So.
So… we’re getting to the end of a second season of Monsterhearts (different PCs to the first season but a linked thread). But I’m thinking ahead to the third season, when there’s a chance we might want to use some of the Skins that have already been used.
Richard Williams – have any of those alternative backstories to establish starting Strings been collated anywhere, so that we don’t have characters that have eerie parallels with those characters from previous seasons?
Quick question – just listening to The Cure’s Lullaby and I was wondering if there’s any spider based Skins.
Quick question – just listening to The Cure’s Lullaby and I was wondering if there’s any spider based Skins.
I figure it’d be the sort of solitary outsider who just seems to hang back, watching, not moving or saying much, until that one thing triggers a reaction. Cold and methodical, not evil as such, just analytical and needing sustenance. Possible Moves include feeling the vibration of prey via Strings, general web and gravity-defying abilities, causing paralysis in victims…
Having just watched the final to True Detective I’ve got an itch to play something in a similar vein, where the…
Having just watched the final to True Detective I’ve got an itch to play something in a similar vein, where the characters have genuine ‘threats’ to deal with, and certain unique strengths, but still have crossed agendas and messy relationships with each other. Is there a hack for that sort of crime thriller game out there?
Has anyone tried to run a game of Apocalypse World in a steam punk retro setting, rather than a…
Has anyone tried to run a game of Apocalypse World in a steam punk retro setting, rather than a modern-day-gone-to-hell Mad Max kind of way?
I was wondering about pitching a game to my friends about an Apocalypse World set in the aftermath of The War of the Worlds (the original story from 1895-7, not the more contemporary films), assuming that the invasion was pretty much on a global scale and that survivors are picking up the pieces with perhaps the capacity to learn from abandoned Martian tech, but also with the knowledge that they’re still up there, watching. But some of the playbooks would likely need a rethink (or at least would require research into the sorts of technology available, such as cars and motorcycles – perhaps horse riding bandits instead).
Quick question.
Quick question. The Ghoul’s ‘No Rest For The Wicked’ move has the character fully healed once they return from the dead. Does this mean cosmetically as well, or just in terms of Harm?
I’ve had a character come back from the dead, but still looking, for the most part, like a corpse. Although this has been questioned by a couple of the players I’ve managed to get away with it because the Ghoul was Hexed by the Witch PC to Wither, and specifically chose to wither his skin – so I’ve had him become a slowly disintegrating corpse, rather than having wounds that heal as if he were The Crow on a mission.
I just wanted to check whether the players are right, that (Hexes aside) he should display some sort of mutant healing ability rather than wake up still scarred (and still essentially dead), but animated and able to ignore the effects, healed in mechanically terms only? Or is it entirely the MC’s call?
I’ve been watching a few actual play sessions online, and listening to podcasts, and one thing that has cropped up…
I’ve been watching a few actual play sessions online, and listening to podcasts, and one thing that has cropped up (which is likely to be a concern in future sessions) is NPCs acting against the PCs. So far I’ve been letting the PCs fight amongst themselves, and to manipulate minor NPCs but in establishing Menaces and Threats I’ve got NPCs that might be active rather than reactive.
One of the sessions I listened to had the MC rolling for the Moves of a Vampiric NPC which, as I understand it, isn’t how the rules are set out. However, there don’t seem to be any basic moves for PCs to resist NPC actions (bar the Hold Steady move, which is a little limited in scope). Has anyone knocked together any moves that allow the PCs to defend themselves from what would normally be MC Hard Moves (or the result of Moves the NPCs would have if they were PCs), allowing the dice rolling and risk to remain in player hands?
This isn’t so much ‘Actual Play’ as one player’s attempt to work out what the back story or ‘mythology’ to our…
This isn’t so much ‘Actual Play’ as one player’s attempt to work out what the back story or ‘mythology’ to our current game is. It’s as close to an Actual Play as I can upload at the moment because a. Lots of stuff has happened over four sessions and b. Lots of stuff is happening in my actual life. It also means I can upload plenty of storyline without showing my hand, because they’re as likely to find Monsterhearts on Google+ as anyone is. But first, a brief introduction to the characters (and their town)
CHLOÉ – The Infernal – bartered her soul with “The Poisoner”, for helping kill her abusive father, who was also the school caretaker. In love with Wolf, and certainly not in love with Charles, although she has promised the latter a date on Friday…
CHARLES – The Ghoul – rejected from some sort of dark afterlife where he saw his dead parents. Was in love with Chloé but has since begun a relationship with Japheth. Had the shape of a penis cut into his hair when Wolf removed some (as a sympathetic token) from his dead corpse. In the last session he had a lucid vision of a glowing white robed figure…
WOLF – The Witch – a gifted individual who has reluctantly begun a relationship with Chloé, even though she is secretly in love with the NPC Mabel. Good friends with the vampire Diabla, for no obvious reasons (other than their respective players being good friends)…
DIABLA – The Vampire – an ancient vampire who dwells in a mansion overlooking the town, and has only recently awoken. Goes to school but subtly hypnotizes people so that they just assume that she is one of the students, although her name is not on the register…
JAPHETH – The Queen – the eldest son of the local Jesus-loving preacher, who has a small compound at the edge of town. Japheth’s gang is composed mostly of his many younger brothers, who deal drugs. For as long as he can remember he’s been able to see through their eyes. Since he discovered Charles is dead he’s become obsessed with him…
CASSIE – The Shadow – a new player last session, but we’ve retconned that she (and two other PCs, who are now NPCs) were part of the same class, whose Shadow is an enthusiastic imaginary friend. Prompted by Chloé to go after Mabel, in part so that she (Chloé) could have Wolf for herself, although this resulted in the Shadow coming to the fore and beating Wolf bloody with a hockey stick…
THE TOWN OF NEWBERRY – Once the Vampire has established that there was a mansion overlooking the town (at it’s northern edge), the Witch established that she had one of her own in the woods on the other side of the town (to the south). It’s also been established that there is a reservoir (just south of the preacher’s compound and the woods). In town there’s a Tesco Express, a boarded up Blockbusters, a pub called The old familiar, and a sex shop(!) – the school and church are both named after Saint Agnes. The game is set in 1999 (July), somewhere in England – if I had to guess where I’d say somewhere north of London, south of Manchester.
