Monster Care Squad
A downloadable game
Welcome to Ald-Amura
Long after the crowns have fallen, long after greed has had it's day, long after war, poverty, hunger, and tyranny passed into memory, Ald-Amura's peace is broken by The False Gold, a terrible sickness spreading through its greatest guardians and most beautiful Monsters. Unified by community and driven by a love for the planet and each other, The Monster Care Squad rises. Do you heed their call?
Monster Care Squad is a tabletop roleplaying game set in the tranquil world of Ald-Amura. The peaceful state of the world is threatened when a mysterious poison known as The False Gold finds its way into the veins of the world's Monsters, causing terrible, maddening Wounds, which drive these incredible beings into uncontrollable rages. The once unbreakable bond of harmony and respect between Humans and Monsters is on the brink of collapse, and it's up to you and your allies to set things right.
You play as Monster Care Specialists, elite vets equipped with the knowledge to heal any wound, given enough time and preparation. In the game, you travel this amazing world, going from town to town in hopes of finding Monsters infected with The False Gold, diagnosing their illnesses, crafting cures, and healing their minds and bodies of the strange, magical Wounds which drive them to destruction. To do this, you'll solve local problems, investigate the land and its mysteries, and apply the skills, abilities, and knowledge you'll build up throughout play.
Beautifully illustrated by Leafie, and featuring work from a dozen incredible writers and artists, every page of Monster Care Squad speaks in quiet confidence of the love and passion poured into it. Lavish spreads, obscenely luxurious layout, and a world that begs to be explored combined with thoughtful and deep mechanics that promise thrilling encounters with incredible Monsters, boundless exploration, and small-scale, community based problem solving.
The Game
Every adventure in Monster Care Squad follows three phases of play - first a Diagnosis phase, where your party arrives in town, assesses the situation, asks questions, and solves minor problems around the town in exchange for information and leads. Once you've figured out what's wrong with the Monster, then begins the Synthesis phase, where brewing the cures and salves, preparing spells, and making plans is the name of the game. Finally, once everything is in place, the Symbiosis phase has the team face off against this incredible, wounded Godling, attempting to cure its wounds and restore its enraged mind.
Do a good job, and the Monster may even grant you a portion of its power in the form of magical Monster Gifts as thanks for your aid.
Featured On
Third Party Links
Mystery At MushWorm by Escape Box Games
The Search For Queen Bancotha by Peach Garden Games
Domu, the Slumbering Rockfall by JN Butler
Monster Care Squad Character Keeper (Editable Character Sheet and Cheat Sheets) by @MelonKind
Additional Character Sheets by @rain_wander
Sounds Of Ald-Amura Official OST by The Fox In The Flowers
Mystery Chasing Sleuths by Ludo
Plants Both Monstrous And Useful by Michael Elliott
The Tangle in the Snarlwood by Leaf
A Dossier Of Monsters Both Curious And Strange by Liam McCrickard
As part of the Kickstarter, we hosted a grant for Monster Care Squad projects. We already have a ton of these, but we've not gotten chance to put them all here yet. Stay tuned for more!
Files
The Full versions are uncompressed PDFs with BIG file sizes, but show the artwork and everything at full resolution, like you'd see in print. The ones that say Small have had their images downsampled to load quicker, and as such will have artifacts and muddying on some of the effects.
Physical Copies
Limited books available now! Please contact me @ SandyPugGames@gmail.com regarding shipping if you are ordering from outside of the US before you hit buy. Shipping on books outside of the US will cost anywhere between $20 and $50. Yeah we're pretty bummed about it too.
Canadian buyers can check out https://store.401games.ca/products/monster-care-squad and https://rattiincantati.com for local copies!
EU buyers can check out https://iglootree.com for local copies!
Want the book in your country? Let us know where you buy your games and how to get in touch!
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $25 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Books
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copy
A free edition of the PDF. Free editions of the game can also be accessed at https://monstercaresquad.web.app
Physical Copy
For a truly luxurious experience, consider picking up a copy of the physical book. A gorgeous tome, sleeved in burgendy faux leather with heavy, uncoated pages for maximum tactile joy. Opening this book, with its gold embossed cover and delightful, exclusive full-spread dust jacket is like stepping right into Ald-Amura itself. Come get lost with us.
Domestic US Shipping included. International buyers please contact before purchase.
Development log
- Humble Brag Alert - Minor Shipping DelayApr 13, 2022
- Character Sheet, Keeper, And Web AppNov 01, 2021
Comments
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I have a physical copy of the book (which is truly lovely), and am running this system for my friends online. I continually struggle to run it for my players without also having a pdf version of the book. Is there anyway I can acquire a pdf version of this book without paying twice?
Yep, just email me and I'll send it through.
There's also the eternally free version here; https://monstercaresquad.web.app/ tho it looks like we're so popular this month you'll have to wait till our hosting renews 😅`
Super excited to play this! My group was looking at the rules together and we were all so excited we made characters on the spot (I think I have it from the store on your site). One question: is there an official map of Ald-Amura?
