Some thoughts on running a Monsterhearts One-Shot:
So last night I ran a one-shot game, with no real prep, for three players (one had played before, one had some experience with RPGs years ago mostly with D&D and the third had never played RPGs before).
It went really well. Here are some things I did to help make sure that it would, since it was only a one shot.
Making Characters: This feels like such an integral part of Monsterhearts, choosing how you intertwine your characters together, that I did not want to skip this step. I did not want pre-gen characters. I did, however, only give them a few skins to choose from. Limiting options means that A) It doesn’t take as long to go over all of the choices, and B) They are not paralyzed by too many options.
We made the characters, and it went very quickly, I just encouraged the players to dive right in and told them they couldn’t make a wrong choice with their stats or Moves, especially since it was only a one-shot.
Homeroom: With only one night to play, there isn’t a need for ten to twenty different NPCs to interact with, they just aren’t going to get to all of them. But again, setting up the people around them is an important part of binding the story together, and I didn’t want to skip it. So, I gave them five people in their class. I told them there are others, but these are the ones that are most likely to be playing major roles in the game that evening. Asked the leading questions, and we got a small cast for the night.
Setting: I did very little to establish the town, we all came up with places as we needed, but only really had three or four that just kept getting re-used. There were a lot of clandestine meetings in the ravine in the park, for instance. I kept this part to a minimum because they could invent places as they needed them.
What I did do was give them a singular place in time, that night was prom and that event was what the game centered around.
Motivations: Monsterhearts gives some great motivations normally, but they can take a slow boil sometimes and I wanted them to dive right into things. I got three scraps of paper, and wrote down a secret on each, and handed them out randomly to the players in order to provide a motivation for them to be acting on that day. The Witch was given “You have a magic ring, and you know that if you can kill someone at the stroke of midnight it will let you live forever”, the Ghoul got “You’ve never been laid, and if you don’t before midnight tonight you are going to die, for good”, and the Fae got “Someone tried to run you over with their car last night. You don’t know who, but someone is trying to kill you”.
Admittedly, these could have been a lot less specific, and more open-ended, but that I think was a result of coming up with them on the fly. The point, though, is that it gave them each a jumping-off point for the one-shot to start the game off running.
Big Mistake: In our haste to get things going, we actually forgot to highlight stats for everyone, and XP growth was a lot slower than it should have been. At first I thought it might be a good thing, because it was one less thing for new players to worry about with the mechanics of the rules, but I quickly realized that the big problem with that is that it meant it wasn’t as meaningful for them to offer strings to one another for XP to do things they wanted. Luckily my players went with it as though XP was still important, but it could have been a lot less successful than it was.
Simply put: Don’t forget this step. The characters need to be able to push each other, and offering strings back is one of the most important ways they do that.
Game:
The game basically ended with the witch in the parking lot accidentally injuring the Ghoul’s girlfriend with a gun she got FROM the Ghoul’s girlfriend, getting beaten to a pulp by the Ghoul, going darkest self, and then shooting the Fae’s prom date and draining his soul for immortality (targeting the Fae’s boyfriend because the NPC he got pregnant at bible camp asked the Witch to kill him)
Summary:
I would do pretty much that same things I did the next time I run a one-shot, and recommend others do too.
Let the players make their characters but don’t give them tons of skins to choose from. Either a limited pool, or hand 2-3 skins to each player. Emphasize that there is no wrong choice.
Only a handful of NPCs, but let the players make them still. It binds them into the story.
Give players story prompts for their characters, don’t build a plot. Most one-shots are set-up with more railroading than normal to keep players confined to a short story. Instead of building a road for Monsterhearts though, instead accelerate the beginning but give them the room to make their own mess of things.
Give them a defined deadline in game, and make it very soon. My game lasted from after school to midnight of the same day.
Don’t railroad, just Intensify time limit and motives.
I hope this is helpful for some people.
