Seeking GM for lighthearted game with a dark system
A lot of my friends have been recommending Monsters and Other Childish Things, but I have been skeptical, because they all seem to want to take it all Grim/Dark and I am not into that: but the recent discussion on the Community Chat board about games for younger players turned it up and I was intrigued. Seems it is just my friends preferences that have it being all infrablack and I would like to give the system it's fair shake so I was wondering if anyone would be willing to step up and have a game which is NOT so dark?
Fair warning, I don't own a copy of the rules, but I might be able to borrow one: but even so the GM would have to hand hold a lot.
Based on what I have heard I have a suite of character ideas: let me go over them now:
1: 'Boo & Sulley' AKA 'Kate Molly Ganning and James P. Sulivan':
There is this little girl, she is about 6. She looks JUST like a slightly older version of 'Boo' from Monsters Inc so her parents have called her that since she was 3. Anyway, one night she went into the closet in her room and found a monster there that looked like Sully, so she made friends with him thinking it was a dream. Over the next few nights he was there again, and then he started showing up in the daytime too. 'Boo' took it in stride and has been hanging out with him since.
2: Brittany Randie Flagg and Izingdust:
Brittany is a bit old for 'imaginary friends': so her parents keep telling her, but she has always been the isolated and studious type, and when she found a manual for summoning and binding Demons she used it, simply because she COULD. The creature she summoned was an eldritch creature that belongs in an H.P. Lovecraft story, all tentacles and eyes and a small mouth on an articulated stalk which is filled with teeth like a humans filed down to points except they grew that way and a long-ish purple tongue. Brittany is probably the oldest member of the cast, and a sort of 'team mom'. She is 15 and fairly mature but still has that aura of the sheltered studious girl who is more into a good book than a cute boy, and besides, if she WERE ever going to get into a relationship it would be with a friend, and her only real peer is Izingdust...
3: Nicholas A. Stolarczyk and Axelki:
Nick's parents are avid gamers, very fond of Pathfinder: too fond in fact. They are second generation immigrants from rural poland and have added the monsters of the pathfinder monster manual to their parents legends from the 'old country' for frightening young Nick into obedience. This has succeeded all too well: Nick is obedient, reverent, compliant: and lives in mortal terror of the monsters just on the other side of the veil between worlds... Or at least he WAS, until 3 weeks ago.
His mother had just told him another story about the monsters: Gremlins this time: and he was trying not to nod off lest they come out of closet and murder him in his sleep: when his unrelenting belief finally tore the veil and a group of four gremlins DID come.
AH, BUT they were not the ONLY thing that came! Heading the terrified scream of a young human boy in danger a young Couatl also came barreling out of his closet and in a bloody fight killed the gremlins and ate their corpses. The rift to the D&D Multiverse closed behind it and when Nick went to the bathroom and got it bandages and Iodine for it's wounds it swore to guard and guide him till he was old enough to do it himself.
Nick's parents scoffed at his insistence that he didn't have to be afraid of monsters any more because he had one on his side now: for about 15 seconds. Then the Couatl cast ray of frost on the glass of water in his fathers hand freezing it solid and shattering it. Nick's parents don't tell him monster stories at bedtime any more.
Now the Couatl is teaching Nick how to be a Paladin, a champion for truth, justice, and the cause of Light and Law. He doesn't have a horse yet, or the ability to Lay on Hands, or a sword, but he is working on it. He is going to get there, and then, then the bad monsters had better watch out!
4: Peter Paul Westinghouse and Damian:
Peter likes to go on walks in the woods, which is where he met his friend Damian. Damian is a wolf. A wolf that is also a person. This makes perfect sense to peeter, not so much to his family. What his family does not realize is that Damian is actually a werewolf, and he is following Peter around because he thinks Peeter might be a werewolf too.
5: Abigail Samantha McAlister the Second and Abigail Samantha McAlister the First: (AKA Abigail and Samantha.)
Abigail is a 7 year old girl. She gets up, gets dressed and eats breakfast, goes to school, does her class work, and comes home. In most ways her life is very ordinary, with one exception: her house is haunted.
