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If you aren't disinclined to do it, I'd love to see a write up for the Skins for the Skinless to see just how bad they are and a lesson on how NOT to make skins for anyone interested in MH.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:29
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The Firestarter seems like a pretty cool skin. I haven't seen it in play yet but I'm in an ongoing game with the author of that particular skin, and another player has been planning on changing to that skin at the end of the season.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:42
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Robindaybird posted:If you aren't disinclined to do it, I'd love to see a write up for the Skins for the Skinless to see just how bad they are and a lesson on how NOT to make skins for anyone interested in MH.
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Oct 17, 2014 18:48
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Okay, everyone seems to want me to do Golden Sky Stories next, so that's what it'll be. It'll be a nice change of pace after the teenage drama of Monsterhearts. It's just the most  game.Gazetteer posted:Okay, I can do that. Really looking forward to your writeup. I haven't actually looked at too many of the third party skins, although I have great expectations for Jackson Tegu's Second Skins when it finally comes out. He's the guy behind the Selkie, a skin that was at one point available through the Avery McDaldno's website, which is a really solidly designed skin. It really catches the feeling of the original Faroese and Orkney myths about the Selkie, and thematically it fits really well into the rest of the game. I mean, you're basically a landbound mermaid/seal person whose magical pelt has been stolen so you can never return to your home under the sea, so your initial plan should be to get back your pelt, but once you get it back you might've built connections in the world and might not want to. It's also one of those skins that potentially gets very tragic if your players are aware of Selkie myths and know what usually happens in them, i.e. the Selkie's pelt gets destroyed meaning they're stuck on land forever and must marry a fisherman (as one does).
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Oct 17, 2014 19:01
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Gazetteer posted:There is actually a third-party Carrie skin. It's called The Fury. But that's a Skins for the Skinless skin, which despite being a very popular third-party collection, kind of range from "wow this is a lot worse than it initially seemed" to "literally unplayable." Trying to explain what's wrong about Skins for the Skinless is kind of a writeup in of itself. Not terribly hard. All the Skins for the Skinless I've spent any time reviewing do exactly the same thing. Monsterhearts is a game about broken teenagers where the skin is a metaphor for the way the teenagers are broken that also happens to give them power. And are frequently kinda hosed up to use. The Skins for the Skinless make the very basic mistake that all the moves are Cool Things Monsters Can Do. The skin ideas are great and the description talks an excellent game about how they represent broken people. (Which is why they are popular - every time I see one of them I want to re-write it from scratch). But the moves are just cool stuff that doesn't rebound or make things hard on the user. At a case by case level there's a lot of bad design beyond that, but they all start with mechanics that head off in exactly the wrong direction.
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Oct 17, 2014 19:06
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neonchameleon posted:The Skins for the Skinless make the very basic mistake that all the moves are Cool Things Monsters Can Do. This pretty much hits the nail on the head. Almost none of the skins have moves like the Chosen's Mercy or the Fae's Lure - things that subtly and non-intrusively incentivize playing into the skin's gimmick as both the PC playing them, and the others at the table. I mean, my Mummy can raise the dead and eat people's souls. Awesome. But where's the move that, say, rewards me for acting like the ancient power-hungry rear end in a top hat I'm supposed to be? Each SFTS skin is more like a splatbook (and, in fact, one of my players suggested that the SFTS are probably much better if you don't -start- as one of them, but switch to it.) You get this list of monster stuff, with nothing to support the real meat of the game: the bullshit high-school drama, and how that -mirrors- the monster stuff. For me, the Minotaur is the exception because, unlike the rest, it seems to have been designed "teen idea first, monster idea second." And there are moves which let your skin play out by directly interacting with the other players (give someone In the Maze, cow loses a string on you) and that reward you for staying "in type" (like the move that rewards you for taking string-commands by giving you additional benefits aside from experience.)
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Oct 17, 2014 22:47
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Gazetteer posted:Okay, I can do that. I've been collecting some other fan skins, if you're interested. I don't know how many of these are well-known or popular, but I have:
I also have the Selkie preview, if you need that. And while I'm posting, I was just wondering if anyone has made/would be interested in a write-up for the One.Seven Design games? (Lady Blackbird, GHOST/ECHO, Lasers & Feelings, etc.) Since many of them are shorties, I would just do all the short ones together in one post.
