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Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

PresidentBeard posted:

Is the parent supposed to be a joke skin?

That's an unfair assumption, just because there's a move called LYDIA, DID YOU TOUCH THE THERMOSTAT.

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Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
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.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Cythereal posted:

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.

You'd like "The Heir", where you gain supernatural powers by killing your siblings before they do you in.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

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.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Oh god. Now I'm imagining Highlander occurring over Christmas break, with the Kurgan as rebellious metalhead running with the wrong crowd, and Ramirez as the cool older brother coming home from college.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Cythereal posted:

:words: about the obligations of adulthood vs the loss of childhood
I think I'm going to actually work on that now.

In the meantime, my clumsy attempts at a "learning how to tell people what they don't want to hear" skin, the Seer.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

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.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



I tend to mentally put Monsterhearts skins into a number of categories. Warning: Effortpost ahead.
  • Joke: This is a joke skin. Laugh and move on. Few of them are good for actual play. Some, like the Neighbour, can be - but mostly for spurring everyone else on.
Fail Fail skins are unusable. They either haven't had basic consistency checking, or make either the PC or the game unplayable.
  • Mechanics Fail: The mechanics simply don't work or don't fit with MH. Can possibly be fixed with a rewrite.
  • Thematic Fail: The behaviour modelled by this skin is either going to break the character or the game (see The Beast for details).
Bad Bad skins are playable. They just take care and work, and although they don't break games or play experiences the game is better without them.
  • Overwhelming Bad: Unlike the other bad skins, throwing in an overwhelming skin can absolutely make the game rather than break it - it's just that in these cases you aren't playing vanilla Monsterhearts, and should agree to this with the whole table in advance. Otherwise overwhelming skins have a tendency to either not work at all, or to take over the entire game. The normal problem is requiring a stable of character-specific NPCs (see The Chosen, the Serpentine, and the Heir for details) - but a time travel skin like The Second also qualifies. (The Seer doesn't - looming dread of a terrible fate merely adds another element).
  • Overpowered Bad: Someone failed at playtesting and probably conceptually. Tone the moves down. This is actually startlingly rare; there are some moves that are too good but generally the game involves teenagers messing up and with the starting stats it's hard to prevent this.
  • Monstrous Bad: Someone hasn't realised that this is meant to be a game about teenage monsters with teenage problems and has written a skin about teenage monsters with monstrous problems. These don't break games, but the individual player's experience won't be as intense as with a good skin (although they may have more fun in the way people playing joke skins do).
  • Uninteractive Bad: The textbook case here is The Unseen. Who only needs to interact with the people they choose. The type of Skin can be written - see both Ghost and Sasquatch - but you don't do it by letting the PC choose who to interact with.

  • Teflon Bad a skin with a collection of moves that reduce drama and consequences. A lot of core Monsterhearts skins have one single healing or even no-selling move, but if you have more than that you can leach drama out of the game:
    1. No-Sells: A No-Sell lets the PC reduce the consequences for a hit they've just taken. The textbook example is The Queen's The Shield - or even the Ghoul's Short Rest for the Wicked.
    2. Heals: Under a given condition you can either remove Harm or cure a Condition. See the Vampire feeding, or the Hungry Ghost. Consequences cease to matter as much so the game is no longer feral
    3. Reactions: Reactions punish others for attacking this character. Ultimately this is a form of Uninteractive Bad because people like a chance of success rather than to simply be punished for trying. I'm not aware that any official MH skins have this sort of reaction.
    The worst case I'm aware of for a Teflon Bad skin is The Faithful which has two Heals, two Reactions, and the most extreme No-Sell I've ever seen, approaching a Reaction. And that's not counting a scene-crashing move.

And then I break the Good Skins into two categories:
  • Roleplaying: An associative skin alludes to its core issues with the mechanics. They frequently don't have a mandatory move but have mechanics (especially among the Darkest Self and/or the Sex Move) that reflect parts of teenage experience. The Roleplaying skins are good, with a lot of RP hooks, but they only point you in certain directions. Textbook would probably be the Vampire - the Vampire has no predetermined moves (although almost all of them pick the same ones) and is mostly a skin that is very good at certain types of antisocial behaviour. Roleplaying skins tend to lead to a good experience for all with a range of options
  • Bleeding: Bleeding skins have issues rather than being teenagers who have problems. The Ghost with their Unresolved Trauma would be a poster child here. When you are playing a Ghost your experience pivots around your unresolved trauma because it's overwhelming and quite literally defines your character. It's intense, gut-deep, and bleeding skins should be handled with even more care than other skins. Bleeding skins can often be a lot tighter than roleplaying ones, but not everyone will want to play one.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
I'm flattered that you mentioned The Seer. Even more so that it was in defense of it (kind of).

