"Possibility (Desirability?) of Giant Monster campaigns" Topic

I know some rules have guidelines for linked scenarios/mini-campaigns, but a full blown campaign over objectives on some kind of strategic map, has such a thing been attempted? Or is it just too silly to contemplate?

The big problem for me is that there's no clear motive or objectives for the kaiju. They march ashore, brush aside tanks, destroy buildings, fight other monsters, go back into the ocean/space/wherever. Why? Who knows what thoughts lurk in the minds of monsters?

I have a copy of AH's Monsters Menace America:

Which is a fun romp, stomping cities and landmarks to gain health points and mutations, until there's a final showdown. Also each player has a military force to try to impede the progress of everyone else. That might have some usable ideas.

Never played, but came across Kaiju, an Axis & Allies variant, on the web:
link

So, to answer my own question, there have been attempts at 'strategic' level games in this genre. Would they interface well with 'tactical' rules? Doubtful. Maybe the whole idea is doomed to failure and a random scenario generator is more doable? Well, a guy can dream. . .

link

Command magazine 13 had a golfwar gozilla scenario.

The very best campaign was in gozilla save the earth for ps2.

Very well done… You could choose between several aliens and gforce and recruit monsters and had than battles with mission untill the earth was defended or conquered…

I think a lot of Giant Monsters are controlled by aliens, who may have strategic goals.

I think a Kaiju campaign would be workable; the Godzilla movies often had one or two skirmishes before the big battle at the end, at any rate!

Monsters Menace America would make a good model for such a campaign actually; each player has a monster and part of the military, so lots of chances to play for everyone. A straight-up monsters versus military scenario could be workable as well I'd think. Here's how I'd play it:

1) The 'monster team' are all working together for some goal; softening up the Earth for invasion by aliens/Atlanteans/moon Nazis/etc would work. They have a set of objectives and a time-table to accomplish them. The goals should be set up in such a way that the monsters can't just all clump together and march from objective to objective and win in time; they'll have to decide when and how to strike. Ideally there should be more possible objectives than actual; the Monsters can fake the military out from time to time.
2) The 'military team' is trying to stop the Monsters from accomplishing their goal. For each possible monster objective there's a set defensive force (whatever size is appropriate to the tactical system*) and the military also has several mobile units they can move as needed. These mobile forces could be air units, mechanized forces, special anti-Monster units (advanced weapons, mecha, telepathic school girls) and so on.
3) Ideally movement would be at least single-blind, the military can't see exactly where the monsters are until they strike. Dummy counters or the like could work. The Military player(s) would get a chance to shuffle around their mobile units and then monsters would move; fight it out at any location where there's both monsters and military forces.
4) I'd carry over Monster damage from turn to turn, so it's possible that a Monster might have to go to ground to heal, and so forth. Destroyed military units can't be rebuilt, though they might have a schedule of reinforcements.

That's a very rough idea, but no reason why it couldn't work.

-Will

* depending on the number of monsters, I'd probably set it up such that a single full strength monster vs. a typical defensive force would be weighted towards the monster; the Monster will probably get the objective, but if the military plays well it can hurt the monster badly enough to make future battle easier or force the monster to take some time and heal. Bringing in a mobile military unit should probably make it an even fight.

I don't know if you remember the old Top Secret espionage RPG, but Dragon #40 included two pretty cool articles to help game masters create campaigns for the game:
- "The Rasmussen Files: From Spy World to Sprechenhaltestelle," a generic mission flowchart by Jerry Epperson
- "From Sprechenhaltestelle to . . . ?" a list of globe-hopping locations by Paul Montgomery Crabaugh

You could develop similar campaign aids for a kaiju campaign. (I apologize in advance if ideas like these are already present in an existing kaiju game; I'm not familiar with many of them.)

In the first article, the mission flowchart started with the agents getting their assignment, kitting out, traveling to a location, locating the target and finding the clues to a new location, and so on. Along the way they could run into complications, cover-ups, getaways, captures, escapes, execution attempts, red herrings, and so on.

A similar flowchart could be designed for kaiju campaigns. One kaiju (or group of kaiju) is trying to capture or destroy something at each location:
- Destroying military bases in preparation for a full-scale invasion
- Kidnapping scientists who are developing kaiju-killing (or controlling) weapons
- "Convincing" a lesser kaiju to help in the mission, or defeating it so it can't thwart the mission
- Scouting out ideal nesting sites
- Rescuing the tiny princesses who are your soul-mates
- Ripping the roofs off canneries to get at the mass quantities of fish inside
- Crushing adult-contemporary radio stations that play ear-splitting Slim Whitman songs
- Collecting deposits of the rare element jpatternium (tm)

There are hundreds of possible goals to be gleaned from kaiju movies and games. In fact, Twig66 played a game based on kaiju battling over fragments of a minus-energy comet: TMP link

A second kaiju (or group of kaiju, or team of clever humans) is either competing against the first kaiju for the same or different goals, or actively trying to stop the first kaiju.

