Lisa Padol – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Blink.

Blink. Just found all the resources on Buried Without Ceremony and am wondering how long I didn’t know they were there. Wow. This is amazing stuff.

The session before last, the Fae did a deal with the other fae that boiled down to:

I renounce all claim to rule my side of the fae war and make one of the Queen’s gang members (the one who is always trying to usurp the Queen) my proxy.

She signs off on everything the other side wants.

The fae stay away from our world (there are some exceptions, but it’s understood that if these apply, the fae in question is playing by mortal world rules and keeps fae stuff out of it).

The fae leave my world alone and don’t try to hurt or kill me.

The Wolf gets to sent her pack (she was raised by wolves) to the fae realm and to visit them whenever she wants, but it’s understood that she’s a guest there.

The Wolf is my champion only, not the fae champion, but let it be known that she’s resigning and was NOT defeated in combat (a really important point to the Wolf).

So, last session, I had consequences.

This started with Connor, a fae who could turn into a rabbit, trying to hide in the mortal world with the Witch, who wanted no part of this. Connor didn’t want to go back to the fae realm because he’d be executed.

But, if he stays, the contract is null and void.

The Wolf wanted to name the local gang leader the fae champion — he was originally totally separate from the Queen’s gang, but the player took second gang and the Queen had sex with him, so he wasn’t sure about conflicts of interest.

Well, says the Queen, who’s had sex with the Fae and the Wolf, it’s really dumb to kill your subjects and we don’t want the fae finding out about the broken contract, so obviously, there’s only one thing to do.

We take over the fae realm.

This suits the gang leader who’s now part of the Queen’s gang, as it removes the conflict of interest.

Also, the whole reason the fae made bargains with folks like the Witch’s grandmother was “otherwise, demons”.

The fae are gone.

The gang leader kept not being a jerk. Despite my intentions, he’s been astonishingly decent and understanding and helpful.

He’s obviously got to be the demon.

And a session or two ago, we learned that the Wolf was intended to be a sacrifice to a demon, only that probably didn’t happen. I’m guessing the Witch’s grandmother was involved. Or maybe the counterpart to the grandmother, whom the Wolf killed.

I mean, okay, it gets complicated, as it should. And that’s before we get into how effed up things are with the Witch’s family, how alien the Queen and her coterie are, and the vendetta the Wolf has with the school nurse, who used to be her friend.

But, that leaves me with the question of how the heck do I cover the upcoming invasion of the fae realm with the Monsterhearts rules.

A local gamer who’s not in this game said to use countdown clocks and make moves. I’ve my copy of Monster of the Week, my copy of Urban Shadows, and over two weeks until the next session, so will see what I can come up with.

I have to admit this isn’t a challenge I had anticipated.

An NPC has sympathetic tokens on two PCs for, er, reasons.

An NPC has sympathetic tokens on two PCs for, er, reasons. It suddenly occurred to me that I’m not supposed to roll the dice. Do I just decide whether a hex the NPC does works or not?

Mind, for the PC Witch, I’m pondering asking the player to roll Dark and explaining, “So, Battler has a guilty conscience, and I’m figuring that if he succeeds on his Dark roll, the hex affects him.” But, that’s a special case.

This has not yet come up in play, but we are wondering how anyone’s handled it if it has come up:

So, the Witch has this hex to bind someone so they can’t physically harm anyone.

Hexes have no time span. I mean, sure, on a 10+, they’re “easily reversed”, but that is generally intended to be a good thing for the Witch, not the victim.

Some skins have Volatile as The Thing, and that generally means the Lash Out part. The Werewolf, for example, can be all about the violence.

The Witch came quite close to trying to bind the Werewolf so she couldn’t physically harm anyone. The player was looking very carefully for a reason not to do that, and found one, and was only considering it because the Werewolf attacked the school nurse. (School nurse wants the wolves dead because they killed her uncle. Werewolf was Raised by Wolves, so punched her. If she’d continued the attack, Witch would’ve bound her.)

So, the player asked, “Hey, if I did do this thing, how long would the hex last if I didn’t choose to undo it?”

And there’s nothing in the rules about that.

And we all agree that it’s a jerk thing to nerf a player’s Thing for too long, and if you’re playing the Werewolf, the Thing may well be Lashing Out Physically. And we’ve got a couple of theories about how to handle it.

* The Witch can undo it.

* Another witch or someone with that kind of power can undo it. This works fine in a game like the one I’m running, where there’s a lot of supernatural stuff running around, but what if the PCs are all or almost all of the supernatural stuff in town?

* There may be some condition to break a spell. Sure, this isn’t in the rules per se, but I could see “Okay, you have to find a dead man’s grave, cut off his left hand, bathe it in moonlight, and…”

* There may be a point where, narratively, it seems to make sense that the hex would end, but I’m not sure if there’s any good guidelines for that.

So, has this ever come up for anyone? How have folks handled it?

Hey, anyone know how one convinces someone to do something in 2nd edition Monsterhearts without turning them on…

Hey, anyone know how one convinces someone to do something in 2nd edition Monsterhearts without turning them on first?

So, what threats, storms, and countdown clocks have you folks used?

So, what threats, storms, and countdown clocks have you folks used? And how far into the countdown clock did things get before the PCs stopped the clock?

Trying to prep for AnonyCon.

Trying to prep for AnonyCon. Mind, I currently have 2 players signed up and had said minimum of 3, iirc, but it’s not impossible I’ll get a walk in.

May I use the “about this community” paragraph as a description of Urban Shadows for the session I’ll be running at…

May I use the “about this community” paragraph as a description of Urban Shadows for the session I’ll be running at AnonyCon?

I’m reading the second most recent version (because it’s easier to read that the one with 2 pages per “page”), and…

I’m reading the second most recent version (because it’s easier to read that the one with 2 pages per “page”), and this is probably the first time I’ve read anything other than playbooks or the basic moves.

Dang, it’s good! So much advice I want to print on 10 foot index cards for folks who haven’t quite internalized it (which sometimes includes me).

Reading through the book, with Gotham in the hindbrain.

Reading through the book, with Gotham in the hindbrain. I loved that show because all the characters totally cared about their city and wanted it to be something. I can see the show’s best moments when the writers follow the principles (why, yes, the rich orphan and the street thief can totally get together in the same scene, however odd it may seem), and the parts I dislike the most are when Gotham isn’t front and center. Now, I just have to figure out which characters map onto which archetype…