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Once again, the kids royally screwed things up on a Sunday.  After another service by a familiar missionary, the kids decided to meet up with him in the skate park to “talk.”  Apparently “talk” now means “steal a dude’s guitar and cheese it.”  The kids managed to get away, but they haven’t gotten the guitar back to the halfway house yet.

In the course of the action, though, they kids made a new friend.  He goes by the name of Nele, and his past is a tad confusing.  He says a lot of stuff about being a super soldier, but seems to lack any knowledge of everyday things, such as soda and how to get a rag wet.

Additionally, the UFO enthusiasts (still on the hunt for the bizarre flaming streak that shot out from the Cineplex a week ago) have seen related activity somewhere around the Halfway House.  Frieda brought in the police to scare them off, but they always seem to come back for more.

Also, that new attendant seems more focused on his bitchin’ wristwatch than he does on any of the kids.  If you get too close to him, his alarm goes off and he has somewhere to be.  Weird, huh?

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The kids have found out that their monsters will be sacrificed as tribute to some kind of ultimate monster.  Their only lead on the case was pulled through a black hole into another plane of existence.  Fortunately, the kids stumbled across five bizarre and unique postcards from their recent contact Jack Blackguard alluding to various machinations of the cult.

One of the postcards mentions Sunny Vale, CA, a place apparently hounded by a team of monster fighting superheroes who call themselves the Sentai Rangers.  As it happens, Sunny Vale isn’t more than a 3-hour drive from San Frandiago, so after a few “air-tight” alibis and managing to coerce someone with a car to take them there, the kids are off!

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School’s out for kids at Casimir Polaski Junior High in the city of San Frandiago, CA!  As the kids are leaving school and getting ready for summer, they receive some bizarre messages scrawled on the walls of their school.  While discussing various summer plans at the local Dairy Queen (apparently unfazed by the bizarre graffiti) the kids contacted by Jack Blackguard, a mysterious young boy who has some urgent news to relay to them.  After a meeting at the museum and a few quick fights, the kids find out they are now on a journey to save the world from an evil cult.

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So, Sunday has rolled around again in the halfway home.  The kids are awakened again for more boring Sunday service, though following their experiences in the last week, they are eager to see who’s going to give the lesson.  Much to their surprise, they hear a familiar guitar being tuned up downstairs.  Elder Dane is, in fact, back.

After the very unusual service, George hits Elder Dane with a bunch of questions, and Elder Dane offers to answer them at the Terje Haakonsen Skate Park later in the day.  If only the kids weren’t still grounded. . .

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Picture in your mind a far off time ago:  Before the AP Site,  the Podcast, and even back before this group existed.  Way, way back in December of 2010, Sean and I were playing Minecraft together, and he told me that he was interested in playing Monsters and Other Childish things.  At the time, I was running the Road Trip campaign for my friends nearby, and I had written a few side scenarios that I wanted to test out.  I told Sean about these, and he sounded interested.  He contacted his friend Nate and got him somewhat interested.

At the same time, I met Alex through another Minecraft server and asked him if he’d like to play along in some short games with Sean and his (at the time) unknown friend.  Over the coming week, I would talk to each person about the characters they’d want to make, and by the end, we had Max Chang (the asian mathelete extraordinare), Daniel Kerington (the hero with as much courage as he has not-brains), and Charlie Bale (the lovable douchebag).  In the discussion portion of the first game, we also talked up BattlePet Network, a stupid little TV show about training monsters and saving the world through card games.

As for the full setting, we’re playing Ross Payton’s Road Trip, which is basically a Summer Road Trip to save the world from an evil cult.  This setting is wildly different from the standard Monsters and Other Childish Things setting in a lot of ways:

  • It’s set during the summer, so no one has to go to school
  • It’s a series of adventures all around the country
  • Less imperative is placed on the “being a kid” aspect, and more on over-the-top goofy action and fun
  • It is very story-driven

One of the reasons that I loved Road Trip when I was starting out with Monsters is that it’s a fully-written campaign.  If you don’t know what your player-base is, Monsters is kind of a bear to write for.  Road Trip simplifies things a lot by basically being a D&D campaign set in the Monsters Universe.  It’s a series of small adventures all around the country which add up to stopping a big bad evil guy.  And it’s a whole lot of fun.

Why is this session called “Session 0”?  Because this entire adventure is non-canon.  As I said, I wanted to playtest some scenarios for my other group, so this was going to be a set of disconnected one-off games.  Shortly after we played this game, though, everyone agreed we should play the whole campaign.  This session is remembered and occasionally referenced elsewhere in the campaign, and it’s the first game that we (The Drunk and the Ugly) ever played together.

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