M(A)NSTERS: A Horror Parody Game with Political Undertones
In Mansters, the world you inhabit is our all-too-familiar modern-day Earth, but the skin you inhabit is very strange indeed. You are a monster, a creature of dread and horror, taken straight from grim fairy tales, urban legends and ancient myth… but you are a loser. That is, that monster is not quite how it was in the stories. To put it simply….you suck. In other words you are a modern monster, with modern problems, modern insecurities and coping mechanisms, and some very real, very modern grievances with modern society.
This marriage of the mystical and the mundane is what Mansters is all about. Mansters is about Dracula with a mid-unlife crisis. It is about Frankenstein’s Monster exploring his father issues in therapy. It is about a Werewolf being insecure that his howl is not wolflike enough. And it is about all of these monsters, who once struck so much fear into the hearts of men, women and children, finally finding out that they have been replaced by other monsters. By other… Man-sters.
And they are truly… Man-strous.
Mansters is a tabletop roleplaying game that uses caustic wit and humor to reveal certain dark blots of the real world. At the same time, it shows how these dissonant aspects of our daily life are perceived by our hero-protagonists, which are none other than the monsters!
Throughout the game there may be instances where the players will come face-to-face with situations that they may be going through in their real lives. (We are not seeking to burden our player with reminders of the problems of day-to-day life in their leisure time. On the contrary, we seek to present some of these problems in a pleasant and entertaining way, pushing these fantastical characters to find solutions for them). And who knows, maybe with this approach, the players will be motivated to try to confront similar situations in their lives in the same calm and humorous way.