Along the way you can throw in complications:
- Additional kaiju popping up
- Tanks doing what tanks do best: Being stomped on, tossed around, blown up, and melted
- Humans deploying secret weapons that actually do damage to kaiju
- Needing to power-up at nearby power stations or nuclear plants
- Bathing in the nearby sea or volcano to heal damage before rejoining the fight
- Accidentally triggering an explosion that stuns one or both kaiju
- Capture by the humans, aliens, or mind-controlling mutants (who can then transport the kaiju to the next location)
- Escaping from the humans, aliens, or mind-controlling mutants

You get the idea. Again, kaiju movies and games are overflowing with ideas.

In the second article, the location table listed 100 major cities and other locations around the world: Tokyo, Hamburg, Gibraltar, the upper reaches of the Amazon, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and so on. The game master rolled a 10-sided die and added 1, to generate the number of locations in the campaign. So a roll of 5 meant there would be 6 locations visited in the campaign. He then rolled two D10s on the table to determine each of the locations, ignoring duplicates. In the game, clues in each location would lead to the next, with the last location being the big payoff.

Again, for a kaiju game you could easily create a similar table, using locations around the world or limiting it to one region or country, or even one type of location, such as ports or military bases. (Of course, poor Tokyo should probably be a given in any kaiju campaign.)

On the tabletop, you could reinforce the sense of place by including one or two famous landmarks: Seattle's Space Needle, the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Harbor Opera House. You could scratchbuild the landmark or search online for a cheap souvenir. There are even plastic and paper models for many landmarks, in various scales. And, really, no one will mind if your Statue of Liberty is a few inches taller or shorter than she should be.

I hope you like these ideas and they get your mental cogs turning.

Nice ideas for structuring campaigns and getting me thinking!

-The use of 'decoy' counters for the monsters would add suspense; I think I'd give the military some kind of reconnaissance units able to 'flip' them.

-Giving city defenders access to a limited number of superweapons and mecha would be a necessity! I'm now playing with the idea of some kind of 'tech tree', with a special/hidden lab producing research points per turn.

-Also think it might be neat for the human player to have a pool of 'telepathic/empathic child' points, able to convince monsters to switch sides (temporarily or permanently). This would give classic kaiju vs. kaiju action; I'm afraid kaiju vs military only would eventually grow stale.

-I remember playing Top Secret a little back in the day, the use of tables to generate locations, objectives, or special events is a good technique and would also keep things fresh.

-I live in the St. Louis area, and one of these days I'll have to drop by the Arch gift shop for an appropriately sized souvenir. Even as a kid I fantasized about knocking that thing down!

-Any thoughts on flying giant monsters raiding 'behind the lines'? Seems like they could interfere with reinforcements, but might also be vulnerable to air force interception (not that aircraft ever fared well in the movies!).

-"Moon-Nazis", "Slim Whitman": *chuckle*

Sorry for the late reply, a couple of additional points:
1) Yep, I agree and would give the 'military' force some form of recon to help narrow down the number of potential decoy counters; maybe one free 'satellite tracking' step that checks a single counter and a few on-map recon assets. I'd start the campaign with a fairly high decoy:monster ratio. As the military scouted decoy counters and the monsters actually attacked the number of decoy counters would probably decrease. BUT the monsters might also be able to create new decoy markers; if they 'went to ground' in a wilderness area or the ocean they could spawn a few new decoy counters, for example.

2) A tech tree would be neat, and the classic kaiju movies are full of possible human super-weapons to develop. I'd make sure that they expensive enough that the humans couldn't simply pump out advanced units and overwhelm the monsters, but the monsters can't afford to sit around too long either.

3) The telepathy points is a neat idea, I like it. Good point on kaiju vs. military possibly getting boring. A few ideas:
A) Allow Kaiju to switch sides, as you point out.
B) Have the top-end Military weapons be Kaiju themselves; either mechanical or genetically engineered. Or even just friendly Kaiju the military managed to locate and wake up.
C) For a really complex campaign you could have two Kaiju factions. One is the 'invaders' as described, the other are 'earth guardians' or similar and have some overlapping goals with the invaders (such as destroying power plants that create pollution) but don't want the invaders to actually win (the guardians are a friend to all children). So that allows three-way battles, temporary alliances and the like. Or each monster could have it's own set of goals, with room to both cooperate and fight with each other.

-Will