After play testing this skin for a couple of weeks, and developing it for even a longer period of time.

10 thoughts on “After play testing this skin for a couple of weeks, and developing it for even a longer period of time.”

1. Ha – I’ve been working on a similar skin, too! 

2. Will take a look later today.

3. Alberto Muti Yeah, I took a look at all of the current skins a few months ago and noticed this kind of skin wasn’t here so I thought to myself that this was my next project.

4. Topher Gerkey Absolutely, hope you enjoy it!

5. There’s a lot here that’s good, and a lot that’s rough.

   First off: the name (considering there’s ALREADY a Queen skin).

   Second: A lot of the moves are skill improvement or better versions of core moves.

   “Ice in the Veins” is a fuck-you to any Fae in the game. “I don’t trust Phoebe, so I get a string or an XP whenever she tries to deal with me.”

   The spells are really bad about this. Consider the Witch: the spells are obvious in fiction but don’t give damage to harm or inflict conditions.

   Unlike the vampire (who’s a cerebral abuser), the Ice Queen is a collection of superpowers.

   “Ice Golem” is basically the regular queen’s gang, but better. It doesn’t have its own agenda and doesn’t fuck up. The tradeoff is you can’t use it in public, but that’s true of half the skin’s powers.

   Third: The skin is too disneyfied. I mean, you can only come out of Darkest Self with “The Ending to Frozen”.

6. The Disney thing is sort of the point being homage to frozen.  The language in the darkest self reflects that but really isn’t much different than most other skins.  You are completely self absorbed because everything sucks until someone shows you that that things don’t suck so bad. 

   Ice golem is super limited in that it can’t do a lot of things that a gang can.  The spells being dangerous or bout running away play to the distancing people from the character.  The potential for unexpected side effects gives more reason for isolation.

   Maybe ice in veins should be tied to a roll rather than automatic.  But the stat swapping is common and improved versions of basic moves are what  lot of the moves are in other skins. 

   The theme makes social interaction a bit difficult and it is easy to be left out, interaction might need to be forced sometimes in the game.  Not being involved in the social aspects really misses the point of the game.   I think this is the biggest flaw with the skin.  Maybe you could skip the charade and just call her The Frozen.

7. Adam Goldberg , Yeah when I made the skin I personally envisioned playing it as a female in mind, so that’s where a small part of the inspiration for the name came from. Another part has to do with the actual phrase “ice queen”, and the third part coming from frozen. Like Tony said I could change the name to make it more neutral, possibly “The Iceborn” or “The Forstborn” not sure, but having a skin named Queen and another named Ice Queen in my opinion do not clash with each other. The names have completely different meanings to them, and in fact the two come off as opposites in many ways. So I don’t see a problem there other than a person’s personal taste.

   The point you made about Ice in the Veins definitely has a lot merit, I can see how it may be abused, and I’m trying to see if there’s a way I can solve that, but I feel as if you may have overlooked it just a bit and missed some of it’s qualities. The general feeling of the move itself is that the character has an uncanny ability that makes them good at getting an upper hand on people they do not trust. When you have a person who focuses on distancing themselves from others it’s not hard to imagine that they have learned to keep their cool in a situation that involves working with people, and that is where the phrase “Ice water in the veins” comes from. The interesting part of that ability is that it gives incentive to the Ice Queen to work with people (via exp) when they would want to stay away. That and the move itself isn’t spam-able, it must be as part of another person’s move who you don’t know or trust, and by the rules of monster hearts alone you can only gain one string and exp per scene with one given move. Also the way you explained how it could be abused came off as a player who was trying to meta/power game mechanics, at which that point I think a player misses the entire point of playing monster hearts and the GM should seriously penalize them. I will say that having a cold roll associated with it sounds like it may be a fix, but if that happens your potential for exp gain increases two fold, and I don’t like that. Lastly I like the fact that some skins have strengths over others, does it fuck the Fae over? It’s possible… if they play their cards wrong, it’s just how the game is played in some instances.

