How to kaiju movie?

[Drakevarg]

This has been a conundrum at the back of my mind for... years now, really. Thing is, I really like monster movies. A big part of why I stick to D&D/Pathfinder despite other systems generally fitting my preferred tone better is because it's got no shortage of monsters and means by which to hit them. But thing is, sometimes the monster movie is about wearing down the monster/finding its weakness, and sometimes it's just about surviving the encounter. Basically every attempt by people to directly fight Godzilla fails, for instance, and only "drop it down a hole until the next movie" or "throw a second monster at the problem" really works with any kind of reliability.

And frankly, I've never really been able to think up a good way to integrate that with TTRPG storytelling. If you're starting from the perspective "if you try to directly combat this threat, you will lose," then most of the time the story is just about trying to make sure the threat never emerges to begin with. Cosmic horror 101. But if you slam the door in the cosmic horror's face, I don't get my monster movie. But I don't want to just relegate the players to the background while I try to describe a monster movie to them, I want it to remain an actual game. I also don't want to contrive some way for them to successfully punch the monster in the face, since that would kind of undermine the whole idea.

So I'm left at an impasse. Can't give the players power (which isn't the same thing as agency) over the situation, but can't leave them mere witnesses either. Best I can think of is to give the players some other objective they have to deal with inside the monster's stomping grounds and just periodically have to deal with a building being ripped in half a few meters away from them. Which isn't the worst idea, but it feels fairly limited in its utility. So I wanted to ask around about some other potential approaches.

[BRC]

I did a Kaiju Fight once with mixed success, but I had to go pretty far outside D&D to do it, basically whipping up a mini-RPG of my own with each PC controlling a different force fighting the monster (A Battleship, a group of mages, a giant but not kaiju-sized robot with a Water Walk spell harassing it) each with a few moves to employ against different parts of the Kaiju, with the end goal being to punch enough of a hole in it that the PC's could get in and plant a bomb inside the thing.


That doesn't really help answer your question, but a real answer would split in a few ways


1) Coordinating and Organizing larger groups. Evacuating people, commanding artillery, ect.

2) Preparing the ground, setting up kaiju-sized pitfalls and caltrops and the like.

3) Climbing the Kaiju shadow of the collosus style until you can get somewhere it will actually feel you.

[LibraryOgre]

You might also borrow from Clvoerfield, a bit... the kaiju sheds smaller monsters, which CAN be meaningfully combated, while the kaiju itself serves more as a setting hazard. However, there's a McGuffin which can be used against this threat, but won't function again for a thousand years or whatever, which the kaiju reawakens.

Then, in ten levels, you have the kaiju awake AGAIN, way off schedule, but now the PCs can stand up to it.

[Drakevarg]

You might also borrow from Clvoerfield, a bit... the kaiju sheds smaller monsters, which CAN be meaningfully combated, while the kaiju itself serves more as a setting hazard. However, there's a McGuffin which can be used against this threat, but won't function again for a thousand years or whatever, which the kaiju reawakens.

This was more-or-less my plan with my last effort to introduce something like this to a campaign, but sadly that campaign suffered a terminal case of "entire party moving out of town simultaneously" and so I never got around to it.

Then, in ten levels, you have the kaiju awake AGAIN, way off schedule, but now the PCs can stand up to it.

This, however, was never in the cards. It's more like the 3.5 Elder Evils where the true threat doesn't even have a healthbar and the best you get is maybe fighting some kind of proxy-creature. But that did get me to remember Elder Evils was a thing, I should re-read that for some ideas.

[Pauly]

I think D&D’s damage model of everything is at full effect as long as they have 1 HP left is a bad model for a kaiju fight.

I would draw inspiration from the old Steve Jackson Games wargame of O.G.R.E. where the big meanie takes incremental damage. For example if you do damage to the legs at certain thresholds the kaiju’s movement is reduced, as you damage it’s arms certain attack modes become compromised and so on.
For a kaiju I would allow it to retreat and heal up. It isn’t going to stand there and let itself be nickeled and dimed to death.

The aim isn’t to defeat the monster, so much as to reduce it’s capabilities enough that the party can achieve their aims. For example if the kaiju is heading to the he t city they may want to reduce it’s movement enough so that the city can be safely evacuated.

I would also let the kaiju have an ultimate weapon, e.g. Godzilla’s atomic breath, but run it with a recharge timer and telegraph when it’s about to be used, maybe 3 or 5 turns worth of set up which will give the party a chance to avoid getting splattered by it.

[Telok]

1. Use a system that natively handles massive size differences, long distance perception, and building/scenery destruction in a reasonable mechanical manner. Or one that does not do it at all and does everything narratively. Don't go for half measures that'll just break or go weird at the worst possible moment.

2. Use a system that gives PCs military commands, battleships, mecha, etc., with the expectation and design that all characters can use them. The fewer new rules & big stuff you have to make up and balance on the fly, the happier you'll be.

3. Kaiju take hours to get places. Except for a (very) few fliers the PCs should relatively easily track and be able to plan for kaiju. They have time to dig giant pits, move hundreds of tanks, construct giant electrodes, etc. They're also pretty predictable and will fight other kaiju almost as soon as they sense them.

4. The crazy mad science thing will work. But only if it's the second try after a fix, done after the normal response of "big booms" has failed, or there was some crazy stunt needed to get something (sample from the kaiju, heroic sacrifice, get the MacGuffin out from the real bad guys).

5. The D&D tarrasque (all editions) is not a kaiju.

[stoutstien]

It's a lot easier to introduce this type of trope in systems that don't necessarily have the promise that the PCs are so far above the normal curve that they can assume they can use combat as a primary/fall back strategy for anything with a statblock.
Not necessarily on the scale of Kaiju but I've used the faction system from WWN to represent giants that are large enough to cause serious concern if they get near settlements.

