New around here? Register your SA Forums Account here!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

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.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

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

Cythereal posted:

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.

Turn Someone On is not about intimacy. Like, that's sort of the point -- you can loving hate the person, or theoretically be repulsed by them, but oh no now I'm "Turned On" what do I do about that? That's the interesting part -- how the individual feels about it and how they react, not the attraction itself. Trying to argue that somehow physical attraction creates less interesting circumstances is silly. It's also kind of largely out of your hands whether or not the attraction is physical, because what exactly you're finding so attractive is decided by the person making the roll.

Midjack posted:

Not coincidentally, neither of those games have love and sex as their main point.

AW is not really about sexuality, but trying to argue that MH is not kind of requires some serious pretzel logic that ignores both what the mechanics say and what the game is literally billing itself as. Sexuality, sex and how the characters relate to them are major themes. Emotional intimacy is something that the MC is literally meant to deny you or make come conditionally.

Gazetteer fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 11, 2014

Young Freud
Nov 25, 2006

PurpleXVI posted:

In short: because they deal with the EMOTIONAL and SOCIAL aspects of sex, while giving basically no screentime to the actual squishy organic parts which, frankly, are less interesting than the former when it come to a story.

I always figured the whole "sex" thing in AW was more like "be intimate with another PC", like your Faceless and another PC's Gunlugger share war stories over the campfire or a Skinner is invited into a Hardholder's private quarters to share some rare liquor instead of actually knocking boots.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
No, I think Vincent Baker has come right out and said that AW's sex moves are just that, things that happen as a result of sex and not just any sort of moment of intimacy.

1st Stage Midboss
Oct 29, 2011

They have to be grounded in sex or similar, because there are sex moves like the Battlebabe's which is entirely "there is no intimacy here, this means nothing, negate how this would be meaningful to either person involved".

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Lynx Winters posted:

The entire podcast could just be a dramatic reading of the setting background in the first chapter.

A reading at dramatic pace took approximately 11 minutes. I am strongly considering adding sound effects and bumpers and just making that the intro.

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!


Anyway, I'm doing an alternate thing for the disciplines: I make a post as soon as I finish a discipline. For this post, we have Golden Lion.



Golden Lion is the White Raven of Path of War, meaning that its true effectiveness is greatest when you have fighting alongside you. A good portion of the maneuvers are predicated around granting additional actions and special abilities, bonuses based on adjacent allies, stuff like that.

Low-level maneuvers (1 to 3) include Demoralizing Roar (boost which imposes the shaken condition on one target), Hunting Party (strike which grants an adjacent ally an attack of opportunity to target you just hit), Tactical Strike (strike which grants free 10 foot movement to ally within 10 feet), Defending the Pride (boost which grants +4 morale bonus to AC to allies within 60 feet), Warning Roar (counter which negates an attack on an ally by Diplomacy vs. attack roll, very useful maneuver!), and Pack Pounce (strike deals +5 bonus damage for every adjacent ally, +15 max). Stances include Pride Leader's Stance (by acting like a proud lion you grant allies +4 on saves vs. fear and demoralization) and Golden Commander Stance (can grant flanking benefits to opponents engaged in melee with the same opponent, perfect for Sneak Attackers).

Mid-level maneuvers (4 to 6) include Charge of the Battle Cat (charge attack deals 4d6 additional damage and knocks foe prone on failed save), Direct the Pride (boost allows a single ally to act immediately as though their initiative was 1 lower than user, then reverts back on following round), Golden Swipe (strike deals 6d6 damage and forces target to move 10 feet, can provoke attacks of opportunity), Discipline of the Pride (grant combat feat user knows to an ally within 30 feet for 3 rounds, can only benefit 1 at a time), Strategic Blow (strike deals 8d6 damage, ally within 10 feet may make a move action as though it were a free action), and Endurance of the Strong (counter which restores 2x initiator level in hit points to ally just struck in combat). Stances include Golden Lion Charger (+2 on attacks when charging does not provoke attack of opportunity when charging) and Golden General's Attitude (grants allies +1 attack and damage rolls and saves vs. fear per 4 initiator levels).

