Monster Truckers: Announcement and Development Thoughts

Monster Truckers: Long Haul into the Worstlands is the next game from Table Cat Games, launching on Backerkit in 2025!

Monster Truckers features players taking the roles of classic monsters who just happen to be semi truck drivers. They must travel through the mysterious and dangerous Worstlands to deliver their freight.

Follow the project on Backerkit and get a free sticker! (To get the sticker you must follow, then back the project at a physical reward level).

Okay now that the pitch is over, let’s get talking about the game in a bit more detail. Or at least, how things came together.

The Idea

Monster Truckers began with an idea: What if… you were a monster… who drove a semi truck?! Actually, the original idea was, “What if you were a monster who drove a monster semi truck” and my wonderful partner joked that the game would be called “Monster Monster Truck Truckers.” But anyway, the game is based on a very simple idea and spun wildly out of control from there.

In order to streamline things though, “monster truck” became a potential vehicle upgrade rather than a core theme of the game. Monster Truckers was going to be about semi trucks as a primary focus with some extra vehicle ideas and upgrades thrown in.

Why semi trucks though? My dad was a truck driver for 30 years. He drove over a couple million miles. In a lot of ways this game is because of him. No he’s not a monster, except for the case of lycanthropy he caught for a few years. It’s more to honor him and to also the knowledge I’ve gained from him and the couple of times I went on the road with him to help ground an otherwise fun and silly idea.

World Building

I mulled over the world building for awhile and went back and forth for just how and why monsters were driving semi trucks. The thing that most appealed to me was a world where they were the only ones who could do it. From there the “logic” of the world came together. Monsters and humans had a war in the past, the humans screwed up the world defending themselves with hybrid magic/science weapons, so most of humanity is holed up in a mega city while monsters are forced by the humans to do the jobs they can’t or don’t want to do.

This set up also allows me to have a class struggle, which I find interesting. And I also am interested in the reversal of fortunes. Where once monsters hunted and stalked humans, humans are in full control… and the humans aren’t benevolent conquerors. I like to deal with social issues in a Twilight Zone kind of way. We abstract the problems of today to make them more palatable and perhaps understandable to those who are too wrapped up in their viewpoint to look at it from another perspective.

This war and post apocalyptic setting also opened up a ton of opportunities for adventure. Players are able to drive just about anywhere and find something interesting to see or do. Danger can lurk around the corner, and mysterious and weird things can be thrown in for good measure.

The final piece in the world building puzzle came to me not that long ago. Part of the game involves making maps of the journey and exploring. If monsters are on regular truck routes, you think they’d have handled it by the time the players take the role of the monsters. So in order for that internal logic to work, I brought it my good pal entropy. Humanity is slowly losing it’s control of it’s technology and the ability to create/repair such things. Large cargo drones used to handle that sort of thing, but they’re almost all destroyed. Without the ability to rebuild it, monsters managed to form a trucking guild and haul that cargo. This allows them to explore the world more than they had been able to before.

The Mechanics

I knew I wanted to do something pretty light. I didn’t want it to be crunchy. The idea is fun, very easy to learn, quick to play, and exciting.

After The Wicked Forever King Hungers I realized how much I enjoyed rules light games that encouraged improv. However, I wanted a little more “meat on the bone” than Forever King has and I wanted it to be a bit less focused. Forever King is a bit more of a “one shot” type experience. You could play it multiple times, but the overall core gameplay experience is related to one scenario: The King awakens and wants to feed, the players must stop him.

With Monster Truckers I want to have the ability to play a campaign involving many different stories in the world. Granted, they involve driving semi trucks, but theres more possibilities for open ended adventure.

And as I side note, despite the success of Street Wolves and for as much as I love Savage Worlds, I can’t publish a game with all their rules in the book. I wanted another game that was all mine where I didn’t have to convince people they needed buy a second book in order to play mine.*

The answer came in the form of Tricube Tales. Developed by Zadmar Games, Tricube Tales features easy to learn and run rules. It’s a step between something like Lasers and Feelings and Savage Worlds. It’s rules light, but can maintain a campaign featuring character progression and character customization. It also uses the creative commons license, so I’m able to put all the rules you need in one book. And finally, it uses the d6, one of my favorite types of dice.

*But I also believe Monster Truckers would make a great Savage Worlds setting, so I may circle back around on this idea.

Current Status

Most of the book, particularly the lore and setting info, is written. I’m in this phase where it feels like the writing is close to being done, but there’s all these tweaks and things that I have to fill in. I’m also testing the game, so some of the rules are subject to change.

I’ve got one piece of art and I’m looking at funding a few more in order to have more to show during the crowdfunding phase.

And in the next few weeks I plan on doing some layout to give people an idea of what the pages of the book could look like.

Consider Following!

In order to bring Monster Truckers to life, I need enough people following on Backerkit before I can launch to help ensure we’ll make our goal. Following the project and telling others about it would really help me out. And you can get a free sticker if you follow and back at a physical level!