Greetings!
I have enjoyed Monsterhearts for a long time now, and I’ve been working on designing a Skin of my very own. I thought I would share it with this community to see if I could maybe get some feedback on it.
So, introducing the Genius:
The Genius is too clever by half. They’re the guy who won’t shut up about Nietzsche, or the girl who spends her lunch period browsing conspiracy theory websites that prove the government is run by psychic cuttlefish. Anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot, anything bad that happens to them is because of other people’s shortcomings. And every problem has a material solution, be it a ray gun, a robot clone, or an army of psychic cuttlefish.
Enjoy!
Gorgeous, revolutionary, and oh so feral. Amazing power at terrible cost…this is one of the best custom skins I’ve ever seen, even in this stage of development.
I think “beautiful daughter” can be renamed (considering very few Monsterheart characters have children). Perhaps “They’re all jealous” or “Inferior minds?”
It’s very similar to the Queen’s move, but I assume it also works for hulking beasts and idiotic AIs.
Thanks! I’m glad you like it.
The name “Beautiful Daughter” is a reference to the TV Trope “Mad Scientist’s Beautiful Daughter,” in which said daughter is ultimately charmed by the hero into betraying her villainous father. But yeah, the parental angle could be kind of off-sounding in a game about teenagers. Maybe “Don’t Touch Anything!” or “That’s Not a Good Sound.”
And yeah, the move works on anything you’ve put effort into creating, whether a stun gun or a friendship or a killer chili recipe. The point of the move is to encourage the player to try to artificially engineer solutions to problems and ultimately realize they can’t keep hiding behind their accomplishments.
Thanks for the feedback!
So, a couple of things I’m working on with regards to this Skin at the moment:
1. I’ve been thinking of a few more Faults that could be interesting. But I also feel like there are enough already there to keep the Genius on his toes. Maybe I should add something to the “Create a new type of Invention” advance about the MC creating a new kind of Fault as well?
2. For that matter, is there enough wiggle-room for players to come up with a wide variety of new kinds of Inventions? I’ve thought of two or three options that one might go with (+1 ongoing to one Basic Move for a scene, put someone at Disadvantage/make them Hold Steady before they can attack you, Gaze Into the Abyss on someone else’s behalf), but I worry about a situation where everyone who plays the Skin ends up choosing the same thing with the Advance.
3. Flux Capacitor kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It may be because I cribbed it nearly verbatim from AW’s Savvyhead, so even if it makes sense for this particular Skin it still feels out of place thematically with Monsterhearts as a whole.
Ever update this?
I’ve done a little with it. I got busy with other stuff, but I plan on turning into a finished product sooner or later. The next big thing to do with it is to replace Flux Capacitor with something else; as it is the move just doesn’t feel very Monsterhearts to me.