This past weekend I ran my first ever session of a (hopefully) continuing MotW game. The session went great and was smoother than I expected. But I had a question about leveling up that I couldn’t find in the book.
I’m a little concerned my hunters are leveling up too fast. In the first session, two hunters leveled up twice, and one leveled up three times (it was a three hunter team). Is that too fast, or is that about expected?
Mainly it seemed to come because everyone was trying to do things that would cause them to roll one of their highlighted stats (which I assume is kind of the point). But my main concern is that if my hunters continue to level up this quickly, will the game become “too easy” for them? As Keeper, should I be concerned with trying to reign this in some how (but I don’t want to be purposefully difficult, because, I want to “be a fan of the hunters”)?
Thanks for any advice!
My advice: don’t sweat it. Hunters are intended to become awesome, and get to a point that we no longer worry about whether this vampire might kill them.
The bit that stays hard is interesting dilemmas into your mysteries.
Plus, you can (and should) always up the stakes: summoned ancient gods, the end of the world, etc.
Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. The ratings all have maximum levels that you can’t advance beyond. Those maximums still allow for failure and hard choices.
If you’re really worried, you could always be a jerkwad Keeper. Highlight the Hunter’s lowest stat at the beginning of every session. 😉
Highlighting low ratings is perfectly okay! Sometimes I do it, just to add that temptation to go for it regardless of success chances.
I frequently do that when I’m MCing games of#Monsterhearts. “I wanna see you get violent, so I’ll highlight your -1 Volatile stat. Enjoy!”
I’m curious though, Eric Spiegel . How long was your session? Three Hunters each marking XP 10 to 15 times for a 4 hour session does seem rather excessive. That’s at least 25 rolls, not including rolls made using non-highlightex stats.
The players will aim to make Moves with their higlighted stats to earn XP. That is the point. But the point of changing which stats are highlighted at the beginning of every session is to ensure interesting stuff happens as a result of them Making those Moves. Constantly highlighting a Hunter’s best stats, or the ones they use most often is a bit boring. Encourage your players to highlight stats based on what they want to see that character do. Not just so they can rack up the XP.
Christopher Stone-Bush Yeah, it was a 3.5 hour session, so there was a good amount of dice rolling, but it didn’t feel like it was an excessive amount (or perhaps it was?). Maybe I’m making them do too many moves rather than allowing certain things to just happen when the hunters tell me what they’re doing.
Also, thanks for the input Michael Sands and Monster of the Week. I’ll definitely work in some more difficulty in the next session and try highlighting their low stats to see how that plays out.
Thanks!
Eric Spiegel also don’t forget the advanced advancements. Personally I like it when those show up after about 3 sessions (3-4 is preferable to me). There are 2 of these options help a lot in preventing constant success. 1: make a 2nd hunter. A fresh character has lower stats, which will create failures. In addition it will split the player’s attentions lowering the XP intake for both. 2: Retire your character to safety. This might seem to a lot of players to be a useless advancement but the truth is that in AW hacks, characters will eventually get boring, and that’s ok. When they have run through their natural course you can retire them to NPC’ness to let the focus back on development.
David Rothfeder That’s true, those do seem to help out. My only experience with AW engine games is with Dungeon World, and even though our group has been playing for months, our leveling up has been a slow process. But then again, it uses a different mechanism for XP than MoTW.
I haven’t played DW, but I have heard that the more recent versions actually differe quite a bit from AW.
I just thought of this. If you’re really concerned about quick advancement, you can use the #Monsterhearts Singleton Rule. Basically you can only earn XP from any Move ONCE per scene. So, if you translate that to MotW, a Hunter can only earn XP the first time they roll with a highlighted stat each scene.
Or you could use the Dungeon World/The Regiment system of xp on failed rolls.
I’ll definitely keep those both ideas in mind. I think I’ll play it out as written for the next few sessions and also ask my group for their thoughts about it as well.
Yeah, I definitely prefer to play a game RAW for a while before I start tinkering with it. Though I undoubtedly will tinker with it. It’s a compulsion. I need a support group or something. 😉
When I first read #Monsterhearts I thought the characters would advance really quickly as well. Another option I came up with is just to increase the number of XP required for an advance. Instead of 5, make it 7. Or even 10. That extends the life of a character, but also decreases the value of XP a bit. I’ve never tried it however, because we felt we didn’t need it.