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Oct 18, 2014 03:33
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ActingPower posted:And while I'm posting, I was just wondering if anyone has made/would be interested in a write-up for the One.Seven Design games? (Lady Blackbird, GHOST/ECHO, Lasers & Feelings, etc.) Since many of them are shorties, I would just do all the short ones together in one post. You can get a decent-szied post out of Lady Blackbird alone, but I say do it however feels comfortable.
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Oct 18, 2014 03:42
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mllaneza posted:You can get a decent-szied post out of Lady Blackbird alone, but I say do it however feels comfortable. Right, Lady Blackbird is long (as are AGON and Danger Patrol), but L&F is 1 page, Mustang and G/E are 2, and Ghost Lines is 4. Those could probably all go together in one post.
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Oct 18, 2014 04:24
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Nthing the request for the Skins review.
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Oct 18, 2014 05:11
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 So, in case you missed it, Ratpick has just finished a writeup of Monsterhearts, which is a very well put together game about being an angsty teenage monster who can’t get a date to the prom and poo poo. Monsterheart is probably the single most elegant use of the Powered by the Apocalypse engine I’ve seen so far -- it’s simple and deceptively streamlined, but all of its mechanics are really well thought out and come together to produce the desired effect. The official character skins in particular are very tightly designed -- they’re evocative, multi-faceted, and fun for everyone at the table. I am not here to talk about those skins. Skins for the Skinless: A Collection of New Skins for Monsterhearts is probably the most popular collection of unofficial third party skins for Monsterhearts out there so far. They’re written by Topher Gerkey, a guy who has designed some cool stuff and -- despite being available for free -- they have professional looking layouts and editing comparable to the official skins. When you start asking around for third party Monsterhearts skins, Skins for the Skinless is the first thing people will tell you about. Lots of groups end up playing games with one or more of the skins he’s created here. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Topher’s MH skins look pretty decent at first glance, but when seen in actual play, they tend to fall apart really fast. There are three things that a good Monsterhearts skin needs: A monster or figure from popular culture that it is based on, a metaphor for some kind of social issue that teenagers face, and game mechanics to tie those two things together and make them fun to play. Topher is usually pretty decent at the first two, but he is… somewhat less so at the third. It’s kind of understandable, because Monsterhearts is a surprisingly complicated game to write third party content for, but I’ve just seen and heard of way too many people picking one of these skins up and then being disappointed because of them. Also I figure some people might enjoy reading about what some… “less polished” Monsterhearts content actually looks like. There are a bunch of different versions of this collection floating around the Internet, in various levels of completeness and with more or less skins in them. I’ll be using version 1.5, which is the most recent one I’m aware of. It currently has 10 skins in it, which I will be going through in order:
If you guys disagree with me and think these skins are fun, or you want to support some of his other game design work (he wrote Princess Drive, which is a cool Fate Accelerated game about princesses fighting monsters in giant stompy robots), Topher’s got a Patreon you can subscribe to if you like. It just seems fair to link it, considering that I’m going to be spending a lot of words being rather critical of some of his work here. Next time: The Beast -- He tried to kiss me, so I turned into a cobra ActingPower posted:I've been collecting some other fan skins, if you're interested. I don't know how many of these are well-known or popular, but I have: I'll keep that in mind if people are interested once I finish SftS. Although The Selkie has been revised and is currently part of the Second Skins -- so it would ideally be covered as part of those when they're officially released someday. Also, I'd love to see someone do Lady Blackbird, go knock yourself out.
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Oct 18, 2014 12:04
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Gazetteer posted:Next time: The Beast -- He tried to kiss me, so I turned into a cobra That never helps.
