Author: David Rothfeder

Originally shared by David Rothfeder

So I ran my first playtest for he Camp Monster Hearts one shot setting I’ve been working on. It most went well, I’ll need to make some tweaks on the materials, see below.

Every character was 15 or 16. We had a male werewolf Levi, a female werewolf Flinch, a female Fae Lilith, and a non binary asexual witch Gerrard who was lumped with the male campers because the camp didn’t really care. Did I mention this was a juvenile correction camp that kids go to as part of please bargins?

I had a few plot preload questions for the pc’s to choose from. They decided that another camper Betsy went missing and Flinch knew more about it then she should. Gerrard was being blackmailed by Herman a junoir councilor whom they call uncle. Lilith couldn’t go home and only the camp administrator, Colnel Falkner, knew why (he also happened to have a goal of mayhem that was determined by the npc quick launcher).

The game started off at breakfast where Lilith wanted to try to act on her crush for Levi, but Levi wasn’t very interested. Gerrad took bets on when they would hook up, but refused to let Levi participate. One of Gerrard’s bunk mates, squicky Joe, was being overly boastful of his sexual prowess and trying to pick up Lilith who was unimpressed. Flinch meanwhile was heckling Joe leading him to show off his goods and thus be hauled off to be punished (bobody was sad to see him go).

Around the time that breakfast was supposed to end, the whole hall was put into lock down and a head count revealed that Betsy was missing and her cabin mates (which include Flinch) outside to question. Flinch obviously lied saying the cabin didn’t notice anything which wasn’t what Faulkner wanted to hear so he punished her with push ups. The rest of the girls made shit up about hearing the door open in the middle of the night to avoid the same.

Meanwhile Gerrard was pulled a sided and was threatened to pay $500 by the end of the week or the drugs would be found. The girls were escorted back to their cabin and Faulkner announced that morning activities were canceled and that all campers were to remain in their cabins until further notice. This of course was starting a riot until Faulkner very calmly made a show of going to the fire alarm and setting off the sprinklers before leaving.

The kids were all escorted back to their cabins and allowed to change. They quickly noticed the cabins were not being guarded and there was only a light patrol, so they all started planning their escape plans.

Flinch tried sneaking out (did I mention how poorly my players rolled, I mean there’s a thing as too many hard moves), but nerves took over and she went to here darkest self because wolves are good at sneaking. Levi convinced his cabin to say fuck it and all rush out the same time thinking they all can’t get caught. He ended up tripping a bunk mate to get away. Lilith just snuck out when nobody was looking and followed Levi into the woods. Gerrard blasted some Swedish black metal to get a vision of what happened to Betsy and ended up experiencing a memory of the guy she was meeting riding a motorcycle up to the other side of the lake.

So Flinch noticed too intruders in her little patch of woods and Levi definitely smelled something large, hudden, and out of control. He tried talking to it but Lilith responded instead, and her failed advances just lead to an argument. Of course Flinch wanted to play too and responded to Lilith comment about liking it rough by mauling the Fae. Levi ran away and came out of the woods to be faced with something worse, Faulkner.

Lilith got out of her mess in one of the most bizarre ways I’ve seen, seducing the giant wolf thing, who decided to give Lilith something she would want, which was not to kill her. Having already dominated one of the invaders, she decided to hunt the one who smelled of wolf.

Gerrard at this point decided to sneak out by using a bunk mate who was complaining about the music as a distraction. Gerrard hexxed the NPC with demonic visions who then ran out of the cabin fleeing from invisible imps who were trying to take him away. Of course somebody gave the NPC a hidden weapon on their quick launch, so a councilor got shanked when trying to tackle the kid.

This did give him a chance to sneak to the girls camp where he heard howling. He convinces the girls to abandon their cabins to head to the far side of camp. Seemed nice to try to protect them from a werewolf like that. NOPE. Gerrard just wanted to rob the cabins so he could pay off ‘uncle’.

Meanwhile Levi was being taken up for punishment while Lilith was trying to figure out if she needed medical attention, which would be awkward as that would mean getting caught breaking lock down. So instead she decided to request help from the fairy king (yet another failed roll). Well instead she opened a portal to Faulkner who demanded she could not leave until a transaction with the fairy court is made. She rejected an offer for a lust potion for her first born child. Instead she asked to lighten Levi’s punishment, which cost her being punished in his place. Of course this was military camp style where they force her to exercise while being insulted until she broke. Of course nobody noticed her wounds and called her Levi the whole time (Fae take in his place in the most literal sense).

At this time Flinch hunted and mauled the now free Levi. Flinch realized she had just hurt a fellow werewolf and changed back and the two figured out the truth of the other.

Meanwhile while scavenging cabins, Gerrard found something they wished they didn’t, Betty’s dead body. Yet another failed role caused them to take something with them as they ran away, but we’ll get to that later.

We had a bit of a time skip we got to the afternoon free period after the lock down had been lifted. They met at the waterfront and talked about stuff (like Gerrard smelling of death) and Lilith made another pass at Levi, who made a random remark about getting it on with Gerrard (who was shot down by the seduction roll). Of course Gerrard against his will started making suggestive moves to Levi. Eventually Gerrard invited Levi to have some fun in Betsy’s voice (you remember the part about taking something with him?).

Well at this point Gerrard wanted the sex craves ghost out of them, Lilith wanted Levi to be into her but was willing to help Betsy and Gerrard, and Levi despite not being into most girls was into the bestial wolfish type. Flinch decided wolf on wolf was only natural and the two snuck off into the woods.

Betsy was difficult because she was stuck in id mode wanting nothing but to party and screw. When she was told she died, she screamed like a banshee (see what I did there ( and then forget she was dead. Eventually she got into an argument with Lilith about which of the two was hot and who was not, but Betsy was confused every time her anatomy was wrong. Lilith and Gerard try to tempt her into trying out sex from a guys point of view, which is pretty confusing when you’re a ghost who doesn’t know their dead and possessing an anatomically male body. Finally, Lilith turns Betsy on and uses the string to convince Betsy to accept being dead. She asks to see her body and afterwords leaves Gerrard unsure of what to do next.

Fade to black.

So here were some of the take aways:

-deciding what activities at the camp took too long. I think a new structure is needed.

-The quick launch sheets are too large and a few pieces were not needed. There was also a desire to make them easier seen during play.

-Players thought the initial setup up had too many npc’s since they interacted more with new ones on the spot. I appreciated though having a few good to go to make it easier to have people to use in the early scenes

-there was a feeling like the pc’s needed more to point them at each other in the set up. There was a suggestion that a quick go around of fuck, marry, kill might do the trick. It’s disturbing how perfect this sounds. I’m likely going to alter my plot preload questions to address this (I’d like thought on the fuck marry kill)

-the player comfort temperature gauze was not used. It’s a good sign for the play, but doesn’t test the aide. We did notice the scale was too small and tokens slid to other places when we were really in the sweet spot. That’s easy to reprint.

-Timing felt OK. It took a bit over an hour for game set up, which I want to cut down a bit, and I ended forcing the end of session a little to get us to about 4 hours.

-The players would prefer more pregame knowledge of each other since the 2nd Ed draft strings don’t really give many details. There were a few recommendations of where to look.

If one were to make a one shot play set, what do you think needs to be included to speed up play.

Things already included:

-Generalized location and theme

-Map

-Schedule

-Quick NPC creation

-List of options for players to choose about setting