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Gerund posted:Yes, but I'd really love a F&F write-up of the Binder chapter simply because I remember it all being really cool and evocative and each was WAY more interesting to 'wear' as a character than 99% of all other choices in regular elfgames. I'd like a F&F writeup of Savage Species in general. It's one of the few sourcebooks I habitually ban entirely from every DnD 3.5E game I run. Those anthropomorphic animals are goddamn ridiculous as I recall.
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May 23, 2014 04:23
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I can understand wanting to address the elephant in the room of the Holocaust in a gameline about ghosts and the afterlife, and this book seems as respectful as it could have been, but... gently caress that's depressing poo poo, even by Wraith's standard.
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Aug 12, 2014 21:53
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Gazetteer posted:Other players can get kind of weird about their characters getting One of Them, especially if Streaming is involved. If people start actively avoiding getting that condition put on them, it can more or less ruin the fun fo r the Queen. There are a few skins that that kind of thing can happen to, but in my experience the Queen gets the worst of it because people tend to view them in an instantly antagonistic light. So you kind of have to watch out for that sort of thing and address it early on if you see it happening in a game you're running. Just looking over this... as a non-antagonist, wouldn't the Queen make a lot of sense as the leader of a group of PCs? Not in the same way that the Chosen might be, but in the sense of the heart of the team, the real people person who can balance out the others and get them working together effectively?
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Sep 6, 2014 04:44
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Mors Rattus posted:In theory, but Monsterhearts and 'working together effectively' are not always things that go together. Obviously, but there's definitely a non-antagonist angle to be played there. Take a Chosen and a Queen, and you've got the core of a dysfunctional group of angsty, overly dramatic teenagers who are nevertheless the town's best and only hope against unspeakable horrors - add an Infernal for spice, and a Mortal as someone's family member who's in love with the main villain. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 11:18
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I mentioned the Monsterhearts game to my tabletop gaming group today after the review of it in this thread sparked my interest. We've agreed to take a break on Friday from our Rogue Trader campaign to be melodramatic teenagers rather than interstellar assholes for a change. Already have a Chosen and an Infernal lined up from my players. 
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Sep 8, 2014 03:50
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Ratpick posted:I'd really appreciate it if you could post a report of your game in either this thread or the Apocalypse World thread, as that seems to be where most of the actual Monsterhearts discussion takes place. Will do. I'm our usual DM/GM/ST/what-have-you, so I'll write up the inevitable shenanigans. Two of my players even work at a local high school, so this should be entertaining.
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Sep 8, 2014 16:40
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Ratpick posted:I'd really appreciate it if you could post a report of your game in either this thread or the Apocalypse World thread, as that seems to be where most of the actual Monsterhearts discussion takes place. For my part, I'll try to get another Skin written up today. Posted a report of the game over in the Apocalypse World thread. Short version: a Chosen, a Faery, a Ghost, an Infernal, and a Mortal walk into a gaming session. Everyone died but the Ghost, and the Faery and Infernal were directly murdered (with the player's permission) by another PC.
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Sep 13, 2014 19:46
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echopapa posted:I’ve enjoyed hearing about the skins so far and would like to know about the limited edition skins. Agreed. My gaming group had a good amount of fun (and from the reactions of the AW thread, significantly more carnage than is typical of the game) running MH as a one-off for a lark, and we all felt the skins were interesting and well done. I'd enjoy hearing about more.
