MonsterHearts

Shall we have a monsterhearts thread?
2nd editions just came out has anyone had the chance to play it yet?
Also what are people's favourite playbooks? I'm a fan of the Fae myself, I like the social dynamic their promise-related moves encourage, it's friendly and yet at the same time kind of dysfunctional, wihch is a pretty good kind of relationship for a game about teenage drama to have.

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discord.gg/RrYCAF
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I will bump your thread

shameless self-bump

What's changed in 2nd edition? I ran a few seasons as DM/MC (Or whatever it was called,) with first edition Monsterhearts and it was entertaining, with me and my group trying to run it as something in the vein of Buffy, Teen Wolf, and a little bit of X-Files, since a lot of my friends like those kinds of shows and even though some of them hadn't played a tabletop game before, we all had some good fun.

The only thing I found difficult about it was the fact that characters with high Hot and/or Cold seemed a lot stronger than every other character. The first season the Queen and the Vampire seemed to dominate everyone, being able to shut people down with Cold and role for manipulates with Hot, and succeed often. On top of that their Cold roles made them difficult to startle/stop, even for me at times. To make shit worse, whenever I'd have them roll to become scared, they could roll with Cold and basically marked experience from being "scared" by holding steady all the time, while other characters would be forced to flee or do something stupid for failing the same roll.

The second season I was more careful about this, but a player picked up the Serpentine skin and was largely able to pull off the same things, shutting down other characters at will, turning on others, manipulating NPCs, etc.

As for other mechanics, "Gaze Into the Abyss" was so open-ended that it was either useless or overpowered. It seemed more like a plot contrivance that should belong to one character, not a universal trait.

>What's changed in 2nd edition?
the Manipulate an NPC move is gone, spending a string on an NPC now means the GM will tell you what bribe, threat or motive will be needed to get them to do what you want instead

Keep your cool works a bit differently, on a 10+ you can ask a question and if you use the information gained you get +1, on a 7-9 you can choose to take a hit to carry on or back down

>spending a string on an NPC now means the GM will tell you what bribe, threat or motive will be needed
That sounds more intuitive and fair.

>on a 10+ you can ask a question and if you use the information gained you get +1
+1 to what?

>on a 7-9 you can choose to take a hit to carry on or back down
I don't understand, you don't gain a condition anymore?

Also is Harm the same as it was? I found it really difficult to deal with in certain instances, mostly when a character would roll 10 and swing for two arm in one move, effective removing the receiving character from the game for some time. In the second season we had a Werewolf who could basically bully every other character with high volatile rolls, except the aforementioned Serpentine who ended up unintentionally power-gaming since she could "lash out" using her absurd Cold stat, while also Holding Steady against everything the Werewolf did.

>2nd editions just came out
oh shit really? I never did get around to finding a good group to play a real game with, but I loved the idea. Never bothered to bring it up here because it's Veeky Forums and it's monsterhearts and, you know... Any tips for finding people who aren't gross and weird, but then also aren't really uncomfortable with a heavily sex-centric game like this?

>ace characters

>Any tips for finding people who aren't gross and weird, but then also aren't really uncomfortable with a heavily sex-centric game like this?
Finding a group to play Monsterhearts is nearly impossible.

People are either extremely awkward at all times, or you get those bizarre smut-tier writers that make every single scene about sex.

Shit, that's what i was afraid of.

I have a handful of friends that would totally be super into it in theory but specifically as a face to face group of those particular people talking about our proxy/avatar characters fucking eachother I think they'd clam up. To be fair I think even I'd have issues with that considering how that particular web of relationships works.

>I have a handful of friends that would totally be super into it in theory but specifically as a face to face group of those particular people talking about our proxy/avatar characters fucking eachother I think they'd clam up.
As someon who has run 4 seasons/campaigns of this, I'll give you a few tips to combat this:

1. Crack some jokes in any given situation to keep the tone light in face of awkwardness. This doesn't always work, but it helps a lot.

2. Agree on how far you and your players want the sex scenes to go. In 3/4 of the seasons I did they were basically PG/PG13, characters move in for a kiss/embrace, etc. Story moves on to something else. The 4th story was more smutty, but it was me GMing over two couples, so that's understandable.

3. Alcohol, if possible. Just to loosen people up a little.

>To be fair I think even I'd have issues with that considering how that particular web of relationships works.
Yeah it's strange. I lucked out and in all four seasons I participated in, I had a close friend that regularly cracks very dirty jokes all the time, so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but the first season and most of the second one was still rough in some parts.

that's actually pretty helpful, even if some of it is just saying aloud what should've been kinda obvious to me. 2 could probably save some lives though.