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

"You're talking to cats."
"And you eat ghosts, so shut the fuck up."

Bieeardo posted:

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.
Okay, having given this a bit of thought:

Part of the problem with making content for MH is that a lot of the moving parts are intangible, even compared to other PbtA games. You need to pay really careful attention to what behaviours you're incentivising, and I just feel it requires a good working grasp of both MH in particular and game design in general to be able to pull off. Most people doing third party skins also fail to recognise how important it is to give players a clear goal or ongoing objective inherent to the skin. Topher in particular often writes one into his descriptive text, but then fails to reinforce it at all in the mechanics.

It's also just harder to make a playbook that's fun in social PVP situations than it is to make one that can contribute to something closer to a traditional party.



The Calaca



This is often presented as one of the better skins in the collection. As with a lot of them, though, it might hold up to a casual inspection, but with any kind of close scrutiny you start to see the flaws. Usually this close scrutiny is carried out once a game has already started, by a player who picked it up because it seemed cool at the time.

The Calaca’s single biggest problem is that it’s boring to play. It doesn’t have any really terrible or session-ruining moves (apart from possibly its Darkest Self), and it’ll basically work okay. What it doesn’t quite do is provide the player with much in-game direction or special abilities to effect the game and other players -- its got a bunch of moves that basically just shuffle around the way you do basic moves, so players tend to feel lost and also somewhat weaker than other skins. So rather than, say, the Beast’s constant scene derailments ruining the game for the entire group, the Calaca instead promises several sessions of quiet frustration for one player in particular.

Drawing very loosely from Mexican folklore, the basic concept here is that you’re playing a joyful skeleton wearing a person-suit. This person-suit needs to be made out of actual skin, and you can take it off and put it back on again whenever you feel like. You are theoretically supposed to be some kind of spiritual guide and offer often-morbid life advice to people. Insofar as teenage metaphor goes here… you’re a perky goth? Like, a kid who is cheerful but also morbid? That’s about all I’ve got here, it’s not one of Topher’s stronger showings on the “reflecting actual teenage problems” front. It also completely fails to match the monster gimmick to any kind of pattern of self destructive behaviour, and self-destructive behaviour is an MH game's bread and butter. Origins are kind of all over the place, ranging from poo poo like “Bone Elemental” and “Summoned Ancestor”, to the… kind of worrisome “Corpse Bride”.

The Calaca’s good stats are Hot and Dark -- this tells us that they’re good at actively manipulating other people, but not so good defensively with their bad Cold and Volatile stats. High Dark usually means you’re expected to Gaze Into the Abyss a lot or have some other kind of magic trick to whip out when you need it. So, that at least feels like a pretty good fit, so far.

Skin Moves

The Calaca starts with Skin and Bones and two more moves of the player’s choice:

Skin and Bones
This is your “is a skeleton” move. You can take off your skin any time you want, and go around as a skeleton. If anyone sees you like that, you both take a string on each other -- that seems like the start of an interesting move you could probably build a skin around. Unfortunately, nothing at all is done with that string exchange. While you’re a skeleton you’re immune to harm from things that logically wouldn’t hurt a skeleton. Like stabbing damage, drowning, that kind of thing.

Oh, and you can’t roll to Turn Someone on or Manipulate an NPC while you're like this. At all. Which is very troubling, because Hot is one of your good stats, remember! It’s also weird, because Manipulate an NPC can be something like threatening someone into doing what you want, something which you’d think would be easier when you’ve transformed into a skeleton. You can roll dark instead of cold to shut someone down, though. So, uh… that’s something.

Lastly, if your skin gets lost or destroyed while you’re a skeleton, before you can pass as human again you need to replace it, somehow. Which could be interesting, I guess, as long as there is a better option than “I kill the nearest person and skin him.”

Being cut off from both Hot moves while using this really makes it a bit of a daunting prospect for me, and it also means that putting your extra point into Hot rather than Dark is almost never going to be a good idea, which really cuts down on variety/replayability.