Abigails ancestors have lived in the house at the end of Beach Street since Beach Street was their driveway over 100 years ago. In that time 3 generations of McAlisters have been born, lived, and died in the house, which is one of those old victorian edifices that have far too many rooms and sprawl across their lot enclosing a central courtyard with an in ground pool and a tennis court. The McAllisters were rich once. They still are if one thinks in terms of contacts, connections, trust funds, and influence, but they no longer have money to burn.
Abigail's father is a Doctor, her mother an investment banker, and both deeply involved in the politics of the city where they live. They have little time for Abigail or her two siblings, who are seen to by Misses Masters, the housekeeper. It should surprise no one therefore that Abigail, living in a giant house with little to do except her homework and swimming, which terrifies her, goes 'exploring' around the house. In pursuit of this hobby she has learned to pick locks, especially the old kind with notched keys that predominate in the McAlister home, and this was how she got into the old nursery in the west wing.
There were so many fun toys to play with in there, rocking horses, and blocks, and wooden soldiers and spring loaded guns that shot the corks out of wine bottles! She would hide in there for hours at a time on rainy afternoons when her homework was done and Mrs Masters was not taking the children to the park.
By and by however she noticed that things were not as they ought to be. Things were always neatly put away when she came back, and she knew that the West Wing was supposed to be for guests only, Mrs Masters did not come in here except to check for leaks, and she had never mentioned there being a mess in the old nursery which she surely would have if she had been the one cleaning it up. Meanwhile just out of the corner of her eye she once saw one of horses rocking by itself...
After a few weeks of sunshiny 'go to the park' weather she came back and there was another girl standing in the doorway. "You mayn't come in." The girl declared, dressed in a very pretty dress which was all pink bows and ruching.
"Why not?" Abigail asked.
"Because you make a mess and don't pick up after yourself." She stated.
"Well I didn't think anyone would mind since no one comes in here, I thought I had the room to myself and could be messy without anyone having a problem with it: and not to change the subject but who are you and what are you doing in my house?" Abigail asked forcibly.
"My name is Abigail Samantha McAlister and I am not in your house you are in mine. I was here first, and am older than you by almost 70 years!" The other girl declared.
It was only then that Abigail realized that the other girl was hovering an inch off the floor and was very slightly translucent.
"You are a ghost, aren't you?" Abigail asked.
"That's none of your business!" The other girl stated.
"Oh no, it is my business..." Abigail said pulling her school ID out of her backpack... "You see," she said as she held the card out for the other girl to examine. "My name is also Abigail Samantha McAlister: the second, and no one has ever been willing to tell me WHY I am 'the second', or who the other Abigail was, and I am guessing it was you." She finished in a relentless cavalcade of logic.
The ghost of the first Abigail Samantha McAlister invited her in and they fell to talking. apparently 'Samantha' as she prefered to be called had lived over 80 years ago when the house was still in the hands of the first generation of McAlister's to live there, and had been visiting her grandfather when she had taken sick with 'The Croup' and after a month long battle with the disease died. Her grandfather had blamed himself and set up a trust: if any future heir of the McAlister bloodline would name their daughter in honor of the first Abigail and raise her in this house to the age of majority at 18 she would have all her living expenses, fees, and tuition paid to the college of her choice to get a degree of whatever level she desired. Until her father no one had dared because on his deathbed her father had forbidden it, saying that no son of his nor anyone who honored his memory should try to replace poor Samantha, but her father had not even been born when the pronouncement was made and all those who had been present and sworn the oath were also dead or living in retirement homes and senile at that point.
The girls talked long into the night, leaving the room cleaned up and locked behind them, wandering the house and hiding from the others. Over the next month they became friends, and Samantha learned a lot about what had transpired in the 60 years she had 'slept' in the playroom since the last person who she could be seen by had come to the house, an old gypsy woman who had worked for Abigail's grandfather as a housekeeper. She played her first video game and went with Abigail to school, finding it an 'abominable unfairness' that just a few short years AFTER her death they had invented penicillin which would have saved her life.
It was only 3 days ago that the two of them met Nicholas A. Stolarczyk at the park, and found out that they were involuntarily part of a club of sorts, boys and girls that had met and befriended monsters, and now could see this hidden world...
OK, I know that last one ran more than a bit long, but does anyone like any of these ideas and is willing to join in or run a game?
