So, season almost finished (we decided we need one more session after grand finale just to set up some things for season 2) and I wanted to share some of my expirience MCing Monsterhearts.
First time I played MH was one-shot at a convention about a year ago, and it was by far most fun and emotional expirience of 2017, so I was dead set to play or MC season or two. And early this year we started a game with three of my friends.
I know that I’m kinda slow-paced MC, so it took us 2-3 sessions just to establish setting and main threats. And at this point I decided to experiment a little. I personally just love idea of clocks from Blades in the Dark, so I used linked clocks to track the story developement. One of the main clocks was kinda experimental. Usually you tick clock when players do not react to threats or miss their rolls. But I decided to make a clock with title «It’s all your own fault!» and tick it whenever players’ characters (or even players themselves) said or done something with this idea behind. For example, somebody said «Todd is an outcast and looser just because he chosen to be one!», or «You totally provoked me to hit you!», and I tick the clock. And after I filled the clock to some segment, I started new, additional one, like «Todd had enough».
Eventually, this whole thing turned out to be just perfect for the game. The players were in the right state of mind to face the consequences, they even unintentionaly helped me to stage some dramatic moments, like Kate, the Ghost, who desided to deal with her mother issues right when she found Kate’s dead body hidden in the closet. Then there was pretty grim scene, whith Kate stabbing her crying and praying mother with knife and the remains of broken bottle in front of all the neighbours. At the same moment Arnold, our Queen (or King?) was throwing a party at the school roof and didn’t know, that the boy he bullied was going upstairs with the shotgun…
Overall, I loved the whole expirience, and I think this game works best with this type of clocks. Choose the question you want to ask your players and make a game from it. «How much can you blame the victim?» was the question of our season, and just pushing players towards the answer was enough to make a story. Yes, that was sometimes ugly story («Real Monsters» all the way), but an interesting one. I’m going to try something like this in the next season, maybe with more dangerous topic in mind.
So this was my experimental run. What do you think, was that a good idea?)
P.S. I had translated some of the playbooks to Russian for my players, so feel free to ask if you need one ^_~