I’m thinking about running a Monsterhearts game set in the early 1980s in a UK Borstal.

I’m thinking about running a Monsterhearts game set in the early 1980s in a UK Borstal.

I’m thinking about running a Monsterhearts game set in the early 1980s in a UK Borstal. (http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/borstal-system.html#ixzz2iNC5iuyO , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borstal)

I’ve no actual experience of a Borstal, so my game will be based in the Fiction of a Borstal (in Film and Book), and the very nature of the place will probably be drawn more from player expectations than from any grounding in the reality of such places.

I do however have a concern. Borstals were correctional facilities for ‘delinquent boys aged 16 to 21′. As a result all the characters are going to be male. 

Has anyone tried running Monsterhearts in a single sex environment? Did it work? What about ‘sex moves’ or ‘turning someone on’? What do I need to look out for / be aware of, that may not have cropped up when I’ve run Monsterhearts before?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borstal

8 thoughts on “I’m thinking about running a Monsterhearts game set in the early 1980s in a UK Borstal.”

  1. I have no experience with the type of game above, just make sure both you and your players are OK with same-sex entanglements.  Personally, the games I have played in, characters are played very liberally with most being bisexual.

  2. I think if you’re running Monsterhearts in any setting, you kinda need your players to be OK with same-sex entanglements; I don’t think you need to change anything about the rules or moves.

  3. Two things spring to mind.

    The first is that the players may have to buy into the conceit that they do not just use their monster powers to break out of the borstal in the first ten minutes. Adults are usually road bumps in a MH game if needed. Sure, that might make for a cool game but I have a feeling it’s not quite the theme you are looking for?

    Linked to that, for the oppressive nature of the borstal to come into play, you need to have some effective adult adversaries, yeah? It would be a pretty poor borstal if there wasn’t at least some of the staff getting up to no good. That’s going to take a very strong staff Front and some juicy Moves to avoid the aforementioned road bump issue. Somewhere, on UKRPG, I wrote up a Threat for adults in a US town ala Footloose, if that might help.

  4. I’d considered the breakout issue. I was thinking about going with the conceit that anyone who breaks out gets captured and returned shortly after (the next scene break), and the capture happens off camera. I’m fairly sure I can get my players to buy into this. Its not really Monsterhearts unless the Werewolf can rampage naked through the woods at full moon. It also allows for the significant NPCs to reinforce the Borstal rules in a coda to the breakout. Obviously too many breakouts and it becomes a cliché, but I feel I have to allow for off-site scenes.

    With regards the adult adversaries, I was wondering about that. I don’t want the adults to overshadow the teens. I’d really like some of the adults to be effective, brutally effective, but only really come into play if directly challenged. Those should be the ones enforcing the borstal perimeter. The majority of adults though should play second fiddle to the teens. In fact in so far as possible I’d prefer most adults to be almost invisible – beneath notice, unworthy of spotlight in the scene except when someone directly interacts with them. The obvious exception to this is the adults important in some way to the teens.

    I cant find the front you mentioned. The obvious searches didnt throw it ups.(https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=uk+roleplayers+monsterhearts+front+site:www.ukroleplayers.com&espv=210&es_sm=122&biw=1248&bih=581#es_sm=122&espv=210&q=monsterhearts+front+neil+gow+site:www.ukroleplayers.com ). I don’t suppose you can recall the name of the town, or any other key word I could use to find it?

    Anyway I have lots of time to think about this. I’m only 2 weeks into a Blake’s 7 mini-campaign (using Edge of the Empire rules) which I told my players would last about 10 weeks (ie to the end of the year). I was originally thinking 5-6 weeks but my players wanted something longer so I agreed to target the end of the year. Monsterhearts is down as a potential January game, although I might run a Borstal setting trial game at either IndieCon or DragonMeet to iron out any issues.

  7. I had a look. Great Front.

    Also a really interesting discussion. Oddly it left we wanting to play Bryan Hitchcock’s The Incubus – a skin where absence is the only safe response when dealing with those we love.

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