Guide Moves

When you use one of these, try not to say its name out loud if you can help it, just make up something that happens within the fiction that matches the Move. “Change the weather” doesn’t mean “the weather changes,” it means you should describe the early blusters of an oncoming thunderstorm, or the utterly-out-of-nowhere soaking that comes with a sudden downpour.

• Present a friendly face, in need of help
• Uncover wisdom in a hidden place
• Show a truth about the world
• Reveal an unexpected twist
• Put the town, or its people, in danger
• Take Control
• Use up their resources
• Change the weather
• Help them back up
• Turn a Move around
• Show the Monster’s power
• Show them a gap
• Put a wall between them and what they need

The Mentor and Guide Moves

When the Mentor is in play, the Guide Moves are no longer just for the Guide’s usage. Any player at the table can use them to answer questions, guide the story, or create consequences.

Present a friendly face, in need of help

There is always someone who needs help. That’s just how the world works. Someone has lost something precious, or can’t fix their friendship, or just needs a hand getting the crops in before the snowstorm hits.

These little moments are what gives the game its structure and present opportunities for the players not just to score Successes on their progress tracks, but also to flesh out the world. Use this Move when the players have no clear objective or goal in mind.

Uncover wisdom in a hidden place

In Monster Care Squad, great wisdom doesn’t live in libraries or with gifted-at-birth geniuses. It’s the domain of the common folk, of the old healer at the edge of town, of the tavern owner who takes in anyone who needs help, of the young eye that sees more than they let on.

Teasing this is a great way to give the party a goal, or an excellent reward for solving a problem. This Move is also a good one to use for uncovering strange or forgotten lore deep in a mysterious cave, or in a book on a forgotten shelf somewhere.

Show a truth about the world

The world of Ald-Amura is mysterious and magical. The rules of the world aren’t really fully understood by anybody, and it hides secrets deep within itself.

As the Guide, always be on the lookout for a moment to reveal something incredible or unbelievable about the world around the party—maybe this city was once alive and could be again one day, maybe the Monster they’re facing used to be human, maybe the trees speak in this part of the world—something that will make the party stop in their tracks and ask questions.

Reveal an unexpected twist

Investigations rarely go how you expect them to. There’s always something else happening that the party isn’t aware of, sometimes until it’s too late. A good twist flips everything on its head—the whys, hows, and whats of the diagnosis get turned around, and the party has to react, quickly, to this new information before it’s too late.

You could reveal that the Monster they’ve been diagnosing is actually the child of another, bigger, scarier Monster, or that the problem they’ve been trying to solve is being caused by the person they’re trying to help. It can also be much smaller scale than that—the ground under your parties feet could be weaker than they thought, or the Monster could have an unexpected ability that changes everything.

Put the town, or its people, in danger

The little town that your party arrives in is the primary thing at risk from the untreated Wounds of the Monster. The players’ characters can’t take damage, but the tavern that everybody meets in after a hard day’s work can be destroyed, the beautiful statue in the town square that commemorates the founding of the town can be ruined, and the people can be put in danger by the out-of-control Monster they once relied upon.

This Move is great for giving the party an immediate threat they have to address right now or for when they need an obvious and clear consequence for failure in the moment.

Take Control

When the party tussles with the Monster, they’re trying to gain Control over the situation—when they fail on their rolls, and the Monster gains ground, Take Control. Give the Monster an advance on the Control track, push the players back, whichever seems most fitting for the moment.

Remember, don’t be cruel, but don’t hold back—a confrontation with the Monster is going to be the climax of a lot of sessions, and you want them to feel real, risky, and exciting. Part of that is making failures hit hard sometimes.

Use up their resources

The party has a couple of mechanical resources—Aces, Supply, Control—but they also have a wealth of narrative resources you can put at risk or use up—the glass bottles they carry to create their brews could shatter on a hard fall, or their sensitive medical equipment could malfunction at an inopportune time.

This doesn’t always have to be permanent—their grapple hook might get pulled from their hands and stuck on a Gargatuan’s shoulder, for example.

Change the weather

In fiction, the world is a character that often reacts to the main character’s actions in a way that they don’t in real life—think of how many times a character walks, depressed, in the rain. Or how many thunderstorms just happen to reach their peak during the climactic battle. This can go both ways—an unexpected snowstorm could roll in at the worst possible time, or the sun could shine through as a result of you Helping them back up.

Keep in mind that many Monsters might control the weather, or be greatly affected by the weather, so having them react to the changes as they happen is also a fantastic idea.

Help them back up

The Guide is not an antagonistic role. Your job is not to hurt the characters, punish them, or push them. It’s to be a voice for the world, and the world of Ald-Amurra is, above all, kind. Sometimes when things go wrong, the answer isn’t to take away resources or destroy something, it’s to offer a hand. When the party fails and all seems lost, revealing the farmer they helped earlier has shown up with some rope and some friends is a great example—it shows that the party’s work means something to the people of this world.

You can also offer more abstract helping hands—an unexpected tree branch that could stop their fall, a crystal clear oasis in the middle of a desert, a healing herb just in grasping range.

Turn a Move around

Think about what a Move does for the party and how that might come back to haunt them. When they uncover information, perhaps it’s not welcome news, or maybe the resources they gathered attract some unwanted attention from Monsters, or even the parties behind the False Gold.

Show the Monster’s power

Monster’s are beautiful, but often in the same ways a fire can be. Their beauty is rooted in their power—be that the world trembling capabilities of the titanic Monsters whose shout can shatter mountains or the mischievous hijinks of the smaller Monsters, you want your party to know, roughly, what they’re up against and what could happen if they don’t get involved. Show the aftermath of the Monster’s rampage, show it in progress, show it in books, in flashbacks, and in folktales.

Show them a gap

Your party is well trained, tested, and experienced, but they don’t know everything. Trainings, Backgrounds, Moves and Specialities tend to make for very focused characters that have a lot of holes in their knowledge ripe for revealing.

You can also use this Move to show the party something they missed in their investigation—if they didn’t quite figure out what every single Wound does, or the exact abilities of the Monster they’re facing, it’s never a bad idea to show them exactly what they missed at the worst possible time.

Put a wall between them and what they need

When it looks like the answer is just within reach, but a roll goes badly, or the party makes an unwise step in the wrong direction, complications and problems can spring up in a moment and change the entire situation.

Suddenly the problem isn’t just getting the thing they need, there’s a barrier between them. The town’s council might deny their request to explore the hidden grove for curitives, or the book that tells of the Monster’s power might get stolen from their hands by a mysterious masked thief. The thing they need is still within sight, but they have to clear the wall first.