Monolith
Starting on Monolith 2nd Edition
Hey folks!
It's been a while since I've done any work on Monolith. Due to other projects over the last year, I've been too busy to think much about it. Recently though, I have been wanting to write an official adventure for Monolith. That led me to thinking about my ongoing home campaign, and things I like, things I'd like to remove, and things I'd like to change. So I've started work on a 2nd edition! So what will that look like?
- The core game will stay the same. Some small elements and rules will be revisited and possibly edited, but at its core the game will still play like Cairn in space.
- I will be removing and revising some of the aspects of the game I don't feel like really jive with the core philosophy of Cairn and ItO. This means I'll be pulling out some of the "advanced weaponry" rules. I will be revisiting elements of weapons and combat, but some of those more fiddly rules should be a little more streamlined. Similarly, other sub-systems will be revisited and hopefully made a bit smoother. Augmentations will be more simplified and streamline with other subsystems for less tracking and more cohesiveness.
- Still, Monolith is going to be just slightly crunchier than Cairn. I think it's needed for sci-fi and the long form types of games I like to run. But part of this 2nd edition will be for those extra rules and crunchiness to still feel at home and appropriately fitting in the Cairn/Odd family of games.
- More backgrounds are coming (probably aiming for 20), more unique psionics, stress and panic rules (for running MoShip and other horror scenarios), more fleshed out creation tools for planets, aliens, and factions.
- Probably more! Yell at me for things you want, I'll probably at least consider it. :D
Right now, I'd love to hear feedback on things folks feel might not be working for them, or elements of the game they'd hate to see removed or changed. Part of the reason I'm posting this devlog in the forum style is so folks can chat and share their thoughts. I'd also love to include art and have a generally higher production value in 2e, so I've been thinking about paying an artist or doing a small Kickstarter to fund that. The end goal would be to have an online SRD of the rules as well as a print version folks can order via POD.
Get Monolith
Monolith
Interstellar Science-Fiction Adventure Game
| Status | Released |
| Category | Physical game |
| Author | AdamHensley |
| Genre | Role Playing |
| Tags | adventure-game, OSR, science-fantasy, Sci-fi, Tabletop role-playing game |
More posts
- Captain's Log: Monolith 2e...Ammo Rules & Damage Types!11 days ago
- Monolith now available in print from Lulu print-on-demand; price at cost.Feb 22, 2023
- Version 1.1 UpdateJan 23, 2023
- Monolith is now in Korean.Jan 23, 2023
- Monolith: Full ReleaseDec 16, 2022
- Status of updates & version 1.0Jun 21, 2022
Comments
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Looking forward to this! I find myself nodding along with a lot of your observations and those in the comments.
I'll heartily second the ask for procedures for Trade - or perhaps more broadly what a lot of CRPGs cram into the "starport bulletin board" area: bounties, cargo delivery, passenger transport, escort missions, etc. These things tend to be rather template-y and fit nicely into the procedural framework ethos you have for hex-crawls or point-craws.
The other thing that might be handy would be "Patron" missions - where a randomly generated NPC offers a randomly generated mission ("mission target, mission activity, mission location, mission reward".) You could probably tie this into an expanded Faction procedures section - so the missions roll up to the Faction's goals, etc.
Quick missions would be a great thing to add. I'll have to play around with it and see how many pages that would add.
Love Monolith, looks like the perfect "Traveller lite" game for me
Here's my thoughts:
- Agree on simplifying weapons. I think a "tag" system where you describe what the weapon does (without giving specific mechanics) might be a good middle ground. Like "slow firing, high calibre" or "armour piercing" etc.
- Very personal to me, but I'd love a bit of a guide on sketching up starship deckplans, just because I think they add a lot to placing the action in a more concrete location, particularly for the player ship where they'll be spending a lot of time
- I think some sort of advice for a narrative advancement system, as in Cairn 2e, would be great - basically, broadening the section on Talents a touch
- Personally I'd make starship combat less crunchy too - the way I run this kind of thing at the table is to make judgement calls on the fly about saves & outcomes of various actions. Something like "give another player an extra turn for 1 fatigue" leans towards the trad board gamey approach for me
- One traditional pillar of space adventure games that's missing is trading, I think something on that might be good, even if it's just a brief section about how GMs should generally judge this sort of thing
- I'd love (maybe as a supplement) a big list of starships. A bestiary would be nice too but isn't so critical as a lot of adversaries are just humans with equipment. I'd just love to launch into running a campaign and have starship encounters without having to stat up anything.
- But overall, the big thing is that I think you've got enough great stuff here that it could be fleshed out into a "full" independent rulebook - currently it's a nice concise summary/reference book that assumes you kind know what you're doing. Again, following Cairn 2e, I'd love a full sized book (or box-set!) with more flavour text, advice on game philosophy, artwork etc. Whenever I sit down and think "Traveller is a bit crunchy, I should make my own space RPG" I realise that what I want to create is pretty much just what Monolith already is!
Great feedback! And good notes on the Starship Combat, that was the biggest section I wasn't super happy with. The goal was a system in which everyone felt like they had their own role, but it got a little too crunchy, I agree.