[Spamotron]

Pathfinder 2E had a Kaiju encounter in one of it's Adventure Paths. They used the environmental hazard/trap rules. I assume you use 1E but it still could be useful inspiration

Collapsing Structure (Mogaru)

Mogaru's Breath

Quaking Footfalls

Swatting Tail

[King of Nowhere]

I had a villain (not kaiju, although she summoned colossal critters at will as a free action) that was far too powerful to be approached.
When she revealed herself and attacked a city, she made a beeline for a strategic objective, and the party did not interact with her. They were instead moving around the swarmed city chasing other objectives, like "save your friends", "save a bunch of civilians", "rescue relevant research data from the university", "persuade the leadership to evacuate instead of fighting". Was a good mission.
However, the final goal of the campaign was to gather power to fight the villain. Which required absorbing the essence of a dead god and researching several ad hoc spells, but still. While the villain was immensely powerful ("mop the floor with 20th level parties" kind of powerful) she was ultimately designed so that power and preparation could overwhelm her

[Vahnavoi]

You have played hide and seek as a kid, yes?

Because that's what you want to do as the core of a kaiju game. If the monster sees you, you have to run. If you don't manage to run and the monster catches you, you're done.

This is infinitely easier to do as live-action play where one of the players is the monster. At the tabletop, you have to do some thinking of how to model players moving around and hiding. For a game supplement that does this reasonably well in a D&D-like context, there the God that Crawls, from Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Some general pointers for how to do this in a D&D-style game:

1) characters are low level - they have stuff they can do, but not enough to kill or stop the monster. Fighting is about buying time for someone else to get away, not ending the threat.
2) pay attention to personality and behaviour of the monster. Since the monster is one of the main characters, it can't be just a dumb sack of hitpoints that shows up to fight and doesn't do anything else before everyone is dead. Focus on where it's moving, how it's moving, why it's moving, especially anything that could divert its attention from the player characters.
3) pay attention to motivations of player characters. A kaiju typically isn't something you fight for money and experience, you don't go it. Instead, it's a natural disaster that comes to you. So player characters ought to be trying to survive, to protect their friends and family, to keep their belongings from harm, etc.. Aim where it hurts: if your players are the kind to grub coins and magic trinkets, the monster ought to be something that threatens to take them away. Bring in the colossal rust monsters, disenchanter beasts and clockwork horrors!
4) as with, you know, hide and seek, plot armor has no place in a good kaiju game. If players goof up, they really ought to suffer the consequences.

[Easy e]

If you think of the human elements of a Kaiju movie, it is basically a disaster/survival horror genre with the Kaiju being part of the elements you survive against. You do not fight the Kaiju, you survive it.

Therefore, you will need to use similar tropes to a disaster movie. Environmental danger, resource management, degradation rather than enhancement, everything the players do has to come at a cost, and choices should be choose the best of the worst. The goal is simply to survive with your sanity intact.

The majority of the time the Humans are completing side quests like go here, help these people escape, get to the chopper, find the temple, etc. They do not try to directly engage with the Kaiju unless as a distraction for one of their side quests. Instead, the enemies are other humans and/or smaller beasties.

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Now, there is a different side of the genre where the Humans are organizing and combating the Kaiju ala Pacific Rim, Ultraman, Power Rangers, etc. In that case, it is just a Mecha RPG but with the enemy being big monsters. That is more akin to a fighting/combat heavy game or a Monster of the Week style game where you are finding the monsters weakness this week and dealing with it.

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Not really sure which of the two "genres" of Kaiju you are after. I would prefer to play Option 1, but I like horror games. :)

[Drakevarg]

Not really sure which of the two "genres" of Kaiju you are after. I would prefer to play Option 1, but I like horror games. :)

Very much the first one. The second is just normal monster fights but scaled up.

[SimonMoon6]

I think the agency issue when you can't actually hope to defeat the monster can still come into play in certain kind of combat situations (without bringing Mothra in to fight the monster for you). I think the idea would involve something like still not being able to cause hit point damage to the monster but instead being able to cause damage to the monster's morale. If you can discourage the monster strongly enough, he may move in a different direction and possibly even leave the city.

This sort of thing would involve the PCs possibly being military people using their limited resources to set up areas where tanks and missiles can attack the monster, but if used without a reasonable strategy, may not be sufficient. The map hazards (the things in the city) may have to be used as well, like luring the monster into power lines that shock him and discourage him even more.

Or, on the other hand, the PCs could be scientists who have to actively seek out the monster or its habitat to find out information about it that can then be used to create a weapon of some sort that could be used to damage the monster's morale even more (or even kill the monster... Godzilla was actually killed off in the first Godzilla movie by such a weapon).

Or PCs could play more of a support role, trying to save as many lives as possible by dealing with the human elements instead. Evacuating people to the right areas, keeping power supplied to the right areas, etc. This might make for a better boardgame than RPG though.

However, the way I always envisioned running a kaiju campaign was this: every player controls a monster and a human PC. The human and the monster have some connection; possibly the human can summon the monster (like summoning Mothra or summoning Godzilla when he's the good guy) or possibly the human turns into a monster (like, um, maybe Rampage? but with more control). And the humans have friends, family, and/or acquaintances that they need to keep alive. So, even when the monsters start fighting, there are stakes on a human level. You have to lure the monster to a different part of the city so he doesn't attack the building where your wife is working in her job as a reporter, for example. But trying to be clever in a fight might leave you more vulnerable to attack. And so forth. And your human character might be doing similar things while the monsters are fighting.

However, I think this mostly means either designing a game from scratch or being willing to wing things a little bit more than is typical in a lot of RPGs.