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Oct 18, 2014 21:58
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The Lone Badger posted:That never helps. So, as a reminder of the basic structure of a Monsterhearts skin, MH characters have four basic stats: Hot, Cold, Volatile and Dark, and mostly consist of a collection of mechanical effects called “moves” that trigger when the right conditions are met. Every skin can perform Basic Moves in addition to some Skin Moves specific to themself, and a special Sex Move (triggers when the character has sex with someone) and Darkest Self (the character becomes a real monster temporarily). It seems a little redundant to go into detail about this stuff when someone else has already done a writeup on them so recently, so you can read about these things starting here. The Beast  (these skins each come in two versions, one with male artwork, the other with female. They are rarely in the same style) So, purely as a consequence of alphabetisation, the first skin in this collection is also the worst. At least, that’s how I’ve felt for some time now. It’s entirely possible that I’ll change my mind about it and give that dubious distinction to something else by the end of this writeup. But right now, I can’t actually think of another Monsterhearts skin I would describe as literally unplayable. The Beast is a shapeshifter -- when you create one, you pick an “animal form” for them, choosing from a list of mammals, birds and reptiles. The one uniting feature they all have in common is that they’re all predators large enough to be a physical threat to humans if they really wanted to. Their Origins are things like “hexed” or “drank from a shapeshifter’s pawprint” -- my favourite is the “uplifted animal” option though, just in case you wanted to reenact that one Goosebumps book where the twist is that the kids are all secretly dogs. The idea is that you are emotionally and sexually repressed, and are keeping your inner “wild side” bottled up. Only when you slip up and it comes out, you literally turn into a cobra or whatever. The Beast comes with Hot and Cold at +1, and Volatile and Dark at -1. High hot/cold skins tend to be dedicated social manipulators like the Queen or the Vampire, since they’re able to Turn On/Manipulate others as well as Shut Them Down really effectively. Immediately, this seems to be at odds with the concept that we’re being pitched -- if you’re so repressed, why would you have a high Hot stat? Hot is about being charismatic and sexy; it’s the offencive social stat, and if you have it as one of you good stats, the skin is basically telling you that these are the things you should be doing a lot of. It seems like the concept would make a lot more sense as a Cold/Dark skin, like the Witch -- but who knows, maybe once we’ve read the Moves things will start to make more sense? (spoiler: They don’t) Skin Moves The Beast Starts with Caged Heat, and two more moves of the player’s choice: Caged Heat Caged Heat introduces the Beast’s primary mechanic, and unfortunately this is where things basically fall apart right away. It’s going to take a little while to explain. Whenever you feel turned on -- whether as a result of someone rolling to Turn You On or from another source -- you gain the condition Feral, and as long as you have Feral, you roll Hot instead of Volatile in order to Lash Out Physically. Oh, and you also have to pick two options from the following list:
What’s going to actually happen here is that any scene in which you feel turned on is going to suddenly become a scene about you freaking out or otherwise turning into a cobra. This is going to get old really fast -- so people are just going to start avoiding rolling to turn you on pretty quickly if they don’t want the game constantly getting derailed. Which is bad, because once other players start going out of their way to not trigger your skin’s gimmick, you can’t actually play your skin very effectively. The Werewolf is another skin that’s built around dangerous and dramatic transformations -- this is relegated to the Werewolf’s darkest self for a reason: It’s not interesting or fun for anyone if it’s happening every other scene, and it very quickly loses its shock value if it does. Lastly: This transformation is tied to a condition, which you are not given a clear way of losing again. You don’t come out of it unless you can get rid of Feral, either narratively somehow or by rolling to Hold Steady. And the skin doesn’t actually tell you what happens if someone else gives you the Feral condition by shutting you down or whatever -- presumably, it’s also going to trigger Caged Heat. This is seriously the single worst move I have ever seen in any PbtA game -- it’s a game-destroying cyclone of poorly thought out mechanics, and unlike a lot of Topher's other skins, this one is actually entirely built around this one central move. Green-Eyed Monster Caged Heat now triggers whenever you feel intense jealousy, anger or hate. It is literally just a move that makes Caged Heat even worse. Scaredy-Cat Caged Heat now triggers whenever you feel intense fear, shame or sorrow. So, if you want to turn into a cobra literally every time you have a negative emotion, feel free to pick this and Green-Eyed Monster. Also, this one has some pretty nasty synergy with Caged Heat: When you use a partially-successful Hold Steady roll to remove a condition… you gain the condition Terrified. So, Scaredy-Cat has the probably-unintended side effect of making it dramatically harder to get rid of Feral. Beauty and... You can spend a string on someone to both Turn Them on and Shut them Down at the same time with a single roll -- you choose whether to use Hot or Cold. This is sort of an interesting concept -- you’re repressed and weird about your feelings and sexuality, so even when you’re trying to attract someone you also end up being a jerk. Except… Hot and Cold are both good stats for you. So there’s no reason why you’d necessarily want to waste a string doing both of these at once. This is also the first place Topher decides to do something weird that he’s overly fond of doing: dictating the result of a failed roll. Usually on a 6 or below, the MC makes a hard move tailored to the situation. When you gently caress up a Beaty and… roll, though, your target chooses one from this list:
