I’m very late to this party, but after a successful couple of sessions (as a player and an MC) I felt like making a…

I’m very late to this party, but after a successful couple of sessions (as a player and an MC) I felt like making a…

I’m very late to this party, but after a successful couple of sessions (as a player and an MC) I felt like making a little setting for Monsterhearts. Take a gander if you please, it always surprises me how changing the wording of a move really adds and takes from a Powered by the Apocalypse game.

15 thoughts on “I’m very late to this party, but after a successful couple of sessions (as a player and an MC) I felt like making a…”

  2. Haha, thanks Alfred Rudzki. I’m glad you do!

    If I get chance to MC Victoria’s Secrets, I’m thinking the first antagonists will be a Sharabha demon and Jinni masquerading as Indian trading allies of Britain, selling a strange spice that turns people into raving zombies.

    So… What do you think the Queen is?

  3. Of course, it doesn’t change the fact that a Monsterhearts game is really about the characters growing up; this just adds goal orientated missions and a messed up society that is twice as backwards as ours; which is way more horrifying than any zealous Arthurian knights or werewolf street orphans.

  4. You’ve made an error, or at least a large change;

    “Turn Someone On” isn’t active! Its trigger, unlike the other moves, can be passive; you can do it by catching the sun on your hair or breathing heavily.

    Also, what does your game offer that’s different from Monster of the Week? That game has a much stronger system of Mystery Investigation, teamwork, and magic use. (I don’t know if ‘group of investigators’ is something MH does well; as written, MH doesn’t even have a teamwork move!)

  6. I dig that. They’re still monsters stuck in a restrictive social caste, awkwardly navigating sex and relationships just like everyone else around them, and even their mobility is restricted… I highly doubt they’re allowed to just wander around on their off-time without some kind of chaperone to monitor them. Everybody just gets to get in on the Chosen fun.

    As for the Queen… Good Q! Maybe she’s a Changeling that has forgotten her true home. 

  7. Monster of the Week is terrible with complex interpersonal drama. What I’m seeing here is that this setting is about complex interpersonal drama, but you just so happen to be chasing monsters.

    Its Torchwood, not Supernatural.

  8. Yeah, “make a provocative gesture” involves a bit more talking than “turn someone on”. Its a thematic thing, Victorian’s are thought of as being restricted and reserved; they’re hardly going to take off their pants for a flick of the hair. Its just an active choice by the players to “act proper” to suit the era they’re playing in.

    Instead they’ll need words or a show of something grand to be moved to action.

    Its not a new game, its just a bit of stuff for Monsterhearts. It’s still all about the characters and their inner desires, which is what the game is good for.

  9. The core mechanism of MH is using sexuality and emotional violence, along with physical violence, to get what you want. I don’t see that as a big crossover with Victoriana, even with sexy Corset-and-Crossbow movies. Most characters get what they want thru violent threats, appeals to authority, or intellect. Sherlock Holmes, the ultimate victorian, didn’t solve cases by showing ankle.

  14. I think it’s a mistake to push the moves toward less sex.  Is sex in the Victorian era less accepted than it is today?  Sure.  But MH is about teenagers breaking the rules in messy and melodramatic ways.  Prudishness is what makes the era sing as a setting, not something that needs to be written around.

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