"Rules?" Topic

What giant monster gaming rules does everyone use?

I have Giant Monster Rampage by Radioactive Press, and I really like it. There's a lot of options for monster creation & customization. I've also been teaching my son to play.

Others that I know of off the top of my head:

Monster Island by Firefly Games(?) – still available?

Mighty Monsters by Ganesha Games – any opinions on this one?

We've used Monster Island… and a short bit of kaiju rules for Dirtside someone found online.

Back when I was first gearing up to run big kaiju games, I read through a bunch of rulesets. My 2 finalists were Monster Island and Giant Monster Rampage. Both have a nice balance of fast play and flavour detail.

I went with Monster Island because it was available in hard copy and my FLGS could sell it when I was running games at the store or at local conventions. Unfortunately, Firefly Games has been pretty dormant and not supporting their products and forums the way they used too. Back when, they had a very active forum community that was a great resource, then they redid their website and forums completely and the community all disappeared.

I might switch over to GMR sometime, if I ever feel an urge to restat all my monster cards that I've developed for MI….

I've decided on Ganesha's Mighty Monsters for now. It has a very flexible point build system so you can quickly stat up any monster (or vehicle).

I've only played a couple times, but it really gives the feel of kaiju combat. Give the .pdf a try you won't be disappointed!

The Creature that Ate Sheboygan. I'm sure it's out there, somewhere.
It was an SPI (?) game that converted well to "miniatures".

I just downloaded the freebie "Destroy all Monsters" and it looks like fun, but I've not yet had a chance to play it.

Doug

I have some free, one page rules on my site: "The Giant Spider From Outer Space"

panzer8.weebly.com/rules.html

Couldn't resist :)

Giant Monster Rampage by Radioactive Press would be my first choice. He is committed to the theme, is active here on TMP, and the system is open for just about anything you want to make/use.

For me, Destroy All Monsters went too much for quickplay at the expense of real movie flavour.

Creature That Ate Sheboygan pops up on EBay and BGG. Also files available at BGG: link

Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas. I had forgotten about Destroy All Monsters and Creature that Ate Sheboygan.

I had the Creature that Ate Sheboygan boardgame years ago. I'd like to see an updated version released. Good KS potential?!?!

@28mmMan – I'm surprised it took you that long.

I use Giant Monster Rampage, but I'm biased. ;)

I have been working on a scenario for GMR that features spacecraft. It is a standalone scenario that can also be used as a companion scenario to Mechanized. It will also feature some rules that can be added to standard GMR games like space terrain.

The first draft of the scenario can be found in the files section of the Radioactive Press Newsgroup.

-Ken
Radioactive Press

GMR, Mighty Monsters, my homebrew using the 'Red Sand, Blue Sky' gladiator rules, my own 'Godzilla versus Tokyo' (players vs monster) and 'Destroy a Lot of Monsters' (players all as monsters) convention rules, Creature that ate Sheboygan, Creature that ate New York, Trash Tokyo, and others…

While reading another thread and I had an epiphany! Try Supersystem. It's designed for superheroes, but it should work perfectly for giant monsters.

I put a list of freebies on a more recent threat (Monster Games--Why?) I included Monster Island on the list; it's not free, but Firefly reduced the price on all of the books to $1.99 USD, which is a fantastic bargain!

This is a good place to plug my own rules – tinyurl.com/colossusgame – which I designed to use my big collection of 2.5" figures and to take a break from other wargames I play. They are free and have been playtested quite a bit: we had a 6 player game last night with about 80 years of gaming experience in total and the game went very smoothly. Probably not ideal for beginners but if you can play a GW game, you can play Colossus!

I've played Monster Island (a little bit), Giant Monster Rampage (a lot) and Monsterpocalypse (a lot including winning a tournament).

The first two are good for a quick game and to play with kids or non-gamers – no offense, it's their target market I believe. They are fun but after a while a more experienced gamer will likely want a bigger challenge or something with more depth. What I found frustrating was that there wasn't much you could do except move into optimal range (distance or close) and roll dice. So the start of a game would be fun but then it would quickly degenerate into only dice-rolling.