Tooth and Claw While you’re Feral and have lost your human form, you get +1 to Shut Someone Down and Lash Out Physically. That’s a pretty significant boost to what are already your two good stats -- pretty much just makes you scarier while you’re a cobra. Fight or Flight While you’re Feral and have lost your human intelligence, you can… take two options from the list if you roll 10 or higher on Lash Out Physically, and can also Run Away with Cold. This seems unnecessarily specific and is a little bit confusing to read. Predator and Prey While you’re Feral and have lost control of your violent and malicious impulses, you carry one forward against anyone who has at least one string on you. You also gain a string on anyone you deal harm to with Lash Out Physically. The first part of this move would work a lot better if you had a move that makes it easier for other people to take strings on you. Cat’s Eye If you stare into someone’s eyes and Gaze Into the Abyss, on a 10+ you can add “You know their deepest fear or secret lust, and add 1 to your roll when using that information to shut them down or turn them on” to your list of options. Which would be cool, if Dark weren’t one of your bad stats, or you had access to anything that let you mitigate your lovely dark score. Sex Move If you have sex with someone, you immediately(!) become your Darkest Self and have to Lash Out Physically against your partner. After that, you may then choose to either keep Lashing Out at them or to Run Away. My first thought is that this more or less steps on the Mortal’s toes, because it makes their sex move potentially do nothing. My second thought is that it deliberately invokes the sort of situation that the Mortal’s sex move gives you an out for -- this is going to cause some uncomfortably violent sexual situations. The play advice also indicates that this sex move does not trigger if you have sex “with another beast”, although there isn’t actually anything in the text of the sex move to indicate this. Apparently, this is deliberately in place so that if you take the Beast’s gang advancement (“Bloodline of Beasts”), you will be tempted to engage in possibly-incestuous sex with them. Because it’s the only kind of sex that does not make you turn into a cobra and try to bite your partner’s face off. Because that’s definitely the kind of element you want to introduce into your skin in the equivalent of a loving footnote.  Darkest Self This was always going to be interesting, since this skin pretty much goes into what would be a Darkest Self for any other skin every time they think someone in class looks pretty today. Basically, though, it makes it so you lose all emotions except for the ones that trigger Caged Heat, and you turn into an animal and start relentlessly hunting down and trying to kill anyone you have “strong feelings for” in particular. If there’s no one around who you give a poo poo about, you’ll settle for anything that moves. This would seem to conflict with the “you can choose to roll to Run Away” option in the Sex move, but whatever. You can’t actually come out of your Darkest Self unless you’ve killed someone. Basically it’s the Werewolf’s Darkest Self, only more extreme and specific. Other Stuff So, an additional problem that nearly all of the Beast’s skin moves have is that they’re all prohibitively difficult for anyone to take as part of another skin’s “take a move from another skin” advancement -- almost everything listed after Caged Heat either only works if you already have Caged Heat or mentions Caged Heat by name. The sole exception to this is Cat’s Eye, which has a different problem in that it would be a much more useful move for a lot of other skins aside from this one. Although many of the official books’ Skin Moves are a lot more useful in combination with their skin’s other moves, typically they’re not completely useless without them. As I mentioned above, the Beast’s gang is a “bloodline of beasts”, who by default I guess are assumed to be related to you. So, you get a gang of similarly-cursed people who turn into cobras all the time or something, and whether or not they’re all your cousin or whatever is up to you. Fortunately, not all of these skins are as big a mess as the Beast is. The next one is weird, but not tragically, fundamentally broken. Next time: The Calaca -- A spooky sexy skeleton who will help you with your problems
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Oct 18, 2014 22:32
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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.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:01
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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.  Me, too.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:03
