Has anyone toyed around with adding a second player/character resource to #Monsterhearts? Besides Strings?
For some reason, ideas for a Changeling: the Lost hack (that I had given up on) started popping back into my head last night (while I was trying to get to sleep). But this time the idea to introduce a new resource showed up for the first time. Completely out of the blue.
In C:tL, the Lost can harvest glamour from the emotions of mortals, which they then use for various supernatural effects (like powering Contracts, activating special abilities, opening gates into the Hedge, etc.). While Lost can “feed” passively by just being around strong emotions, it’s easier to try and evoke that emotion from a target.
That sounded like it would be a great move, as all kinds of things can go wrong when a Changeling is getting someone all worked up to “feed” from them. You’d want players to harvest emotion fairly often so that their lives are constantly interesting, so you’d have to give them an incentive to do so.
My original idea was to allow characters to clear Conditions or take +1 forward after harvesting emotions. Sort of like a healing move, but that didn’t exactly line up with the fiction I imagined. You don’t heal from harvesting glamour, you just have it to use. Then I thought about giving characters a number of hold they could use to trigger special effects. This seemed like a better idea, as Lost can hold onto glamour to use at a later time, rather than it being a “use immediately” kind of thing. From there my mind went to giving them points of a whole new resource (glamour) that they could spend to activate or enhance special abilities. There would be some basic moves that all Changelings had access to, that cost a point of glamour to use. Each Skin would also have special things the player could spend glamour on, making them all feel different from each other.
Of course this means tracking both Strings and glamour. That might get complicated or clunky, or just be more trouble than it’s worth. So I’m curious if anyone has done something similar, and if so, what happened.
Well, this is already what the Ghoul does. You can gain XP for feeding on flesh, power, fear, and/or chaos.
Ah, you’re right. I didn’t think of XP as a player resource, but it totally is.
Never played C:tL, and this is all off the top of my head, but here goes:
—
All Lost can harvest emotions from those around them, making them more powerful. Choose one emotion that you are keyed to: lust, anger, or fear.
Whenever you roll to turn someone on (lust), shut someone down (anger), or lash out physically (fear) you gain an additional benefit. On a 7-9, you carry 1 forward as you are momentarily emboldened by the small rush of emotion. On a 10+, hold 1. You may spend 1 hold to:
• Remove a condition
• Act at advantage
• Mark experience
—
The idea being that each of the moves elicit a response from your target, and you can passively feed off of that. Of course, you can have other moves that expand on the “spend 1 hold to…” list, specific to each type of Lost.
The move itself is a combination of Satiety from the Ghoul and The Feeding from the Vampire.
The move I’m thinking of is similar to both the Vampire abd Ghoul’s feeding moves. The difference is both The Feeding and Satiety are instant effects. You trigger the move and get the effect right then. Clearing Conditions and healing harm have long term effects for sure, but you can’t hold onto them and use them at a later time. You do hold onto XP to use at a later time, but there’s only one specific thing you can do with it.
I was thinking of something like this:
Harvest
When you evoke a strong emotion in a mortal (ecstasy, rage, terror, or sorrow), gain up to three Glamour. For each point of Glamour you gain, choose one:
● their emotion bleeds over to you; gan the Condition high, jumpy, irritable, or depressed as appropriate;
● the mortal causes a big scene appropriate to their emotional state;
● the mortal realizes you are intentionally manipulating them;
● give the mortal the Condition drained.