High-level maneuvers (7 and 8) include Orichalcum Swipe (much like the other mineral swipe maneuvers, strike inflicts 12d6 damage and target must move up to twice base speed and provokes attacks of opportunity), War Lion's Charge (strike deals 14d6 bonus damage on a charge and stuns opponent on failed save), Alpha's Roar (boost is an awesome cry for victory which grant allies +4 morale bonus on saves and an equal increase to the save DC of their special attacks and spells), and Lion Lord's Agony (strike does not deal standard damage, but instead damage equal to initiator's max hit points minus their current hit points, plus foe is shaken for 1 round on a failed save). The stance includes Triumphant Lion's Leadership (initiator and any allies gain +1d6 damage for every foe initiator has slain while the stance is in effect, maximum +5d6).

The ultimate 9th-level maneuver is Lord of the Pridelands, a boost which grants the initiator and all his allies within 60 feet a +2 morale bonus on attack, damage, Armor Class, and saving throws for one round (maximum +10 bonus).


Libertad's Thoughts: I can see a lot of powerful combinations and uses for a Golden Lion user in just about any party. It's a really good discipline.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora

theironjef posted:

A reading at dramatic pace took approximately 11 minutes. I am strongly considering adding sound effects and bumpers and just making that the intro.

Yeah, now that I think about it, reading it to my friends took about an hour because we couldn't stop laughing at poo poo like "were-storms." When the full moon comes out, he turns into vicious precipitation!

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Lynx Winters posted:

Yeah, now that I think about it, reading it to my friends took about an hour because we couldn't stop laughing at poo poo like "were-storms." When the full moon comes out, he turns into vicious precipitation!

Are they vulnerable to silver iodide?

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Worse. When the were-storms come, it starts raining men.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Bieeardo posted:

Worse. When the were-storms come, it starts raining men.

Worse? I'd be crying Hallelujah if that happens.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Sure, but think of the poor SOB who has to calculate all that falling damage!

(A surprisingly simple job, that, especially for Synnibar.)

MartianAgitator
Apr 30, 2003

Damn Earth! Damn her!

Midjack posted:

For any game, has there ever been a game or supplement focused on love/romance/sex that hasn't been completely loving terrible?

NO GUYS I GOT THIS! I KNOW WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DID WRONG!

Does Pendragon have mechanics for courtly love or getting married or anything like that? I'd think if any game could do an awesome job of setting-space+mechanics for love, it'd be Pendragon.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Gazetteer posted:

AW is not really about sexuality, but trying to argue that MH is not kind of requires some serious pretzel logic that ignores both what the mechanics say and what the game is literally billing itself as. Sexuality, sex and how the characters relate to them are major themes. Emotional intimacy is something that the MC is literally meant to deny you or make come conditionally.

It seemed to me that Monsterhearts was focused more on adolescent emotional turmoil and growing up than it was boning ghosts. Admittedly sex and emotional intimacy are major parts of that, but getting your dick out doesn't appear to be the game's point. Running Monsterhearts as Twilight is lazy and shallow.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Midjack posted:

It seemed to me that Monsterhearts was focused more on adolescent emotional turmoil and growing up than it was boning ghosts. Admittedly sex and emotional intimacy are major parts of that, but getting your dick out doesn't appear to be the game's point. Running Monsterhearts as Twilight is lazy and shallow.

Ooh sweet, maybe when this argument is over in a few pages we can do the one about whether Monsterhearts is gothic or southern gothic again.

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

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

Midjack posted:

It seemed to me that Monsterhearts was focused more on adolescent emotional turmoil and growing up than it was boning ghosts. Admittedly sex and emotional intimacy are major parts of that, but getting your dick out doesn't appear to be the game's point. Running Monsterhearts as Twilight is lazy and shallow.
So, uh... you're aware that Twilight is a series written by a conservative Mormon and is primarily about abstinence, right? Until you get married to your perfect soul-mate husband, then you can have fabulous sex all over the place and you will have inhumanly beautiful children because that is what womanhood is about? I mean, Monsterhearts literally started out as a Twilight parody, and the two skins that were part of that original joke are still heavily based on Twilight, but if you were to actually play this game as Twilight, it'd look really different from any MH game I've ever ran, played in or read/listened to a play account of.