Casting the Bones
You can offer your wisdom to a friend and Gaze Into the Abyss -- when you roll a 10 or higher, you add some new options to the list:
  • The visions show what your friend must do; they carry one forward
  • The visions heal your friend; they may remove one condition
  • Take a string on your friend
On a 7-9, you only add one new option to the list:
  • The visions are lucid and detailed, but your friend takes a string on you.
So, what’s weird here, is that you could easily hang a whole skin on this move as well, if you beefed it up a little. It’s actually a pretty great concept -- a sort of oracle skin who can Gaze Into the Abyss for others, maybe grant them a bonus to fulfill or fight against the vision in exchange for strings. But here, it’s just an optional, random move rather than a core mechanic. Although, honestly, you should pretty much always take it if you’re playing a Calaca, because this is the only thing the skin gives you that lets you affect others in any particular way.

Deadpan
You are cheerfully morbid, and that puts people off. You can roll Dark to Shut Someone Down instead of Cold. Which was already supposed to be your benefit for using Skin and Bones to turn into a skeleton. Yay redundancy.

Connected
You can take your body apart while you’re a skeleton, letting you like, send one of your hands spidering away from your body or something like that. The move indicates that you can use this to be “present and active in multiple simultaneous scenes”, but it also notes that only your skull can see, hear, or smell. If you could be aware of your body parts somehow, you could like… send your hand off to spy for you, but as is this is highly situational and not particularly useful to take, and has zero synergy with any of the other moves.

Morte Alata
You have bony wings when you’re a skeleton, so you can roll dark instead of volatile when you Run Away while you’re not wearing your skin. There really shouldn’t be more than one “roll this stat instead of this stat!” move per skin. It gets samey and boring, and it creates a situation where a character never has to rely on their bad stats.

Ossuary
You’ve got a stash of spare bones. If you take your fourth harm, instead of dying you can drag yourself off to use it to patch yourself up. When you do that, you clear all your harm and mark experience. When you use Ossurary, you replace it with another Calaca move and have to spend an advance to get it back again.

Or, you could just take the Ghoul’s Short Rest for the Wicked if you’re worried about dying. This move probably does not need to exist -- it would make more sense if you could somehow use the stash to just heal harm on the fly rather than waiting until you take your fourth, and even then, are we expecting this skin to get into a lot of fights? It literally has nothing to help it out there apart from this.

Sugar Skull
When you take your skin off, you still get a human-looking face and hands, although they are “pale like bone-china.” It lets you use Turn Someone On and Manipulate an NPC while you’re in skeleton-form! But if any part of you aside from your hands and face are visible, you roll with Dark instead of Hot!

:shepicide:

So for those keeping track here, if this skin takes Morte Alata and Sugar Skull, they can potentially use Dark to cover for at least one move from literally every other stat. It’s too bad they don’t have anything interesting to do with that ability. That aside, though, this move literally just feels like, well, feat tax. This is a thing you take in order to be able to use basic moves you’re supposed to be good at while you’re in the form almost all your skin moves are built around. Woo.

Sex Move
When you have sex with someone, you treat it as if you’d just rolled a 10 on Cast the Bones and take three options from the list instead of two, even if you didn’t take that move. Which isn’t awful, but it’s also not very interesting, to be honest.

Darkest Self
You get fed up with showing people that death isn’t scary and respond by… giving advice and wisdom directly calculated to drive them to suicide. :stare: You get out of it when someone demonstrates to you that life is beautiful, or when you cause someone to commit suicide. Not attempt suicide, either -- they need to succeed.

This comes right out of loving left field. For one thing, the skin’s mechanics do not actually ever direct you toward showing people that death isn’t scary in the first place -- the only move related to giving advice at all is Roll the Bones, and that’s entirely optional. This is also REALLY dark in a way that even “just flat out try to kill someone” isn’t, and which does not seem to come naturally from the rest of the skin at all.

Other Stuff
The Calaca’s gang is a “skeleton crew”, which… I have to admit is probably my favourite gang advance ever, just because I love that pun. I’m sorry. Thematically, it’s basically just a group of skeletons, presumably who have similar powers to yours.

Once again, most of these moves directly reference turning into a skeleton, so good luck taking any of them if you’re playing another skin. As has been noted in the thread already, this is a pattern that will continue with many of these skins.

Next Time: The Creature -- “I kiss her!” “Okay, roll 2d6 to see if she drowns to death.”

Gazetteer fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Oct 20, 2014

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
I get an odd mentor/supporting cast vibe from the Calaca as presented. Something like a sexy Moundshroud.

