Tomorrow will be my first time running M<3s (going with 2 because I wanna try it!!) and I couldn't be more excited. For reference, I've got a Ghost, Hollow, and Witch. Everyone except for me are newbies to the game (and PbtA for that matter). Any first time MC or player tips? Good questions for the seating chart? Ways of pulling what seem to be a rather passive trio of Skins into the thick of things? Or anything else you think might be helpful!
Tomorrow will be my first time running M<3s (going with 2 because I wanna try it!!) and I couldn't be more excited.
Tomorrow will be my first time running M<3s (going with 2 because I wanna try it!!) and I couldn't be more excited.
A mistake I make is not going over all the moves and why they work the way they do. Make it clear that the moves make interesting thing happen and they should be excited to make things trigger.
For buy in, make sure you develop the setting with them and the relations between different pc’s and npc’s so the players have a way of knowing what to care about at first. I’ve started using a round of fuck, marry, kill to get some initial emotions into the game. It works pretty well to get players to make the kind of Id based poor decisions that feel teenagery
A mistake I made was jumping too fast to make humans monstrous-make sure your characters have people they care about during your seating chart questions!
Don’t skip going over the agenda, either, even if you think everyone understands what the game is supposed to be from your initial proposal. Go over it at the table just to be sure.
Fuck marry kill is a great idea, I’ll definitely be incorporating that, thanks.
And yeah, I plan to go over the agenda. And moves, etc, etc.
What is hard to learn, or was for me, was pacing and Hard Moves/Reactions. Don’t feel bad about dealing Harm for Hard Moves/Reaction. For example, if there is a nutter with a gun because the Hollow stole her boyfriend and the Hollow decides to go all head to head – well, the NPC has a gun. Shoot them and then let the NPC gloat some to give them a chance to rethink this but don’t feel you need to save the Hollow from their poor choices.
The second is pacing. Taking from above the Hollow run away from the NPC and gets a 7-9, choosing “run into something worse.” Don’t feel like you need to apply more harm, perhaps they run into the person they stole who finds this show of madness super sexy and who dumps the Hollow. Still pretty cruel but makes the humans look monstrous and doesn’t punish the Hollow with death.
I know these are kind of specific examples. Take them as you will. Reactions from NPCs take some time to learn as will finding the pacing for your group. Don’t get disheartened by not getting them perfect off the bat.
Specific examples are awesome! Kinda wish the book had more tbh. As far as pacing, I was going to follow the book’s advice of setting it up and knocking it down as best I can. I was sort of planning on spending NPC strings quickly, at least to start, since I feel that’s a good way to get the PCs into the thick of things. But if the PCs start spending strings quickly first, I’ll slow it down. We’ll see how that works out…
It went well! I went pretty easy on the failures (for now…) but the Ghost and I agreed that one of his would be PERFECT for going darkest self, so… He did. Still is as of the end of the session. Drugs were taken, boobs were touched, someone got sucker punched by the popular douche-y bro… And most importantly, players said they had fun!