Mansters - Starter guide

What is Mansters?

Mansters is a horror parody roleplaying game by Black Lantern Productions, the Greek studio behind the dark fantasy setting Soulmist. The premise is simple and immediately charming: you play as a classic monster of folklore - a vampire, a witch, a werewolf, a ghost, a mummy, or a Frankenstein's monster - who is going through a bit of a rough patch. People just don't scare as easily anymore. The void grows, the depression sets in, and before you know it you are sitting in a Depressives Anonymous meeting with five other dejected monsters comparing notes.

As it turns out, the reason humans aren't afraid of you anymore is that the world has produced something far worse: corrupt politicians, predatory loan sharks, manipulative corporate executives. These are the real Mansters. And somebody has to deal with them.

The tone is warm, satirical, and knowingly absurd. The art style suggests a children's book, but the game is firmly aimed at adults. There is genuine political wit underneath the silliness, and the best sessions are the ones that mix laugh-out-loud chaos with moments of actual heart.

How does the system work?

Mansters uses its own original system called Hack & Slice - a name that is explicitly a pun, because Black Lantern are very clear that this is not a game for dungeon crawling or combat-heavy play. Hack & Slice is built for narrative-driven sessions where the story and its characters carry the game.

Characters are defined by three core attributes: Body, Mind, and Heart. These are visualised on the character sheet using a distinctive pizza-slice layout, where the divisions represent your rating in each attribute. Skills branch off from these stats in a tree structure, meaning progression feels organic and visually readable at a glance.

Three additional mechanics round out the system. The Edge allows players, on a successful confrontation, to add their own dramatic or narrative twist to the outcome - handing storytelling agency directly to the players. The Monstrosity counter tracks how far your character has drifted from their monster nature, which creates interesting tension between leaning into your powers and maintaining your identity. And the Skutendo effect handles failed rolls in a way that leans into the comedy: instead of just narrating failure, unlucky results can escalate into farcical events, and poorly-performing monsters risk drawing the attention of monster hunters.

The game is designed to be playable within 30 minutes of explanation, with characters created quickly at the table. That accessibility is a feature, not a compromise.

What do you need to start?

The Mansters corebook is a 130-page hardcover that contains everything you need to play: all six monster types, the full Hack & Slice ruleset, guidance for the GM (called the DM here), and enough material to get a full campaign going. There are no required supplements.

Before committing, you can try the game for free. Black Lantern released a 31-page demo version that is available on DriveThruRPG without cost. It gives a solid sense of the tone and the mechanics, and is a genuinely useful tool for pitching the game to a skeptical table.

For those who want the full experience from day one, there is also a box bundle that includes the corebook, a complete dice set, a character sheet pack, a deck of Skutendo event cards, a GM screen, coasters, and bookmarks.

Who is this game for?

Mansters works best for groups who enjoy leaning into character and comedy. If your table loves roleplaying the personality of a character just as much as resolving mechanical challenges, this will feel very comfortable. The political satire gives sessions a backbone that goes beyond pure silliness, so players who appreciate a point of view in their fiction will find something to hold onto.

It is not the right pick for groups focused on tactical combat, dungeon exploration, or systems mastery. Hack & Slice is intentionally light, and the game doesn't reward min-maxing or combat optimisation. Players who need a lot of mechanical crunch will likely feel under-served.

Despite the Halloween-friendly art, this is an adult game. The satire deals with real-world themes - economic exploitation, political corruption, institutional cynicism - and the tone assumes players can handle that kind of material, even wrapped in absurdist humour.

How does it compare to other systems?

The closest comparison in spirit is Paranoia, another game where the fiction is pointed satire of a broken system and the tone deliberately keeps things from getting too dark. Both games use comedy as a lens rather than as a coating. The difference is that Mansters is collaborative rather than competitive - the monsters work together, not against each other.

Compared to something like Kids on Bikes or Monster of the Week, Mansters is lighter mechanically and more focused on a specific premise. It doesn't try to be all things; it does its one thing with personality and commitment.

If your group has played D&D and wants to try something completely different in setting, tone, and mechanical weight, Mansters is an excellent left turn.

Where to start?

Start with the free demo on DriveThruRPG. Read through it, or better yet, hand it to your group before your next session. The demo gives enough of the system to play a one-shot without the full book.

When you're ready for the full game, read the corebook cover to cover once before your first proper session. The system is light enough that a single careful read is enough to run confidently. The first session works best as a standalone adventure that introduces the premise - let the players discover their monster's situation organically rather than summarising the lore upfront.

There is no large online community around Mansters yet, but the Black Lantern website and their social channels are active, and the game's Kickstarter comment section is a good place to find early adopters.

Recommended products at Netherbook

The Mansters corebook is the natural starting point and contains everything you need. For groups who want to go all-in right away, the box bundle adds the Skutendo event card deck and GM screen, both of which add genuine value to actual play rather than just being collector items.