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Sep 15, 2014 22:48
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The Witch also calls to mind, for me at least, the loners who think they're so much smarter than everyone else because they've learned about something few people do, at simultaneously smart from being loners and outcasts and think they're better than everyone else. I knew a few self-proclaimed witches like this in high school, but I also saw that attitude with early serious computer geeks and the like. Only Monsterhearts Witches have found actual power to back up their fantasies of revenge and self-superiority against those lessers, those mundanes who are so self-satisfied and don't recognize or appreciate their betters. Even their sex move is about gaining more power over others. Notice that none of the Witches' hexes are beneficial, except maybe Binding. Edit: In particular, the dynamic the Witch calls to mind for me is that the Witch is both more and less powerful than he thinks he is. Suddenly this kid has power, power to act out his fantasies and avenge every humiliation, every perceived slight. But he almost certainly isn't thinking about the consequences of his newfound power and what he's doing. He doesn't appreciate, or perhaps care, that he now has the ability to seriously hurt people physically, mentally, and emotionally. It's every "prank" that's sent someone to the hospital. And it doesn't take any imagination to have some dark power come calling to the Witch, plunging them into a world they never wanted or counted on. Be careful what you wish for... Cythereal fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 18:05
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pkfan2004 posted:The interesting thing about the Witch is that it's like a more specialized version of the Infernal. The Infernal really has power. It absolutely has power to call on, at the cost of said power taking a moral and ethical toll on everyone around them. The Infernal really has to consider if what they're about to do is worth moving a step closer to the edge. On the other hand, Witches aren't indebted to an external power like Infernals are. Infernals are addicts and tied up in powers beyond their understanding. They're the kid who signed the wrong contract. Witches are that kinda creepy kid at the back of the classroom who just figured out how to spy on the head cheerleader when she's in the shower, make the captain of the football team's muscles start to wither, and the class goody-goody two-shoes go bugfuck insane.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:52
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Bieeardo posted:Yes! That's much more elegant. I think I was too much the supercilious nerd in high school to fit them into that frame without prompting, but they really do. Thinking about the Witch's hexes and moves for a bit, the more hosed-up this skin becomes if you roll with the general image that they're a loner/outcast type of high schooler who's suddenly found some real power. Sympathetic Tokens is a big warning sign from the word go. You can't just have anything that belongs to the other person, it needs to be something that matters to them emotionally. They'll miss this thing, or if they willingly give it to you it's a major gesture of friendship and trust. A diary? They're opening their innermost thoughts to you. A high school athlete's letter jacket? At my high school those were a huge thing. But it can be anything that holds emotional value to the person - a photograph of a cousin who died in a car crash, a stuffed animal that they've had since childhood, a beloved pet... think back to things like that, that you cared about at that age. A favorite book. A musical instrument from a girl in the marching band. A car. To make things that much worse, when you use it to cast a hex the token is destroyed in the process. Think about that for a minute. You're destroying something important to another person in order to cast a spell on them, being a dick if you stole the token or betraying their trust if they gave it to you. You're throwing their diary into the sewer when you cast a hex. You're burning their letter jacket. You're putting their photograph in the shredder, ripping apart their teddybear, killing their pet... Transgressive Magic plays off this angle nicely. Now you're not just destroying something important to them, you're desecrating and perverting it - and not necessarily in a sexual way. You're endlessly writing "n***er" in a black girl's diary. You're masturbating on their jacket and soaking it in your mess. You're photoshopping the photograph and uploading it to a porn site. You're turning a puritanical Christian guy's teddy bear into a voodoo doll. Hexes use sympathetic tokens to use the symbolism of destroying something important someone to punch them in the gut. Now you're defiling that something important to give your spell extra power. Bide My Time is a variation on the same theme. You're emotionally blackmailing the person, whether they know it or not. You have something important of theirs, and that gives you an edge over them. Sanctuary might be a genuine sanctuary if you're playing the Witch nicely, but it might be the Witch's lair where they do awful things. It might be that finally letting someone into your private space really does make you more personable and genuine. Or it might be that they're in your domain now and are freaking the gently caress out, consciously or otherwise. The sex move is also really creepy. You can take a free Sympathetic Token from someone you've boinked. In a moment of intimacy, someone gives the Witch something that they care about. As I've previously noted, this can be a very bad idea. On the whole, the Witch strikes me as having one of the most interesting interactions with a core mechanic and theme of the game: emotional connections. That's essentially what strings are, as I understand it. The Witch weaponizes the "strings" between people and objects by destroying the object to hurt the person it's connected to. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 22:49
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Ratpick posted:I personally don't have this experience with any of the Skins. All things considered, I was a pretty emotionally healthy as a teenager. However, if I had to choose, it'd definitely be the Ghost. Not having been the most popular kid in school, I can totally relate to the idea of people literally walking through you and being ignored. Also, it's just a really sad skin. Minus the overtly supernatural bits, the Angel strikes closer to home than I'd be comfortable playing, having come from what I thought was a very religious and authoritarian home. I later grew up, of course, and understood it wasn't half as bad as I'd thought as a typical moody, rebellious teenager, and am still very close to my family, but that Skin reminds me too much of feelings and thoughts I try not to dwell on to be happy playing it.
