Hi Monsters!

Hi Monsters!

Hi Monsters!

So… I’ve played in several Monsterhearts one-shots, including some of the early playtests, but haven’t actually played in a multisession game yet, though I have a lot of background in the AW Engine. However, apparently I’m MCing 3-6 sessions of the big MH, starting next week, so I wanted to ask a couple questions of veteran monster-mashers.

The guidelines in the text essentially say that the first thing you do is have the players pick playbooks and start making characters, but I was wondering when and how it’s best to have a conversation about setting, vision, tone, etc. For example, if we’re playing a group of monsters in an isolated town on one of the San Juan Islands only reachable by private ferry, that’s pretty different than if we’re playing a Gossip Girl-inspired game of affluent and “Hollywood poor” kids in a big city.

Should I pitch a general “premise” to the players over email before we even get together?

Should I wait and have that discussion in person when we’re looking over playbooks?

We should do that before everybody picks Skins, yeah? The San Juan Islands premise might make someone really want to play the Selkie, right? Or to not play a different playbook.

I mean, the setting and tone obviously also vary depending on which playbooks are chosen, especially the Chosen! And I am totally anticipating some give and take, pushback from the players on some things, and adapting to their ideas and suggestions as well.

How has making these kinds of initial decisions worked best for you in practice?

13 thoughts on “Hi Monsters!”

  1. I have played in-person and online campaigns of MH.  Typically, I have seen a pitch presented to the players in the online games (http://www.infrno.net) I have played in.  When I played in-person, we talked a little bit about what type of school/community we wanted to be a part of before choosing skins. 

    Either way works, it depends on your players, your MC style, and what everyone is comfortable with.  It can be as simple as saying West Coast, then talking through public/private, affluent/middle class/urban, and figure out any other miscellaneous locale details based on skin selection.

  2. In my experience, unless somebody has something already established beforehand*, I’d have that conversation while choosing the booklets, and let the two things influence each other. Throwing the idea of playing on an island might push someone towards the selkie, or someone going for the selkie might generate the island idea, for example. A Fae character migh – or might not – bring with it a lot of supernatural elements, a Serpentine might generate hooks by detailing its family, and so forth. And of course you’ve already mentioned the Chosen. Characters really set the tone of the game, so it makes sense to consider the two things together! 

    *for example, we played a game and the MC had already decided it would be set during a summer camp. It’s not exactly how things are supposed to work in the book, but in this case it turned out really well. On the other hand, I’d be very firm in discouraging the players from deciding too many details about their character before the first session. I’ve seen players come with the character they really really wanted to play pre-gen at the table, and it’s always worked out less than ideally. Something is lost in bypassing the shared creation moment.

  3. Also, J. Walton: I’ve written a Skin, which has already gone through several stages of revision and a round of playtest (a full season, and a long one at that). I would say it is already technically solid, and I’m looking for external testers… would you be interested?

  4. Alberto Muti Sweet. I appreciate the offer, but I think we’re sticking mainly to the core Skins, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions if players really want to try something different. This is the first time any of us have played more than a one-shot, so I think we want to keep it relatively focused for now. Maybe we can expand some if people end up playing additional characters later on, after we’ve got the hang of things.

  6. I usually have people pick skins first, then we talk about setting.  Sometimes I start the setting discussion when a couple of people have narrowed the field but not made their final choices yet. Mostly, I let the skin choices lead the setting, rather than vice-versa. I usually also think hard about which skins I put on the table — sometimes I’ll take the Chosen, or the Selkie, or the Vampire off the table (usually checking first that nobody’s got their heart set on it).

    That said, I’d been thinking about starting the setting discussion at the point of starting skin-choices, next time.  I don’t know if I’d be comfortable starting it much earlier than that.

  7. Some Skins also influence your options. A Selkie demands that you are next to a large body of water. 

    I also think it is okay to come with a rough pitch of an idea you are really interested in as the MC. You are part of the game and your voice should also count. 

  8. I think that if you’ve got a firm idea for a setting that is unusual you ought to bring it up as soon as possible. If however you’re quite flexible about the setting and would be quite willing to run the standard high school setting if that’s what people want, then by all means discuss it while picking skins.

    In general, the thicker the red line, the earliest it needs to be raised. Otherwise you could find yourself in a situation where you are in quite avoidable conflict with another player.

  10. I’ve both MCed and played in games that were more than one-shots. I’ll echo everyone here who says that you can pick Skins and generate the setting as part of that first session. Skin selection can affect the setting, and the setting can affect what Skins people choose, so it’s a good idea to do them together.

    That being said, when I MCed the game, I intentionally went into the game with no preconceived ideas about the setting of the game. I asked questions like crazy  (both during and after character creation) and built the school and surrounding town during the little bit of playing we had during that first session. I pretty much said yes to anything the players established as part of the setting (be a fan of the players, right?) except if it felt really out of place based on what had already been established. When that happened, we would have a quick discussion on why it didn’t seem to fit, and what we could replace it with or change in order to make it fit.

    Things went pretty much the same way when I was a player. The school and town were left as generic, unless and until the players filled something in. We had a new player join us after about three sessions, and he envisioned his PC as a surfer. As we hadn’t previously established anything that prevented the town from being near the ocean, suddenly it was.

    If you as MC have a specific idea for a setting that you think is cool, then by all means pitch it to the players. But it is also totally fine to just let the setting be created through play and player input.

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