10 thoughts on “Is it possible to play as an MC and PC?”

  2. Yes, I’ve actually ran MC less AW and MC less Monster Hearts.  Everyone has a character and they take turns scene by scene being the GM.  As an incentive as a GM I say if you GM a scene you get to mark an experience.  Give everyone a an MC list sheet and explain very early on that as MC when these moves are hard make them hard.  Make characters suffer and give examples of how rough you need ti be as a an MC.  It worked fine and we ran games with like 7 or 8 people where we had multiple scenes goign at once.  It’s a lot of fun. 

  3. I think the MC shouldn’t play a character as well, at least not to start.  For one thing, AW games try to give the MC a role that is different but equal to players, so the MC is basically playing their own character that takes the form of fronts and NPCs; giving them a PC as well is like giving someone two characters.  Possible, but not a great way to start.

    For another, it’s pretty difficult to one minute pursue your own interests and goals as a character, then the next minute look at the best way to make like difficult for that character.  One of the two sides is likely to suffer.

    And then you get into how weird it would be to put a second self into the conversation of play “Jacks pulls out his club and hits you upside the head.  How do I react to that?  Well, I dive in to take revenge on Jacks.”  And how difficult it would be to be a fan of all PCs, including your own, in the same way.

    So yes, entirely possible.  But I wouldn’t recommend it.

    But I agree saying that someone else has to MC every second or third session sounds like a good idea.  Update some fronts that you can hand off to people so they can keep track of what’s going on, be open and collaborative.

  4. In the end, AW is based around a conversation, a conversation governed by principles. The MC doesn’t have control; they don’t have the three next encounters lined up.

    So if for a scene, somebody else takes a different role in that conversation? It works.

    My assumption is that a reason you’d rotate MCs scene to scene is because not all the characters are in the same place all the time: Monsterhearts does really well with that kind of split attention.

    Playing a MC and a PC at the exact same time is definitely a more difficult/stranger thing.

  6. Keenan Kibrick I found it worked better that everyone has their own threats and you MC your threats. My only caviate is that as a player you can not argue with your threat’s NPC’s.

  7. Keenan Kibrick that’s pretty awesome! I’ve been running some pretty large groups lately and that type of movable GM would be highly useful!

    Thanks for the idea.

    It also plays into a discussion I was having with Stephanie Bryant about teaching players to be GMs.

    Thank you so much for sharing!

  8. It really is easy in AW and Monsnter hearts.  Both involve some PVP so people like going off into separate scenes.  the big secret I forgot to mention is after everyone runs a scene they all meet back and discuss what scenes were had so everyone knows what’s going on.   Let there be in character secrets but no out of character secrets.  Also, if a person was a GM or has not had a scene they get to frame the next scene they want to have.

  9. My pleasure glad I have a fan.  It also helps teach players to be GMs and helped me become a better AW GM.  I’ve done it with DitV as well, and it also makes for a very  interesting  MC Less game.

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