And of course it's about adolescent turmoil and growing up. Why do you think that that is separate or mutually exclusive from sexual confusion and discovery? The game has a huge focus on those things. Literally the first move the game tells you about is Turn Someone On. SEX MOVE is written in bold letters right on every single character sheet. This is explicitly a game about boning ghosts. It is also a game about plotting petty social machinations to steal ghost's boyfriends, and about how ghosts feel really confused and alienated from the people around them. This is a supernatural romance game. Like, in the words of Avery McDaldno, written at the beginning of the book:

Monsterhearts Pages 4-5 posted:

You play because the characters are sexy and broken. You play because teen sexuality is awkward and magnetic, which means it makes for brilliant stories. You play because despite themselves, despite the world they live in, despite their fangs and their bartered souls and their boiling cauldrons, these aren’t just monsters. They’re burgeoning adults, trying to meet their needs. They’re who we used to be - who we still are sometimes. You play to get lost, and to remember.

And let’s be honest. You play because you have a guilty attraction to supernatural beasts and harlequin love stories, but you harbour the secret presumption that you could write them way better yourself. Good. This is your opportunity to prove it.

This game is unabashed about its subject matter: it’s a teen sex horror story. It revels in codependency and untenable promises. If that sounds compelling to you, then this document will provide you with guidelines to explore these themes and play around in this creative space. The game’s rules map out territory that you’ll explore and build upon.
Like, sure, MH is pretty tongue and cheek and kind of darkly critical of the genre it is emulating, but it is still emulating a genre.

theironjef posted:

Ooh sweet, maybe when this argument is over in a few pages we can do the one about whether Monsterhearts is gothic or southern gothic again.
You know, at least that discussion is like... an area with a degree of subjectivity involved? Like at this point we are arguing that no, man, this game is not literally about the things it deliberately states it is at the beginning of the book.

Gazetteer fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Oct 12, 2014

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

nomadotto posted:

  1. Where are our dudes from? Pick one of “Dwarven Halls,” “Religious Bastion,” “Bustling Metropolis,” “Wizards' Tower,” “Remote Village,” and “Busy Crossroads.” They can be from different places.
  2. What are these folks' social graces? Pick 1 of Haggler, Manipulator, Orator, or Persuader. They can have different graces.
  3. What's their specialty? They have to have different specialties. Pick one from:
    Cartographer, Cook, Criminal, Dungeoneer, Haggler, Healer, Hunter, Manipulator, Pathfinder, Orator, Scavenger, Scout, and Survivalist. (The overlaps with 2 aren't a mistake, you can double-stack)
So let's build these bad dudes, who at present are probably not going to save the president, but might make a couple of bucks stabbin' d00ds

Mr. Tumnus or whatever our intrepid halfling is named is from a Wizzard's Tower. He is a Master Orator, who specializes in being a Criminal.

Our Warrior is from a Religious Bastion and is quite a good Haggler. Our warrior is, on top of it all, an excellent Cook.

They may yet be bad enough dudes to rescue the President.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Gazetteer posted:

You know, at least that discussion is like... an area with a degree of subjectivity involved? Like at this point we are arguing that no, man, this game is not literally about the things it deliberately states it is at the beginning of the book.

Welp, looks like I am in fact full of poo poo and had the wrong idea. Sorry folks!

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Gazetteer posted:

You know, at least that discussion is like... an area with a degree of subjectivity involved? Like at this point we are arguing that no, man, this game is not literally about the things it deliberately states it is at the beginning of the book.

I actually don't know the difference since I haven't read MH. My derived impressions about it are "Nerds sure love arguing about what Monsterhearts is" and that is solely derived from this forum. I am glad to see this one blew right on past though.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
DH1e always made me wonder how it'd operate if you basically cut a 0 off of just about every single number except Fate and Wounds and used d10s instead of d100s.

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Poison Mushroom posted:

DH1e always made me wonder how it'd operate if you basically cut a 0 off of just about every single number except Fate and Wounds and used d10s instead of d100s.

Doesn't DH have critical failure on a roll of 100? Would you make critical failures 10x as likely, or do something else?

