Ran my first game of MoTW over the weekend, and for the most part we had a great time. I did however have a couple of issues we ran into that I wasn’t able to resolve in a satisfying way and I’m hoping someone here can clarify some things.
The Mystery I ran involved a motorcycle gang of werewolves who were rampaging across the Nebraska countryside, killing rural farm families and they were ready to graduate to a nearby small town.
My first issue involved the traditional weakness of a werewolf: silver. Once it was revealed that the team was up against a gang of werewolves, they immediately asked me if they had silver bullets and I honestly wasn’t sure, so we floundered in conversation about it for a bit and ultimately decided that they had some, but not many. I’m hoping someone might be able to point out a rule that somehow limits their ability to go “Oh, the monster is __ and it takes __ to kill it? I’ve got that right in my Mary Poppins bag of monster hunting gear!”
I know that in the revised rules under the GEAR section it says that “If you want something that you couldn’t just buy (like a flamethrower,or a magical artifact), or something you don’t have the resources to get, then you need to do something special (like call in a favour, or steal it). Tell the Keeper what you’re doing, and play through the acquisition attempt to see how well it works.” Does this apply to anything that the players couldn’t just go into a store and buy? I’m fine if that’s the intention of the game, but I want to make sure. Based on the tradition of the fiction, if the players are telling me their characters are experienced monster hunters, it’s hard to make the argument that they might have one thing and not another. Are there any rules I’m missing on where to draw the line with this?
The other problem I came up against involved a Wronged Hunter PC who attempted to Use Magic several times. I get that every playbook has access to Use Magic as a basic move (a thing I’m not crazy about personally) and it’s up to the player to explain how what they’re trying to achieve and how they go about doing it. My issue comes with the Keeper Requirements and the fact that they’re things that the Keeper “may” do. Sticking with the first question, let’s say the rules indicate that the players have to locate/make some silver bullets (or anything else that might act as a monster weakness). Does that also apply to “weird materials” or the “tome of magic” used during Use Magic? That feels kind of cheap, like at any point a Keeper could just go “Okay, you want to Use Magic to do __? That’s going to require some weird materials that you don’t have because we haven’t done a scene involving you obtaining them.” If I go the other route and establish at our table that anything you couldn’t buy from a store must be obtained by calling in a favor, or stolen, etc., but allow the weird materials and magic tomes to just be things they have, then I feel like one aspect of the game is contradicting another.
Would really appreciate some clarification!