Sounds like it went really well! Are your players hooked? Think you’ll play again?
I really like your tip about giving some kind of deadline. Makes it so the players dive right into the story with some urgency. I think it’s difficult in PbtA games for players from more traditional games to realize they are the ones driving the story, not the MC/GM. So they tend to sit back and wait for a lot of things to come to them at first.
Thanks Daniel E for taking the time to do this. 🙂
I agree about the skins, there are some that are just harder to do justice to in a one-shot. Which ones did you take out if I may ask?
And that’s an interesting way to give them something to drive for!
I also like to keep the number of NPCs manageable and cut down a bit on set-up time for a one-shot. Usually I let everyone name a person or two and then ask some questions. Did you feel that you had enough NPCs and that they were established enough?
When I run a one-shot, I usually have an event that is occurring- like a dance or a party or field day or something like that to give it some structure and something to move towards while still allowing plenty of freedom for the players and characters to do their thing. Your approach with randomly dealing out those motivations is an interesting one! How did the players respond?
Oh, a thought on your secrets, which I also love… if you have enough prep time, you could do three for each skin and let them choose. That way you could still have very specific ones without feeling like you’re being too forceful.
If you plan to run one-shots a lot, you could just generate them far in advance and have them to pull out any time you run.
Really nice summary man. Good job.
Adam West It did go well, and the players are definitely hooked. I don’t know if it will happen again though, mostly due to logistics. I game less than I’d like but it is all because of logistics.
I think you are right, that players from other games can easily fall into the trap of waiting for the story to come to them. That’s one of the reasons I handed out those random motivations though, and why I was careful to make them motivations and not storylines. I hadn’t even decided who it was trying to kill the Fae, I was going to let that shape itself out in game. When those motives were handed out I had no further direction for any of them, and just let the story take shape as the players went about things.
The other problem that I’ve kind of sensed from reading others talk of one-shots though is that GMs seem to often fall into the habits from other games with one-shots where they feel a need to limit options to players so that they can stick to the one-shot that the GM has planned for the night.
I think that Monsterhearts benefits from NOT having a plot or story for the characters. The ongoing Monsterhearts campaign I am running right now (one of the players is the same) I had planned events to occur within a couple of days (in game) from the start point and I had fretted that I didn’t have enough planned for them. We have finished two sessions and they made so much drama and story for themselves that we are not hitting my planned event until the third session.
Dani L. , I got kind of lucky with the players choosing their skins quickly. I suggested the experienced player choose something that wasn’t already in our ongoing game, and suggested the Ghoul because I know he’s a fan of The Crow and he had been talking about it before we sat down. He jumped on it. The player who was new to Monsterhearts but had played D&D before had looked over most of the skins earlier in the week and had settled on the Witch. For the completely new player, I actually handed him four skins that weren’t being used in my ongoing game, and he grabbed the Fae because of the picture.
As for the number of NPCs, five seemed to be perfect. They were all classmates though. It should be noted that their parents came into the story a little and they came up as we went, but five ‘peers’ to weave their web of drama and starting Strings seemed great.
Also, I am completely in agreement with you about setting the one-shot around an event. It gives an immediate structure and timeframe. Most of my one-shot took place in the hours leading up to prom, but giving them the dance as the deadline for the night gave them a framework to work with.
Adam West Dani L. , as for the secret motivations…
The players responded really well, and took right to them. They liked having that little bit of info in their back pocket, too.
As for multiple motivations to choose from – I am reluctant to do that, but you will note Adam that all of the motivations I handed out were starting points. None of them dictated how to go about getting what they wanted. I could have had them a little less focused, and likely will the next time, but the idea was that these were almost like the lasting results of a previous story. It was a way to make it feel like the story had started before this session, so they could start faster into the drama. I don’t want to give them too many options, I like that it was something that was out of their hands that they had to deal with one way or another, but the key I think is to leave it unfocused so they can find their own way about dealing with it.