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Does anyone have any good Monster of the Week one-shots?

Does anyone have any good Monster of the Week one-shots? I want to run a demo for my Encounters group but horror really isn’t my genre and I need some ideas.

What does it mean for a PC to use an improvement to take the Quarantine playbook?

What does it mean for a PC to use an improvement to take the Quarantine playbook? Should it be allowed? Should the player establish this aspect of their past prior to the decision or is it ok for it to be a spontaneous discovery?

Those wacky kids at Something Awful know how to do it.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3501383&pagenumber=25#post410382037

Anti*World

The GM

AGENDA:

-Make the world seem contrived

-Make the players’ characters lives miserable

-Decide what is to happen, then play it out

ALWAYS SAY:

-Whatever you like, never mind the rules and all that nonsense

-What guile and treachery demand

PRINCIPLES:

-Never, ever, bloody anything, ever

-Talk to the players, not the characters

-Move directly and with great obviousness

-Your NPCs are precious, guard them jealously

-Noone and nowhere has a name, nor any distinguishing characteristics

-Ignore any questions, treat the players input with contempt

-Never explain, never apologise

-Nothing the players’ characters do has any real consequence

-Hate the players’ characters to the depth of your soul

-Only you can make decisions

-Do them slowly

Only the GM rolls dice in Anti-World. Every time a player character has the temerity to do something, roll 2d6. On a 1-5, the lucky bastards pull it off. On a 6-9, nothing happens. On a 10-12, they fail and suffer the consequences. On a 13+, oh man, it’s hosing time!

The players’ characters have five stats that modify your rolls. They are Hysterical, Feeble, Odious, Stupid and Common.

Source: http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/17726/antiworld

I put this on the SG community, but thought it worth poking here too. Long story short, MotW is a lot of fun.

Originally shared by Alex Fradera

I played Monster of the Week! It was super fun. A bunch of us have been hanging at the house of some friends in Wales, bedding in for the end of the world with some meditation, movies and munchies. We made characters one nights, and then played out the mystery over the next two. I’m the only regular gamer, and three of the four others had never played before. It was nice to see how easily people got to grips with it. Some poor rolls at the beginning put the game in a bit of a slapstick mode, and we discussed after how the failure rate for the game felt a little high, with futzed magic rolls leading to mess, explosions and helplessness in scene after scene. I do recognise that I could have pushed the use of luck, which was deployed more later in the game; this happened to give a nice failure-to-success arc that made the last session feel gratifying.

As the Keeper, I felt the game looked after me really well. Mystery advice was generally useful, although I think I was making things hard for myself for trying to pull all the character backstory (which really emerged in early play) and feed it into the mystery, as I knew this was likely to be a one-shot and wanted to maximise the pay-offs.

My only area I struggled on was magic. My sense from the rules was that there is no division of playbooks into magic-users and non-magic users, and so in play all but one player elected to Use Magic during the game, generally in high-stakes fight-or-flight situations. At times the use of magic felt like a get-out-of-jail free card, pulling off tricks that were otherwise impossible to do. I knew that I could counter that by upping the criteria involved in the magic, but that tended to feel arbitrary, a form of stomping on the player’s ideas. Yeah, the Expert can dispel the magic that is holding everyone in the air as the police are converging on the room… but it will take several minutes / a rare ingredient to do so. So I generally just acceded to the requests. Demanding an ingredient (sacrificing something alive) at one point led to a flubbed preparedness role by the Expert that nearly killed the momentum of the climactic sequence. In the end it became incredibly cool when the player decided to amputate their finger and get rid of that, but there was a cold moment where no-one wanted to let go of the idea but felt stuck on how to execute it.

The team bested an attempt to reincarnate Y Mab Darogan, the Red Hand of Wales, a saviour predicted to crush the Anglo Saxons, manifested as, yes, a giant red hand. It was a fun finish in the Welsh Millenium Dome, the Spooky tk’ing cables to power up a speaker rig that the Flake ported ‘God Save the Queen’ through to paralyse the Red Hand with its former defeats ‘rung by the horns of the Saxons’, the Expert opening up a dimensional gate for the Summoned to fling it through, with the fallout of trapping forever the Expert’s enlimbo’d lover from her swinging 60’s dark past. The highlight of the game for me was an earlier attempt by the Summoned to cast big magic to find the lair of the Boggart minions, which I stipulated required a boggart skull to do so. The Summoned bulldozes through police lines to the location of their Boggart fight, to snatch a skull and run…. only at that point we all remember how that player beat me into agreement that his final blow in that fight ‘made the monster’s head explode clean off’. Cut back to Summoned laying down defensive fire while scrabbling for pieces of skull fragment embedded in the floor and walls…

I’ve been thinking of a solution to the problem of new people not being able to get LE playbooks due to lack of…

I’ve been thinking of a solution to the problem of new people not being able to get LE playbooks due to lack of stuff to trade, while still maintaining the feel of trading playbooks. As is my solution to most problems, I’ve created a countdown clock. For each trade I make with somebody for the new trifold I made, I mark a segment. At 12:00 I release the playbook to the public.