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ActingPower posted:I've been collecting some other fan skins, if you're interested. I don't know how many of these are well-known or popular, but I have: You've got two of my four there - The Gorgon and The Deep One  (Cliff notes: The Gorgon can't look anyone in the eyes without starting to petrify them, 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). Both have playtested pretty well although I'd love any more feedback.I've two others that I can't recommend as highly; The Kitsune is meant to be the kid that doesn't dare take anything seriously but the skin doesn't hook gut deep, and The Banshee; a control freak who screams to try and keep control (as if that is ever going to work! Especially when the bodies start appearing when in Darkest Self) which I think is very good but I haven't tried playtesting yet, and it has a lot of its double-edged nature riding on consequences of the Banshee's screams being loud. Oh, and the Incubus and the Succubus are separate skins as far as I know. At least I've seen different skins under the name Incubus and Succubus. Oh, and the Harpy is a Topher Gherkey (unless there are others out there by the same name; there are at least three Kitsune other than mine I'm aware of). quote:And while I'm posting, I was just wondering if anyone has made/would be interested in a write-up for the One.Seven Design games? (Lady Blackbird, GHOST/ECHO, Lasers & Feelings, etc.) Since many of them are shorties, I would just do all the short ones together in one post. Definitely! I've yet to see a miss from One.Seven. neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Oct 18, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 23:08
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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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Gazetteer posted:Sex Move So, this is another problem Skins For The Skinless has. Namely, the skins are blatantly specific references. In this case, the Beast is the main character of Cat People. Literally, the sex move is the entire plot of Cat People. There's a hot lady, she thinks she'll turn into a monster if she has sex, she has sex, she turns into a panther and won't turn back until she kills someone. It even has the weird incest-y bits of the 1982 remake. It's just an entire skin that's Cat People. Now, there's nothing wrong with being explicit about your influences. There's nothing wrong with making a Werewolf variant that focuses on being afraid of your inner sexy beast instead of being a dominating rear end in a top hat. The problem's when you get so focused on your influences that your skin can only be used for a blatant ripoff of your source material.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:14
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Lurks With Wolves posted:So, this is another problem Skins For The Skinless has. Namely, the skins are blatantly specific references. In this case, the Beast is the main character of Cat People. Literally, the sex move is the entire plot of Cat People. There's a hot lady, she thinks she'll turn into a monster if she has sex, she has sex, she turns into a panther and won't turn back until she kills someone. It even has the weird incest-y bits of the 1982 remake. It's just an entire skin that's Cat People.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:14
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Business travel is keeping us from recording in a timely manner, but in the meantime here is the dramatic reading of the full Synnibarr intro in a System Mastery Special Edition. Beware the dreaded werestorm, and let none know your true name, not even your 72-headed Chameleon Hydra.
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Oct 18, 2014 23:54
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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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Cythereal posted: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. I have to agree. By making it explicit, you take out some of the awkwardness out of the theme of growing into a teenager. I think you could probably pull The Deep One off as a kid raised in an environment that hates everything of a different ethnicity/religion/social class/etc and work with them being attracted to what is different/deemed 'bad'.
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Oct 19, 2014 00:39
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Cythereal posted: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. Not at all. First there's no railroading the actual sexuality at all. It's not about that part of the experience. It's about the closet - the internal part. The wall built up inside because you have always been told what you are is very, very wrong. It's the sort of skin that can take the (optional) move "Projection When you successfully Shut Someone Down by claiming that they are a Deep One you may give them the condition Scapegoat. While someone is a Scapegoat no one can learn your True Nature from anyone but you. Gain 1 on all rolls to hurt them". 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. The particular Christian Fundamentalist/homophobic influences are woven into lots of parts of the skin including most of the other peripheral moves. But there's nothing at all there that dictates the character's sexuality in specific any more than for any other skin.
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Oct 19, 2014 00:45
