term goal, because Vagabond is just a great manga and I'm having a story idea, of the human PC having met this old infirm dragon, filled with regret for his decaying body and his lack of martial victory, seeing in the pact a chance to reignite his ambition! For the short term goal, I decide to push the idea that this character is independent and struggling to exist in the wasteland, so it's "Finding Shelter". Step 7 is leveling up, but I started level 1 so I can skip it. Once again the game show it's D&D 4e inspiration, explaining that each level is a different tier of play, so instead of always starting level 1, we should look at the kind of campaign we want to play and just start there. It's certainly not an unique idea even in level based game, but it's nice to see it actually clearly explained rather than simply implied by the player base. Then step 8 is equipment and finishing touch. We do have starting gear, but it's mostly clothes and a basic survival kit, along with any item necessary for our skills and classes. We can start with a weapon, but it's nothing more than a descriptor for our attack, there's no mechanical difference. There's no equipment field on the official sheet anyway, we'd keep it in our general note on another sheet. I chose the name purely off the dome and by making sound with my mouth, rather than my usual using generators and random tables to try to pick something with any meaning! Kiyana is the name of the human woman, Verxirox is the dragon she made a pact with. Oh, I went all this time without saying that normally, the monster only exist in the pact master's mind until summoned, but Verxirox is physically fused with Kiyana, changing her appearance. He's still a voice in her head, with his own opinion and personality.