Beneath A Cursed Moon - Castlevania inspired monster hunting
Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 1:46 am
Late last year, I finished work on Beneath a Cursed Moon - my RPG about monster hunting in a gothic fantasy setting. It pulls inspirations from Castlevania, Bloodborne, The Mummy (1999), Dracula, Hellboy, Disney’s Gargoyles, and you’ll find some After Sundown ideas running through it, too. The players are heroes who hunt monsters and solve mysteries and get into fights, and it focuses more on mystery and action than horror.
You can find totally for free on:
Itch.io: https://karrius.itch.io/beneath-a-cursed-moon
DTR: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25 ... ursed-Moon
I wanted to talk about it for the Den, especially because it’s a PBTA game. I haven’t had a lot of success with PBTA games in the past - my disappointment with Monster of the Week is part of what drove me to make this game, because nothing can teach you how to design a game better than seeing how another game failed. While I know PBTA isn’t quite to the Den’s flavor - it isn’t really to mine, either! - I wanted to see if it was something I could “fix”, and it felt like a closer starting point to an idea I wanted to make for a long time. So here’s some things I did that I think are important:
There are no surprise bear moves. There are no moves that are going to summon more dangers that *might* have been there. The closest I have to a “size up a situation” move is Hunt, which is “When you’re playing cat and mouse with something, roll to see who ends up on top.” If there’s not something that’s hunting you or you’re hunting in the first place, it doesn’t apply! Investigation stuff especially can easily end up with surprise bears - to fix this, I specifically inform the MC to write up a timeline of events. The longer the PCs spend investigating, the more these bad events progress. But if they act fast enough, the PCs can prevent them - these monsters always “exist”, and it’s just a matter of time before they show their face.
All characters can participate in both major parts of the game. This game is focused on both investigation and combat. All the playbooks can participate in both, and how they participate in each is usually somewhat different than other PCs. Nobody is ever left not doing anything, especially because for investigation rolls, the only thing you lose on a failure is time - the cost is incurred as a group, when you go to investigate.
Monster strength does effect roll difficulty. So this is another big den complaint I share, and I fixed… halfway. Monsters declare their actions, and then your interrupt, and your character rolls and moves and interfere with how well you interrupt. So there’s no “Stop an attack, be it from a shitty skeleton or Dracula”, but there IS a “Take 1 less damage from an attack, which stops a skeleton from hurting you, but is a tiny chip of Dracula’s damage”. So for monsters, this complaint is handled. Even things like “Turn Undead” work based on the monster’s rank, so you can’t really ward Dracula away with a cross as well as you can one of his lesser brides. Now, admittedly, this problem still exists for non-creature obstacles, like scaling a wall or whatever. I don’t know how to fix that, frankly, and because those things aren’t a major focus, I kinda just let it slide. I don’t have a good answer!
There’s no taking stuff from other playbooks. I’ve never seen anyone on the den complain about this in particular, but holy hell do I hate having to dig through 12 playbooks to pick a new move for my character, when most of them don’t even make sense stat-wise or use mechanics my playbook doesn’t have. It’s the worst! The worst!
Does this fix PBTA? Is this a significant improvement? I dunno! My ideas were fed by a lot of discussion here, and I hope at least my designs can contribute more to someone else’s ideas.
And honestly, if you can do better, I’d love to see it and buy it. I made this game because it’s a thing I want to run, but doesn’t exist usably otherwise.
You can find totally for free on:
Itch.io: https://karrius.itch.io/beneath-a-cursed-moon
DTR: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25 ... ursed-Moon
I wanted to talk about it for the Den, especially because it’s a PBTA game. I haven’t had a lot of success with PBTA games in the past - my disappointment with Monster of the Week is part of what drove me to make this game, because nothing can teach you how to design a game better than seeing how another game failed. While I know PBTA isn’t quite to the Den’s flavor - it isn’t really to mine, either! - I wanted to see if it was something I could “fix”, and it felt like a closer starting point to an idea I wanted to make for a long time. So here’s some things I did that I think are important:
There are no surprise bear moves. There are no moves that are going to summon more dangers that *might* have been there. The closest I have to a “size up a situation” move is Hunt, which is “When you’re playing cat and mouse with something, roll to see who ends up on top.” If there’s not something that’s hunting you or you’re hunting in the first place, it doesn’t apply! Investigation stuff especially can easily end up with surprise bears - to fix this, I specifically inform the MC to write up a timeline of events. The longer the PCs spend investigating, the more these bad events progress. But if they act fast enough, the PCs can prevent them - these monsters always “exist”, and it’s just a matter of time before they show their face.
All characters can participate in both major parts of the game. This game is focused on both investigation and combat. All the playbooks can participate in both, and how they participate in each is usually somewhat different than other PCs. Nobody is ever left not doing anything, especially because for investigation rolls, the only thing you lose on a failure is time - the cost is incurred as a group, when you go to investigate.
Monster strength does effect roll difficulty. So this is another big den complaint I share, and I fixed… halfway. Monsters declare their actions, and then your interrupt, and your character rolls and moves and interfere with how well you interrupt. So there’s no “Stop an attack, be it from a shitty skeleton or Dracula”, but there IS a “Take 1 less damage from an attack, which stops a skeleton from hurting you, but is a tiny chip of Dracula’s damage”. So for monsters, this complaint is handled. Even things like “Turn Undead” work based on the monster’s rank, so you can’t really ward Dracula away with a cross as well as you can one of his lesser brides. Now, admittedly, this problem still exists for non-creature obstacles, like scaling a wall or whatever. I don’t know how to fix that, frankly, and because those things aren’t a major focus, I kinda just let it slide. I don’t have a good answer!
There’s no taking stuff from other playbooks. I’ve never seen anyone on the den complain about this in particular, but holy hell do I hate having to dig through 12 playbooks to pick a new move for my character, when most of them don’t even make sense stat-wise or use mechanics my playbook doesn’t have. It’s the worst! The worst!
Does this fix PBTA? Is this a significant improvement? I dunno! My ideas were fed by a lot of discussion here, and I hope at least my designs can contribute more to someone else’s ideas.
And honestly, if you can do better, I’d love to see it and buy it. I made this game because it’s a thing I want to run, but doesn’t exist usably otherwise.