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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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neonchameleon posted:Not at all. First there's no railroading the actual sexuality at all. It's not about that part of the experience. It's about the closet - the internal part. The wall built up inside because you have always been told what you are is very, very wrong. It's the sort of skin that can take the (optional) move "Projection When you successfully Shut Someone Down by claiming that they are a Deep One you may give them the condition Scapegoat. While someone is a Scapegoat no one can learn your True Nature from anyone but you. Gain 1 on all rolls to hurt them". Hey, I just took a look at the Deep One and it looks like a really neat skin. A couple of notes though: First of all, in spite of the fact that Monsterhearts is based on Apocalypse World, there's no "ongoing" in Monsterhearts. I know, it's a minor quibble, but Monsterhearts has its own language, and moves that would be phrased in Apocalypse World as "take +1 ongoing to [X]" would be phrased as something more like "add 1 to any roll to [X]" in Monsterhearts. I think this is in part because Monsterhearts was written with new players in mind and Avery McDaldno wanted to do away with any terminology that couldn't be phrased better in clear language. Secondly, Bringing the Storm is basically two stat substitution moves in one. I know it's thematic, but taking into account what Gazetteer has already discussed (the potential for taking moves from other skins) it's an awfully powerful move, especially for something like the Selkie (another Cold+Dark skin that relies heavily on water for its schtick). Having said that, I do appreciate what you've done with the skin: it seems like the perfect skin to represent a kid from a strict background who has internalized the toxic memes they've been taught. Even though there's a clear metaphor of internalized homophobia and guilt over one's homosexuality ("Have you tried not being a monster?" comes to mind) the skin seems like it would drive the drama towards eventual self-realization and letting go of those toxic ideas.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:05
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Hello, everyone! I'd like to talk about a specific set of games that I find interesting. They're all created by a man named John Harper and posted for free on his website, OneSevenDesign.com. He has four games which are short, minimalistic games (Lasers & Feelings, GHOST/ECHO, The Mustang, and Ghost Lines) and three full-fledged game systems (Lady Blackbird, Danger Patrol, AGON). To start off, I'll be looking at the four short systems, going from shortest to longest. If these go all right, I'll move on to the longer ones. Lasers & Feelings: "You are the crew of the Interstellar Ship Raptor. Your mission is to explore uncharted regions of space, deal with aliens both friendly and deadly, and defend the Consortium worlds against space dangers. Captain Darcy has been overcome by the strange psychic entity known as Something Else, leaving you to fend for yourselves while he recovers in a medical pod." Lasers & Feelings is a very, very minimalistic system. It takes up a grand total of 1 page, though it crams itself up to the gills to do that. Basically, it's a system to play episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, with all of its campy goofiness fully intact. For example, in the character design paragraph, you're asked to do five things:
From there, Lasers & Feelings moves into the dice resolution system. It's remarkably straightforward. You roll one die, and if it's above/below your number, you do what you set out to do. You can get extra dice if you're prepared, an expert, or being helped by someone else. The more dice in your pool that succeed, the better off you are. In fact, a three-dice success says "The GM tells you what extra effect you get," so that could be really good. I'm sure you're wondering, "What happens if I roll my number exactly? It's not really above or below." That's actually a special effect called LASER FEELINGS! When you get LASER FEELINGS! (I'm sure it doesn't have to be written like that every time, but shut up yes it does), you get to ask the GM one question that they have to answer honestly. (Assumedly, it means in-game, but, RAW...) After you get your question answered, you can change your action if you want (like if you were about to jump out of the ship with a parachute and your question revealed that your parachute isn't packed right); otherwise, you just reroll it. Why yes, that does mean you get special insight 1/6 of the time you roll for anything. That sounds like overkill, but a good GM can make it work. It'll help keep the game fresh and interesting! Speaking of that, let's talk about the GM rules! Most of it is pretty standard. Introduce threats; prime the characters by asking, "What do you do?" Apocalypse World-style; don't pre-plan successes; allow for failures; ask the group questions regularly. All that stuff. What makes the GM rules so interesting is the random threat chart. Basically, when you start a game, you roll a d6 four times and choose the results from the table. This fills in the following blanks: "A threat of ___ wants to ___ the ___ which will ___" Here are some examples I randomly rolled just now:
And that's Lasers & Feelings! It's very minimalistic, but it's just enough to give you an idea of what to do. Before I go, I thought I'd mention a hack of this system (no, really) called Swords & Scrolls. Basically the same thing, only in a fantasy setting instead, with a fighter/wizard dichotomy along with logic/emotion.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:10
