Scoring mechanic for a story game about making monsters.

Interesting concept.

Since you want players to incorporate rumors successfully, you should be rewarding points based on that.
And since adding rumors becomes successively harder, maybe you should also give more points as there are more rumors in the pile.

From a rules perspective (I know RPGS don't work like board games), since only the guy who completed the monster gets points, people are incentivized to complete the monster on their turn. Perhaps make it difficult to complete (have to narrate both rumors) to name a monster?

Another suggestion, if the monsters could cross reference, basically, a player could incorporate completed monsters in their narration, this would make the world more interesting. Perhaps reward players with "proof" tokens, that can be used to sway a vote, if they can reference a completed monster and get that passed.

Good luck!

This sounds fun, & a simplified version for kids would be interesting to see.

I was confused about how the monster is completed so this may not work, but what if players could steal a completed monster of less than x-rumours from another player if they can successfully add another attribute/rumour to it?

This would stop players from completing them too soon. They also can't add a rumour to a monster that they already own. You could keep the random aspect by making them roll a d10 > the number of rumours in the monster they want in order to deactivate it, but if they fail the roll the next player gets that rumour that had been drawn plus the new one they draw to use which means that those 2 rumours may help that next player complete a monster that was still being built in the centre of the board.

You are right, researchers can try to steal other people's work but researchers are also often working on the same thing at the same time, or they do additional research to find out more information about something someone else researched. Adding the dice roll to unlock the monster for additional research would minimise how often it happens if the safety tier was high enough that the dice roll needed was harder & harder.

Once you set a scoring target & lock monsters in players will naturally aim for the minimum required to win knowing that the monsters are safe at that point so you could end up with a player advantage for whoever gets the first turn at making the monster at that safe point.

Could you add a wound mechanic where the researcher plays the wound they got, as a part of the narration, to then help prove the monsters existence? If the wounds were silly enough, like losing both arms, any future monster they then try to claim needs to also account for having no arms, e.g. Lying on the ground I held the rifle up with my toes&, using a hooked stick between my teeth, leaned back & pulled the trigger.m the blast took off 3 toes in my left foot. Etc etc. the wounds could have a score based on how ridiculous they are but also have tiered scores for the value they add to each subsequent monster the player proves exists whilst taking into account that previous injury.

Yeah, that sounds good. Maybe the wound mechanic can only be played in conjunction with a steal & additional rumour as well so it isn't to easy to do but is possible? That way stealing can be done but not to often, & once a monster has a wound played on it it can't be stolen again?

I think this is sounding really interesting, simple & yet has plenty of room for variation from game to game. Well done, I'll be interested to see the final cut.