Open Brainstorm: What Would You Want in a Godzilla/Kaiju-Based Roleplay?

[Capone]

So during my time on E, I've seen people try to put together all kinds of giant robot/monster style games, but it never seemed to work out from what I could gather. It's no surprise, really, as a game focused on monsters engaged in a colossal wrestling match where major cities are the arena is... a tough thing to sort out player roles from.

Following my watch of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, however, I've been encouraged to go back and rewatch some of the Showa and Heisei era flicks. It's in those latter that I realized such a game might be possible, but I didn't want to go about setting it up as GM or anything quite yet. In part because I dunno if GMing is something I got in me anymore, and in part because I'd like to see what others think on the matter.

Return of Godzilla (released Stateside as Godzilla 1985) was a soft-reboot that wiped the entirety of the Showa era from continuity, forming a new continuity where the films were semi-episodic. So while Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah was a bit of a return to the "sillier" era that Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Biolante were stepping away from, the Mecha-Ghidorah technology would later be used as the basis for Mechagodzilla. Similarly, Godzilla and Mothra: Battle for the Earth would set the stage for Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla. The psychic of Biolante would be a reoccurring character throughout, as would others playing as government characters.

To this end, I think the best option would be to focus the roleplay on the human characters that would be involved in studying the kaiju, engineers working on the weaponry to counteract the kaiju, the pilots of the machinery, politicians, etc. This means the primary focus would be everything in between the monster attacks, rather than the monster attacks themselves.

Well, there's plenty for pilots to do, at least.

If players were to do a game together, then I think the best option would be their own Alternate Universe. Godzilla and a few other monsters will have already emerged, with details largely inspired from Godzilla and Return of Godzilla rather than taking place in any of the specific continuities. This would free players up to determine not only which Kaiju would later appear, but how they appear and how the individual factions choose to deal with them. Perhaps most of all, rather than keeping everything centralized to Japan, a global force created by the United Nations would have formed. This would allow our characters to come from multiple countries, for their to be leadership roles in what would inevitably be called G-Force, the organization dedicated to the study and defeat of Kaiju, and then the politics of the different countries and their personal interests.

I thought I had more to say on the matter, but I suppose that's really all that needs to be said for now. Anyone else got thoughts? How would you approach a Godzilla-themed group story?

[Mathim]

I had an idea for what would make for a pretty interesting TV series. It takes inspiration from a lot of the lore but quite a bit of it comes from Godzilla: Final Wars.

A group of random individuals are brought together by some supernatural means to a base that monitors all (or most) Kaiju that are being quarantined on Monster Island, where they are kept from swimming away by some engineered giant amoebas surrounding the island that pen them in with massive amounts of bioelectricity, and are kept from flying away by high-tech weather satellites that freeze them if they try to go up too high or far (inspired by the movie Son of Godzilla). The few Kaiju that aren't quarantined on the island (things like Hedorah the Smog Monster or Ebirah the Giant Crab) require the team to go out and deal with them in a few different ways:
1. Jet Jaguar. One of the team finds a suit and realizes it grows them into a giant, Ultraman-esque warrior.
2. Mechagodzilla. Requires a group to pilot it like the Megazord.
3. Mental link. One or more of the monsters can be mentally merged with and controlled by one or more members of the team (a bit like a remote version of how it works in Pacific Rim except it doesn't have to involve drift compatibility).

It could be that benevolent aliens or extra-dimensional beings have left all of that there for the humans to utilize and keep the monsters from obliterating their world. But they may have either been corrupted by another group of aliens or just have ulterior motives and are using the humans for some nefarious purpose. Some of the humans in the group are revealed to be gifted mutants, a result of distant ancestors being bred with by aliens.

That's a rough concept but I think it would be workable to include at least some of that in there.

[Capone]

I'm not sure I'm fond of having a Monster Island like the Showa films. In addition, by focusing so much on the fights you encourage the story to keep focusing on the monster mash which limits the use of non-combatant types.

I might put together a request thread anyway, but I imagine the best place to start would be the aftermath of a recent attack. That way you have the soldiers recovering, scientists gathering biological materials, politicians dealing with the fallout, and proposals for competing counter-measure projects (so say one branch wants to launch MOGUERA while another Mecha-Godzilla).

I just feel skeptical that you'd be able to get everyone on a level that they'd be willing to fill out the necessary roles and work together in what will be a more political roleplay where the monster mash will be uncommon.

[ReijiTabibito]

Here's another question: would we just be limiting ourselves to the Kaiju from Toho?  While there's not a lot of other Kaiju series out there, I can think of at least one...