Hey all, another question !
One thing we have a problem with, is : everyone’s gathering to play high school drama with monsters. It’s the basis of the game and the setting, and it’s what draws us to MH.
How do you maintain that setting for more than 2 sessions? As in: how doesn’t the setting go FUBAR the second one player unleashes their darkest self?
I mean, even one of the official examples is the Witch who causes her mother’s tongue to fall in the soup, twitch a bit (perfectly unnatural) and shrivel. In front of the whole family.
HOW do you recover from that without ruining the settings basis as “regular highschool life with horror”? How can the highschool daily life go on after that, multiplied by every player with whom it can happen? And for the tongue, we’re just talking about a family, it can be “fixed” if the Witch terrorises her family and trap them at home (but even then, goodbye normal life for that player). But when it happens in front of the whole school which gets half destroyed/killed in the process (hello, werewolf), I don’t see how you can salvage anything beyond that point.
As a corollary, how can you challenge the Vampire or the Queen when their powers let them hypnotise and control any inconvenient NPCs ? (since these powers work with their best stat, usually, 7-9 is usually the worst they can roll, and even that lets them succeed). So, how do you not have them easily take absolute control of the whole school (even city) in three sessions, through key officials under their thumb?
So, sure, one answer is “well that’s the point: to deal with the consequences”. And I agree, but the point is that everyone came at the table to play in a highschool setting with horrible social drama and crippling teen anxieties. So for that, you need an illusion of normalcy about the daily life, otherwise it’s another setting entirely.
I’m not we’re ot the only MH group who got faced with that problem, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve already been adivsed to try something like the Veil in White Wolf, whereas humans just can’t process supernatural and rationalize event againsts their best judgement and the evidence from their own eyes. It could work but it feels like it would remove the burden of responsability and consequences a bit too much. another advice was to do like Buffy, where the town is invaded by demons and vampires on a weekly basis but nobody notices because normal people just don’t want to see.
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In my experience stuff rapidly goes off the rails, and I think that’s by design.
I certainly err on the side of people explaining things away, but still holding it against the people they know who are involved. If they see you turn into a wolf and maul the postman, they will still hold you responsible, even if they remember it as you siccing a big dog on them.
If you’re playing Monsterhearts, why does something like that “ruin” the game?
Aaron Griffin because, as I just explained, we’re playing it for the highschool teen monster drama. When the school has been evacuated forever and the city is under martial law because there are destructive, bloodthirsty monsters about and everyone knows it because of the massive body count, that description doesn’t really fit anymore 😀
Benjamin Davis sounds reasonable, this is all things i’m going to relay to the MC.
Topher Gerkey I don’t know, it feels odd to have advancement rules and adult moves if everything’s supposed to end in flames after a few sessions, you know what I mean ? 🙂
I agree that MH can get derailed by built in rules and character abilities just like you point out. On the one hand it can be viewed as a strength of the game when it comes to running a one-shot session, but if you want an ongoing game than the narrative can feel broken if that happens. It might be possible to save it using ‘the veil’ approach. I would not mind if that was implemented in a game I played, but it might feel a little over used and cliche if it happens multiple times.
I had two thoughts on how to approach having a multi-session game. Both involve having a discussion with everyone at the start of the first session about how long you want to play.
The quick and easy idea is to predetermine how many sessions you are all willing to commit to. If you set a goal of 4-6 sessions, then players may stear their decisions away from using the nuclear option on the first night. This should happen before any other discussion of playbooks and setting etc. are put on the table. You could all agree to shooting for 4 sessions then letting the story come to it’s (super)natural conclusion. It might only go one more session, but it could go longer. Characters might find alternate paths to success/fulfilment besides going to their Darkest Self and setting the world on fire, thus allowing the game to stretch to session 6 or 7.