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

I really, really wanted 'sexy spooky skeleton oracle' to be a good idea, but it didn't really seem to gel at all. Too bad.

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

"You're talking to cats."
"And you eat ghosts, so shut the fuck up."

Ratoslov posted:

I really, really wanted 'sexy spooky skeleton oracle' to be a good idea, but it didn't really seem to gel at all. Too bad.

Skins for the Skinless is mostly a collection of good ideas executed poorly.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

Ratoslov posted:

I really, really wanted 'sexy spooky skeleton oracle' to be a good idea, but it didn't really seem to gel at all. Too bad.

At it's base, the Skeleton could be someone with an inner identity that they want to hide from everyone because it's weak and fragile or something and an outer identity that they constantly change to whatever's appropriate. It's a bit of a variation on the Hollow who has "no identity."

Tulpa
Aug 8, 2014

Golden Bee posted:

Of the second skins, "The Sasquatch" always seemed cool in the angsty-90 kids way, and has the coolest move I've seen.

The Sasquatch is mostly cool and one of the most conceptually developed of the Second Skins but some of the moves (in particular, Musk) tend to completely undercut the tone of the game and make it a farce.

Lurks With Wolves
Jan 14, 2013

At least I don't dance with them, right?

Tulpa posted:

The Sasquatch is mostly cool and one of the most conceptually developed of the Second Skins but some of the moves (in particular, Musk) tend to completely undercut the tone of the game and make it a farce.

The mechanic reason for Musk is good. Namely, it makes people want to interact with you even though you're an antisocial mess. The flavor... Well, sasquatch mythology is really dumb.

For reference, Musk. Every Sasquatch stats with this move.

Second Skins posted:

Musk

You have a distinct smell, unpleasant
to some, intriguing to others. When
you sweat in the presence of others,
roll with volatile. On a 10 up, the MC
gives you a String on someone there
and they choose:
- compliment you,
- apologize to you,
- give themselves to you.
On a 7-9, the MC gives you a String
on someone there, and that character
gives you a Condition, delivered in the
most appropriate way

You see, the Sasquatch is a very antisocial skin. It's built for fading into the background and running away from your problems and dealing with them later. If it didn't have Musk, it'd be way too easy for a Sasquatch to just never interact with anyone ever. So, they have a move that makes people talk to them, one way or another. The fluff is embarrassing, but weird musky smells are a surprisingly large part of Bigfoot lore and it'd be weird to fictionally justify the trigger for a move called Mystique Of The Bigfoot or something so I'll take it.

(For what it's worth, the only other smell reference in the Sasquatch is in the sex move. Namely, unless the other person scrubs it out they get the condition scented. Unless they really try to hide it, everyone is going to know that they banged that one weird kid.)

Tulpa
Aug 8, 2014
Oh I know the underpinnings behind that move, I playtested an early version of that skin after all.

I'm just in an ongoing game where another player is a werewolf that took Musk and it's really hard to take seriously whenever he interrupts a scene with "Ok I ran over here so I'm sweaty enough to musk"

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Xelkelvos posted:

At it's base, the Skeleton could be someone with an inner identity that they want to hide from everyone because it's weak and fragile or something and an outer identity that they constantly change to whatever's appropriate. It's a bit of a variation on the Hollow who has "no identity."

Yeah, but this isn't The Skeleton, this is The Calaca or the Calavera, someone who helps others to have a healthy relationship with mortality.

The big problem with this whole idea thematically is that calaveras aren't monstrous. They're friendly, a bit morbid, and satirical, but nobody would say a calavera is scary or tragic. So they don't really fit in with Monsterhearts- hence the dissonant swing of the Darkest Self. A Calavera class would work a lot better in a game that wasn't all about being hosed up.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Musk is something the Second Skins do wrong and I've seen nowhere else. Moves that work in context but don't have to be taken in context. The worst case I can think of is The Cuckoo which has (or at least had) two mandatory skin moves - Feathers and Shredding The Looking Glass. The entire purpose of Shredding the Looking Glass is to tone down the otherwise overpowered Feathers. So people who take Feathers without Shredding cause problems.

Mitama
Feb 28, 2011

neonchameleon posted:

Musk is something the Second Skins do wrong and I've seen nowhere else. Moves that work in context but don't have to be taken in context. The worst case I can think of is The Cuckoo which has (or at least had) two mandatory skin moves - Feathers and Shredding The Looking Glass. The entire purpose of Shredding the Looking Glass is to tone down the otherwise overpowered Feathers. So people who take Feathers without Shredding cause problems.