Here's my hot take on starship combat - and starship encounters in general - I think the real trick is about designing starship _encounters_ rather than starship _procedures_. There's a bunch of standard problems with vehicle encounters: the pilot and gunner do all the work, so you invent roles for each character, but then you end up with everyone stuck doing the same action each round because it's the only sensible thing to do (often with one player quarterbacking everything), so you maybe go another level and let players move between stations dynamically, but you still end up with very few viable options, while taking more effort than a simple "take turns shooting at each other" game.
I think the core thing here is that trying to use mechanics to add depth to a simple encounter really just makes it slower and more complex, without adding real choice. Instead, the key is to make the actual encounter complex, and then depth will come naturally. And if the encounter is not complex (e.g. a duel between two ships in open space, particularly where one outpowers the other), then don't drag it out - just quickly do the damage rolls as you normally would.
So, things I would do if I wanted an interesting space combat is have multiple zones with "terrain" (asteroids, opaque gas, moons to hide behind, maybe weird warp field corruption if that fits the setting), have more moving pieces (maybe even, as in the Elite Dangerous RPG, give each player their own ship!), multiple partially conflicting goals (save the civilian ships, grab the ancient artefacts, don't let the pirates escape!), and multiple moving parts (boarding parties, cyberwarfare, multiple enemies etc). And if the scene isn't big enough to justify that sort of thing, then just roll through it quickly. That's the type of advice I would write - maybe even using something like the Cairn 2e quick map generation thing with throwing dice on a piece of paper, to generate quick and fun battlemaps for space combat.
Wow this is some good stuff and a lot of amazing ideas to chew on! Thanks for sharing those thoughts.
Great news! If you do POD, please consider Lulu or Amazon as an option. I prefer them to DTRPG for printed books.
Absolutely! I do Lulu now, but it would cool to expand those offerings.
This is soo exciting Adam, i've been running a campaign for the last year using Monolith and its been great, ill gather my thoughts and also hit up my players to see if they have any feedback. The last feedback I got from them is more ship battles and more dice rolling XD
I have implemented a "deprived state" after gaining 3 or more fatigues (from eco mofos) just to increase the cost of gaining fatigues, we'll see how that goes.
I’d love to hear what your players have to say! The core game will stay the same, but right now a lot of the ship and travel mechanics are under scrutiny for rework! Any feedback on things folks like, or find lacking, would be helpful as I pinpoint what to preserve vs change.
You did a great job taking Cairn and making it Sci Fi. I look forward to 2nd edition. I also look forward to an official adventure that demonstrates the tone and setting that you consider appropriate for the system. Thanks for your work.
Finally! And I see that you've already mentioned things I wanted to suggest, such as simplification of "advanced weaponry", rules for more compatibility with Mothership and more tools for content generation. Maybe also expand on some optional sections from 1e, like "Tags"?
Other than that, it's really hard for me to suggest anything else. Monolith is already such a nice little, yet tight package. I'm very excited to see what 2e will look like!
P.S. Oh, and for quality of life - please add bookmarks to the PDF! This is a small detail, but it can greatly improve the experience of using the book.
Good calls! Yes 2e will definitely have bookmarking and hyperlinking galore. Right now I'm in the midst of thinking through the combat details, and getting that level of crunch right without being too much or too "lite". Sci-fi is a little trickier in that regard compared to fantasy.
And I've also been thinking about expanding the idea of tags. I'm curious what you like about the idea of tags. Skills are a tough nut in OSR games, especially Cairn-hacks. But I think I'm leaning towards a route where tags are listed for leverage, but any list I include will be considered "non exhaustive" so it doesn't come across as a list of limitations, ya know? That way any downtime training for advancing your character can include acquiring new knowledge, skills and technical expertise, etc. in the form of tags, without it being too fiddly and something like a modifier. More like additional fictional leverage. Still massaging that idea, though.
Yeah, "tags" seems more like a narrative idea, best suited for foreground growth. You may check Block, Dodge, Parry to see how it can be implemented in Cairn hack. Some of those are more like modifiers, but some are really interesting:
https://lars1808.github.io/Block-Dodge-Parry-SRD/careers-and-skills
Foreground Growth is exactly how I think of them, too. Like learning how to hotwire a speeder, or picking up some computer hacking skills, those are sort of fictional permissions you either have or don't. Then you can simply do those things, given the right circumstances and tools, and it's simply a matter of introducing an appropriate Save whenever risk or danger is involved.
Consider itchfunding. It’s not quite Kickstarter level intensive, which is both good and bad. Also, I would love a print version of even higher quality than POD.
This is a great idea and something I will have to look into more.
Huzzah! I love Monolith 1e, have the printed book edition! But excited to see this, and will be happily following its progress. As a solo only player, I don't tend to run pre-written adventures, so would love to see just good amounts of GM tables, guides, oracles, world-building, etc. Procedures that are solo friendly. Oohhh, perhaps a simplified ItO skirmish rule, to play out firefights with some tactical!
This is all great feedback and exactly the kind of insight I was hoping to get! Thanks for sharing, I will definitely be taking all of this into consideration.