19 thoughts on “Has anyone played Monsterhearts: Academy by Dirk Detweiler Leichty?”

  3. Oh, man! I haven’t played it, but, at least on paper, it’s really good. I’ve been chatting about it with Dirk for a little while.

    Some of the moves in there are solid gold, and arguably improvements on Monsterhearts.

    I would imagine it plays great, although it needs some guidance on how to use the “flags” to be ready to go. (Of course, you can always fall back on standard highlighting, if that doesn’t make sense to you, however.)

    I’m not convinced the Level Up move is set up right, either; although maybe it will work fine for you.

    Other than that, it looks super solid.

  4. I actually like the Level Up move (it would work especially great in a con or long con setting, IMO) and how some Skins can drag you into them by spending 4 Strings (although I’d have to see how that worked in play). I have a document which merges some 1E and 2E mechanics which I’ve used at a couple of con games and my ongoing game, and adding in some of the moves would be pretty easy.

    Question: How are you supposed to gain Reputation? Did I miss that somewhere?

  5. Yeah, Reputation is notably absent – I think it “never made it”.

    I love the Level Up move… I just think it’s not quite there yet. (We were discussing an alternative version elsewhere with Dirk, which might be a good way to go.)

    I’m working on my own thing which is inspired by that. I’ll post it sometime in the next week. Remind me here if you don’t see anything!

  7. What do I mean about Level Up? If it’s used, I think it should have more teeth. For example, I think that on a miss you should enter your Darkest Self, full stop.

  9. Mark, that’s remarkably similar to my own document! I didn’t notice too much in terms of changes to 2nd Ed, except for keeping the Manipulate an NPC move and leaving in certain options for a couple of the moves that were removed. Are there any other significant changes?

  10. The XP is ramped up for the con to get people to level up. Otherwise, since I want people to get Strings by ways other than Turning Someone On, I made sure to include any String option the other moves had.

  12. That’s pretty interesting! Nice idea.

    Some of these are really logical and some are somewhat counter-intuitive. Is that intentional, or just the way I’m reading it?

    One thing I’ve thought about (and am actually going to try today! playing M<3s in about an hour!) is to highlight elements of the fiction instead of or as well as stats.

    You can ‘highlight’ a character, for instance, and anyone making moves aimed at that character mark experience.

    Seems like it could be good for a one-shot, especially if you switch them halfway through.

  15. I had a great session of Monsterhearts yesterday, with the new moves and harm rules in effect (as linked above). They worked great!

    We didn’t have any Shutting Someone Down, though. I’m still a bit on the fence about that.

    The “story highlights” worked really nicely, too (mostly to facilitate a good conversation at the beginning of the session).

    I may be putting together a scenario for a one-shot using some of the Academy playbook moves in the next 10 days or so. I’ll definitely be back here to report on that if it happens!

  16. Awesome! I didn’t see anything about harm rules in your PDF other than using a string to force them to reroll. Am I missing something?

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