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GHOST/ECHO //WHILE HUNTING FOR LOOT IN THE GHOST WORLD, YOUR CREW WAS SOLD OUT. YOU'VE WALKED RIGHT INTO AN AMBUSH, WITH HUNGRY WRAITHS ON YOUR HEELS. GHOST/ECHO is what can only be described as a cyberpunk/steampunk game. Frankly, it’s almost impossible to describe exactly what GHOST/ECHO is trying to do. It is extremely, extremely minimalistic, but what little clues it does give you reveal a very unique style and feel going on. For example, there is no character creation model in this system. You wanna know how to make a character? Pick a name from the list. .COIL, .DEMON, .HULL, .GRIP, .VIXEN. Boom. That's your character. Those sorts of names sound very cyberpunk, right? Especially with the whole formatting thing GHOST/ECHO's got going on. But then you look at the list of /PLACES, and they all sound very steampunk. .THE_WATCHTOWER, .CHALK_STREET_BRIDGE, .CATHEDRAL_HILL. There's no description of what these places look like, no tour guide blurb about what makes these places important. That is entirely up to you and your /CREW. The very last part of the sheet says, /QUESTIONS YOU WILL ANSWER AS YOU GO, and lists a variety of central mechanics and descriptions that will be developed as the game goes on. The entire sheet is like that. The /OTHER characters you could use in the game, the /WRAITHS that act as the enemies you can face, the /LOOT you can collect. The game doesn't tell you how to use them; it just gives them to you and tells you to go nuts. Honestly, it's quite fascinating. It's a far cry from quite a lot of other systems. It doesn't give you too much that it doesn't feel like your story nor too little that you feel lost or without direction. The back lists the resolution mechanics. Whenever you perform one of the actions listed, you will get a +GOAL and a +DANGER. You roll one die for each +GOAL or +DANGER (plus another one if you're prepared), then assign the results as you like. A 5 or 6 means you've successfully achieved the +GOAL or averted the +DANGER. A 3 or 4 means you've partially achieved the +GOAL or partially avoided the +DANGER, but you leave it in front of you to be completed/suffered later. A 1 or 2 means the +GOAL falls out of reach or the +DANGER comes true. This means you'll really only be out-and-out succeeding about one-third of the time. You'll also have to regularly decide what's more important to you. If you're trying to, say, climb up a crumbling wall, you'd roll once to succeed at getting up the wall and once to not get hurt doing so. Nothing worse than seeing a 4 and a 1 come up and having to decide how to go about it. Do you take the harm for sure to leave the possibility of getting up the wall open, or do you fail at climbing up the wall just to partially avoid taking the damage? Whenever anything happens in the game, you'll come to face to face with this dilemma. It's an effective way of taking the luck of normal skill checks and putting the results, at least partially, in the hands of the player. Here's the list of +GOALS and their +DANGERS:
See those last two? The system doesn't tell you how to do them or even what they are. All it does is suggest some ideas for what you might accomplish with them. Each of these examples also gives us more ideas about the things you might be doing in this game. This is where the secrets of the setting are hidden. There are security measures to defeat, deals to negotiate, a datastream to read, and a Ghost World to visit. Hopefully all of those give you some ideas as to how to play GHOST/ECHO. The very end gives you two things: the starting situation (which is the tagline at the top) and a list of questions for you to answer as you play. These include things like "What is the Ghost World like?", "What are .ECHOES and .WRAITHS?", and "What powers and talents does your particular /CREW member have?" All of this is evocative yet mysterious, flexible enough that you can do whatever you like yet strict enough that it defines the tone the game should take. Whether steam- or cyberpunk, this game is punk: gritty, dark, and full of antiheroes. But the fun of the game, the creation and experiences you'll share, are left to the imagination. Isn't that what gaming should be?
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Oct 19, 2014 01:14
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Lasers & Feelings is basically the best Star Trek: The Original Series RPG ever made. If you want to make it more Star Trek specific, just change Lasers to Spock and Feelings to Kirk and you're all set.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:18
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I really want to get Laser Feelings, now. I should give that one a shot sometime.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:21
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I was going to refresh my memory of Cat People before I scrolled down, because yeah, that's pretty blatant. Given the sheer number of PBTA playbooks for one game or another out there, I'm honestly surprised that it seems to take such a light touch to make a good one for Monster Hearts. Maybe I just haven't looked at them hard enough.
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Oct 19, 2014 01:22
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So it seems like you could salvage the concept of the Beast (sexually repressed person who turns into a cobra when they let go) by sorting out the central move and building from there. Maybe something like this (warning, below is probably bad)? -When someone turns you on, you may instead negate the result and take the condition Feral. The next time you successfully lash out physically or shut someone down while Feral, pick an extra option and remove Feral. If someone successfully turns you on while you are Feral, pick one of the following: You mostly retain your human shape You mostly retain your human intelligence and personality The intent here is that you get an element of choice, you get some form of benefit (you become really good at being a jerk when repressed) and is still complicated (you need to be a jerk while repressed) in a way that will make other PCs sometimes avoid you but also sometimes create interesting experiences (I really need someone to get up in this NPC's space, better go flirt with cobra boy).
