A Monster's Tail (Quickstart)
A downloadable game
A Monster's Tail is a Powered by the Apocalypse TTRPG inspired by games such as Pokemon, Dragon Warrior Monster, Digimon and other games in the Monster Catching genre of RPGs.
What's in the Quickstart?
- The Rules
- All the Basic Moves and Mechanics needed to run the basic game
- Rules for Character creation as well as Conditions and Status Effects
- The Eight Core Playbooks
- The Captain: An aspiring up and comer, the community has high hopes for them and higher job priorities for them to take care of before they go anywhere close to the top.
- The Champion: They want to be the best, like no one ever was. Battling Gyms and other Trainers, they're aiming to become the number one Trainer in all the Region!
- The Doctor: Everyone, including Genmon, get scrapes and bruises from time to time and Doctors are there to patch them up. Whether it be in a Town or in the Wilds, Doctors are always looking for more Patients to expand their practice.
- The Idol: Performers who know how to incorporate Genmon into their Routines, they've got a fan base and they're going to show the Region there's more to Genmon than just battling! You can dress them up too!
- The Professor: The academics of the Genmon World, Professors study oddities both of the Region and of Genmon themselves.
- The Mystic: Some can tap into the strange powers of the world and Genmon, even coaxing it out of themselves. Mystics have a deep connection to the Wilds
- The Smith: People still have to make things in the Genmon world and Smiths are happy to do it. From making potions to devices to capture Genmon, the Smith is a handy person to have around.
- The Transfer: A visitor from another region, they may have some skills but can they defeat their biggest foe? Culture shock.
- 30 Genmon
- Includes all for Starter Genmon and their second stage Evolutions
- Rules on Type Strength/Weaknesses
- Rules on Genmon Natures and Types - A PDF for the GM with helpful tools to run a session
- A character sheet for Players
What isn't in the Quickstart but will be in the full releas
- - The Journey Finales, the end of a Trainer's journey across their Region
- - 70 more Genmon!
- - Full GM rules for running and operating a game of A Monster's Tail
- - Two more Playbooks, the Ranger and the Invigorated
- - The full Hayle Region, a pre-packaged region to run out of the box
Now with an AP!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Final Quickstart UpdateJun 16, 2024
- A Monster's Tail is Funded!Mar 26, 2024
- Two Week Mark! The Last Push!Mar 05, 2024
- Halfway There!Feb 24, 2024
- The Kickstarter is Live!Feb 21, 2024
- GM and Player Cheat Sheets now AvailableFeb 18, 2024
- The Quickstart is Live!Feb 17, 2024
- The Pre-Launch Page is up!!Feb 03, 2024
Comments
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Hey guys! My tabletop group has been using the system for our Pokemon game and its been great! We'll definitely all be buying copies once it full releases!! We had a few questions that came up during play and were hoping you could help answer!
1) How are Reputations/stats defined and what does each one represent? Going through the book there's cases where they get case uses for Basic Moves (Confidence being used for Convince to appeal to passions etc) but no actual definition of what the stat alone represents.
2) Gear points are mentioned, but then never extrapolated on in the guide. Is this something intended for the full release that just accidentally got left in the Quickstart guide? Should we ignore it until the full-release?
Again, thank you for making such a fun system and can't wait for the book. Thanks guys!!
Really glad to hear you're enjoying the game!! Tell your players thank you as well!
1 - Reputation explanations were something cut from the free PDF but they will be in the full game. The PDF went much bigger than we were expecting, but I can assure you (because I just checked because I have a terrible memory) that the Reputations are explained in detail in the full product. It will, in fact, be the very first thing explained in Chapter 3: Character Creation.
2- Gear is explained in the PDF however. Gear Points (and how you can gain them) can be found under the Travel Mechanics, specifically the Move Gear Up (on page 26 of the PDF), and what Gear is, and how it's used, can be found on Page 24 and 25. The entire Gear List however is not in the PDF but will be in the final product. This was, once again, cut for brevity of the free version of the game.
We expect to have the PDF out to backers at the end of this month. Our artists have December and January off for holidays, family, and the like, but we'll be back swinging with art in the new year. We're aiming for a PDF release by Fall of next year to everyone on Itch and Drivethru, and a physical release to backers in Winter as per Kickstarter obligations. We will then be eying Print on Demand over at DrivethruRPG in 2026 if we can meet all of those goals.
And the likelihood is solid, given that we've been ahead of schedule for our goals this year.