With all this in mind, and considering I’ve told the players that there are likely just a handful of background elements responsible for the undercurrent of magic in the area, I suggested that these character origins are like facts or clues on a board in a police station, where the cops are trying to establish what connects each character to each character. What follows is one players attempts to create some sort of back story, or mythology, from those clues…
It. Is. Incredible.
In some cases it veers away from the ideas I’ve had – in others it’s veered pretty close. But it fascinated me that, with all the possibilities I’ve been considering, and the ways I’ve used them to construct a backstory so far, the players have their own ideas about what could be the causes of certain events, their own possible stories, their own theories and suspicions. Much of what follows is much more convoluted and detailed than ideas I’ve even considered in my ‘bigger picture’ plan to pull everything together. Of course, the advantage of playing feral is that I can choose to adopt these ideas for the story in future sessions, or I can steer away from them to really surprise the players…
Here are his theories…
Anyone know what font is used for the Monsterhearts headings?
Anyone know what font is used for the Monsterhearts headings? Or does anyone know where I could find a template to create official-looking Skins.
I’ve created a pseudo-Skin for players who join a game mid-Season, that allows them to play as an apparently ordinary human teenagers for a session and pick their Skin by the end – potentially they can actually be an ordinary teenager who gets changed by the events of that session (perhaps through receiving some sort of gift, or curse, or by dying) but with he option that they were actually a Skin already, in the guise of a human. It’s a way to allow a new player to hit the ground running, without having to integrate themselves into the established setting outside actual play.
I’m also still trying to scratch that Constantine itch too, by creating something like the Witch or Infernal, but something that’s more like a trickster, fool, or loveable rogue, who isn’t half as clever as he makes out and usually only gets out of the trouble he gets himself into by burning bridges and friendships.
I don’t know if anyone has gone outside the typical Buffyesque/Harry Dresden/Being Human/World of Darkness setting,…
I don’t know if anyone has gone outside the typical Buffyesque/Harry Dresden/Being Human/World of Darkness setting, where there are monsters everywhere and tried to do something a little more, ah, focussed, but inspired by the recent TV series In The Flesh, and also last year’s French series The Returned, both of which explore how small communities deal with people who come back from the dead, I’m going to be giving it a go myself next week. I’m hoping it’ll go beyond a one-shot, but wanted to pick people’s brains (heh) to see if anyone had tried to tackle anything like it before…
I’m giving the players a degree of free reign in how we create the community, what Skins they pick and when the story picks up, either after some world-shattering events that exposes the Unnatural to humanity, (ala In The Flesh, where the community reacts to those who are trying to return to their own lives after medicine has granted them a semblance of life) or right back on that first night, when the PCs are newly awakened to their unnatural natures, and humanity first becomes aware of those who walk amongst them (more like The Returned, where the dead return more or less unaware that they were even dead), but once the setting has been established I’m hoping to concentrate on the few select Skins, having just one of them representing a race that ‘goes public’. I’m happy to have multiple players play the same Skin, to roll with idea, whilst those other Skins that come into play may well the the only known examples of such creatures. The session will thus focus on a world where the dead begin to rise, for example, or where people begin to succumb to a disease that awakens a feral rage in them in the light of the moon.
I use the term “unnatural” rather than “supernatural” here as I want to have people responding to the monsters in real terms, recognising them as victims of a disease, trying to understand things through the prism of science and logic rather than through superstition, reacting to them as if they were not nightmarish creatures but second class citizens, foreigners, or somehow unhealthy, untouchable (“you can catch it through shaking hands, you know…”). Similarly I’ll be having Gaze Into The Abyss a lot less mystical (unless a player has a particularly mystical Skin) – answers are uncovered through flashbacks, or memories of when a character was their Darkest Self.
In short I’ll be trying to emulate some of the cool things I’ve seen in the two shows I’ve mentioned, deviating from standard Monsterhearts individual alienation from each other by having the teenage protagonists be part of a subculture that seems perfectly normal, even reassuring, to them but which scares the older generations and more conservative residents of the town. You know, the way teenagers actually do.
Can anyone else (particularly people who’ve watched those two shows) think of other things I should be considering?
How would you create a young John Constantine type character?
How would you create a young John Constantine type character? Would you shoehorn him into an Infrnal Skin, because he’s had problems with demons and addiction, or would you create a new Skin altogether.
For those unfamiliar with the Hellblazer character he’s essentially an occultist who, in attempting to save the world and his own soul will frequently use others, as bait, as distractions, as long as the ends justifies the means. He’s clever, he knows his stuff, but he’s a poisonous little viper that will bite you if it saves his own skin. He has elements of the trickster, and although arguably a good guy he’s, well, a selfish one, who looks out for himself before others (and saving the world may well be just a means to saving himself in the long run).
That’s broad brush-strokes, I suppose – more details can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constantine
In short, however, he spent his teenaged years as a rebel, a runaway and a punk – at heart he’s a charismatic charlatan and a man who lives by his own rules – there are elements of the Infernal in there, but it’s unlikely he’d ever bow down to a demon unless he had no other option…