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Sep 20, 2014 18:07
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Ratpick posted:Alternately I'd go with the Watchful Golem route of a character obsessed with another character (because that character reminds the Ghoul of the warmth of life and love and poo poo) in a really creepy fashion. Again, it's creepy and unsympathetic, but it's a relatable kind of unsympathetic, and one that lends itself to more nuanced drama than "My character is a murderous cannibal." A different spin on this would be taking Watchful Golem but playing up the fact that the Ghoul is virtually impossible to kill. Even though they might want to die. Perhaps the Ghoul is a cursed guardian, or someone who claimed immortality and now hungers for those she thinks might finally be able to kill her. If my tabletop group runs Monsterhearts again, I'd consider using the cursed guardian interpretation as an NPC tasked with protecting someone whether they like it or not. Perhaps a PC, perhaps an important NPC. Either way, anyone who wants to deal with the character must reckon with their sentinel - a sentinel they may not have a choice about having.
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Sep 20, 2014 19:15
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Night10194 posted:It gets a little old always playing more adventurous stories. Sometimes you'd like to settle in for interpersonal drama stuff. And the problem is of the two groups I'm in, neither has enough people to really play something like MH properly if we're down one (or a couple, in the other group, that one's got two guys who can't stand the idea). It can also be a fun change of pace from a more serious, epic storyline to just play dumb, melodramatic teenagers where the optimal course of action is whatever would be most dramatic at that point. You certainly could play Monsterhearts with a straight face, but I can't imagine why you would want to.
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Sep 20, 2014 20:54
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I pitched it as 'The Dresden Files: the High School Years' to my gaming group, and we played a session of it last week as a break from our Rogue Trader campaign. It was good fun, up until the Infernal got just about everyone killed and the Ghost then murdered her in cold blood.
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Sep 20, 2014 21:01
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I can also see it working really well for a kid from an immigrant family to whatever country you're playing in whose family is very close-knit and tied deeply to their old country while you're the kid assimilating into your new country - perhaps the only country you've ever known - and having problems with your family as a result.
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Sep 21, 2014 16:09
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Ratpick posted:Bolded the bit that is relevant to my point here: I don't think I stressed the fact that the Serpentine's family sees humans as intruders on a world that is rightfully theirs enough. Basically, the Serpentine's family is a Southern family with connections to the KKK who see a multiracial society as an affront to their family's former glory, and the Serpentine is an innocent kid who's been raised in that environment who either needs to drink their family's Kool Aid or awkwardly learn to accommodate themselves to a society that doesn't match their family's values. Or playing the miscegnation thing with the "Serpentine as an immigrant kid" angle I'm partial to, it's a kid from a part of the world where arranged marriages are the norm and her parents intend to find her a nice young, successful man back home to marry. But the Serpentine instead falls for someone from this country that her parents really don't approve of. If you've ever known a girl whose family immigrated from India to name a common example in modern culture, you may be familiar with this phenomenon.