The latter (MonPoc) I found to be an excellently designed and written game with some crucial flaws which I couldn't overcome:
- no possibilities to expand beyond what Privateer was offering
- too focussed on cities and non-monster forces contrary to monster movies which see them fight in all types of terrain and the small fish never really matter much.
- very very hard to explain the basics to people who hadn't invested time in it. The dozens of different icons used on the bases didn't help!

GMR was never intended to be marketed as a game for kids or non-gamers. It was intended to be a standard miniature game that has multiple levles of customization and difficulty. The basic game is great for beginners and young players, but when you start adding in optional rules like facings, size, weight, and strength (just to name a few) the game starts becoming more complex, engaging, and strategic.

I have played many many wargames over the years and one of the things I didn't like about most of them was the lack of customization and adjustable difficulty levels for different styles of play.

I set out to create an expandable (usable for more than what it is intended) game that allows the players to achieve the complexity they desire without forcing that complexity on the players who don't want it.

I think I finally acheived my vision of the system with the release of ASH and GMR Deluxe, but I'm not done yet. I have been slowly working on a rules digest to add new options to the Toy Battle System. I am taking my time with it becuase I want to make sure the new options expand and heighten game play without bogging it down with unnecessary complexity.

-Ken
Radioactive Press

Agreed!

Yay…Giant Monster gaming!

:)

Ken, without getting too much into it, I stand by my points. We also have to bear in mind we probably game at entirely different environments with different expectations. As you know, I've had fun w/ GMR and invested a lot of time on it and might even have sent a few sales your way. :)

You are entitled to your opinions and I respect them, it just felt like a "cheap shot" to see the comments about the other games posted in the same post advertising your game.

Regardless, welcome to the giant monster game arena. I hope your game does well. More games means more exposure for the genre. :)

-Ken
Radioactive Press

Absolutely and sorry for the ambiguity in my original post.

If I didn't think that GMR was a fantastic game I wouldn't have started a website on it, bought dozens of miniatures to play it, taken it to my club several times, bought the rules and expansions, have joined your Yahoo Group and contributed to the discussion, etc. If I'm now your 'rival', then you could use more rivals like me!

To me Colossus! and GMR are like cricket and baseball: both superficially sound like the same game (giant monsters fighting / hitting a ball w/ a bat) but aren't after all that similar.

I don't see any of the game designers/publishers of monster games as rivals. I see them as kindred hobbyists with a love of giant monsters.

That is why I do my best to refrain from making any negative comments or comparisons about any other monster game regardless of how accurate the comment or comparison may be. To do so makes me feel like I am insulting a friend.

Giant monster gaming fills a small niche and I feel a kinship with any fan of giant monster gaming especially those who love the genre enough to take a hand at writing their own rules.

This is just a hobby for me and I want to help that hobby grow by being supportive of the genre as a whole instead of drawing lines in the sand.

I encourage every player to check out all of the different rules systems availble, each one offers something new and unique to the genre.

-Ken
Radioactive Press

I agree with GiantMonster as I have never seen the different rules as rivals. We who love Kaiju gaming are generally a smaller group than most other gaming types and are never going to be the "in" thing (even with Pacific Rim coming out). I have used several different rules sets and do have my favorites but I have enjoyed each and every one I have tried.

My problem is just being lazy when it comes to coming up with stats for different monsters. Thats why I always wish for a place people could (and would) share their stats so that lazy bones like me can just set up and play.

For the record Carlos's GMR website and write-ups got me to buy a whole heap of GMR/ASH stuff.

In terms of games I've played, I liked Monster Island, but found the use of 3D6 to resolve things threw out the balance of the game unless you were very careful with your builds.

GMR hit all the right buttons, and is still my go-to game, having a good balance between detail and playability.

Our group is familiar with the Songs of Blades and heroes engine, so Mighty Monsters is probably something I'll introduce to them. I don't find the monster design as easy as that for GMR, but once they;re done the games plays well.

I wasn't aware of Colossus until now, so will have to give it a read.

Speaking of Colossus, I just downloaded version 1.0

Haven't read it all the way through yet but it looks to have some interesting ideas. In the near future I will give it a whirl on the tabletop.

Colossus can be found at:

colossus-game.blogspot.co.uk