#scare school

Casper's Scare School

Monster High

Monsters University

Monster Prom

Monsterhearts

ENG Mosshead from The Thatch Gang A swamp creature, pupil of the school of terror, and member of Thatch's gang. He is one of the 4 main characters in the series, characterized by his annoying and energetic personality. First design and drawing of this character within the TTG universe, keeping an appearance close to that of the original series “Casper’s Scare School”, but with a 2D cartoonish touch. ESP Mosshead de The Thatch Gang Una criatura de pantano, alumno de la escuela del terror y miembro de la pandilla de Thatch. Es uno de los 4 personajes principales de la serie, caracterizándose por su personalidad molesta y enérgica. Primer diseño y dibujo sobre este personaje dentro del universo de TTG, manteniendo un aspecto cercano al de la serie original “Casper’s Scare School”, pero con un toque caricaturesco 2D.

DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/bearenice/art/The-Thatch-Gang-Mosshead-FULL-BODY-864644490

My kid has decided he only wants to try new games, but my dad really wanted to try this game out so I ran a session. Some observations...

Okay, pre-observation, this was my first time ever running a TTRPG for anyone other than my son. So that's a milestone. I think I did... okay?

Skill Checks & Progression. I decided to run the encounter on Level 3 - that is, all rolls of 3 or less are failures, which meant that the player's skills increased rapidly. I think that worked well for a one-shot, but was too generous if there's any continuity between sessions.

Setting the Scene. I again found moderately detailed illustrations of children's bedrooms online, but this time invited the player to add some detail to the room. I did not characterize the child at all. I think there's an opportunity to build that out.

Retry Rule. In an attempt to force some variety in tactics and add some non-narrative bite to failures I ruled that you can't repeat a skill-check you just failed. I think this reduced the feeling of brute forcing through a check and encouraged some more creativity.

Failures, narratively. I found it a little difficult to consistently give narrative explanations for failures. I think I should have differentiated 1's vs 2's vs 3's, but that doesn't work if you're at a lower difficulty level. I didn't do a good job of communicating what would happen on a failure; If I was better at that it probably would have solved the problem.

Failures, in scoring. The scoring system is purposely convoluted to appeal to my kid (final calculations was the only part he participated in on this day), but I had a hard time knowing how much to penalize the Suspense score when there was a failure.

Delayed Parents. I slightly tweaked the parents mechanic. Now, if you or the child do something to alert the parents (mainly but not exclusively making a loud noise), the parent countdown does not start immediately. It only begins after a second alert. At that point, after every subsequent action, the GM rolls a D4. When the cumulative D4 rolls reach 8 the parent arrives in the room and you fail.

Multi-Part Skill Checks. Towards the end of the encounter the player started combining skills, which I wasn't sure how to assess. In one situation, it was synergistic enough that I felt passing 2 out of 3 skill checks felt appropriate, but in another I felt it was almost entirely dependent on one skill, while the other two could be auto-passes. If this were someone else's game I was running I would want more direction, as I had to make up those approaches in the moment.

Teacher Feedback. I didn't do much within-world communicating with the player character. I did have what I thought was a really good idea, but I was hesitant to offer it (and did not end up offering it) because I didn't want to steal away the opportunity for the player's own creativity.

Finding the Fun. The fun here is definitely in stretching the creativity. I am not sure (here expressing sincere ignorance, not doubt) whether the scoring system is helpful or not. I think in best case, it might be something like Balatro (I can't stop talking about Balatro!) where the scores are technically calculable to the player, but in practice more fuzzy. At minimum, the scoring provides a little bit of momentum and tension, just from a number going mostly up. I am not sure how much that encourages creativity

Scoring Sheet. The character sheet (at the top of the page) did its job, but I still had to track the actions. If I were to develop this game further (and keep the scoring system) I would want to create a GM sheet for tracking actions and their effect on suspense. However, it hasn't been bad tracking it freeform.