Review: 'Monsters! Monsters!'

Monsters! Monsters! by Ken St. Andre
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Monsters! Monsters! is Tunnels and Trolls creator Ken St. Andre's old school role playing game that is designed for "...providing equal time for the monsters". It's essentially a Tunnels and Trolls variant, and as such very old school, very basic, very much light-hearted fun. This ain't one of them modern sophistimicated RPGs. Heck, they aren't even any multi-sided dice used: plain old six siders are good enough for this game.

In this game, you play a monstrous beings and get awarded points for doing evil monstrous acts, such as pillaging villages and killing sissy hero types. You can either choose the type of monster to play, or, as is recommended, randomly determine this through drawing a playing card from a deck. If you are lucky, you'll draw a dragon. Not so lucky, and you'll get a goblin or snollygoster. Them's the breaks.

I won't go into the game mechanics, but suffice it to say that they are very simple indeed. This can be a bit frustrating, but it is also part of the charm of the game. One especially charming section is the spells: "Oh-there-it-is" (detects hidden objects), "Glue-you" (impedes motion), "Slush-yuch" (converts rock to mud) and other fun little cantrips.

I doubt that I will ever run a Monsters! Monsters! session (though it may be fun) - I got this because of my interest in the history of RPGs. And they sure don't make 'em like this anymore. Probably a good thing.

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