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Sep 21, 2014 19:06
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I'm taking notes on using the Serpentine if my tabletop group decides to play MH again after our Rogue Trader campaign finishes, which it probably will in the next few weeks. My group liked having a Chosen to give the game some definite direction, and I'm considering using the Serpentine's family as an ally rather than an enemy. A dangerous ally, one that probably shouldn't be trusted, but they've got the money, the connections, and the know-how to be an invaluable asset to the Chosen's fight. They're using the Chosen, of course, no one's under any illusions about that, but can the Chosen really afford to turn down their help? Make the Chosen's Menace the prime reason for the Serpentine family's downfall, giving them a deep and personal reason to be in the fight. Add teenage melodrama for spice in an already tense if not unholy alliance.
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Sep 21, 2014 21:48
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Golden Bee posted:MH has a core move called "Turn Someone On". Which is about attraction, not necessarily physical. From my experience with MH so far, reading intimacy simply in terms of physical sexuality is only the crudest and least interesting lens to dwell on.
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Oct 11, 2014 20:19
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Halloween Jack posted:Man, that reminds me of my ex. I didn't mind that she was a hipster, but the way she transformed into an owl every time we had sex was intolerable. It just wasn't going to work. I can kind of see where that idea is coming from, the heavily repressed person unleashing pent-up emotions when they finally express themselves, usually dramatically and not infrequently violently with a healthy dose of self-loathing at times for "giving in." In addition to the Beast being a mechanical mess, I also feel there's an existing skin or two that do that core concept better.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:08
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neonchameleon posted:and the Deep One is a metaphor for a gay kid raised in a fundamentalist environment - and works on the basis that the sort of drivel that's spouted and some unfortunate people believe is true). Isn't this concept basically one way to play the Angel, albeit with some different mechanics? It feels too narrowly defined for a skin, and I'm not a fan of skins that railroad the character's sexuality.
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Oct 19, 2014 00:25
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neonchameleon posted:The Angel is about rebellion and acceptance. The Deep One is about fear, secrecy, and denial. And working out who you can trust due to the central move. Personally, I'd argue that fear, secrecy, and denial are essential elements of rebellion and acceptance, and the closet is an apt allegory for an Angel whose conflict is more inward in nature. Each to their own, but nothing you've said about the Deep One strikes me as anything that the Angel, Werewolf, or potentially other skins like the Serpentine can't effectively represent and explore if the player chooses to go that route, certainly nothing that warrants a skin of its own.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:03
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Eh, I can actually see some basis for a skin that could be called the Parent: the elder sibling who, due to family crisis, ends up effectively playing the role of a parent to their younger siblings, probably involving at least one missing or dead actual parent. There's a ripe source of drama for you. As for the monster and supernatural powers to name and theme it after, though... the Crone, perhaps, or the Dragon. Maybe the Golem. Anything designed around a conflict between protecting and serving their charges and exploring and enjoying life as the kid they still fundamentally are.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:35
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Golden Bee posted:You'd like "The Heir", where you gain supernatural powers by killing your siblings before they do you in. ...No, that's nothing at all like what I was thinking of. I get enough killing siblings and children before they do me in in Crusader Kings, thanks.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:51
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Poison Mushroom posted:I think I'm going to actually work on that now. Obligations of adulthood vs loss of childhood isn't quite what I had in mind. If I were to try making a skin for this concept, I think I'd expand it a little further. Call it the Dragon, and the central mechanic of the Dragon is their Hoard and their inclination to Rampage. The Hoard is something they've been entrusted with to protect, guide, and take care of. This may be younger siblings, or family heirlooms for missing parents, or a house while the parent is away, whatever. Point is, the Dragon has been entrusted to care for and protect something by elders who are now functionally absent. The flip side to the Hoard is the Dragon's pull to Rampage - to leave their den and Hoard to cut loose, have fun, and burn down the countryside. To have fun and be yourself, forgoing the responsibilities the Dragon has been entrusted with. Of course, the mice do come out to play when the cat is away... The sex move might be designed to pull the Dragon's lover into the Dragon's trap, beginning to attach part of the obligation to the Hoard to the new person. I'm not sure how to express this concept in Monsterhearts mechanics, though, or if it's even a particularly good idea. My gaming group has run a few sessions of Monsterhearts as breaks between a now-finished Rogue Trader campaign and a new one, and I'm not hugely comfortable with tweaking the system yet.
