We just had our 6th (?) session of our Monsterhearts campaign set at the prestigious serpent-controlled boarding school of Malvern-Chamberlain (Go Crusaders!), in Western Massachusetts. I really need to post all the weekly love letters from this game at some point. Here’s one of my favorites from this past week:
—
Dear Ms. Zazsu Brightly-Ladon [the Serpentine],
Your family has decided — despite not being like the hippies you were raised by — that it is time to “imminentize the eschaton” so to speak. It is time for the other major players in the game to choose which side they will stand with in the coming time of trial. You and your four cousins (Alistair, Genevieve, George Winston, and T) have each been asked to seduce and/or destroy the following five targets: Tucker [werewolf PC], Mark [infernal PC], Annie [witch PC], Eli [nephalim NPC], and Pastor Helen [Eli’s dark angel mother NPC]. The adults have left it up to you to divide these amongst yourselves while they handle some other matters, but are clearly watching to see which of the younglings handles this business with the most skill. Let’s play out the scene where you pick your targets, yes?
Are you still in your Darkest Self? If so, tell me whose life you have totally destroyed with cold venomous fury. Did you swallow them whole? If so, mark XP.
Hugs & Kisses,
Your MC
—
And, of course, the person that the Serpentine chose to swallow whole, slowly digest, and spit their bones down an old well was the girlfriend of the Infernal. So… awesome?
We have a world-shaking battle looming on the horizon between the spawn of the Dragon (the serpent brood) vs. the maybe-fallen Angel and her halfbreed childe. That will be fun.
What is the nephalim? Is it a custom skin? The angel skin by another name?
(Also, awesome!)
Alberto Muti The nephalim is an NPC, so there’s no skin. We’ve established that Eli looks like a normal person, but secretly has dozens of arms sprouting from his shoulders that sometimes look like wings if you can’t see them clearly. But most people can’t see them at all. A couple of the female PCs are busy fantacizing about what he could do with all those hands…
Paul McBride It’s going well, though I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the different requirements of being an MC in Monsterhearts. There’s actual honest-to-goodness scene framing, for one, which both AW and DW don’t normally suggest. And there’s no Read moves, so I’m still trying to master how much information to give the PCs and how much to hold back. Finally, I’m still figuring out how best to leverage the Strings that NPCs gain on the PCs and how best to engage the Advantage/Disadvantage rules, which are on the back of the GM sheet and easy to forget. It’s definitely still in the AW balliwick, but there’s enough different that I’ll probably only get good at running this around the time we wrap up this campaign 🙂
I too am running a game at a prep school in Western Mass. Mine is at New Salem Academy.
Jaison Hellstrom Nice. I bet we play you guys in football.
We just had homecoming with Miskatonic Prep, but it looks like the Crusaders are on the schedule.
Cool. We’re into the winter already, so we just beat Sacred Heart to make it to regionals. Our homecoming was a disaster with multiple players suffering serious injuries on the field (werewolf took some poor kid out and then fell awkwardly and tore his ACL).
the WR who made the winning catch isn’t at school anymore. because he is dead at the hands of the PCs.