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Oct 19, 2014 01:25
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Ratpick posted:Hey, I just took a look at the Deep One and it looks like a really neat skin. A couple of notes though: No ongoing: Good point. I've edited. Bringing The Storm: It's not as powerful as it seems. It's two conditional stat substitutions rather than two complete ones. If you're inside (e.g. in school) you aren't in the rain or in the storm so you gain nothing from it. And I can't say I'm unhappy with the idea of a Selkie becoming pretty powerful when outside and in the middle of a storm. And pretty weak when caught at school or even when they are in a good mood. I've edited the wording to clarify the move that your target has to be exposed to the storm to lash out at them. And that's a pretty perfect description of what I was trying to do. With an alternate dark end built into the skin with Metamorphosis. Thanks for the feedback
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Oct 19, 2014 01:38
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Lurks With Wolves posted:So, this is another problem Skins For The Skinless has. Namely, the skins are blatantly specific references. In this case, the Beast is the main character of Cat People. Literally, the sex move is the entire plot of Cat People. There's a hot lady, she thinks she'll turn into a monster if she has sex, she has sex, she turns into a panther and won't turn back until she kills someone. It even has the weird incest-y bits of the 1982 remake. It's just an entire skin that's Cat People. That... explains so many baffling things about this skin.
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Oct 19, 2014 05:01
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Saguaro PI posted:So it seems like you could salvage the concept of the Beast (sexually repressed person who turns into a cobra when they let go) by sorting out the central move and building from there. Maybe something like this (warning, below is probably bad)? Yea what really 'bugs' me about Skins for the Skinless is that a lot of them have good ideas that MH did legit overlook. Like you said the whole base concept of 'super repressed sexy teen that can't handle themselves when they finally let go' is a classic trope of stuff like this, but they gently caress it up pretty bad by making it an incest cobra face instead of just playing with the basic idea of 'ok what if we made a thing like the werewolf but from the different angle, instead of being all wild and primal at heart it's trying to keep the 'animal' inside'. They try too hard to go beyond the classics sometimes, and MH is really a game of classics with a dark twist.
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Oct 19, 2014 05:15
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Bieeardo posted:I was going to refresh my memory of Cat People before I scrolled down, because yeah, that's pretty blatant. I think it's because skins are sort of inherently asymmetrical. Every one does something different with the mechanics, they don't just work on different aspects of the same system the way most splats do.
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Oct 19, 2014 05:45
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Have there ever been any fan-skins that were done well? All this talk about lovely ones is making me want to try my hand at it.
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Oct 19, 2014 06:14
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Poison Mushroom posted:Have there ever been any fan-skins that were done well? All this talk about lovely ones is making me want to try my hand at it. As we'll see, some of the Skins for the Skinless are actually pretty good. IIRC, the Calaca, the Minotaur (maybe?), and the Unchained are fairly decent. From those other ones I have, I believe the Shadow, the Reverent, and maybe the Anansi are supposed to be pretty good. Maybe the Muse, too? I don't remember.
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Oct 19, 2014 06:35
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lovely Topher skins: Nearly all of them. They don't work or they work too well. I played in one game against an Unseen who only 1 person even knew existed. And who only wanted to hug her true love mortal. It's basically a ghost that's even less bound to stay in the game. Awesome non-core MH Skins: The Reverant/The Faithful (the tempted bible thumper). The Second (Donnie Darko; the person who can't live with their mistakes so they make things worse). The Genius (who seeks to UNDERSTAND the Abyss...by creating dangerous poo poo / being lured out of his shell at the wrong time). Of the second skins, "The Sasquatch" always seemed cool in the angsty-90 kids way, and has the coolest move I've seen. LONG FUSE: When you or someone wrapped in your arms would take harm, you may negate that harm. If you do so, name something that you hold dear - if you don't destroy that something later, do yourself the harm then. Strontosaurus and I made a Monster Hearts Skin, The Parent. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 09:23
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Lurks With Wolves posted:So, this is another problem Skins For The Skinless has. Namely, the skins are blatantly specific references. In this case, the Beast is the main character of Cat People. Literally, the sex move is the entire plot of Cat People. There's a hot lady, she thinks she'll turn into a monster if she has sex, she has sex, she turns into a panther and won't turn back until she kills someone. It even has the weird incest-y bits of the 1982 remake. It's just an entire skin that's Cat People. I'm pretty sure that the Beast is a blend of the main character of Cat People and the main menace from season 1 of Hemlock Grove which was a self-repressed young girl who drank from the footprint of the werewolf main character's werewolf form and turned/murdered in response to sexual feelings that other people engendered in her.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:01
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Is the parent supposed to be a joke skin? It looks pretty entertaining but also kinda against the spirit of the game. By taking it you're changing several core assumptions, like someone insisting on playing Old Man Henderson in a Call of Cthulhu game. That being said I haven't played MH outside of a one-shot, so I may be mistaken.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:27
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