Aw hell yeah! That's really exciting, I hope y'all enjoy the game. There is a map, we use it as the background graphic on the opening section and you can see a clean version of it below.
Thank you very much for the map, Sandy Pug team!
Any possibility on getting a community copy? My group and I are looking for more indie TTRPGs to try and this looks absolutely amazing!
Happy new year :D
Any chance for more community copies?
On December 1st I'll put up one community copy for every copy we sold this month, should be at least 5!
Do you have any plans to re releasing the physical copies? I've looked everywhere but cannot find any stores that aren't already sold out. I feel kind of bummed out that I missed out on the release and not being able to get a physical copy unless I want to spend 120$+ from second hand websites
We'd love to, honestly, but it's incredibly expensive and the interest in niche indie TTRPGs so low that we probably won't ever be able to afford to. If we ever make a ton of cash it'll be on the list of things we'll consider spending it on, everyone on the team shares this disappointment, I assure you.
You can get a couple copies on Ebay occasionally; https://www.ebay.com/itm/196049538123?hash=item2da5768c4b:g:VkcAAOSwj~hlL-ZQ&amd...
Isn't this the sort of thing that might be able to be done through a subsequent crowdfunding campaign? I swear I've seen more than one backer-funded reprint campaign...
(Which is not to say that sort of thing can just be done without its own nontrivial chunk of time and effort, mind! But I think it'd likely be less of a hill to climb than the cost of ordering another print run yourselves, without having some similar form of preorders already lined up to guarantee it'll pay off.)
Absolutely; if we were ever gonna do a reprint it would be via a crowdfunder, the barrier is that we can only do one~ crowdfunder a year, and at least at the moment our priority tends to land on Cool New Thing. When HELLPIERCERS is done and we're clear on our To-Do list, we'll be discussing a reprint more seriously for sure
any community copies for us poor folk? :/
Sure
ah! Thank you so much!
I'm curious if you've considered porting this game to One More Multiverse as a module? I've been noodling with it as a way to play other lite systems and think MCS would be great on it. (It would also give me a way to play online without asking people to give me their G-drives which can be a breach of privacy for a lot of people.)
Hey I'm super interested in this system i usually play a druid who likes to adopt animals lol so I was wondering if/when you'll have more physical copies for purchase and if there was a way to somehow get the vinyl record for it to love the art by the way
Hello,
This might be a silly question but I bought the physical book yesterday at my lgs and noticed there were no character sheets included. I noticed them here if I purchased. Was that my only option? My playgroup prefers physical sheets.
Thank you!
Hey! So, two answers! Firstly, you're entitled to a download code for itch with your physical purchase, just email me at sandypuggames@gmail.com and I'll send you one
Secondly, we've got the character sheets up for free right here! - https://sandypuggames.itch.io/monster-care-squad-character-sheets
Have fun!
Thank you so much! Im very excited to play this. I tend to prefer less violent games and settings so this really looks like it will hit the spot.
If I purchase this book from Indie Press Revolution, would it be possible to get an itch.io download key?
yeah, just email me sandypuggames (@)gmail.com
*Obi Wan voice* Hello there
already added to the page 😅 Awesome video! Huge thanks for pointing people our way!
Hi again! :) I wanted to let you know that I just received my physical copy in the mail and I love holding it in my hands. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasant surprise to wake up to.
I also have some questions about the system and how to run it, after reading the PDF all week in preparation. My biggest one is about the character the Guide makes. There is mention that they're supposed to be a mentor, but there is very little about what that entails mechanically in the Guide section or the Creating a Specialist section. Have I missed something? I'm not sure how I can run a game and also play a character without either risking narrative dissonance or accidentally playing a DMPC.
Mechanically speaking the Mentor character should only take one of the given Guide moves at the start of the game, then through Advancement they gain more. Unfortunately we goosed the advancement rule that helps clear this up, it's in the errata here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zi2ictwL4yAWL-rNMi8p7Z1ThHF8qUUkmfQrAXR_JFc/...
Otherwise a Mentor character has access to all the abilities of a regular one, with the sort of agreed upon fictive conceit that you are acting as a mentor within the game, and you'd be a pretty bad one if you hogged the spotlight, or got in the players way. Try to play with a mind to the character back at base or on the sidelines. The moves, hopefully, try to reflect this style of play with big once-in-a-session supporting acts. I dunno how well I did with those alas 😅. You can of course opt not to use those rules if you're concerned about it at all! Playing through as a more traditional GM/Player relationship works just fine.
Thank you! I think what I'll end up doing is making a character that is very old and generally less able than younger players, but who can give some direction and context while my players and I all figure out the system.
It also might be interesting if this character is taken away from the party temporarily for any number of reasons related to their age or health. Or if they just sit in the bar like your companion in Witcher 3's first chapter, HEH.
I appreciate the clarification. Thank you for posting this errata. I'm sorry if the question is asked a lot. XD
Not at all! Glad for the chance to chat about it!
Hello. :) My friends and I would love to play this online, and the character keeper might be what we need (editable character sheets we can all share through google drive) but... I'm a little lost when it comes to using google drive for anything besides personal storage so uh, how do I actually copy this thing to my own g-drive for editing and private use among a group? Sorry if the question's a bit obvious to answer.
