I’m running my first game in a few weeks. This will be the first time any of us have played MotW. I know, I know. Logic says just use one of the pre-built mysteries. And I may yet do that. But once I read the creation rules, I had a bunch of ideas and ran with them. I would welcome any feedback on my current write up (the link currently allows commenting in the doc).
– Am I being too prescriptive?
– Are the monsters and minions overpowered or “wrong” in some way?
– Is it best to have all the locations close together? (I could put all these locations in Manhattan, for example.) Or should I spread them out? Should I avoid cities the players don’t know?
I’m nervous but excited about trying this out. The group is only going to meet over lunch hours, so there will be multiple sessions for sure and I hope to expand on details like the locations as we get to know the hunters more. But it’s an open and enthusiastic group, so I’m sure we’ll find a way to have fun no matter what.
Thanks for your time!
Looks solid to me! It’s more detail than I would include for myself, but that’s purely personal preference.
One note: the “Day” item on your countdown is the hook really… it’s intended to be the first thing that happens after the hunters arrive. That’s a pretty minor thing too – your countdown still suggests what will happen if the hunters don’t intervene which is the main point of it.
My general advice for a first game is keep it simple and don’t be upset if your hunters rewrite your adventure! You have a ton of ideas, a great African setting—maybe you could introduce all this richness more gradually with player input?
Thank you! I’m terrified of freezing up when I need to move the story forward, so the extra info is to help me cope 😊 I’ve made a big deal with the players that this is collaborative storytelling, so I’m happy to let them mess everything up. I just don’t know what to expect yet. I’ll report back how it goes.
Aaron Dalton perfect. I think the extra info you’ve included is the right sort to be prepared too – what the threats can do and what they are planning. That should set you up well to react to whatever the hunters try
So the “Unsettle” power is acceptable in that it’s still in the spirit of the mechanics of the system? I’m not familiar enough with other mysteries and just want to make sure I’m keeping in the spirit of the sytstem.
Unsettle: When starting an encounter, Aza attempts to unsettle human opponents by projecting unfamiliar images, urges, or other sensations. Hunters roll +cool. A failure results in -1 ongoing. A mixed success is -1 forward. A complete success avoids any penalty.
Aaron Dalton yes, that’s perfectly reasonable. And make sure that you find out what unsettles those hunters who don’t get a full success!
Sorry for all the questions. I’m trying to embrace the uncertainty, but the planner part of my brain keeps thinking about these things. I also appreciate that each group is different, but I’m interested in what your experiences have been.
In your experience, how much is travel a part of things? And what about real places? In this scenario, I could situate all the locations in Manhattan, for example, with everything essentially in walking distance, but this isn’t a place my players know. But it’s easy to map out. Should I keep things pretty fictional? Is some distance between locations a good thing? I don’t want them to feel claustrophobic, but I also don’t want to weigh things down too much with travel.
Relax, its all under your control. Get to know you’re group and find out what they like. Have they played an RPG before? Watched Supernatural or Buffy? The game should be cinematic and fun with the players input. You can always turn a barrier into a roll or have the hunters “owe a favor” you can cash in for another adventure! What is your group used to? What makes you comfortable? What is more fun? They should know an adventure is usually half investigation/half monster hunt. The group should know that they need to find a monster’s weakness to kill it. Let them come up with solutions, lean on the playbooks and if all else fails throw in a trope of a “retired monster hunter” to help out (who the monster will most likely eat).
Aaron Dalton I think of distance as a problem of time for the hunters – it’s not so much how far things are apart as much as will they be able to get there in time.
So, if you have a map you can assess based on that, or you can improvise the places and determine distances when the hunters say they go somewhere. Both ways work fine.