The White Forest Institute is a mental health group home for children who have been determined to be a threat to themselves or others. Some children who have been misdiagnosed due to the antics of their monsters, and explaining it that way will get you the appropriate anti-hallucinatory medications. Some strange Arcane Confluence at the home keeps the monsters from reassuring their kids that everything will be okay. The game will shift gears between the Children navigating the social hierarchy of the Home, while trying to not suffer relationship damage that will sever their tie with their monsters, and the Monsters will begin to solve the mystery of why their kids were taken to this particular home. Can the Children and Monsters find a way to reunite and convince the adults they have been successfully rehabilitated?
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Aww yeah, I’m expecting things to get bleak and depressing as all get out.
Downloading right away.
I love it when RPPR writes what you know. Dan’s passion for his work is thoroughly touching. particularly liked the last therapy session. and yaaay Monsters, ORE lyf
will totally back this if it ends up getting written up and kickstarted btw
Just started the podcast.
The mechanic of choosing more social standing and risking monster relations; and the different starting roles are very interesting Dan.
If someone wanted to run a prison game (OZ, Prison Break, even a game centered around the space jail in Guardians of the Galaxy) they could take your mechanic of social standing with increased risk to monster relations and plug it right in to their game. Just swap out “humanity” or “socialization” for “bond with monster”.
Huh, interesting. Is Dan in the mental health or youth care business? I don’t know much about the professions of much of RPPR, but this definitely piqued my interest. Off to listen instead of sleep.
do you not catch the RPPR non-actual play shows, TRNSHMN? Dan talked at some length in the education-and-gaming panel at GenCon about his work. and it gave me FEELS. about STEAMPUNK. fuck all of that. but it’s here: http://goo.gl/lSRgJU
it also has Caleb humblebragging about how he’s the best English teacher of all time, which…I dunno, it made me feel like a victim of the American education system, why aren’t they all Calebs
Great scenario, great spin on the whole idea of monsters and setting it in a mental health setting, very interesting.
Note: This game shares a universe with the No Soul Left Behind Universe.
Absolutely fabulous session. Great role-playing and I loved the scenario.
Would throw money at a campaign connected to this.
Great stuff. The monster scenes were a laugh riot.
Those therapy sessions were pure magic. Adds tension with the whole maybe they really are just disturbed kids angle. Brings into question what those monsters trying to get back into their lives really represent. Was practically relieved when Slenderman showed up. The resolution with the cultist hoedown was nice and cathartic.
@crawlkill I do not listen to every single thing RPPR puts out immediately, you know. I’m still working through older episodes alongside newer stuff. 😛
Cool stuff here, the monster parts were hilarious and the therapy sessions are a pretty damn good RP section. If I had to criticize anything, it’s the relative lack of stuff to do for the kids? I understand this is a bit of a hybrid, being a congame made out of a campaign finale, basically, but there wasn’t too much on the children’s end aside from the sessions. In addition, the final conflict needs some streamlining, part because of how much of a mess ORE combat can be with many participants who aren’t familiar enough with the system to not need help with it.
I loved this because it’s at once pointing out how horrible the monsters are and in the same space offering an even worse outcome.
Also I think the Lion should be named Luther.
I have to admit, the first time I listened to this one, I fell asleep for reasons not related to the podcast. I must still have been listening, though, because I had the oddest dream…..
@ TRNSHMN – that’s kind of the reality of institutional life. There’s nothing to do and nothing to look forwards to.
Also, I chuckled when someone said it might be a little too cold to go boogie boarding in the Northeast. I went boogie boarding as a kid in New England all the time. And it definitely got cold.
@Baron I understand that, but it’s one of those situations in RPGs where you can, and possibly should, take artistic liberty with it. Few people want to play the boring routine bits of Delta Green where you go in, disappear some bodies and/or records, then go home, but it’s probably the reality of a large part of their operations. Same in games about war, rarely do you make it so the whole session is sitting around in a trench or in the barracks with nothing to do.
I figured that the children would have to try and bust Lucy out themselves, for example, while their monsters try and deal with Slenderman or hold him off, etc.
@Dan
How did the con games play out? The same or vastly different?
Every game was different, but the biggest differences were:
1)switched out the book pregens for RPPR gallery of past child/monsters, some fans really enjoyed that.
2) took out the social standing submechanic. It was really clunky and my reach was exceeding the grasp of a con game. Eventually the whole scenario became a MaOCT tutorial.
3) The big reveal at the end caught almost everyone off gaurd, but they loved it. Not really a difference, but still worth mentioning.
Not trying to spoil but when the remains of a certain monster was found all I could think was ‘Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!’
I would actually love to hear another episode of the main show that has Ross, Aaron, Dan and others to discuss further ideas and concepts that can be explored in “Monsters and Other Childish Things” after listening to this episode… and also discuss possible supplement ideas?