I'll let my fellow players know you said thank you!! Thank you for the response and tentative schedule, we'll keep an eye out for the book next year! In the meantime, will there be any updates to the quickstart guide for those of us that have to wait until next Fall to purchase the PDF? Since we didn't have the reputation explanations, we sorta just made up our own definitions based on context clues but I'm not confident we got them all that correct 🤣 Thanks again for the response, and you guys have a good holiday season!!!
The only update to the Quickstart will be some copyediting stuff, as far as we have planned. We'll talk over whatever else we feel like we might need to add but I can't make any promises, commitments, or otherwise on that end.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention - best way to get direct answers, and help with what's not in the Quickstart, is to join our Discord. Pretty active, especially for A Monster's Tail.
My taste for monster catching games have been reignited recently, and i've been searching some inspiration for my own projects. Seems like this puts 1 plus 1 together. Now, i'm personally not a fan of PBTA, i usually think it tends to make characters that are too similar to one another. I tend to compare playbooks with slightly different shaped cookie cutters... ¡But it's perfect for trainers! Especially because you have actually taken the effort of making differences inbetween the playbooks, which is something i haven't seen yet in the PBTA scene. Keep up the good work.
Pledged! I have a few questions, is it easy to convert the game's genmon to pokemon stats? Are you planning allowing a Print On Demand through drivethruRPG? Looks amazing. Thanks!
Thanks for backing!!
To answer your first question: Yes. It is incredibly easy to convert the game to using Pokemon. The only issue you might run into is Immunities such as Dark being Immune to Psychic but we're confident it can work. The original Playtest actually used Pokemon. We simply ignored the Immunity Rule and gave a harsher penalty for rolls against what you'd otherwise be Immune to.
Second: We don't have plans for print on demand yet but if and when we do we'll be sure to announce it. We don't currently have our company set up on Drivethru which is the first hurdle but we plan to in the near future. Once we've got that worked out, we'll be looking into doing Print on Demand for all our content up on that platform.
I'd like to give you an update. As we've recently set up a DriveThruRPG store, we will be getting this to Print On Demand there when we're able.
The Idol Journey seems to be the most complex out of all of the beta playbooks, and has fairly inconsistent wording. Could you clarify how the Audience Reputation mechanic is supposed to work?
The Idol is probably the most complex of the eight but we've smoothed it down a lot. Can you tell me exactly what you're not understanding on The Idol's Audience Reputation mechanic you're having trouble with?
Whether the maximum for the audience rep track starts at their Technique, or the level of reputation in that track (which is set at 3 in the beta), and if the size of the track increases as the Idol wins trophies.
Also does the Idol gain perks and clear their companionship drives upon gaining their trophies like the other journeys?
The maximum for the Audience track is 3, regardless of Reputation. That's why there are only three pips for the Audience Track.
Yes, the Idol does reset their Drives after a Performance. You no longer get Perks when successfully hitting a Benchmark, that somehow remained from an older version.
Hi. This game seems awesome.
Can i play it with just 1 player + 1 GM?
It's not really designed for that at the base game. Maybe for a splatbook or something.
Can you expand a little on what you mean by it not being designed for that?
I've backed with the full intention of playing exclusively solo with Mythic GM Emulator. Why wouldn't a person be able to play this with 1 player and 1 GM?
Is it primarily a balance issue, or is there a mechanical reason?
I just mean that we didn't write it to be played solo. We wrote it with the idea to be played with 3-4 players. I'm sure you could play it solo with some tweaks and using Mythic. Also, thanks for backing!
Hey, are you still working on this? Any plans for a physical edition? It looks so promising and I'm beyond excited, I was looking for a way to ditch Pokerole and clearly you're it! Good luck on your work! <3
Hey! Thanks for the interest!
We are, indeed, still working on this! We have plans on doing a Kickstarter by the end of the year!! You can keep updated on our progress either here on Itch by following our page or following us on Twitter and Bluesky, here are the links to that, it's the best way to keep abreast of what we're doing, any art we put out or other news.
https://twitter.com/FivePointsGames
@fivepointsgames.bsky.social
We are planning on a physical copy through the kickstarter as well! Thanks again for the interest and the kind words! We're excited to show you what we've got for the future! Lots of plans for the game, splatbooks and additional content are in the works.
Love it, super excited, will check it out!
Can this be played solo?
It isn't designed for solo-play.
You can probably play the game solo with the assistance of Mythic or some other DM-simulating oracle.
I wouldn't know, I don't know that system to say if it would work or well.
Word search for Genmon Journeys in the beta doc - it's still in there a few times.
Really excited for this!
That was it's old working name. I'll have to fix it when I'm able. Thanks for the catch!