Category: Monster of the Week Roadhouse

Hey there. We just played MotW on saturday and I liked it. I’d been reading it so that I could help the Keeper if needed (it was her first time).

I’ve been meaning to GM some pbta urban fantasy for quite some time and was planning to run Urban Shadows, because I thought it was the only candidate (even though the high emphasis on inter-faction political shenanigans is really not my cup of tea). But I’m starting to think MotW could work, even outside the strict framework of a self-contained episode.

One thing I did like in Urban Shadows was the possibility of playing different types of monsters as a regular character option, not limited to the Monstrous playbook. It really helped with the “commonplace supernatural” aspect that I want to install.

So, I’ve been thinking on allowing players to make supernatural characters even if the playbook has a regular human in mind. Like, a demon being The Crooked. I’m using demon in the buffyverse sense, where some of them are just regular people with green skin, little red horns and some basic supernatural power.

What it would look like would be a player taking the “human” playbook they want (The Expert, the Initiate…for example) instead of just The Monstrous.

Then, if their “breed” of monster really HAS to have a power that’s not just narrative polish, and has to have mechanical effects, I would simply have them tick “Take a move from another playbook” and get the corresponding Monstrous move, effectively starting the game with an advancement already, which I don’t think really unbalances the game. I probably wouldn’t ask a demon to take a monstrous Curse, but I may ask so from a vampire (or offer to the player the possibility that their character has overcome their thirst somehow) .

In that perspective, playing the Monstrous would be playing Angel from Buffy: a tormented character with a Curse, who wants to atone/ hates their monstrous nature. it would be a character whose main narrative attribute is that their are a Monster ; as opposed to a character whose narrative axis isn’t that their are a demon, but a private eye. Does that make sense?

So, yeah, what do you guys think of using MotW as a urban fantasy game that would be less centered on a “one game = one mystery” structure, but not “everything is politics, all the time” either?