Author: Eric Spiegel

I ran my third session today with my RPG group and it went really well.

Our group consists of a Professional and a Sidekick who use an Initiate, an Expert and a Spooky as off-the-records contractors to help out with the monster-hunting.  The group got wind of a poltergeist haunting an abandoned home in the suburbs. After learning their physical attacks would do nothing, the Expert and the Sidekick, through their research, learned of a special ritual (big magic) that would put the ghost to rest.  After almost going mad from my poltergeist’s mind-tricks, the gang was able to successfully lay her to rest properly.

We all had a really great time. This was the first time that I used the countdown proper (now that I understand it) to help fuel the mystery. It really really really helped make the game run smoothly. Instead of me trying to prod the group to do what I wanted them to do, things naturally got worse until they dealt with the ghost in a proper way (my countdown made it to Sunset and shit was really hitting the fan).

I had previously mentioned here that I was worried about the leveling up, but that isn’t of any worry to me now. Everyone leveled up about once this session and that seemed reasonable to me.

My only cause for concern now is my hunter’s motivations. It seems to me that many of my hunters are more concerned with trying to wrangle as much XP as possible, rather than just playing the game. A few seem hell bent on trying to do things that would trigger moves that would gain them XP, rather than organically letting that happen. So it concerns me that my players are just motivated by gaining XP rather than doing what their actual characters might do.  Does anyone have any tips to help me address this? Should I address it, or just let it play out?

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!