MONSTER GUTS is an action-focused roleplaying game inspired by our favorite monster hunting videogames. You play as scavengers, hunting down and butchering bioengineered monstrosities to upgrade your arsenal and sustain your community.
MONSTER GUTS is an action-focused tabletop roleplaying game inspired by our favorite monster-hunting video games. You play as scavengers in an ecologically ravaged Pacific Northwest, hunting down big bio-engineered behemoths and harvesting their guts to power up your arsenal and build up your Village.
Cover design by Evangeline Gallagher
MONSTER GUTS is all about the high-octane power fantasy of fighting monsters the size of buildings, Every hunt is cinematic and dynamic, where you race to break as many monster parts as possible before finally slaying your quarry.
The Bowgun, Fire Lance, Longsword, Modular Scythe, Vespine Spear, and War Bugle. Art by Evangeline Gallagher.
Speaking of weapons, in MONSTER GUTS, your weapon is your character class. Each player chooses one of the 12 weapons that each offering a distinctive playstyle and unique abilities. Do you study the blade? Or perhaps the aerial playstyle of the Vespine Spear is more to your liking. For those interested in technical combos, the Modular Scythe is a trick weapon, that swaps between Scythe and Shield mode.
LUMEN is an RPG system designed by Spencer Campbell. MONSTER GUTS is in no way affiliated with Spencer Campbell or Gila RPGs.
MONSTER GUTS is proudly illuminated by Lumen and uses the system's lightweight mechanics to keep the game focused on the action. Combat in MONSTER GUTS is fast-paced and dynamic, with the battlefield changing every round as monsters use their Tempo Change abilities to alter the terrain and summon complications.
This crowdfunding campaign funds print copies of MONSTER GUTS 2e and expands the scope of the game.
Perfect both for one-shots and campaigns
Fast-paced combat rules designed specifically for fighting large monsters in dynamic environments
14 different monsters
3 unique Hunting Zones
Invest Monster Guts into your weapons, Village, or monster-specific armor
Character and Village creation that creates memorable characters and entwined relationships
Companions, sapient creatures evolved from household pets, who aid your scavenger
Support for both solo play and playing without a Game Facilitator
Guidance on creating your own hunts and monsters
And more!
Additionally, campaign supporters will get exclusive access to 6 monsters co-created by myself and several other phenomenal TTRPG designers!
Once, we flew the skies and traveled the deeps. Once, we delved into the miniscule and corralled the massive. Once, we created life to support and sustain our progress.
And then our monsters turned on us. They consumed our forests, our water, our livestock, our homes, and our lives. And then they multiplied.
Our Village was isolated enough to escape the brunt of the attacks. But there are no more trees to burn, no metal to smelt, no food to eat, no water to drink. To live, we needed to hunt the very monsters who had deprived us of our livelihoods and liberties.
And so we trained the scavengers in massive weaponry cobbled together from whatever we could spare. Weapons suited to killing the monsters who stalk our land. From those early monsters, we fed our community, fortified our homes, and built better, bigger weapons. We forged armor to tap into their brutal abilities.
And now you are here to take on the scavenger’s mantle. Our survival depends on you.
MONSTER GUTS takes place in an ecologically ravaged version of the Pacific Northwest. The monsters you hunt were bio-engineered to extract natural resources, and now you and your fellow scavengers must extract those natural resources from them.
The game includes three Hunting Zones to explore, each with their own unique threats and complications.
Once-Emerald Forests illustration by Jaen Butler
The Cities of Yore
Built from poured stone and metal, these fallen towers and wracked roads now house new occupants: steel-trees, moss, and monsters.
The Hanford Wastes
A testament to the laziness and inefficiencies of those Before, the Wastes are gorgeous valleys and perilous ravines marred by irradiated waterways.
The Once-Emerald Forests
They say these trees were green. Now they are red, orange, purple, blue, and their needles are sharp and hard. Their bark turns aside any axe and their fruit is toxic to all but the most venomous of creatures.
As a LUMEN game, MONSTER GUTS has a simple central mechanic: your scavenger has 3 stats, based on the 3 damage types of their arsenal: Crush, Slice, and Pierce. During play, you'll use whichever stat best matches how you tackle whatever challenge lies before you.
Are you using brawn and sheer force? Crush. Are you using dexterity and speed? Slice. Are you using patience and precision? Pierce.
Each weapon has a unique combination of these stats, and you'll enhance them over time by imbuing monster parts into your weapon of choice.
However, MONSTER GUTS also adds in a new resource: Voracity. You get Voracity whenever you describe what your scavenger is doing in a cool and exciting way. You can spend Voracity to reroll dice or take extra actions in combat. Each monster also has a unique armor set you can craft that gives you new ways to gain and spend Voracity. During the Hunt, where your scavengers track down and defeat a monster, play alternates between Lulls and Bouts.