Hwurmp
May 20, 2005

Could they roll a second d10, and have critical failure if that comes up 10 as well?

vuk83
Oct 9, 2012
DH also has a really nifty hit location mechanic.
you reverse the d100 roll to determine hit location.
d100 roll 41.
hit location 14 left arm

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Midjack posted:

Welp, looks like I am in fact full of poo poo and had the wrong idea. Sorry folks!

Ultimately, though, you can always make the game what you want and interpret it in ways that are more comfortable for you or your group.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

nomadotto posted:

Our Halfling will be named Mr. Tumnus
Our Fighter will be named Bradamante

For next time, we need the following things:
  1. Where are our dudes from? Pick one of “Dwarven Halls,” “Religious Bastion,” “Bustling Metropolis,” “Wizards' Tower,” “Remote Village,” and “Busy Crossroads.” They can be from different places.
  2. What are these folks' social graces? Pick 1 of Haggler, Manipulator, Orator, or Persuader. They can have different graces.
  3. What's their specialty? They have to have different specialties. Pick one from:
    Cartographer, Cook, Criminal, Dungeoneer, Haggler, Healer, Hunter, Manipulator, Pathfinder, Orator, Scavenger, Scout, and Survivalist. (The overlaps with 2 aren't a mistake, you can double-stack)
So let's build these bad dudes, who at present are probably not going to save the president, but might make a couple of bucks stabbin' d00ds

Mr. Tumnus shall be from the Dwarven Halls and is a Manipulator with a specialty in being a Dungeoneer
Brad is from a Busy Crossroads and is an Orator with a specialty in being a Cook

Halloween Jack
Sep 11, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Kai Tave posted:

To be fair you've just described like 98% of all RPGs and a huge swathe of other games as well.

Poison Mushroom posted:

DH1e always made me wonder how it'd operate if you basically cut a 0 off of just about every single number except Fate and Wounds and used d10s instead of d100s.
Well, there are lots of games where you just want to get high numbers in your combat stats, then sling those numbers at your enemy. Basic D&D is like that, but it's also simple the rest of the way through--it's easy to generate a character, even at high levels, and the things about the combat rules that are complicated (spells and combat maneuvers) are also fun in themselves. Whereas Shadowrun and Warhammer have a bunch of combat-related traits and stats that you have to calculate, all for about the same level of complexity as a much simpler system.

MartianAgitator posted:

Does Pendragon have mechanics for courtly love or getting married or anything like that? I'd think if any game could do an awesome job of setting-space+mechanics for love, it'd be Pendragon.
Yes. The Great Pendragon Campaign is generational; you can earn a woman's hand in marriage, have children, and then adventure as your son.

hectorgrey
Oct 14, 2011
Well, thank you to whoever did the write-up on Spears of the Dawn - I just finished running my first session of what should turn in to quite an interesting campaign. I started with the adventure from the back of the book, because unlike most introductory adventures, it actually has hooks for future adventures.

ZorajitZorajit
Sep 15, 2013

No static at all...
Just listened to the Horrortoberfest review of The Rage: Carrie 2. ...Is... Is that just somebody's game of Monsterhearts?

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.

ZorajitZorajit posted:

Just listened to the Horrortoberfest review of The Rage: Carrie 2. ...Is... Is that just somebody's game of Monsterhearts?

I haven't seen it, but the Carrie films (and the books) in general are perfect Monsterhearts material. Supernatural powers as a metaphor for puberty? Check. High school setting? Check. Generally nasty atmosphere of intolerance and an undercurrent of "the humans are the worst monsters?" Check.

Speaking of which, I'm just going to try and finish this writeup real quick so I can move on to something else.



Chapter Six
Real Monsters


The penultimate chapter of Monsterhearts is about the villains, menaces and dangers of the setting, as can be surmised from its title. You know, all the stuff that gives a context to the game beyond the characters trying to awkwardly sex each other up.

Villains

First of all, there's a short discussion on what makes a good Monsterhearts villain. The main idea boils down to this: villains should be simple, with clear goals that either conflict or go hand in hand with the PCs' motivations. Secondly, while villains should be formidable, the PCs in general should be stronger than them, going from the principle of treating your NPCs like stolen cars. The job of villains isn't to block the PCs' actions, but to give new opportunities for the drama and story to move towards.

