Fighting and hunting monsters in a tabletop RPG like Dungeons & Dragons is fun, but what about befriending, taming, or hanging out with them? There's a surprising number of tabletop roleplaying games out there with settings, rules, and narrative themes designed to encourage players to build interesting relationships with monsters - not forbidding monster-on-human violence per se, but making the act of befriending beasts of the wild and supernatural creatures just as interesting as combat.
RPG campaigns where players get "chummy" instead of "choppy" with monsters have been around for longer than many think. In sessions of old-school Dungeons & Dragons and other early roleplaying games, the design philosophy of "never create an combat encounter players can't overcome" hadn't come into vogue yet, leading to scenarios where low-level dungeon-delving parties encountered dragons, hordes of goblins, or other high-level beasts beyond their ability to slay in full-frontal assaults. To survive these unbalanced encounters, savvy RPG players would try to bypass combat by giving food to feral monsters, bribing intelligent monsters, or even just striking up a flattering conversations – even Evil monsters, after all, can be starved for small-talk after spending all day at the bottom of a dungeon.
Some modern tabletop gamers, likely coming to the pen-and-paper RPG scene from video games, automatically assume monsters in the game world are like those in computer RPGs, existing only to be killed (one of several catalysts behind murder-hobo behavior in tabletop RPGs). Tabletop RPGs like Monster Care Squad and the others listed below try to counter this tendency with settings and narratives that present non-violent interactions with monsters as perfectly viable, along with game mechanics for human/monster socialization just as intricate and tactical as the rules for combat.
Monster Care Squad
Monster Care Squad, an upcoming tabletop RPG, fuses elements of classic JRPG fantasy, Monster Hunter: World, and the Arcadian movies of Studio Ghibli. In once-peaceful world of Ald-Amura, a magical malady called the False Gold has infected a number of monsters across the land, driving them into feral rages. Instead of taking on the role of monster hunters, players are Monster Care Specialists, capable experts who travel around diagnosing the specific maladies infected monsters suffer from, preparing treatments, then subduing the monsters so the cure can be administered. The Kickstarter page for Monster Care Squad cites narrative RPGs like Ironsworn and Rhapsody of Blood as major sources of inspiration, with modular abilities like Specialties and Monster Gifts used to build characters instead of Playbooks.
Urban Shadows: Second Edition
Urban Shadows: Second Edition, the upcoming update to Urban Shadows 1st Edition, is a supernatural urban fantasy RPG in the tradition of The Dresden Files, the Chronicles of Darkness RPGs, and all those urban fantasy/paranormal romance dramas on TV. In this "Powered By The Apocalypse" system, players create characters with Playbooks based on classic monster and occult mortal archetypes - the Wizard, The Hunter, The Fae, or The Vamp - who fight and conspire against each other, but also forge friendships, alliances, and even alliances. The Master of Ceremonies then works with their players to create a fictional metropolis filled with neighborhoods, secret societies, supernatural enclaves, and various Threats and Storms to make life complicated.
Monsterhearts: Second Edition
The go-to game for roleplaying teen wolfs, cliquish witches, and bloodsucking bad boys, Monsterhearts: Second Edition is another "Powered By The Apocalypse" RPG with playbooks for Ghosts, Werewolves, Witches, and Vampires who also happen to be hormonal teenagers pretending to be humans as they attend high school. When scenes of challenge and conflicts arise in a session of Monsterhearts, players and their characters uses Moves with titles like "Turn Someone On" or "Gaze Into The Abyss" to figure out what happens next.
The majority of these Moves are designed to generate stories with less focus on combat and more focus on The Breakfast Club - style teen shenanigans, awkward romance, mysteries, and the complicated aspects of being a supernatural critter in human shape.
MajiMonsters: The Monster-Catching Roleplaying Game
MajiMonsters: The Monster-Catching Roleplaying Game is, blends tropes of fantasy RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons with the gameplay of Pokémon, Digimon, and other monster-catching franchises. The setting of MajiMonsters is a world where magical monsters have overrun the world, and most of humanity has retreated behind walled cities and secluded enclaves to survive. Players characters are "Binders" - knights, wizards, and scholars with the ability to tame and seal monsters into magic crystals, then call them forth to fight other monsters and trail-blaze paths through the wilds outside of civilization.
The gameplay mechanics MajiMonsters: The Monster-Catching Roleplaying Game, as detailed on its Kickstarter page, generate narratives similar to those seen in Pokémon installments, with players wandering through a world of adventure, taming new monsters, and fighting against villainous factions seeking to use the power of MajiMonsters to evil ends.
Sources: Monster Care Squad/Kickstarter, MajiMonsters/Kickstarter