They fixed that in the final version; you automatically take Shredding the Looking Glass when you take Feathers.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Gazetteer posted:

Okay, having given this a bit of thought:

Part of the problem with making content for MH is that a lot of the moving parts are intangible, even compared to other PbtA games. You need to pay really careful attention to what behaviours you're incentivising, and I just feel it requires a good working grasp of both MH in particular and game design in general to be able to pull off. Most people doing third party skins also fail to recognise how important it is to give players a clear goal or ongoing objective inherent to the skin. Topher in particular often writes one into his descriptive text, but then fails to reinforce it at all in the mechanics.
...
This comes right out of loving left field. For one thing, the skin’s mechanics do not actually ever direct you toward showing people that death isn’t scary in the first place -- the only move related to giving advice at all is Roll the Bones, and that’s entirely optional. This is also REALLY dark in a way that even “just flat out try to kill someone” isn’t, and which does not seem to come naturally from the rest of the skin at all.

I think this is right on the nail. There is literally nothing in the Calaca pointing me in a direction as to how to behave except the Darkest Self. Every single move is a supernatural ability that has no mundane equivalent or a stat swap move including the sex move. "What are the consequences of sex?" "Magic." Literally the only behavioural mechanic (other than sometimes shedding the skin) is the Darkest Self. It's a collection of cool abilities rather than a metaphor for teenage problems.

nomadotto
Oct 25, 2010

Body of a Penguin
Soul of a Hero
Mind of a Lazy, Easily Distracted, Waste of Space

TORCHBEARER
Character Generation

Mr. Tumnus in action

When making a character, there are the mechanical steps, detailed here, and then the “finishing touches,” which will be handled in the next post. Making a character doesn't involve a lot of choices, in comparison to something like Pathfinder or FATE, but for a dungeon-crawler with theoretically disposable characters, it's pretty involved, which is not helped by the way that information is presented. I'm going to follow along with Bradamante and Mr. Tumnus to show how this process goes

For example, the first step is to choose your class and stock (which we did previously). This is followed by a table for the vital mechanical information depending on your stock and class. This is your starting Will and Health, your basic skills and traits. Also included in this table is an entry for weapons and armor. This is not the list of weapons and armor that you start with. Nor is it the list of weapons and armor that you can pick from. Instead, it's the list of all the weapons and armor that you could theoretically use. This is not explicitly spelled out, I had to figure it out myself by looking at later sections. Why is it here? (:lukecrane:)


Mr. Tumnus is a Halfling, which means he's a Burglar. He has 5 Will and 3 Health. He has the following skills-
Cook 3, Criminal 3, Fighter 3, Hunter 2, Scout 2, Scavenger 2. He also gets the trait “Hidden Depths”

Brad is a Human Warrior. She gets 8 point to split between Will and Health, (neither of which can go above 6 or below 2), so I'll give her 5 Health and 3 Will.
She has the following skills-
Fighter 4, Hunter 3, Commander 2, Mentor 2, Rider 2 and the Trait “Heart of Battle”

Since she is a human, she gets another skill at 3 from the list Criminal, Haggler, Pathfinder, Survivalist. I'll giver her Survivalist, since I she her as being rough and outdoorsy. This bonus 3 skill is listed in 1 sentence below the main table and is easy to miss if you're not reading every line. This is particularly annoying because the instructions are to make characters together, with the GM reading from the book and passing it to players, as needed, which is not conducive to close, careful reading.

Next we choose where the characters are from and give them a bonus skill from the list of hometown skills and another trait. If you pick a skill you already have, the rating goes up by 1, which is also true of Traits.

Mr. Tumnus is from the Wizzzzzard's Tower, where he learned how to trash things for cheap, and also some Lore Mastery, which he now has at 2. He also learned not to trust things he reads on the internet, and has developed the “Skeptical” Trait

Brad is from Busy Crossroads. She learned how to Haggle like a champ, and as part of wheeling and dealing, is now a little more “Quick Witted” than the average sort.