Secondly, there's some discussion on how to make the villains seem monstrous: the idea is that while the PCs are monsters, they're also teenagers. Villains should be real monsters. The difference is that real monsters kill people, eat babies, that sort of thing. Also, if you're taking your principles to heart, your villains might not even need to be literal monsters: because making humans seem monstrous is one of your principles, a skilled MC can probably concoct a villain that is a human but is really monstrous because of their actions.

There's also a short discussion on Darkest Selves and how they allow players to be villains in their own right. If you've got a player who's constantly going into their Darkest Self, you can use your villains to offer to work with them to sate their unnatural urges. Or alternately, if you've got the traditional situation of say a Werewolf terrorizing the town in their Darkest Self, you can probably introduce a werewolf hunter as a villain. Basically, you've then got a villain that the other PCs have good reason to work with (if they want to do something about the Werewolf murdering people in town) but can also drive the drama forward (say, the Werewolf happens to have a love interest in the group, the werewolf hunter can easily become a wedge in their relationship, or even try to use the love interest against the Werewolf).

Menaces

Menaces are basically Monsterhearts' version of Fronts. They're a neat package of information to help the MC keep a track of all the potential dangers and villains in the game and to allow them to codify them with actual rules to an extent.

A Menace is composed of three parts:
  • An outline, quickly summarizing what the Menace is about.
  • Stakes, questions about what might happen if the Menace gets its way.
  • Threats, the villains and dangers introduced by the Menace.
Going from the above example, if the Werewolf terrorizing the town is a thing that's been going on in the game, we could easily make that into a Menace. If the Werewolf is from an organized pack of werewolves, it further adds a complication into the Menace.

So, we've got the outline "Werewolf pack menacing the town." Our Stakes include stuff like "Will the werewolf hunter be able to stop the pack before they rip the town to shreds? Will Jason [name I just came up with for the Werewolf PC] side with his pack or work against them? Who will Robin [the Mortal love interest of the werewolf hunter] side with?" and so on. Then we go on to making our Threats.

Each Threat has a Craving, Offering and a Capacity, describing what they want, what they have to give to their allies, and what they're ultimately capable of. Each of these gives the Threat a custom hard move.

The Cravings, and their moves, are as follows:
  • intimacy (isolate them)
  • notoriety (lash out and provoke reaction)
  • ownership (viciously protect coveted thing)
  • transcendence (enlist others to do unethical bidding)
The Offerings and their moves are:
  • sex (tempt them and seek promises)
  • power (shower them with outlandish gifts)
  • inclusion (show them what they're missing)
  • support (save their skin at a vital moment)
And finally, the Capacities are:
  • sudden violence (outright kill someone they love)
  • cold betrayal (turn their friends against them)
  • calculated sacrifice (lose an eye to gouge an eye)

Going back to the above example, we've got the following threats:

Threat: Werewolf Pack
Craving: Notoriety (lash out and provoke reaction)
Offering: Inclusion (show them what they're missing) [I'm thinking "You could be one of us cool werewolves!" here]
Capacity: Sudden Violence (outright kill someone they love)

Threat: Werewolf Hunter
Craving: Transcendence (enlist others to do unethical bidding) [What I'm imagining here is a religious zealot type of slayer.]
Offering: Support (save their skin at a vital moment)
Capacity: Calculated Sacrifice (lose an eye to gouge an eye) [So, this guy is more than happy to send those he's allied with to their deaths if it means taking out a few werewolves.]

Finally, if you want, you can write a Custom Move for your Threats. These follow the standard formula of Moves in the game. Since we've got a religious zealot werewolf hunter here, he's probably more than happy to offer support to those who also have interests in fighting against werewolves, but this support comes at a price. So, we give him the following custom move:

Whenever the Werewolf Hunter offers you support (soldiers, weapons, money, whatever) and you accept, he gains a String on you.

Finally, we get to the last chapter!


"About loving time!"

Chapter Seven
Utterly Malleable


The last chapter of Monsterhearts is about hacking the game. The first and most important part of this is Shifting the Action.

Shifting the Action is about altering the assumptions of the game by making an all new Basic Move. The anatomy of the Basic Moves is pretty simple:
When you do [something], roll with [a stat]. On a 10 up, [a good result].  On a 7-9, [a mixed result or hard choice].

