JourneyMon: Monster Trainer Roleplaying

Core Rulebook by Imogen Gingell

Take one more step to crest the rise, and look towards the horizon: out there, in new and fantastical lands, your next big adventure awaits!

JourneyMon is a tabletop roleplaying game about monster trainers on a journey of discovery. You and your friends will meet other trainers, befriend and recruit new monsters, and pit your team against wild and villainous monsters.

In this book you’ll find all you need to play a one-shot game or longterm campaign of JourneyMon, including:

• Nine unique Trainer Classes for your character, including the Ace, the Rival, the Performer and the Youngster.
• Dozens of tables and roleplaying prompts to help you create new locations, monsters and trainers every “episode” of play.
• Playbooks for four kinds of villainous team: the Criminals, the Empowered, the Hunters and the Ideologues.
• 67 unique Powers for your monsters to use in battle.

What is JourneyMon?

At it’s heart, JourneyMon is a game of…

Improvised, Episodic, World Building … With Monsters!

Zero Prep: JourneyMon requires no preparation ahead of your game sessions. Instead, you use a set of randomization tools at the start of each session to generate the building blocks of a new story, including its location and a “monster of the week.” You won’t know where you’re going until you sit down at the table! The whole table gets involved with turning the generated prompts into a new part of the world, then populating that region with allies and enemies.

Episodic: Each session of JourneyMon is structured like an episode of a TV show. The story unfolds over a few hours of play, then wraps up tidily at the end. However, the villains might still be working in the background on their grand plans, culminating in an exciting season finale! JourneyMon’s episodic structure is great for one shot games as well as extended campaign play. A “campaign” of JourneyMon played over multiple sessions is called a Journey.

World Building: With each Episode of JourneyMon you play, you’ll create and explore new locations, meet new people, fall afoul of new villains, and discover new monsters. You are encouraged to start from scratch, so that each game you’ll collaboratively build up more and more of the world your characters inhabit.

…With Monsters! Monsters big and small inhabit the world. They are our fast friends and companions on the road ahead… but they can also be wild and dangerous. What’s more, the villains have companions of their own! Monster battles are inevitable on your journey, but the partnership between monster and trainer means you’ll never have to fight alone.

Trainer Classes

Every player trainer in JourneyMon adopts a “Trainer Class” to represent their drive to travel with monsters, and to the shape the way their story unfolds over each Episode. Each Trainer Class comes with a playbook to serve as a record of a trainer’s relationships, unique game mechanics, and the ways they can grow. 

he base JourneyMon game features nine iconic player trainer classes:

• The Ace: You’ve always wanted to be a monster trainer, and now you have the chance to show the world what you’re made of!
• The Rival: You’re someone to look up to and strive to beat… and you make sure everyone knows it.
• The Researcher: Science is amazing, and you always have a useful fact or gadget ready to go!
• The Caretaker: You’re always looking out for your companions, and you show your friendship with delicious treats.
• The Heir: You are a representative of a tradition or institution, and you have a special affinity with one type of monster.
• The Performer: You’re going to be a star, and what better way to cultivate an audience than to travel with monsters?
• The Oldtimer: You’ve journeyed with monsters before, and your experience is your greatest asset.
• The Youngster: You probably shouldn’t have come on the Journey yet, but here you are!
• The Mascot: You travel alongside trainers despite being a monster yourself. Your shapeshifting powers are the key to battle!

Monsters are perhaps the most important aspect of any JourneyMon game. They’re our fast friends and travelling companions, but their supernatural powers make them dangerous and unpredictable—especially in the hands of villains.

Player trainers usually begin a game of JourneyMon with one monster companion, but have a chance to recruit new monsters for their team in the Epilogue of every Episode (session of play).

Monster & Battles

There is no fixed set of monsters in JourneyMon, so the possibilities are limitless—a huge part of the game is collaboratively populating your world with your own unique roster! Monsters can be generated by players during an Episode’s Prologue as they discuss the “monster of the week”, or they might spring into existence to satisfy a good pun. Either way, you’ll soon have your very own Encyclopedia Monstorum.

Types

All monsters have one of nine different Types: Fire, Nature, Water, Mind, Matter, Mayhem, Fey, Heroic or Machine. As is traditional for this genre, monster types have advantages against some types and disadvantages against others. The “type chart” works out as a nested rock-paper-scissors like this:

Battles

Many of the video games that inspired JourneyMon feature a tactical, turn-based battle system with an emphasis on choosing monsters and powers with an advantage against their adversaries. JourneyMon merges this framework with the narrative approach to its other scenes for a quick-flowing system that rewards tactical play. In particular, JourneyMon battles have a focus on engaging the environment in a way that mimics depictions of monster battles in cartoons. The key to that approach is a sketched “Arena” with “Fields” representing the area’s major environmental elements. Even players can get involved in building the scene: if you need a sprinkler system to soak a rock-solid Matter-type monster, your trainer can find one with the “Explore” trainer move!

Monster Powers

In JourneyMon, each monster has a suite of common and show-stopper powers specific to their type. These monster powers engage the Arena and Fields system without any expectations of using miniatures on grids. However, if you prefer faster battles that don’t stray from JourneyMon’s narrative foundations, you can also run simple “Quick Battles” to play with more freeform action.

JourneyMon: Monster Trainer Roleplaying is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

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