This is a new trifold, so I can guarantee you don’t have it yet, based on Jamie Fristrom’s Orphan. The main thing I’m looking to trade it for is the Solace, after that I suppose any playbooks/skins/minisupplements that I don’t already have, although I don’t think there’s many of those. Finally, I’d love to see writeups for new playbooks, skins, and minisupplements, or anything else like that. I’m always looking for something new to lay out, especially since BFA seems to be down?

Edit: I accepted Patrick’s offer of seven playbooks for this playbook in the letter of the terms, not in the spirit, and here’s the Orphan:

Has anyone had any success doing PbP with AW or any of the offshoots?

Sharing this here to get additional feedback from folks who are more familiar with Monsterhearts than I am.

Sharing this here to get additional feedback from folks who are more familiar with Monsterhearts than I am. I’m pretty happy with the “feel” – I think it hit the Carrie target pretty nicely – but could probably use more help with the mechanics. Be gentle, this is my first skin.

Originally shared by Topher Gerkey

Second draft of the Fury, a new skin for Monsterhearts.

#monsterhearts #skinning

The Fury

You never wanted this. You never wanted to be different or special or a freak. All you ever wanted was to fit in. To be liked. To be accepted. Maybe even to be loved. Was that so much to ask? You’re not a bad person.

But they wouldn’t let you fit in. They hurt you. Taunted you. Called you names. Exploited you. Betrayed you. They pushed and pushed and PUSHED and PUSHED and

They’re all going to be sorry when you start pushing back.

NAME

Choose a name:

Alice, Bea, Cam, Carrie, Charlie, Kim, Jill, Joe, Robin, Will

A diminutive name, a nondescript name, an unpopular name, a victim’s name

LOOK

Circle one from each list:

Raggedy, unfashionable, nerdy, nervous, beneath notice, frightened

Desperate eyes, brittle eyes, teary eyes, resentful eyes, twitchy eyes

ORIGIN

Circle one:

Genetic mutation, government program, confluence of bloodlines, abused child, experimental psychotherapy

STATS

Add 1 to one of these:

Hot -1, Cold -1, Volatile 1, Dark 1

YOUR BACKSTORY

You have a secret crush on someone. Take a string on them.

Someone has been bullying you. Give them a string on you.

Someone was kind to you once. Give them two strings on you.

FURY MOVES

You get this one, and choose two more:

X Futile Hope – Whenever someone acts kind or accepting toward you, gain a string on them and give them a string on you, and give yourself the condition Hopeful. If someone you trust betrays or hurts you while you are Hopeful, roll with Dark. On a 10 up, you lose all strings on them and replace Hopeful with Betrayed. On a 7-9, lose all strings on them, replace Hopeful with Betrayed, and choose one:

~ Give them an additional string on you

~ Take 1 harm from psychic feedback

~ Trigger your Darkest Self

O The Eye – When you gaze into the abyss, add 1 to your Dark roll. On a 10 up you can choose all three options. If you are Betrayed and roll 10 up, also mark experience. If you are Betrayed and roll 7-9, choose one of the 10 up options instead of one of the 7-9 options.

O Firestarter – Roll with Volatile to summon jets of flame, unleash destructive telekinetic blasts, instantly freeze the air, or otherwise psychically attack your tormentors. On a 10 up, do 2 harm and give your victim an appropriate condition (Burned, Frostbitten, Concussed, etc). On a 7-9, do 1 harm, give them an appropriate condition, and choose one:

~ Give yourself the same condition

~ Take 1 harm

~ Trigger your Darkest Self

If you are Betrayed, you may also carry 1 forward against them.

O Poltergeist – You can lash out physically using telekinesis instead of physical attacks, and your victim must roll to hold steady before attempting to run away. If you are Betrayed, do 1 extra harm when you lash out physically.

O Push – You can roll with Volatile to turn someone on via empathic projection. On a 10 up, in addition to giving you a string, they must follow one short-term command of your choice. On a 7-9 also give yourself the condition Creepy. If you are Betrayed, also give them the condition Enthralled.

O Scanners – Roll with Dark to invade someone else’s mind. On a 10 up, gain a string on them, and they must honestly answer one question. On a 7-9, gain a string on them and choose one:

~ They gain a string on you

~ You gain the condition Creepy

~ You each take 1 harm

On a 6 or less, they must answer one question with a plausible lie. If you are Betrayed, do 1 harm to them in addition to any other results.

O The Shining – You can roll with Dark to manipulate an NPC or shut someone down via telepathy instead of speech. If you are Betrayed, add 1 to your Dark roll and give them the condition Headache.

SEX MOVE

When you have sex with someone, take two strings on them and give them two strings on you. Give yourself the condition Hopeful.

DARKEST SELF

Nobody loves you. Nobody ever will. It’s all pain and loneliness and watching other people from the outside, and it will never change. They only pretended to like you so they could hurt you even more. There’s nothing left for you here but revenge. So burn it all down. Smash it all to pieces. Rip their secrets out and make them dance like dolls for your amusement.

To escape your darkest self, you must be confronted by someone who has never hurt, excluded, or betrayed you, or be shown an act of kindness that seems genuine.

Sooo.

Sooo… who else has read the Solace playbook for AW? I just did today, and I think it’s pretty awesome and I’m very excited to make it available for players in the next game I MC, but I do find some of the stuff under the Threshold section a bit confusing. Can anyone help me out?