The example given is about traveling between dimensions, but that's just one possibility. You could make your game about sports and cheerleading, adding new moves to fit that idea, you could write moves relevant to certain places in the town to accentuate their weirdness, and so on.

Modifying Skins is the second least intensive way to modify the game. Say you'd rather have the Mortal be about friendship instead of love (if you're a boring person) you could easily modify the Mortal's moves to refer to their best friend instead of their lover, change a few of the moves a bit, and you've got a different kind of Mortal. If you've got a player who's really into the Werewolf but also likes the Skin-walker angle of needing an animal pelt to transform, hell, steal a few moves from the Selkie (a third party Skin and one of the best I've seen, actually) and you've got a Werewolf type of character whose big dramatic arc is obviously about someone stealing their animal pelt.

Changing the MC Toolkit is also pretty straightforward: if you don't like the list of Cravings, add a new one and come up with a hard move related to it!

Finally, there's Creating New Skins. The list of things you need to create a new Skin is a bit too exhaustive for me to list here, so yeah.

The book finishes with The Long Example, an example of play showing how the game works both on the player and MC side, Mediography, a list of media that inspired Monsterhearts (and yes, Carrie is there, but I'm kind of surprised at the omission of Nine Inch Nails from the music section given that one of the Mortal's Moves is named after a NIN song), and finally, A Perfect Moment, a scene from Jennifer's Body that is too good for me to not post here:

A Perfect Moment posted:

Let's say you don't have time to watch all the same movies and television shows that I did, but you still want to understand this teen monster genre.

Here's the entire genre, distilled down into a single moment. It's one of the last scenes of Jennifer's Body. Major spoilers on this page.

Needy has decided that enough is enough. Jennifer might be her best friend, but she's also a flesh-eating demon who's wracked up a pretty serious body count. Needy's the only one who can do something about it. Jennifer must die.

And so Needy breaks into Jennifer's room in the middle of the night. She's got Jennifer pinned to the bed, straddling her. There's an x-acto knife in Needy's hand, and she's wrestling to drive it home. She somehow manages to overpower Jennifer and drive the x-acto knife into her chest.

"My... tit."
"No," says Needy, "Your heart."

Jennifer wilts. There's a moment of silence. And then her mom walks in and flips on the light. Cut to Needy in an insane asylum.


There's not a single thing missing from that scene. Someone murders their best friend. An element of messy sexuality. Punchy, over-the-top dialogue. Betrayal. Melodrama. Crude violence (with a boxcutter, no less!) And finally, the mundane world suddenly rearing its head.

Flawless.

So, that's it. I think it goes without saying that I love Monsterhearts. As far as RPGs go it's pretty much in a genre of its own where there's not a lot of competition and it manages to perfectly emulate and encapsulate said genre. However, even if you've no interest in running a game of teenage supernatural sexytimes, it's really worth reading simply from a game design point of view, because it's probably one of the best examples of genre emulation in the RPG scene.

Anyway, I'm probably going to be taking a break from writing F&F for a while, but in the meantime I'm open to suggestions about what I should do next. I've got Golden Sky Stories, a game of cute magical anime animals helping people, 3:16: Carnage Among The Stars, a game about badass space marines that kill aliens simply because all non-human life in the universe is a potential threat to Earth's well-being, or I guess I could do Rookvale, another game by Avery McDaldno, this one a hack of the Anima Prime system that could be best described as "grimdark weird fantasy Pokemon".

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

My vote is for Golden Sky Stories, but take a break! You earned it.

Also holy poo poo maybe I should find the time to write up Noir.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Golden Sky Stories deserves the love.

Mr.Misfit
Jan 10, 2013

The time for
SkellyBones
has come!
Definitely go for Golden Sky Stories. Sooooo cute :D

By the way, you people are doing great work, it has taken me the better part of the year to catch up but I have finally reached the current page after reading through both the very old and then the follow-up thread only to get here, and I have registered just for the FATAL & Friends. You are giants of reviewing!

In the same vein, have any of you heard of DSA, the biggest rpg of Germany? If not, I call Dibs to bring you the messy complexity of the strangest fantasy rpg ever. It has to be. It is german ;)

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Another vote for GSS!

Edit: DSA? Mainly know it from a brush with Realms of Arkania: Star Trail back in the Nineties, personally.

Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Oct 16, 2014

Ratpick
Oct 9, 2012

And no one ate dinner that night.

Mr.Misfit posted:

Definitely go for Golden Sky Stories. Sooooo cute :D

By the way, you people are doing great work, it has taken me the better part of the year to catch up but I have finally reached the current page after reading through both the very old and then the follow-up thread only to get here, and I have registered just for the FATAL & Friends. You are giants of reviewing!

In the same vein, have any of you heard of DSA, the biggest rpg of Germany? If not, I call Dibs to bring you the messy complexity of the strangest fantasy rpg ever. It has to be. It is german ;)

Das Schwarze Auge? I'm aware of the game and know it was even translated into English at some point, but beyond that I don't really know much about it. I know that there have been a number of Dark Eye CRPGs and I recall watching my flatmate playing one of them.

Wait, I just Googled it, and apparently there was a series of CRPGs based on the system, titled Realms of Arkania, and one of them (Shadows over Riva) was actually translated into Finnish for some unfathomable reason in the nineties. I remember playing that game as a kid and never really getting it, but some things just stuck to my mind about the game (like the Holberks, elf/orc hybrids who were being fiercely persecuted against because of the imminent orcish attack on the city the game was set in).

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

ZorajitZorajit posted:

Just listened to the Horrortoberfest review of The Rage: Carrie 2. ...Is... Is that just somebody's game of Monsterhearts?

Man does that ever work. She spends the whole movie doing dumb poo poo and being horrible because it gains her ennui power or whatever to go all Super Sayainfreude all over the party at the end.

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

"You're talking to cats."
"And you eat ghosts, so shut the fuck up."
Go for Golden Sky Stories, Ratpick. Give yourself a break from lovely people doing lovely things and tell us about the anime Care Bears RPG.

ZorajitZorajit posted:

Just listened to the Horrortoberfest review of The Rage: Carrie 2. ...Is... Is that just somebody's game of Monsterhearts?

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.

There's an official bonus skin in the works for Monsterhearts Second Skins called the Firestarter which is supposed to also do the "angry psychic kid" thing, but we have no idea how long it's going to be before we have access to it at this point.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

ZorajitZorajit posted:

Just listened to the Horrortoberfest review of The Rage: Carrie 2. ...Is... Is that just somebody's game of Monsterhearts?

I remember being part of a character approval staff of a superhero MUSH at a young age and having somebody apply for a character that was obviously just Rachel (down to the insufferable background), only powerful enough to punch a hole in the Earth.

There were some changes requested on that character.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I remember being part of a character approval staff of a superhero MUSH at a young age and having somebody apply for a character that was obviously just Rachel (down to the insufferable background), only powerful enough to punch a hole in the Earth.

There were some changes requested on that character.

Maybe she was just making Kirby?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lxNNlQYttU

Jolinaxas
Oct 24, 2012

I'm in the business of...
Absolution

Gazetteer posted:

Trying to explain what's wrong about Skins for the Skinless is kind of a writeup in of itself.

This is actually a fairly common subject of post-game discussion among my skype MH group - one player has tried the Gargoyle and the Calaca, and the Beast and Fury have also been used in one-shots, and the most common complaints are:

1) Some moves are just too good - the Mummy being the worst offender, having the incredibly powerful Royal Decree and the almost-as-bad Cursed Idols.

2) Some moves should have been part of the "base" - has anyone ever tried to play a Gargoyle without Babewyn?

3) The moves are so tied into a "script" for the skin to play that they can't be poached. (Don't have the Beast's base move? Every single other Beast move depends on interactions with it)

They all look really cool out of play, because just reading through the move lists, there's some very cool mechanical interactions there - the same kind of stuff from the Base Skins that got me really interested in MH in the first place. But they seem to fall apart when actually put into real-game conditions. The exception to this is the Minotaur, which everyone, myself included, just adores.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

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

Jolinaxas posted:

3) The moves are so tied into a "script" for the skin to play that they can't be poached. (Don't have the Beast's base move? Every single other Beast move depends on interactions with it.
Not that you'd actually want to take any of the Beast's moves, as it is literally the single worst and most broken PbtA playbook I have ever seen for any game.

  • Locked thread