>+1 to what?
any roll where the information gained is relevant
>I don't understand, you don't gain a condition anymore?
The GM tells you what the consequence of doing the action would be, if you still want to do it, it happens

Anyone got a PDF of 2nd edition for DL? I'd like to check out the changes before thinking of purchasing it, since the first edition was really heavily flawed and required a lot of changes, despite it being fun.

What didn't you like about the 1st edition and what did you change?

Haven't played it, just enjoy apocalypse world and hear mosterhearts is one of the few good hacks of it.

I know this isn't the gamefinder thread but would anybody actually be up for doing a campaign?

Discord:BadWrongFun#0889

>What didn't you like about the 1st edition and what did you change?
Harm needed to be hacked extensively in the seasons I played, because you could have situations where a character had 1 harm, then something like the werewolf skin takes a swing at them and rolls a 10, deciding to mark 2 more harm. That character is shuffled off to the hospital and the player doesn't really get to do much for the rest of the season. So we had to bump up the harm that could be taken to six or seven, I think, and then we had to change what marks harm.

Off the top of my head we also had a lot of problems with certain stats being far better than others. As another user above wrote, Cold was
the strongest thing to mark for experience in a "horror/sexy" setting. With a high Cold stat your skin could basically thwart anything. Stop a character from attacking you, stop a character from turning you on, stop a villain from scaring you, stop a teacher from giving you detention, etc. etc. etc. Cold was just too good at shutting the game down.

Since it was over a year ago, I don't really remember how it was fixed, but it sure was annoying.

Don't get me wrong though, it's a fun system.

text based or audio?

Neat. I can see how a bigger harm clock could be useful depending on what's up. The tone of teen drama seems different enough from post apocalyptic action drama.

I've found a similar thing can happen with the battle babe playbook in apocalypse world. Get a high cool, take Ice Cold, and just go nuts. I think its what they're suppose to do, but it was potent.

dude you cant join a discord server without an invite link

I don't really see your reasoning for either of these things. Harm can be regained once per session just with rest and one other time with treatment (with erotic undertones). There's no real reason for a character on a few harm to be taken out of the game. Even if the character 'dies' the PC can just enter their darkest self or lose all their strings and be back to full health twice per session.

As for Cold, whilst useful for staying calm under pressure it can't really negate an action, it's only effect is to make people lose strings or gain conditions, so they're weaker than they were before but it doesn't stop actions.

I'd prefer audio, but I'd be willing to go text.
I was gonna take over shit first in PMs, but here you go. There's a room.
discord.gg/RrYCAF

It's been a while, so let me try and think this through a bit.

>Harm can be regained once per session just with rest and one other time with treatment (with erotic undertones).
I remember this. The problem was more along the lines of how much harm could be dealt at once. The example I remember the most clearly would be a player with the werewolf skin attacked the chosen, who had taken two Harm earlier in the season, with 1 harm being healed, which means he still had 1 harm marked.

The werewolf, who was the effective antagonist for the time, swung with a 10, chose to mark two harm, and then spent a string, marking it up to 4. The chosen chose Darkest self to survive, and effectively went on a suicide mission. By definition the Darkest Self for the Chosen is pretty limited. They hunter down whatever until someone else rescues them or they end up in the hospital. Their rescuer got their ass kicked by a similar circumstance, so two characters ended up in the hospital, all because one character was practically sucker-punched into doing something that would almost inevitably end with them getting sucker-punched again.

That's not to say that it was a bad experience per say, but it wasn't really great either. I think in the end we increased harm to 6 so that any given thing could cause harm without it immediately incapacitating someone.

>As for Cold, whilst useful for staying calm under pressure it can't really negate an action
Cold was a non-stop string engine that also allows anyone that marked it to gain experience though, and strings are extremely powerful. So a character is gaining exp while also gaining strings, while also preventing certain actions. You know what I mean? It's not like it was so bad that the game was ruined or anything, it was just too strong compared to other stats, of which there are very few.

>so two characters ended up in the hospital, all because one character was practically sucker-punched into doing something that would almost inevitably end with them getting sucker-punched again.
I would argue that's exactly the kind of chaotic snowballing that I love about this system but fair enough.

>while also preventing certain actions
I can't really think what actions it stops other people doing

>I can't really think what actions it stops other people doing
Well like I said, it's mostly indirectly responsible due to how many strings the stat builds up