Also, because I need to run the actual game through Roll20, are there any plans to release raw images of the maps of the areas that we can import? I would actually pay a bit extra to have those resources since all of my games are run online and it would make setup much easier.
Hey Mushrooms!
I believe you should hit File and there should be an option to save a copy. I didn't make the sheet tho so I can't say for certain. As for the art, I'm not sure what you mean by maps, but we have an art drive we've made publicly available, and you're very welcome to extract the images from the book (if you rename the PDF to a .zip it should allow you to unextract the contents). I'll follow up this comment with a link to our drive when I get back home.
Nem
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dahu9noXf6lBZ7_EKrpJIVUlZ7HguuKp?usp=sha...
Thank you! That had the raw map on it, which was what I needed. Also, I figured out how to make a copy of the G-drive sheets. If you're in contact with the person who made it, could you tell them that I appreciate it very much? :)
Wow, this is not the place where I thought I would learn about a neat trick like renaming a .pdf to .zip being useful. Cool!
I want to purchase the physical copy of this, but I can't find a way to contact you about shipping.(might just be me being blind though....)
Hit me up at SandyPugGames@gmail.com!
I love the artwork, but is there any plan to release a printer-friendly version of the game?
Besides the HTML version, no.
When I use my PDF editor (Nitro Pro) to extract images, I get weird colorless/artifact-y files that aren't the art. Was that intentional? Seems kind of silly that I can't pull the images out of the PDF to share with my group (and I still can with screen-grabbing and such, it's just much harder). It doesn't feel like a move you would make on purpose, given how open you've been with Kickstarters regarding this page, but I don't know why it's not working otherwise.
Here's an example.
Update: This seems to be just the Full PDF, I can pull from Small. I was hoping for the full quality images, but hopefully most of them will be fine compressed. Also, hopefully it will be the actual art (a lot of the Full images "extracted" were just the stingray logo).
Any chance you could make a zip file of full size art assets for people who do online gaming? Mostly interested in the creature/specialist art, but will take literally any of the gorgeous work you made.
Hi, I'm really loving the content of the pdf thus far (just recently got it) but I've come across a bit of a confusing layout mistake on page 17 of Pages and right side of page 9 in Spreads; everything is bullet-pointed and aligned the same which causes the five stats to get lost in the rest of the trainings and backgrounds.
Hey friend! Could you post a screenshot of what you mean? I'm not seeing what you mean in my version
Oh I see! Thanks!
Seems to be a small technical glitch with the Small PDFs (both pages and spread). Pages 42, 43, 46, 47, 52, 145, 154, and 164-167 all have black bars over their sidebars making it unreadable.
beyond that this is one of the most beautiful rule books I’ve seen.
Thanks for the heads up Ceetee! It's a glitch with the PDF elements getting rasterized that seems to hit us at random, will try and get a clean copy up today
I'm in love with this game, all the art, the lore/setting, the gameplay, everything's great ❤ One question though, for the move "crickey", does a character have to be able to physically lift the monster for it to work, or in other words, can you not use this move on the bigger monsters? Or can you frame it as other forms of physical contact?
This was a point of some contention within the squad, with some of us thinking the size restriction was a balancing thing, and others thinking other forms of physical contact are ok - I think the spirit of the move def. allows for some leeway with the physical contact, just means you'll have to get creative with the bigger Monsters (Interesting to imagine applying it to Gaa’domi!)
I'm liking the game so far, but I'm a little unclear on when to mark a clock segment or draw a cross through it. The Clock Segment section says that certain moves will say what to do, but none of the Diagnosis or Synthesis moves say to cross out a clock segment and very few of them give you the option to color in a segment.
Generally marking a clock segment as a failure should happen when narratively appropriate - when a lead goes dry, when a resource is permanently out of reach, or just generally when it's unlikely that this avenue of investigation fails. Marking a segment is kind of like the full stop at the end of a little mini arc.
I can see how that's not clear, and we should have made it explicit, but almost any move rolled at 6 or below could potentially trigger a X for a clock. Hope this helps
The arts are beautiful. I love it so much.
Congratulations on the release, Sandy Pug Games!
Ooo, I am very interested. Will show this to my players and see if they are interested too.
Hey, the book references a character sheet, but I don't see one in the book itself or as a separate file here on itch. is there an official character sheet for the game?
There is! I'll try and get it up over the weekend.
Or, as it turns out, right now. Should be downloadable now.
ok radical ty!
On page 29 in advancement I have a few questions
1. When it says the mentors has 2 special options, where ate those options listed?
2.when it says "change a -1 or 0 stat for a new background or training" does this mean change a background/training on those types of stats or to change the stats and also the background/training?
Alas it looks like we goofed on 1. It should read that the Mentor can pick 2 additional Mentor moves from the Mentor starting moves selection.
2. Its a straight swap out for a background/training at that level. If you have a -1 in Boating, you can't use that to swap out for a 0 in Chicken Keeping, although I suppose if you wanted a slightly faster or more broadly capable character that would be an easy tweak.