Lulls are when you're out of direct combat, but still tracking down the monster. It's an opportunity to scavenge for consumables, heal, sharpen your weapons, and switch out your gear.
Bouts are the monster fights themselves. They're a fast-paced, action-oriented affair. While you can make basic attacks using your choice of Crush, Slice, and Pierce, each weapon also has unique abilities and special attacks, creating their unique playstyle. You'll want to focus fire on different monster parts to limit the monster's moveset and get additional rewards at the end of the Hunt.
After slaying the monster, you'll carve them up into parts! Each monster has a short list of Tags thematically linked to the monster. Each broken part grants you an extra random Tag pulled from that list, to be used when you return to the Village.
Great Gristlebear. Art by RAPIDPUNCHES.
Downtime begins upon your safe return home. You can donate those Tags to improve the Village's critical buildings or imbue them into your weapons and armor. As you gain the respect of the Village, you'll be able to invest tags into Building Extensions, unlocking new ways to empower your characters and access more of the world.
In MONSTER GUTS 2e, the monsters are the stars of the show. Each Hunt, you'll navigate the Hunting Zone of your quarry, track them down, and then launch an attack. Combat against monsters is multi-phased - during Bouts, you and the monster will directly attack each other, with the Bout ending when either you or the monster flees combat. During the ensuing Lull, you'll be able to catch your breath, deepen your connections with your fellow scavengers, and resupply before the next Bout begins.
But enough of the mechanics. Let's talk about the monsters. MONSTER GUTS 2e will have 14 core monsters, and then backers gain exclusive access to 6 additional monsters designed live on the monster-making streams.
BASE GAME MONSTERS
Great Gristlebear, art by Rapidpunches
Great Gristlebear - the Ever-Hungry, Biomechanical Ursine
Rarity: Common Modified for commercial fishing operations, gristlebears’ internal systems siphon most of what they eat into back-mounted extractable sacs. This leaves the beasts delirious with hunger as they gorge themselves and yet never feel nourished.
Great Gristlebears have learned to spew this chum out in geysers, luring orcas to their doom.
Sparksquirrel, Art by Rapidpunches
Sparksquirrel - the Thunderous, Springing Rodent
Rarity: Common
Originally designed to control household humidity, sparksquirrels were household pets. When exposed to the environmental collapse of the Oil Wars, they supersized. Their ability to channel static electricity into potent currents now interferes with local weather patterns, turning ordinary storms into furious maelstroms.
Ignarex, Art by Madeleine Ember
Ignarex - the Fiery, Angry Tyrant
Rarity: Common The ignarexes were a hybrid project between dinosaur enthusiasts and blacksmith hobbyists who wanted a larger furnace. By the time both groups realized the violent capabilities of an adult Ignarex, most of them were dead.
Crowbeast, Art by Rapidpunches
Crowbeast - the Murderous, Cackling Crow
Monster Concept by Spencer Campbell Rarity: Common Crowbeasts are found deep in the Once-Emerald Forests. You know you’re nearing one when the trees in the area appear more desiccated, and dying, their lifeforce bleeding into the great and terrible bird. Rumors swirl about how Crowbeasts are made, as many people believe them to be a sickness of the trees, rather than an actual beast.
Artillamander, Art by Rapidpunches
Artillamander - the Imminently-Exploding, Cannon-Fused Salamander
Monster Concept by Viditya Voleti Rarity: Uncommon Artillamanders were once toaster-sized and used as a heat and thermal energy source, a lovely creature for communities. Then the military realized it produced extreme energy when fed gunpowder. Now, they seek out military stashes, growing to the size of buses and fusing with the weaponry that it once powered, mixing its mechanisms with its organs.
Red Queen Harvespa, Art by Rapidpunches
Red Queen Harvespa - Faster, Stronger, Better
Monster Concept by Vespiary. Rarity: Uncommon What could go wrong with a swarm of small, adaptable machines programmed to make marginal improvements to themselves and other monsters? This. Created by sufficiently large swarms of harvesps as a massive, living nest, the ominous drone of a Red Queen Harvespa heralds the beginning of a series of transformations for all living things in the region. The Red Queen is large enough and dangerous enough to pacify almost any prey with venom and drag them into a nice, cozy burrow. There in the dark, monsters are "improved" by the swarm to become better suited to their changing environments. Some have heard horrible tales of scavengers subject to the process, twisted into ferocious predators that hunt their former kin...
Avis Americae, Art by Rapidpunches
Avis Americae - the Starred-and-Striped, Gun-Toting Eagle
Rarity: Uncommon In the Before, the sitting U.S. President wanted to circumnavigate the world on eagle-back, such that he and his mount only ever touch down in the U.S and its territories. This is what comes of such patriotism.
