I am excited to start a new campaign, trying out Monster Of The Week again (Actually, it was the first PbtA game I ever played, it has a special place in my heart, Shoutout to Sebastian Baker, and Elliot, but I don’t want to summon him, as he’s a player). But I kinda want to crowdsource some ideas. The campaign is in an unnamed SouCal college town, in the 80’s. we have decided to go for a kinda “Stranger Things” vibe, so heavy King and Spielberg references are expected.
the cast is
The Mundane- A sporty girl going to college here, good friends with the Initiate, hence getting roped into all this.
The Expert- A complete nerd, and the mundane’s classmate, they are the expert because they have just watched that many monster movies, and read that many comic books. also, the Professional’s kid
The Professional- A beat cop assigned to Gang detail, with the unfortunate luck of running into most of the monster-cases, the disappointed father of the Expert.
and The Initiate- A kid who joined the peace-corps right out of high school, and wound up in the monster-hunting organization, which the peace-corps is a front of. as of session zero, he is the only member aware of the existence of monsters.
What kind of monsters should I have these guys hunting down.
If you want that vibe, it might be cool to go for a singular Big Bad that takes multiple sessions to get to. Maybe each session ends with pointers to the BBEG.
The expert, reminds me of frog brothers from lost boys, good stuff!
Not demons, because I know Elliot hates those. If you can do it without giving too much away, getting feedback from the players might actually be a good idea.
My first instinct would be that cryptids from all over the world keep showing up in this town (maybe they’re drawn to it, maybe they come from it, it’s a mystery!), and there’s probably a secret conspiracy involved. You could also easily tweak this setup for ghosts or aliens, although given the source material I’d advise against mixing multiple categories of monster, because that just makes the setting feel cluttered.
Also now I really want to play/run MotW.
The IT idea os tempting, but I don’t want to rip off SK that hard (Plus at least a couple players have probably read the book)
The cryptids idea is cool. maybe someone is bringing them to the town, for reasons unknown (Maybe an unethical scientific group, hoping to study their feeding habits, or a military group testing them out as weapons to use on the soviets), with the players discovering clues about them throughout the mysteries (A tracker tag on one monster, signs of vivisection on another, government spooks taking all the evidence of a more high-profile case)
I am liking this idea, thank you seb.
Ooh, I had forgotten about the Cold War! That gives the government (and anyone else, really) a nice excuse for being excessively secretive and paranoid.