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Prison Warden posted:I don't understand why melodrama necessarily equates with a strictly sad sad negative let's all cut ourselves emotional tone for a game. Or that something where the focus is interpersonal character interactions and relationships is just everyone sort of farting around not doing anything, both of those seem to just be a result of a lack of creativity. Contrast is what makes this sort of game (or book, or tv show, for that matter) work. You can't have an unrelentingly depressing tone, or you'll lose people - it's all about balance. Whedon shows, when they work, are built on this. And given that Buffy is very obviously the core inspiration for Monsterhearts, it's not a stretch to think that's where you're expected to go.
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Aug 22, 2014 06:30
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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.)
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Oct 21, 2014 02:43
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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.
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Oct 21, 2014 08:11
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Prison Warden posted:So a Green Lantern ring? No - the spikard has to be connected to specific things to draw on them, as opposed the the Green Lantern ring just creating from nothing.
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Feb 2, 2015 17:35
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I've always wanted to do a "Red Storm Rising" sort of game with Jovian Chronicles. The asymmetry between the two major factions lends itself very well to that - the Syreen, iirc, is significantly more competent than it is portrayed in the fluff, and the same goes for the Wraith, providing a perfect place to put unlikely heroes. . .
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Feb 21, 2015 23:27
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fool_of_sound posted:Compared to what though? It's relatively fast solidly designed for a high-crunch game, tbh. A large amount of the complaints I've seen about Ex3e boil down to "I don't want this much crunch in my game," which a) is a perfectly valid opinion and b) makes me wonder what they expected from a game that has always been unapologetically mechanics heavy.
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Oct 6, 2015 01:12
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Kai Tave posted:Does the amount of crunch actually make the gameplay substantially better, is the thing. In short: yes. The combat system now hangs together better, both mechanically and thematically. The fact that you no longer have to avoid every single attack or die horribly is the most obvious. Social 'combat' being tied to intimacies is a huge improvement over hypnotoading everyone into submission with unnatural mental influence. And there's a real benefit to having and maintaining those intimacies, despite the fact they can be used against you. Some things are still just inexplicably bad, though - the fanatical devotion to keeping the BP/XP split, for example, or the unwillingness to include a proper bureaucracy mechanic for running large organizations, but it is now a much more solid game than it ever was.
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Oct 6, 2015 02:17
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