MANSTERS - The Roleplaying Game

Hack & Slice is a rules system created to cover the needs of what are mainly narrative-based settings. Its goal is no different from the goal of all other RPG Rule Systems, which is to help the narrator tell the story they created, and help players interact with that story, shaping how it unfolds and eventually concludes.

“Hack & Slice is not actually recommended for ‘hack & slash’ or ‘dungeon crawling’ settings. Obviously its name is a pun.”

Monstrosity

In the good old days when monsters were on the up and up, they would act undisturbed and independently, they all embraced their true nature. In the case of our protagonists, though, our heroes have distanced themselves from that monstrous nature. Whether through sheer incompetence, or a deliberate decision to come closer to humans in order to understand and help them, our characters have lost a significant part of themselves. They are walking down the path of humanity, which none of them knows where it is going to lead.

Monstrosity essentially represents that relationship: how far someone has distanced themselves from their monstrous nature, how close they have come to a human frame of mind and way of life. 

Skutendo & D(oo)M's Clock

Every time a player makes a failed roll, they add a slice to their character’s Skutendo clock. When the slices ‘fill up’ (i.e. make a full circle) in the player character’s Skutendo clock, the player removes all marked slices, restoring the circle to its original position and resolving the Skutendo effect. Skutendo effects are nothing more than random, unlucky mishaps that happen near the character who caused them, or, in some cases, the broader area.

The D(oo)M’s Clock is a circle with 4 lines (12 slices) that the narrator has in their possession throughout the game, and how they will use it is up to their discretion. Each time that a player fills up a PC Skutendo Clock and triggers a Skutendo Effect, the narrator fills one slice on their own D(oo)M’s Clock.

The slices from the D(oo)M's Clock can be used by the Narrator in order to insert one of the available "Hunters" into the plot. These Hunters show up in the area, influenced by the constant stream of strange occurrences. As we will see in greater detail later in the relevant section, each Hunter "costs" the Narrator a certain number of slices in order to be recruited, which varies depending on the Hunter's impact.

The world has changed. In the good old days, things were simpler: one lived a plain, frugal life, and promptly died at 35… assuming one wasn’t tangled up in some war, famine, inquisition or terminal toothache first. Despite the hardships of life, though, humans lived a more or less content and carefree life, with less stress, more romance and other such naive notions.

Today, however, things are very different. Technology and the sciences are making rapid progress in an abundance of fields and have found their way into every household (or just about). While all this suggests that people should have to work much less, and have more free time for rest, self-cultivation and -education, entertainment a higher degree of comfort, they nevertheless find themselves in a constant state of insecurity, a daily struggle for survival, a life full of anxiety and fear… Oh, this fear! It is so intense and so widespread throughout societies, that people have learnt to live with it, or – worse yet – to feed off of it.

In fact, some people have become so good at feeding off of the fear of the rest that they decided to make a lifestyle out of it. In other words, they utilized fear as a primary tool to achieve a comfortable way of life, and acquire fame, wealth and power at the expense of other people. In time, that fear spread everywhere, whether large and uniform or cut into tiny pieces and sprinkled across our daily life, it covered like a veil of mist the hearts and souls of people, dominating and subjugating the mind.

And so, people came to hold less fear for monsters, these fantastical and mythical creatures that were created to frighten us. The balance of the world shifted. Monsters were pushed to the margins, isolated and embittered, unable to fulfill their raison d'être, while humans live a grey life – dull, full of fear towards all the challenges of daily life which they themselves have created.

Hunters are for the most part humans who, one way or another, came to be aware of the existence of monsters and the supernatural. They are tasked with uncovering the truth and, usually, to eliminate anything non-human that they encounter.

For a monster, the existence of a Hunter in their city is never a trifling matter. Hunters can perceive, and are drawn to, the ripple effects caused by monsters just like monsters can smell the fear of humans. One thing is for certain: the last thing any monster would want, especially a monster hunting down evil people, is a Hunter – or multiple ones – in their city, hunting them and trying to eliminate them.