   You then began to mention how most of the moves have skill improvements and better versions of moves, but it goes without saying that most skins released currently have moves like that, and it’s not an uncommon thing to see. That and many of the bonuses have strings attached to them (excuse that pun) for example with Cold and Dark Go Hand in Hand you can only use dark with lashing out physically with your ice powers (they are still bad using any conventional weapon or fighting through volatile aside from their unstable magic.) Another move example being the +1 to dark while being alone while gazing into the abyss. That is a really minimal buff and the move has it’s own weaknesses that other players can act upon from it as a result. Lastly with a skin that’s dedicated to isolation getting a +2 to a run away roll after the fact that you have to choose which kind of spell you have to go with isn’t strong at all. On average a person playing the Ice Queen will have a -1 to volatile this means they have only a +1 to run away in most circumstances when using Ice travel, and that’s IF they have control of their powers, and I haven’t even gotten to that part yet. Just to give you a little back story, when I play tested this skin I had used ice travel when she had little control over her powers that session. Instead of her phasing through some ice she was trapped in, she was teleported a couple hundred miles up form Oregon to Vancouver.

   I’ll disagree with you that the Ice Queen is a collection of different superpowers. Each power that the Ice Queen has runs thematically with the skin itself and it all revolves around ice in a way that makes sense. Similar to the infernal, the Ice Queen rides on highs and lows, some sessions you might be shit-out-of-luck and your magic is very unstable, while other times they can be very powerful. That is the risk involved with the character.

   Going along on the spells, like Tony mentioned the Ice Golem is very limited in what it can do, not only can it be an eye sore and very noticeable, it can’t freely think for itself and relies on your orders, what if you are gone? What if you can’t communicate? It can only do the one task you set it out to do, and as a result cannot react on the fly if something sprung up. That being said the Ice Golem isn’t a gang itself, and has weaker qualities than what an actual gang can do, so I don’t know where you think it’s better than a real gang. Also a person would have to invest into an advancement or use one of their two starting spell slots to take Ice Golem (Thus effectively making it a tax to get all the spells you want), and after that you have to see if you can even control your powers to use it each session. Also like anything, the Ice Golem can fuck up, especially if you roll badly enough. It’s not like it has it’s own individual stats, if it helps you in a task, you the player are rolling for it.

   I’ll end it with the point that yes I made a skin inspired by Frozen. So it being too “Disneyfield” shouldn’t come as a surprise, and most skins out there like Tony pointed out work the same way with their darkest selves. “You are completely self absorbed because everything sucks until someone shows you that that things don’t suck so bad. ” Yep that about sums it up.  I wish I had more room in the actual PDF to make the information on the skin more clear and streamed lined, it would make it much easier on me to explain the several mechanics that are involved with the skin.  

8. Alec Henry I’m not really taking any names right now at the moment, but thanks anyways for the suggestion, that’s something that I can possibly think about at another time after polishing the mechanics. Though the Ice Queen did have a move called coldsnap during it’s creation, I ended up removing it cause it was a move she didn’t need. I like that you picked up on the persona and feel of the skin and how it’s played.

   Moving on to what you mentioned about Ice in the Veins, I do like the sound of that idea, but for example a vampires feeding move also gives them bonuses after the first feeding, I don’t want turn the move into something that becomes used once and then never used again, so perhaps putting a negative attached to the skill like the other person getting a string on you if you fail to meet ends for example?

   You are absolutely correct about the consistency of using harm instead of damage, I overlooked that thank you for bringing it up. Absolute Zero is in fact meant to hit everyone as that’s how AOE attacks work, it’s just the wording I used at the time did not elaborate on that fact.

   When I made the skin I thought about adding an errata on Ice Golem so that it said only able to be used once per session, given that the golem disappears every session I thought that may have been enough.

   As far as the crush thing goes, I could reword it but it should work both ways. Either way thanks for the comments.

9. I remember Eska, she was an interesting character. Thanks again though for the feedback.

10. I actually played this Skin in a one shot and will say i really enjoyed it.

    The Klutzy background turned out quite well for the story between myself and another NPC and provided lots of entertaining moments which i enjoyed, as well as the Ice Magic giving lots of options and interesting events, especially since the characters we used did not know they had a skin to begin with IC.;

    If i have to say anything to the negative it would be the Ice in the Veins move was not something that really thrilled me as a option. But again that might just be personal taste.

    Overall id like to thank you for the skin which made for a very interesting One-shot session that may be expanded into a longer Season, We are talking about it being classed as our Pilot episode of sorts

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