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Oct 19, 2014 19:17
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I like the "Preachy kid who has more passion for than actual knowledge about their cause" angle as a Skin notion, but I feel the environmentalism angle is perhaps a bit too restrictive. Depends on where you're setting the game, perhaps, if that idea would make game and thematic sense as a PC.
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Oct 24, 2014 16:23
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ZorajitZorajit posted:Wait, Monsterhearts does involve actual, verifiable, supernatural events? I've been under the impression that all of it existed on a magical realism level of metaphor and the characters strictly exist as normal teens that are just being described as movie creatures. Although, now that I say this, I'm pretty sure the answer is "you can play it either way, stupid cis-het." Yeah, Monsterhearts assumes that you really are playing as supernatural high schoolers. Speaking for my gaming group, we've taken to it as a nice break from being swashbuckling Space-Outlaws now and then. We don't break it regularly, but it's nice to relax with on occasion.
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Nov 9, 2014 01:50
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Saguaro PI posted:Well sure, I'm not denying it's important to good playbook creation, I'm saying it's perfectly valid to start from "I really like creepypasta/harpies/minotaurs, can we make a playbook out of that?". I think a little too much of the criticism here goes straight past the failure to match the monster and highschool aspects correctly and goes all the way into "well the werewolf is already violent, why would you want to play <some other monster that's violent>?" I think one of the issues with that approach is my personal response of "Why are you trying to make an entirely new Skin for a very similar concept rather than renaming/refluffing an existing Skin, maybe with one or two move tweaks?" The game design of almost all the base skins is very, very good, so I'm in favor of not messing with it too much. When my group has played Monsterhearts, for example, we've refluffed the Infernal as tied in with the Fair Folk and caught in a perilous web of fae "hospitality" and gifts, and completely redone the names and fluff of the Ghost as a time traveler.
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Nov 10, 2014 03:49
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Saguaro PI posted:Refluffing is cool and I am in favour of it, but it's not the 100% the solution every time. I think trying to boil down every monster that's kind of stalkery to the Ghoul or every monster that's actually an ordinary person tied to a supernatural entity to the Infernal can get needlessly reductive and discourage people from looking at new design space. An ordinary person tied to a supernatural entity can just as easily be a Serpentine (say, the family next door are aliens but the alien kid just wants to play with her human friends and doesn't really want to be an extraterrestrial invader), or an Angel, or a Witch, or a Queen, or just about any other skin if you want. I've found Monsterhearts' core themes and mechanics are extremely flexible to a variety of archetypes, perhaps with a little tweaking, and I'm reluctant to mess with what is on the whole a fairly elegant balance of archetypes and moves.
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Nov 10, 2014 04:08
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Robindaybird posted:So the Nice Guy(tm) who thinks all the guys the object of his affections go for are assholes and never realize the reason they don't get laid is because they're a creepy obsessive freak? Isn't that the Witch?
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Nov 10, 2014 20:34
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Pththya-lyi posted:Godfucking damnit, this is why libraries are dying, isn't it? They don't try to understand why librarians (or any mature people) do what they do! For example, libraries impose due dates not because the librarians hate borrowers, but because they want to make sure that people other than the current borrower can have access to the book. If you keep a book past its due date, you're forcing the other library patrons to do without the book! The late fee is meant to deter people from keeping the book too long! Now, maybe it's because I'm a ~*mundane*~ who can't appreciate ~*whimsy and wonder*~, but it seems to me that someone who sets up rules to provide equal access to imaginative stories to everyone in a community does more to cultivate imagination than a faerie who hoards books. As a professional librarian myself, I can attest that I've never encountered the quasi-mythical breed of librarian described here. Yeah, we ask people and children especially to keep the noise down - many people use the library, and keeping noise down is a matter of courtesy for those trying to read or work or study in peace. Children bent on "wacky hijinks" are disruptive to other patrons. And yeah, we don't allow children to check out some books without the express permission of their parents. These tend to be books on very mature topics like, say, the Holocaust or the psychology of serial killers. Children *should* be reading fairy tales and Harry Potter, not that kind of stuff.
