While enjoying monster of the week, there is some areas that should be addressed.
1. The advanced moves prove useless to a game where a majority of the time the game is:
A. One shot scenario.
B. The hunters already have an extensive backstory and history.
What I would suggest is enabling advanced moves for one shot games, especially the advanced kick some ass move, as that is the only way outside of luck to go toe to toe with a monster boss without taking near deadly harm.
2. The failed roll XP reward system is something I do not like. The PC’s should get experience from progressing the mystery and acting their character, hence the highlighted stats in the previous edition was a better mechanic. If the PC’s do well in an investigation through a string of successes, their advancement slows to a crawl. Also failure means the mystery drags on as hard moves and failed rolls means you miss out on valuable information that may progress the plot. How is being shitty on your rolls worthy of an XP reward?
So what do you say about my beefs?
Sorry. When you say “advanced moves” are you talking about the Hunter Improvements and Advanced Improvements? Or do you mean the “advanced, on a 12+” results for the Basic Moves? Regardless, I don’t see how playing one shot scenarios or having an extensive backstory/history make either of those things useless.
One of the consequences of going toe-to-toe with a boss monster using Kick Some Ass is that the hunter will take near deadly harm. That’s just how the game works. Monster in MotW are scary and dangerous and hunters who simply try to beat them in a straight up fight will probably lose.
Hunters need to be smart and catch the monster in a situation where it can’t fight back. At least not with its full power.
Failed rolls often progress things more than successful rolls do. Things go sideways on 6- results and the game gets interesting because things happen. Sucky things for the hunters, sure, which is why they get rewarded with an XP on a miss.
If the hunters do well on their rolls then their reward is beating the monster and saving the town (or whatever).
I liked the highlighted stats mechanic from 1st edition too. But this works just as well.
> Also failure means the mystery drags on as hard moves and failed rolls means you miss out on valuable information that may progress the plot
No, missing out on vital information is a GM decision. There is nothing to say on a 6-, you don’t achieve your stated goal, just that it goes poorly.
> How is being shitty on your rolls worthy of an XP reward?
You learn from your mistakes.
It’s your game now, John Swan! If you want to throw an Advanced Move out there for players, or swap back to the highlighted stat for XP bit from 1st edition, go for it!
This game makes assumptions about game play and the expected experience. Maybe your assumptions aren’t meshing with the game and it may not be the game for you?
I’ve never played a MotW one shot, only campaigns. I think most people play MotW as campaigns, so I’m not sure I follow your first beef — sorry! D:
As for failures slowing down the mystery; I would hope not! Misses are just “bad stuff happens!” And as all prime time monster hunting TV has taught us, getting suplexed by alien-demon-robots is 50% of solving mysteries! A proper MC should be using misses to reveal unfortunate secrets in addition to ruining your day.
Also, missed rolls are where the drama happens. That’s when the police get suspicious of your snooping, or the vampires abduct your witness, or the bloodworms come pouring out of the walls.
Giving out XP for low rolls encourages players to take risks, so they don’t hide in their base and play it safe. If they want those XP, they’ll need to be bold and a little foolish and be willing to get into trouble.
At least, that’s been my play experience.
As I run frequent con games, like next Saturday and Sunday… +OrcCon in Los Angeles Feb 12th-15th!!! (hooray shameless plug) I have a some experience with one shots.
Issue 1. If you are running a one-shot then there is nothing stopping you from letting them start at a higher level (especially if you’re allowing extensive backstory). When I run one-shots at my local game shop, I typically let people start my Dungeon World and MotW games at level 4 or 5 so they can enjoy and experience more of what the game has to offer. At Cons, everyone gains a level after each hour, on top of levels xp derived from xp.
*Side note, for one-shots and con games I limit usable Luck to 2 points to make them feel precious and important rather than players flinging them like dollar bills at a stripper.
Issue 2. As others have stated, you are conflating a failed roll with the mystery not advancing. While I love games like CoC, that is one of the primary weaknesses of it. Coincidentally the reason why I love ToC so much is because the players are given the bare bones to advance plot regardless of the dice (and less math Hooray!). As the GM you are the arbiter of what they find out, so you can advance plot on a Snake Eyes roll, you just have to remember there’s a snake attached to those snake eyes when it comes time to advance plot.
As to the way you earn XP, it has been my experience that the people who have commented to me about Fail=XP all love it. If you’ve been in d20 fantasy combat you know how much you want to bang your head on the table for having waited 20 minuets and achieve nothing with a blown roll and having to wait another 20 minutes. In my experience Fail=Xp encourages people to not only be more daring in what they attempt but also be less prone to living and dying by their primary stat.
As this one feels more of a personal style issue than Point 1, it’s easily solved by using the pre-existing 1st Edition. We’ll all just judge you behind your back for making the wrong decision. :p