UPDATE: a few people have asked me already, so I'll extend the deadline for another month! yay! time is meaningless!

Hello, my monsters, anomalies, freaks, weirdos and sickos in general. Our game here, there, be monsters! has finally attained its physical form, and we're gonna have a good old game jam  to celebrate that!

For those who don’t know it, here, there, be monsters! is a rules-lite response to monster-hunting media from the monsters' point of view. It's both a love letter and a middle finger to stuff like Hellboy (and the BPRD), the SCP Foundation, the Men in Black, the World of Darkness games and the Urban Fantasy genre in general. It is an explicitly queer, antifascist and anti-capitalist game about the monstrous and the weird, in any flavor you want, not as something to be feared, but to be cherished and protected. In it you play as a diverse crew of monstrous, anomalous or just generally odd beings, fighting against those who would use, abuse or even annihilate you.

The Jam

• Put your monsters here, there, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere!
  • here, there, be monsters!’s implied world is set in the dirty and shadowy alleys of the Generic City of Urbanpolis, or something like that. This was the best way for me to grapple with the specific themes, clichés and tropes of Urban Fantasy I wanted to explore. It does, however, leave a lot of space for players to insert their own setting elements, for better or worse.
  • So, here’s what I suggest: write a setting supplement for here, there, be monsters!, which can include examples of character backgrounds, factions with possible encounters, places and what we can find there, NPC ideas, weird magical artefacts. All of those are ways of expressing and exploring your setting and, thus, the themes and ideas in it.
    • Some examples: a guide for playing it in a coastal city in Brazil; or adapting it to a Weird West setting; maybe your monsters can be in a foggy US fishing village in the 1920s, or in a generic European Fantasy dimension, or in Retro Cyberpunk Tokyo. You get the gist. Anywhere.
• Or you can ignore that suggestion and just go ahead and hack it, reskin it, give it a new paint job. Make it about something else besides monsters. Or write an adventure/mission/scenario for the original game, I'd certainly love that! Or create new mechanics. Keep something you like and change the rest. Expand on stuff you think I did wrong or that are currently underdeveloped. I’m not your boss.
• Feel free to charge for the stuff you create, but I encourage you to provide community copies as well – and please send me a copy so I can check if you’re a bigot or a cop and also FOR GIVING YOU PRIZES REASONS (see below).
• Please, try to include an accessible version of the game, like a plain text epub or html file. I will provide links below with how to make them.
• Remember: no bigots, only bigfoots. No terfism, racism, fascism, queerphobia or bigotry in general against marginalized groups is allowed. You can be as hateful as you want towards those who are undoubtly deserving of our collective hate, like nazis, billionaires and cops.
• You can certainly make a traditional game about being a cop and hunting monsters and all that. And I can certainly kick you out of here. I don’t care if your “agents” are “nice” or “complex” or “tortured” or whatever. ACAB means ACAB, and while I appreciate the complexity that can be involved in such things, I don't want this here specifically to be the place for that and risk any bootlicking being allowed.
• This is a jam for tabletop RPGs but I won’t stop you if you want to make anything else inspired by this game. On the contrary, I’d be honored and surprised. Here, there, be whatever you want!
• Please, use the community board to share ideas and resources! You can also find me on discord, I’m usually around the FKR Collective or the RPG LatAm servers, so just ping me there or something?
• If you have any questions, please reach out to me!




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Prizes!

Yes… Ha ha ha… YES!, my dear sickos! My imperial overlords at SoulMuppet are gonna help me with this and we’re gonna give FREE COUPONS for physical copies of here, there, be monsters! to a couple of randomly chosen submissions! Depending on the number of entries, we can throw in some more, I can add some digital prizes as well, and maybe some other nice assorted junk I can come up with (I’m open to suggestions).

Here are the completely arbitrary rules for the sweepstakes: you get one number for each submission, and an extra bonus number for each of the elements below that is present in your entry. At the end of the jam, I’ll give you your numbers and ask random.org or something similar for a couple of random numbers and that’s it.

Here there be stuff that give you extra chances:

• If your title or subtitle contains a pun or stupid wordplay of any kind, +1;
• If said pun/wordplay involves the original game’s title or at least any of the words “here”, “there” and/or “monsters”, +1;
• If your submission is a setting guide for here, there, be monsters!, OR if it’s an adventure/mystery/mission/scenario for it, OR if it’s a hack or reskin of here, there be monsters!, where the players play as something else than monsters, +1;
• If said setting is somehow significant for yourself and you say that in the game text, +1;
• If it contains at least 6 background examples, +1 for each 6;
• If it contains at least one faction example with 6 possible encounters, +1 for each faction;
• If it contains at least one place example with 6 things we can find there, +1 for each place;
• If it contains at least 6 NPC examples, +1 for each 6;
• If it contains at least 6 magical artefact examples, +1 for each 6;
• If it contains at least one new mechanic, +1 for each.
• If it expands on something the original game got wrong, or didn’t explore to your satisfaction, +1 for each thing.
• If you challenge me to a duel and win, +1.

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Resources:

• Here is a short SRD, or System Reference Document, or at least something close-ish to what I've seen one have. It has the basic rules summary and tips on how to adapt them, as well as design information. Please tell me if there's anything wrong or that you want further explained!
• The font used in the game title and subheadings is League Gothic; chapter headings are IM Fell; body text is Alegreya. All of them are free.
• Some places you can use to grab Public Domain or Creative Commons images to use: Rawpixel, Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr Commons. Pay attention to the image licenses.
• Here is a guide by Luke Gearing on how to create and export a plain text file using Markdown and Pandoc.
• Please anything you need feel free to reach out to me through here, or on twitter or discord or something!