I’m playing for my first (non-con) game of Monsterhearts on Tuesday and my skin is the Fae. Any tips, tricks, or advice for playing these characters? How do you get people into promises or play them up in game?
I’m playing for my first (non-con) game of Monsterhearts on Tuesday and my skin is the Fae.
I’m playing for my first (non-con) game of Monsterhearts on Tuesday and my skin is the Fae.
The one time I played a Fae (for only two sessions, sadly), I played her as a giant airheaded chatterbox. Everything was “OMG! Promise you’ll give me the deets on Cage.” “You have to totally promise you’ll call me later.” “You’ll meet me here after school? Promise?” She pretty much never stopped talking. (Within reason, mind. I made sure other players got spotlight time.)
I didn’t make her asking for promises seem ominous or like it was a big deal. She just kept bombarding people with chatter that had the word “promise” in there somewhere. It worked, too. More than once, a character would throw up their hands with some variation of “Fine! I promise. Just shut up, will you!”
The key move for the Fae is The Lure. It reverses the temptation for people to clam up when dealing with you, and instead means that you start relatively slowly – but get them to promise what they were thinking of doing anyway and they get XP for it. I’ve never seen a Fae work well without The Lure or work badly with it.
If you want to play the Fae as a genuinely Magnificent Bastard, grab Temptation from the Serpentine. At that point you get XP whether they succeed or whether they break their promise – and they get 1XP and 1 Forward for promising you something. Unashamed and Feral are both terrible moves mechanically.
Remember that they need not use the words “I promise”. If they agree to meet you after school, to return your pencil after borrowing it, or to not go out with that boy you like, these are all promises that can be broken.
For a one-shot, I’d agree but for something longer term there should be some weight to the words aside from a statement. Unless you’re in Darkest Self.
Manipulate an NPC can help if you can find a bribe, threat, or motive for them. Lure is always great for providing incentive.
And pay attention to the wording of the promises too. 🙂 There’s a big difference from “I promise to protect you” to “I promise to protect you when we confront (insert name of person or group)” after all.
One of my PCs in the game I’m running tends to stand behind the other PCs, and when they extract some kind of promise or make some kind of deal, she shouts “You promise?!” at them. And because the NPCs are all mundanes, and terrified of the other PCs, they promise, not knowing what it entails.
You have to be kind of active. It’s not the kind of skin that benefits from sitting back and waiting your turn. Werewolves, Vampires, and Infernals can wait their turn to use Volatile, Hot / Cold, and The Power Flows Through You (respectively), and just be awesome. Your contract power requires that you actively engage.
Oh, and be careful what you say as well. The MC might very, very well call you on it.
It got one of my players into a whole lot of trouble when he was crowned Winter King at the Winter Ball at school, and promised to be the best Winter King ever. His father, a fae, currently inhabiting the body of their math teacher, immediately began gathering the armies 🙂
Tore, you are horrible and I love you.
Thanks!
Advice for playing a fae? During RP, make others (PCs and NPCs) think they need your approval for things by not giving it to them when they want it. Be hesitant in as nice of a way as possibly, The more you subtly fight for assurances the more casual promises you will get which will give you more power over people when you decide that vengeance has come due. Also if it seems someone’s promise isn’t good enough or is too couched in qualifiers be free to deny it and push for one that has more hidden barbs, just because someone is offering you a deal it doesn’t mean that’s the BEST deal you can get out of them with a little pushing.
I would also be wary of entangling yourself with power creatures that can say rewrite the laws of reality 😉
Also Strings. Strings are important if you want to say ever choose anyone’s highlighted stats or even get more than one-shot vengeance on broken promises.
As a pure Fae turning people on is the way you get extra strings.
Unashamed all but guarantees that you can boost a failure to a partial success (Which with your sex move guarantees you will either you get a promise or a string on that person so long as you actually sleep with them) and guarantees that you can boost a partial success to a full success (wish insures that they give you a string instead of taking the easy way out of giving you a promise on their terms that they think you want).
All this can be decided AFTER the roll and all from the low price of giving them a string on you (Which everyone already has because you give them to everyone in character creation)
Wild Hunt is a little less useful as an advance than increasing your Hot by 1 but if taken after the advance it will mean the lowest you can roll on turning someone on is a 5 or 6 (depending on if you spent your initial Stat increase) which means near automatic success on most rolls, and no chance of failure if you use conditions for forward or strings
Also if one of your fellow players is a Vampire, they should be the perfect target for your sexual advances. Their sex move and inherent power gaming will lead them more likely to making you promises they must no break (Which will give you strings) or will outright give you strings on them, and having strings on them will protect you from that Hypnosis move they seem to favor. 😉
Thank you Branden Leavens but dear frickin gods that’s a lot! lol. My brain is fired from today, so I’ll have to read through it all a few more times before the game on Tues and hope it sinks in. 🙂
Don’t sweat it. Just play the fae your own way, have fun and don’t worry about xp and strings. Having fun is the point of the game, not numbers and dots on paper.