The next step is to select social graces, which involves picking a skill and giving it a rating of 2

Tummy McTummerson is a Manipulator, while B. Dawg knows how to make a buck, improving her Haggle to 3

After that, characters pick a specialty skill, which cannot be duplicated through the party. This will also be the profession of your Mentor, should you have one.
M. Tumnus is a Criminal, born and bred, increasing his skill to 4
Bradamante is Hagglin' fiend, bringing her skill up to 4 as well.

The characters then get to pick some knowledges (game parlance: Wises). Humans get 1 wise, while non-humans get 1 wise relating to their stock +1 more wise of their choice. Suck it Hewmooons. You can pic basically antyhing you want to be knowledgable about, but it needs to be limited in scope (so specific place-Wise is good, but Town-Wise is not), and relate directly to the game world (so Plot-Wise is not ok)

Brad is Horse-Wise, while Mr. T is both Home-Wise (as befits a halfling) and Shrewd Appraisal-Wise.

That's enough words and numbers for right now. Next time we'll start talking about Nature, the thing that keeps you alive through the early levels. Also, people should come up with a Belief (1-2 sentence summary of what the character is about) and an Instinct (Short, action-oriented macro, generally using always, whenever, or never)

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus

Gazetteer posted:

Drawing very loosely from Mexican folklore, the basic concept here is that you’re playing a joyful skeleton wearing a person-suit. This person-suit needs to be made out of actual skin, and you can take it off and put it back on again whenever you feel like. You are theoretically supposed to be some kind of spiritual guide and offer often-morbid life advice to people. Insofar as teenage metaphor goes here… you’re a perky goth? Like, a kid who is cheerful but also morbid? That’s about all I’ve got here, it’s not one of Topher’s stronger showings on the “reflecting actual teenage problems” front. It also completely fails to match the monster gimmick to any kind of pattern of self destructive behaviour, and self-destructive behaviour is an MH game's bread and butter. Origins are kind of all over the place, ranging from poo poo like “Bone Elemental” and “Summoned Ancestor”, to the… kind of worrisome “Corpse Bride”.

The thing that comes to mind when reading about the Calaca is that the problems stem from a lack of grounding in what the skin represents. There's not a "this is all about X" theme that holds it all together, like the base skins. I think, though, that it could be salvaged: Make the Calaca be about bringing Death (capital intentional) into the lives of the other players. The Calaca is the kid with some terminal condition hanging over them. They're cheerful and outgoing because they've come to accept what is going to happen to them, but everywhere they go they bring the reminder with them. Would give a much better focus to their Darkest Self if it's about the despair lurking underneath the acceptance, too.

(Not that I'm ever going to get to run or play Monsterhearts with my group, but it's fun to do some armchair design spitballing.)

Mexcillent
Dec 6, 2008
The Calaca should be the kid who had someone die recently and has just gone all out in mocking death and life, not caring at all.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Mexcillent posted:

The Calaca should be the kid who had someone die recently and has just gone all out in mocking death and life, not caring at all.

That's not grounded in the mythology though.

Calaca as Cancer Kid is a fascinating take.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

theironjef posted:

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.

After listening, what Operating Thetan Level did you need to be to learn all this? Is it OT III? OT IV?

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Golden Bee posted:

Calaca as Cancer Kid is a fascinating take.
Agreed. I'd probably give playing that a shot ,depending on how it was written.

ZeeToo
Feb 20, 2008

I'm a kitty!

Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era, part 1

The year was 2003. The same year, in fact, that D&D upgraded from 3rd edition to 3.5. The same month, in fact. Just as it was hitting shelves, its necessary core rules were getting an upgrade, just enough to break easy compatibility. So that was good.

Testament is... a game about playing D&D in the Old Testament. It's subtitled "Roleplaying in the Biblical Era", but with rules and campaign information set around Israel, Caanan, Egypt and Mesopotamia, it's pretty much exclusively about playing as Israelites between when they were led out of Egypt and when the countries of Israel and Judea were overrun with token efforts about other times. It's about playing as judges and warrior-kings with God's let. You won't find any real support here to let you adventure with (or after) Jesus.

I haven't read it all that thoroughly, yet, but I'll be going over things as I post about them... until I get sick of it. Yeah, I'm not going to commit to getting all the way through this, because this is one of the ugliest layouts I've ever seen in a book:



The header font is really ugly and not all that readable at a glance (D vs P is a really bad example) and the rest of the text is... tiny. It's 240 pages of miniscule writing. There is a bit of art in here, all black-and-white because this is not a color book, but it doesn't do much to make the book feel any more welcoming.

