Hello, Monsters. About to run my first game of Monsterhearts, and nervous as hell; especially worried that I’ll blush, stammer and mumble like an idiot the first time someone mentions a Sex Move.
So if you can: I’d like one piece of advice, and one of your disasters (funny is okay).
The first is to help me prepare, and the second hopefully so that, if something goes wrong, I can put it in perspective. Also, a laugh is always appreciated!
For advice when it comes to sex moves, I’d say to fade to black when it starts to fell uncomfortable. You don’t need to role play sex. In fact, you can replace the sex trigger with intimacy and the game still plays the same.
My worst MH disaster was like a month ago where I was running the game at a con. Before I could even get the PC’s into thier home room a character picked a fight, got sent to the principal’s office, kicked the guy in the blls, threatened to kill everyone in the school over the intercom, and of course jumped out the window to avoid the police. Of course I was running other scenes while this was happening, but I was also prodding the pc that caused all this trouble. As an MC I completely failed to read the situation and bring about character interaction. It ended up killing the game, but the players still had fun. We ended up picking up Lady Blackbird to play next to cleanse our palate.
My advice: don’t fear the awkward. It will almost certainly happen, but that’s okay. Laugh it off and let everyone release the tension if needed. Teen sex is awkward; role playing about it can be as well. And as David said, when it stops being fun, fade to black. I like to get to where it’s just a little uncomfortable before fading though. Just because it’s fun to push limits.
I’ve had a similar experience to David where the characters went separate directions and it was a bit of a struggle to get them to interact. I ended up running three separate storylines at the same table. I now address that right at the start of the game by saying something like “There’s no reason your characters have to be friends or interact with each other. But the game is much more interesting when your characters do interact. Monsterhearts is a game that puts more responsibility on you guys to find reasons for your characters to stick together than other games.”
I’ll echo David and Adam about the sex thing. narrate or roleplay things up until the point that people are comfortable, then fade to black. You can trigger yet skip past Sex Moves simply by saying things like “So… after you two finish…” or “After having sex…”
My suggestion is playing this and any other game that challenges your sexuality and understanding of gender with mature people. There’s no need to infer the need for maturity in this or even it’s precursor; the sex moves are intrinsic to monsterhearts as much as puberty and sexual identity are in high school.
Plus, it’s not like the rules demand your players to describe their genitals in great detail or what they’re doing with them.
I’d be proud if my players ever did that though. That would mean they were were comfortable enough with the idea of sharing their imagination with others that they went beyond any hangups they had about talking about sex.
It certainly helps to realize, that we all play to have fun.
Yes it can be awkward and Monsterhearts almost tops this, because of the sexual uncertainty of the characters. Does this make the game less fun? Not for me as I am happily embrace this with all my heart 🙂
As for a disaster… it didn’t happen in one of my games, but I heard of a Mortal-Ghoul-Loop where the Mortal triggered the Darkest Self of the Ghoul and the Ghoul had to choose: Hunger (flesh) or Hunger (Sex with the Mortal)
If there wasn’t another character to break this loop, they would be fucking until the end of time 😉 (or the Ghoul would eventually break out him/herself and eat the mortal as a little after sex snack…)
I want to play in Seth Abel’s game! 🙂
Sascha Müller’s Infernal and my Rusalka have had sex many many times lately, and we’ve actually had various levels of description. There’s a real power struggle between them, so at times it’s really important to describe which of the two boys is “on top.” But there have been other instances where they start kissing and we immediately fade, because the sex was just about sex and not about the power game.
Maybe that’s something that can help you figure out when it’s right to fade to black or not… if the way they’re having sex is important to character development, it should at least be specified (if not narrated). But if they’re just having sex to have sex, it’s not really important to go into details.
Adam West Oh, the lovely “They are 5 Minutes alone? Fade to black…”-Rule 😉
As for the level of detail… personally I am far away to hit the limit of my shame, but I don’t want to bother the players with their limits… but perhaps I should start to wait for another player to say the “Please fade to black!” *grin*
Or perhaps…”Please fade to black…please…screw it, just switch it off NOW!”
Of course I would immediately stop mid sentence if I overstep the boundaries of a fellow player, because of my “We play to have fun together!” rule. But perhaps the limits are higher than everybody assumed 🙂