Because you can’t fight a boss without clearing out the trash mobs along the way.

Alright, that isn’t fair to the goombas and lackeys along the way. Frankly, if you’re a boss monster, you don’t need to personally dirty your claws dealing with every PC that wants a piece of your hide and the quest turn in for said hide. Before they get to you (and your hide), they need to battle through scores of mooks. So the backbone of any RPG needs to have decent mooks, because that is the bulk of what the players are going to punch it out against.

So I have been working behind the scenes a bit, and have finally hammered out a bit of how the monster cards will work against the players. Monsters are fought in rows versus each player, meaning their attacks are primarily directed at the player in front of them. The kicker is, monsters shouldn’t just be damage sponges. They have families, responsibilities and rent to pay, and a deeply interesting backstory that richly defines their lives. In order to truly know the secret to defeating the enemy, the player will have to take these threads and weave a tapestry of the interwoven lives of monsters into a whole.

Oh wait, no, you just hit them until they fall down. That is, after all, what mooks are for. Never mind all that family stuff. Don’t worry ’bout it.

But! To make them interesting before they fall down, monsters do have some variety. For one, different stats — some are tough, some are wizards, and some are slimes with really terrible stats. For another, they have moves. Different moves based on what kind of monster and role they play in the game. I wanted to show a pair of examples to explore what monsters look and play like. Plus this is work I can double up and put into the player’s guide, so, bonus

RPG Slimes are the most bare bones, boring monster a hero can thwop with their wooden sword. This one has pathetic stats, as low as they can go and just 1-6 hit points. Pretty chumpy monster, just as nature intended. Even for a bare bones (er, bare pseudoplasm, I guess) monster like a slime, it does have 3 move slots to give them a little uniqueness.

Each turn, a monster makes a dice roll to see what it will do. The dice icons next to the moves show the moves it will do. In the case of the slime, most of the time it bounces on people and deals its (meager) physical attack and a little acidic slime juice to knock off a hit point next turn. Since one point of physical armor counters one point of physical attack, these things really don’t do much damage — again, appropriate, they are slimes. They do have one other ability; every time they roll a 1, they get a little harder to beat up as their physical armor goes up.

“But wait,” you might say, “there are three move lines. Surely that math does not math! For you cannot have a result higher than six on a six sided die!” And you are correct; cubes do indeed have six sides. The bottom move is Always Active, which isn’t really a move they do, but more of a passive ability inherent to their species. Slimes, being slimes, are immune to Continuous Damage (think poisoned or being on fire, neither of which I can imagine are things slimes are much bothered by). It isn’t the most powerful ability, but it is something that even a basic monster can have to give it some goopy variety.

The other example I wanted to show off was a more powerful variety of mook:

Silver star monsters are more of a threat. This one isn’t necessarily a bruiser, but it does have a range of 7-12 HP, meaning it will likely be on the battlefield a while. It still has fairly soft stats, but has a higher ranged attack power – meaning it will automatically deal damage to any player with 1 point of ranged defense when it attacks. Which it tends to do, as half the time, it will do an AoE against the players! Its other moves are no slouch either, so you’d be wise to take this thing down as soon as possible.

While this monster isn’t a huge powerhouse, it is definitely annoying and will cause problems the longer it lives, either whittling the players down or making it much harder to damage the monster’s allies. Which brings me to my last thought: Monsters will be teaming up on you.

Imagine the dinky slime in front of the evocado. If that slime gets a lucky roll on its hit points, it could be tanking a few hits while the vegetable wizard thing is striking the team and making everybody harder to damage with ranged attacks. Work in a third monster, and this can snowball. I’m honestly not sure how to balance this, because I’m having fun making silly monsters with oddball abilities — maybe balance is less the issue and more about players assessing best strategies given the wide variety. Which sounds like a pretty fun game to me, honestly!

So, big update on the progress bar for The Also Rans RPG.