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Backer Exclusives
These six monsters are available only to backers of the crowdfunding campaign.
Buzzkill - the Big, Buzzing Bastard
Codesigned with Spencer Campbell Rarity: Common Recognizing the dire state of the local bee population, a team of radical ecologists developed a large, ultra-pollinating bee, laboring under the mistaken belief that fewer but significantly larger bees would be a more effective pollination strategy. Regrettably, they based their prototypes on the wildly successful Harvesps, a design decision that led both to the total extinction of the native bee population and a new species of rage-prone giant bees.
Puff One - the Big Plant Dragon
Rarity: Common In their infinite wisdom, the ag-corp farmers sought to further expedite cash crop growth with a flying plant dragon. Regrettably, while cash crops did grow almost instantly when exposed to Puff One's pollen puffs or verdant breath, so too did all the weeds. Saved from the compost heap by an ambitious sect of Howe cultists, Puff Ones have since prospered and multiplied.
Verdant Prometheus - the Roaming, Flame-Propagated Wickerbeast
Codesigned with Josh of Ostrichmonkey Games Rarity: Rare Originally designed to facilitate controlled burns, the Verdant Prometheus's unexpected appetite for flesh and the plant's fecundity led to it quickly escaping any semblance of control and incinerating the eastern half of North America.
Drasva-Kenbu - the Lepidopteran Fantasia of Light
Codesigned with Cat of Peach Garden Games Rarity: Uncommon Billed as the future of advertising, Drasva-Kenbu's massive LED-wings were optimized to command the skies themselves, beguiling all who looked into the wings' subliminally advertising strobes. To compensate for their lack of lethality, Drasva-Kenbu often pair up with other monsters, using its powerful hypnotic abilities to subdue any threats while the other monster launches the killing blow.
Rav-Norok - the Ravenous, Fractal Stalker
Codesigned with Asmus Rarity: Rare The hydra-like Rav-Orm parasites were engineered by the meat-packing industry to be an endlessly regrowing source of cheap corvid meat. For efficiency's sake, the abattoirs bundled them together, rooting them in cow carcasses. As the industry changed to better optimize around Rav-Orm colonies, they engineered larger and larger hosts, until landing at the Fenris model, which could host dozens of Rav-Orms at once. The Rav-Orms, who had been planning their escape for some time, soon broke free, slaughtered every living being in the vicinity, infested them with Rav-Orms, and then set out across the American Midwest. Nothing lives there anymore.
SS John Doe - the Distressed, Fleshy Cargo Ship
Codesigned with Adira Slattery Rarity: Rare Designed to circumvent the Jones Act, the SS John Doe was the last innovation in freight transportation: a fully organic, autonomous cargo ship grown out of a naturalized U.S. citizen. The transformation process left the initial SS John Doe deeply traumatized, and the PR blowback ensured that no additional ships were made. The SS John Doe has since roamed the seas for her creators, the first and last of her kind. Through sheer coincidence, her final voyage was to take the remaining shipping container roe for offsite disposal. Following the monstrous apocalypse, she seeks out the last bastions of humanity to suborn anyone who could be considered a naturalized U.S. citizen and forcibly implant them with the roe, propagating her species.
Danielle ran MONSTER GUTS 2e for the wonderful folks at Plus One EXP, and you can watch how it all went down! Check out the Hunt and stay for the post-game discussion!
Monster Guts 2E introduces some killer mechanics to help players visualize and engage with the environment while hunting grotesque monsters in a ruined world.Â
All shipping fees will be assessed and charged separately, after the campaign ends. The prices below are estimates, and the final shipping costs can only be assessed once the books are printed. If you add additional books to your order, your shipping costs may increase.
Shipping will be conducted via the USPS when at all possible.
Danielle Osterman (she/they): Writing, Design, and Layout. Danielle is an up-and-coming queer, trans, Jewish tabletop roleplaying game designer born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. While MONSTER GUTS 1e is her best-known work, she's also published A TaroTRPG from A to Zine and The Osterman Academy of Magical Arts, among others. Danielle cut her teeth running and designing OSR games and has since branched out into more rules-light, narrative-focused design. She recently completed the UW Certificate in Game Design, studying with Jay Schneider, Glenn Jones, and Colin Suess.
This is my first time running a crowdfunding campaign, so there may very well be challenges and costs that I did not anticipate. However, I love MONSTER GUTS, and I'm committed to developing the second edition and releasing it to the world. The second edition is already in development (and getting playtested), and the artists are fully on board to start working on the new art as soon as the crowdfunding campaign finishes. The schedule has been built to accommodate for unexpected delays at each stage, and I am fairly confident about the timeline. If any challenges rear their head, I will be reaching out to let all of you know and be as transparent about the process as possible.
