New threat type: Monsters

Monsters:
Alien (impulse: to change the environment drastically and irrevocably)
Apex Predator (impulse: to consume and sustain)
Beast (impulse: to spread destruction and chaos)
Horror (impulse: to inspire awe and terror)
Hunter (impulse: to eliminate all threats, real or imaginary)
Shapeshifter (impulse: to deceive and spread lies)
Undead (impulse: to remind of inconvenient truths)

MC Moves for Monsters:
* Hint at its presence.
* Display its full might.
* Get a hold of something, disregarding anything that might interfere.
* Crush something, annihilating it completely.
* Make a rash and sudden action, devoid of human emotions.
* Execute a carefully hatched and unmistakeably immoral plan.
* Gloat, possibly revealing a weakness.
* Dictate somebody's behavior: charmed, frightened, enraged.
* Have its behavior dictated by someone else: tamed, provoked, manipulated.


In Apocalypse World, the moral high ground probably got nuked along with the rest of the world. There's no more good and evil, right and wrong; only bigger gun and smaller gun.

Sometimes, though, we want to re-tune our moral compass, be reminded that there's wrong and there's plain wrong. This is where the monsters come in. Unlike grotesques, the monsters are fundamentally inhuman, even if they do inhabit a human body.

I came up with the monsters for my PG-13 game, where the players (and later the MC) were clamoring for glowing purple worms, skeletal dinosaurs and other exotic inhabitants of the wastelands, and the moves for warlords and brutes weren't quite cutting it.

The monster moves were successful, but I always insisted on no more than one monster per front (including the home front). More than one might work, but I sincerely doubt it. Anyway, I'd love some feedback.

I've got a monster threat type in my hack, Monster of the Week. They're not intended to be dropped into an Apocalypse World game, but I guess they could be.

Here's the current text of my monster threats, as my contribution to the discussion:

Monster Types:

• Devourer (Impulse: to consume)
• Breeder (Impulse: to give birth to badness)
• Trickster (Impulse: to inflict chaos and bitter justice)
• Beast (Impulse: to run amok)
• Queen (Impulse: to possess and control)
• Demon (Impulse: to make people do terrible things)
• Collector (Impulse: to take and keep certain things - hearts, souls, etc)
• Parasite (Impulse: to infect and spread)
• Avenger (Impulse: to punish, get revenge or restitution)
• Sorcerer (Impulse: to gain power)
• Torturer (Impulse: to hurt and terrify)
• Druj (Impulse: to destroy the world)

Monster moves:

• Appear suddenly, in front or behind someone
• Attack with great force
• Seize someone or something
• Attack with stealth and cunning
• Provoke someone
• Flee the scene
• Return to home ground
• Return from seeming destruction
• Use an unnatural power

These are a little messy - I'm not exactly happy with all of the types, moves and names. But I'm working my way through a to do list and haven't got to these yet.

I really like your list of monster moves - would you mind if I stole some of them for Monster of the Week? I love "Gloat" in particular, and the pairing of "hint at its presence" and "display its full might" is really neat.

That said, it seems like the general approach is pretty similar. Interesting!

Thanks Mike! Your list is interesting too, though it might take some customization before dropping into Apocalypse World. Let's see if I can try merging the lists without stepping on the toes of warlords and grotesques, and while still removing human-like impulses (such as controlling others or getting revenge).

I would have added Undead (impulse: craves unsavory revelations and bitter justice) to this list, but on second thought it might be better off with its fellow grotesuqes (think of the ghouls in the Fallout series).


I also want to keep the names as evocative as possible: this is why I like threats such as cannibals and mutants better than disease vectors and pain addicts. I mean, sure, the cannibal doesn't have to be a crazy savage who eats unwelcome guests, it could  be just plain old Dremmer, who steals from the hold's grain stores at night; but if you're looking to create more threats for an emerging front, a threat called cannibal tells you of one very obvious thing that you might create.

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Here's a revised list. I think the phrasing could do with some polishing by a native speaker.

Monsters Types:
Alien (impulse: to change the environment)
Apex Predator (impulse: to devour and consume)
Beast (impulse: to run amok)
Demon (impulse: to create others in its image)
Horror (impulse: to hurt and terrify)
Hunter (impulse: to eliminate all threats, real or imaginary)
Shapeshifter (impulse: to spread chaos, lies and falsehoods)

MC Moves for Monsters:
* Hint at its presence.
* Display its full might.
* Get a hold of something, disregarding anything that might interfere.
* Crush something, annihilating it completely.
* Make a rash and sudden action, devoid of human emotions.
* Execute a carefully hatched and unmistakeably immoral plan.
* Gloat, possibly revealing a weakness.
* Dictate somebody's behavior: charmed, frightened, enraged.
* Have its behavior dictated by someone else: tamed, provoked, manipulated.
* Grow in size, power or number.
* Make use of an unnatural power (physical, moral or otherwise)
* Leave the scene, with or without an apparent reason.

Just a quick response (I'm at work), I might have more to say later.

Alien (impulse: to change the environment)

How about "to remake the world" as the impulse? That makes it broader, and 'remake' implies more significant changes that 'change' does.

The qualm I have with recreate the world is the same one I have with destroy the world.

The monsters, of themselves, are not very interesting. On their own, they don't present the players with interesting choices: if you see a glowing purple worm in the desert, you either try to kill it or run away.
That's why I have the one monster per front rule, and that's why I try to gear the impulses and moves towards more interaction and co-dependency with more human elements of the game. While the world is certainly more evocative, the environment implies that there are people immediately affected: the gray slug is slowly raising the temperature of the mud river, and it's nearing the boiling point. The creepy orphan is talking other children in the hold into killing their parents. Neither of them have some grand scheme for the world, they're just acting according to their impulse.

Sure, I thought that might be an issue. I still think "remake" works better than "change", but if you want to keep the scope smaller of course do so.

Note that the impulse to "destroy the world" is in Monster of the Week because, with inspiration from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural and Fringe, the total destruction of the world will come up sometimes. But it's not really appropriate for Apocalypse World, even with monsters.