With that out of the way, it's time to take a look at what the book gives us. It starts with a fairly odd collection of assumptions: we're given Moses' levels (the first three were paladin), the fact that various gods all exist and have equal power over their own followers (what?), this game's version of alignment (piety, which is an integer showing how in favor you are with your god) and the ability of gods to wander around completely hidden from view by basically being double-ethereal.

Oh, the first among equals for our clerics and priests to worship is, of course, the god of Israel. In a sidebar, we're given a bit of information about what potential names could mean/where they came from and wraps up by ignoring all of that and saying that all other deities get personal names, but YHVH is going to be known as "god of Israel" or "the Lord" from here on out.

Next time: We see about making a 7,000 year old Egyptian elf desert hermit.

ZeeToo fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Oct 21, 2014

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
I got some critique, and took another shot at The Seer. I now present to you, The Seer, version 2. The skin's Thing being having an abusive childhood and/or teenage depression is now somewhat more explicit!

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


I swear I've seen that font used before in a World of Darkness book. It's probably generic, though.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Poison Mushroom posted:

Agreed. I'd probably give playing that a shot, depending on how it was written.

While there's room in the space to make it monstrous (origins: Mayfly, Cut by the Strega, Rough Diagnosis), and a clear darkest self, there's no WANT, is there? What's the anti-social behavior pattern, especially if you're on the 5th stage of grief?

Maybe you have a stat that goes from Denial to Acceptance. When you're in Denial, you remove conditions and delay harm. When you're in acceptance, you can't Run Away or Shut Someone Down, but gain access to a growing-up style move; you can inspire others.

STAGE THREE: A force beyond your understanding will get you what you need. On a 10+, they'll clear a condition from you; the coughs go away, sand flows into the hourglass. On a 7-9, what it wants is reasonable...but it's someone else's.


Note: You can't take "Short Rest for the Wicked" unless you change your playbook to Ghoul. When you gain your 3rd advance, your time is up, unless you've made other plans.

Edit: We should just have a MH thread, since it's taken over this and the A*W thread.

Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Oct 21, 2014

KirbyJ
Oct 30, 2012

Kavak posted:

I swear I've seen that font used before in a World of Darkness book. It's probably generic, though.

Reminds me of Book of the Dead from nWoD.

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus

Golden Bee posted:

While there's room in the space to make it monstrous (origins: Mayfly, Cut by the Strega, Rough Diagnosis), and a clear darkest self, there's no WANT, is there? What's the anti-social behavior pattern, especially if you're on the 5th stage of grief?

I'm not sure how to do it mechanically, but the hook would be that it's not about a directly anti-social behavior by the Calaca, but about the effect they have on everyone around them. Hmm.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

After listening, what Operating Thetan Level did you need to be to learn all this? Is it OT III? OT IV?

I did a few takes and realized the only way to read it was phonetically. If I tried to pay attention to the words I'd pause and say '72 headed chameleon hydra alone knows Lord Midnight's secret name what the unholy gently caress?'

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

theironjef posted:

I did a few takes and realized the only way to read it was phonetically. If I tried to pay attention to the words I'd pause and say '72 headed chameleon hydra alone knows Lord Midnight's secret name what the unholy gently caress?'

Who takes the time to count heads when a hydra's head count passes two dozen? Do you have to be an expert hydrologist to work that out?

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
It helps if you've mutated a Midnight Sunstone calculator.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Say, are the pictures and such mandatory for reviews? I was thinking of writing up an obscure game from the makers of Ironclaw called Albedo that my group has been trying out because it does some pretty fun stuff for 'realistic' military sci-fi combat, but I only have a paper copy.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Night10194 posted:

Say, are the pictures and such mandatory for reviews?

Nope!

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Who takes the time to count heads when a hydra's head count passes two dozen? Do you have to be an expert hydrologist to work that out?

I believe if you're either an alchemist or potentially a dark lord you are a little more versed in hydra head wrangling. Lord Midnight (whose name I definitely don't know) is probably both. I can tell you how many heads there on a flying Grizzly (1) and how many lasers it can fire from its
eyes (2) though.

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Fossilized Rappy
Dec 26, 2012

ZeeToo posted:

the fact that various gods all exist and have equal power over their own followers (what?)
Henotheism was pretty common for the time, actually. God may be the big man in charge for the Israelites, but there's an assumption that deities like El and Baal-zebul are real and have real power (albeit assumed to be less powerful than Yahweh).

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