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Nov 14, 2014 15:16
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theironjef posted:That's all very reasonable, but can you see why kids like Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Of course I can. It's full of sugar and to a lesser degree has cute advertising aimed at kids.
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Nov 14, 2014 16:43
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Kurieg posted:Wrong! It's because it's full of magic and whimsey! Drag them behind the speculative fiction stacks and don't come back until they love wackyness. Children require no assistance in that regard. Our job is to help them find books that they'll enjoy reading, not cram some arbitrary notion of whimsy or fantasy down their throats. That only makes them resent whatever you're trying to instill in them. In order to teach effectively, you must first make a child want to learn.
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Nov 14, 2014 16:51
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Kurieg posted:I was joking Sorry. We can, however, agree that oChangeling sucks.
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Nov 14, 2014 17:26
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Kai Tave posted:nWoD werewolves are kind of a pale shadow of their oWoD unstoppable rage monster selves too. I think the most powerful supernatural splat is a toss up between mages and geists. Actually demons might be up there too but I don't have any hands on experience with them. Hunters can be ridiculously scary if you let them tool up. Task Force Valkyrie in particular has some hilarious endowments. Prometheans might be pound for pound the biggest heavyweights excluding geared up hunters. They're extremely difficult to kill, have a lot of powers, and are theoretically the most dangerous of any supernatural because of the sheer havoc they wreak just by existing in an area. Reality itself hates them, and the backlash against a Promethean who stays in one place for too long can be devastating, both the Disquiet and the Wasteland.
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Nov 16, 2014 01:51
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Rand Brittain posted:The Bound are kings of the mountain at killing things, ruining lives, being bloody difficult to kill and dealing with ghosts. Outside of that they don't have much going for them. An Ulgan Promethean is the stuff of their nightmares, though.
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Nov 16, 2014 02:46
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Kavak posted:Ulgans wreck the barrier with the spirit world, not the world of the dead. They're an Uratha's worst nightmare, but at least they burn easily. True, though any Promethean's wasteland and disquiet qualify them as among the most destructive supernaturals in nWoD. Zeka have an incredibly nasty one, too, but none of them are healthy to live in.
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Nov 16, 2014 07:12
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Night10194 posted:There are two ways to play Black Crusade: Ridiculous power metal melodrama and Shenanigans. One involves quests across blasted hellscapes to accomplish insanely ambitious goals, similar to Rogue Trader. The other involves landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair. The correct Rogue Trader approach is landing a shuttle on a pirate king and stealing Khorne's lawn chair to sell at an interstellar auction only to betray everyone in attendance and sell them to the Inquisition in return for wealth, fame, and privilege.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:54
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Night10194 posted:Admittedly 'I sell everyone to the Inquisition for wealth, fame, and prestige' would also be a hell of an ending to a BC campaign. Then the Rogue Traders keep Khorne's lawn chair because whatever else you say about the Blood God, he's got good taste and it's a perfect accent to your private conservatory on your flagship.
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Nov 22, 2014 19:50
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theironjef posted:I've always avoided it because every description of play I've ever heard is basically concentrated monkey cheese. I assume it's way more fun to play than to hear about. The game certainly encourages a light-hearted approach to the setting, but really it's down to the people and DM playing it rather than the system. For good or ill, Rogue Trader and Black Crusade tend to attract goofier types of games and players. More seriously-minded players and DMs tend to prefer Dark Heresy or Deathwatch.
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Nov 22, 2014 21:56
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