The more potentially restrictive idea I had is to talk to the other players about wanting a longer multi session game, and how overt displays of supernatural shenanigans would draw unwanted attention to the characters. This could/should be a concern of theirs anyway. You might all be able to agree that if something happens, authorities show up. Mulder and Scully arriave and spend a week poking around the first time. Everybody might be on their best behavior so they don’t get black bagged. The agents eventually leave bit the next big display brings them back with a team, and some drones or something and keeping your nose clean is more important and harder as the PCs are already on the list of suspects. You can’t just eat the FBI. If that is avoided, round three brings in the monsters that we all know they have chained up in their secret black sites. Or something like this.
Again, that would require an agreement and commitment from the players. I’m not sure if it would worl as I have never tried a multi-session MH game. Just some ideas.
A lot of what makes thing go gonzo in mh is the pacing of complications. If the consequence of their actions, hit or miss, are always immediate then you’ll hit your climax in a session or two. But if you let things get spaced out you get a slower deeper burn. The school setting isn’t there to be the only location, but as a tool to push characters together or force them apart. A lot of the game can occur after school and that gives a lot more options for scene structure. As far as darkest self, most of them allow for plausible deniability. Some of them are mostly behavioural, which can be explainable with the fact that the characters are volatile teens. Some like the ghost or the werewolf are overtly supernatural. The ghost is easy to explain since it’s about disappearing, but the werewolf is is very overt. My suggestion is to use the trope, have the character run from the crowd before people can tell what’s happening, if there is a witness, nobody believes the, if they try to video it, it comes out so blurry and jumbled Moby can tell what it’s showing.
You’ve a great point. The games I’ve played in have only been 4 sessions and the setting was crumbling by the fourth, but wasn’t shattered. We had a black ops team in one that went around cleaning up things and giving them mundane explanations. (This actually sounds like it could be the basis for a fun PBtA game.) A little bit of the ‘veil’ and a little bit of a government cover-up can help the setting survive player shenanigans, but as David Rothfeder suggests, setting is probably even more important. Moving the scenes where shit is likely going to get crazy away from public spaces.
Think of teen drama TV shows – characters often find ways to mess with each other that don’t get “external parties” (like parents, teachers, or the authorities) involved specifically because of the consequences. Once the cops show up, it’s pretty much game over.
So whenever I’m a player in a MH game that’s intended to last for a while, I have my PC keep things small and relatively quiet. I have my PC pull other characters aside when threatening, bribing, or blackmailing them, as that way adults don’t get involved. When I MC the game, I have side characters try to get even on their own, rather than going to an authority figure.
If you plan for your game to run for a while, I think players need to go for the slow burn. If someone wolfs out right in the middle of homeroom right in the first session, that’s kind of it in my opinion.
If you’re looking for models, I’d check out the Pocket Sized Play podcasts from the Gauntlet. The have two or three runs of MH, in the same campaign with most of the same characters. Most of the creepiest action takes place out of sight, in the woods at a night, or at homes, with school used to establish relationships as a jumping off point.
A Darkest Self doesn’t have to end with half the town destroyed, and I’d be surprised if it got to that point – after all, at some point the Darkest Self PC should be running into or interacting with the other PCs and should have a chance of snapping out of it. If you’re worried about that happening, put forth situations that make breaking out Darkest Self possible. If they show supernatural powers in front of some NPCs though, now those people know the PCs are monsters…but they can’t report the PCs to the authorities or anything, so they’ll likely try to deal with them in a way that other people won’t notice. You say that people are playing a highschool setting with social drama and teen issues, but half the name of the game is Monster. So that’s going to come up as well.
As for Hypnotic keep in mind it’s a single command not lifelong control. Even then, the duration of how long an open ended command lasts is up to you. And 7-9 can be trouble. Either they mess up doing what you want, they know that you used mind control on them, or you unhinge their sanity. Playing out the consequences of that should suffice. I had a Vampire who kept unhinging people’s sanity and it kept coming back to bite him (he got stabbed by the Serpentine’s cousin, who he unhinged twice). Even a 10+ can have effects – people do what the Vampire wants and there’s no issue there but other people might realize something’s up if that person is acting weird and doing things they normally wouldn’t. And see how well the other PCs take the Vampire hypnotizing people they care about.
I think it’s all about creativity at the end. I see narrative pressure and writing myself into spots and challenges to myself. It’s fun to figure out something unexpected that works.