Hi, I’ve been playing Monsterhearts for quite some time now, but not very frequently.

Hi, I’ve been playing Monsterhearts for quite some time now, but not very frequently.

Hi, I’ve been playing Monsterhearts for quite some time now, but not very frequently. And I’m fairly new to making new Playbooks, but yesterday I threw together this first draft.

It’d mean the world to me if anybody could look it over and comment on what could be improved. ^^

Honestly not so sure about the Sex move. Is it too rapey?

10 thoughts on “Hi, I’ve been playing Monsterhearts for quite some time now, but not very frequently.”

  1. I think it would be hard to determine who the Doppelganger’s partner thought they were having sex with. There’s no incentive for the partner to play along and think the Doppelganger is the Twin, and the Doppelganger gets hit hard if that happens.

    I would suggest coming up with something else. Something that encourages the other players at the table to play along and not metagame.

    I think In a Mirror Darkly might be broken. The whole point of the skin is to impersonate your Twin, right? That sounds like this move would trigger a lot. Too often, I think. Won’t the Twin take a lot of Strings on the Doppelganger?

    I also think this needs to be split into two moves. One that sets up the Doppelganger’s tell and the other that allows the shapeshifting.

    I’m not a fan of Convincing Liar. I don’t like the idea of one player spending Strings that another player has worked hard to collect.

    I don’t know if Shared Pain, Twice the Pain works. If harm done to one clock is reflected in the other, then the clocks will always be identical. It’s not possible for either to have more or less harm than the other, and so not possible for one to be alive while the other should be dead.

    Copycat works, but as the Doppelganger has to impersonate their Twin, that will trigger In a Mirror Darkly, right?

    Only Half There also works, but I’m not sure what the Condition “Depersonalized” represents. I like the theme of never being the equal of your Twin, but this is the only move that reflects that.

    I’m not a fan of Projected Allure as I don’t see how it fits.

    What about focusing the skin more on trying to live up to someone who you percieve as being better than you?

  2. I suppose meta-gaming may be a problem. It’s rarely an issue in my group, but one should probably plan for it. Do you have any suggestions for incentives, because everything I can come up with doesn’t really work.

    You could give them -1 forward, but… to what, exactly? -1 to dealing with you if they don’T play along? How do you determine that? Difficult question.

    The hard hit for the Doppelgänger in that move is kind of necessary for the concept, I feel. And I don’t like restricting player’s options in how they react to stuff, because that’S the entire fun the game. I want other players to embrace the doppelgänger as their twin and as themselves both (THough not at the same time).

    And now that you mention it, that would probably result in a lot of strings, yeah. Maybe a tough choice between the string, a condition and triggering the darkest self instead?

  3. Woops didn’t see the rest of that.

    On Convncig Liar: I never perceived Strings to be that big of a deal. My group don’t hoard them or guard them jealously at all. May be different from group to group. I’ll think it over.

    And the death clause in Shared Pain, Twice the Pain is meant to avoid the Doppelgänger actually dying if their Twin has the Ghoul’s immortality move or something like it.

    Copycat will indeed require In a Mirror Darkly, yes.

    I thought long and hard about the “Depersonalised” condition. What I mean to get across is not being valued as a person, being an un-person. If there’S a better way to put that, I’m open for suggestions.

    On both Only Half There and Practiced Allure: They both serve a similar purpose: Giving the Doppelgänger incentives to not be themself.

    Practiced Allure also represents the Doppelgänger’s manipulative nature. As themself they can’t turn heads. But once they act on what they have observed others doing to get their way, they turn into a heartbreaker.

    And I don’t want to focus on living up to the original too much, because that’S not the point. The Doppelgänger can live up the Twin just fine, but the very act is a deception and makes the actual problem worse: The self-doubt. The Doppelgänger just has this self-loathing that they allow to destroy their own and others’ lives.

    Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to analyse this.

  4. I think the problem that this skin will run into, that the Cuckoo won’t, is your twin might not show up for play.

    If someone gets car trouble or can’t find a babysitter, you’re skunked! Or if your Twin dies or leaves the game.

  5. Well, in my opinion, playing Monsterhearts when a player is missing is pointless anyway. It leaves the missing player’s character with a pretty significant blank spot in the story and you often find yourself in a situation where someone would definitely want to call tem but can’t because the player’s not there. It just ruins everything.

    And if the Twin leaves the game, you can always grab their skin and take over their life, right? It’s all there in In a Mirror Darkly.

  7. I have to say that my experience in having a missing player is radically different from yours, Gregor. monsterherts supports drop-ins and drop-outs quite well, because there is no story except that which involves a character. So you just shine the spotlight on someone else.

  8. While it is true that you can totally do that, our game has resulted in a pretty complex web of relationships and there’s always something going on that the missing character would definitely have to respond to in some way.

    But yeah, groups differ.

    And I think if you can make missing players work at all, then you can probably also make a missing Twin work.

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