Actual Play – Hillsdale High (5/18/2012)

GM: Scott White
Players: Sean Nittner, Rich Rogers, Jack Nolan, Adam Robichaud
System: Monsterhearts

Well, I couldn’t make the EndGame Monster Party, which made me very sad, but I was happy to be playing a Monsterhearts game of my own. Scott White and Rich Rogers (who I play PTA with) recruited me into the game, and I was very excited to get my angst on.

The first session was character and setting creation. It was also the players getting to know each other. I had never gamed with Adam or Jack so we spent a lot of time dong the dance of “this is how I play. I want to make sure you’re down with playing in a compatible way, without coming out and telling you ‘you must do this thing'”. I think we all got some buy into playing teenage angst and our characters digging their proverbial (and perhaps literal) teeth into each other.

What I’m still very dubious about though is play style. Jack and I have characters that are nearly identical (teenage female ghoul musicians who died in fires… I know, crazy), but we have very different approach to secrets in game. I’m super hippie-indie “lets all talk about our character secrets so we can frame cool scenes around pushing on them.” Jack, is old school and has character secrets that are shared between him and Scott only. I was pretty heavy handed about saying “I want us all to collaborate” and in fact talked a lot more about my character than I expected to at first, to show that doing so is safe, but I think Jack has very different sensibilities than I do. So we’ll see how it plays out in game.

Seating Chart

Character Roster

Fee was born in 1970 in the Prypiat (Ukraine) and in 1986 was incinerated during the Chernobyl disaster.  Buy she didn’t die, or she died and came back, she really didn’t know. Either way, she came back, physically untouched but mentally and emotionally vacant. She has been wandering the world for over 20 years lost and empty, until recently she found something that makes her feel alive again. Spreading the chaos that caused her death. Still with the emotional maturity of a 16 year old girl, she seeks through music to incite the same longing she feels into others… to burn it down, burn it all down.

“We all know it. The universe is expanding and moving to a state of greater entropy. All I’m trying to do is help it along. It’s like watching a tiny bird almost ready to take flight, all it needs it a little nudge to push it out of the next and set it free.” –Fee

Fee is of course short for Phoenix Levitski, but her real name is lost to her. Something like Elena no doubt. She currently lives, as a foreign exchange student with the Browns. They have one (biological) son named Doug who is 15 and would have had a daughter that was Fee’s age if not for a miscarriage.  The browns never got over their first loss and are always terrified they will lose Doug as well, so they are incredibly protective of him, terrified of anything that might put him in danger. Not surprisingly the browns are not delighted with Fee. She’s super goth, she makes a lot of noise, she doesn’t play by the rules, but worse of all, when scolded, she just looks at them with these dead eyes, oblivious to the threats they make. The truth is she always has dead eyes, it’s just only in times of anger that they notice.  Fee is terrified of them trying to send her back.


Dante is a misunderstood kid with no right to be as angsty as he is. His family loves him and they are good people. His brothers and sisters are well adjusted, and his parents have noticed how distant he is, tried to help, but haven’t been able to figure out what is wrong, let alone how to fix it.

Music speaks to him though. He mixes it, remakes, and turns it into something. He’s found a mixing service that allows users to do re-mixes online and has begun connecting with the DJ community, specifically the owner of the site, who has become his patron. Really. His effing dark patron!

Now Dante gets help from the owner Brom Silva (whose real name he doesn’t know), in exchange of course for doing things that are in their mutual interest.


Abraham was groomed to be great. He’s a Serpentine and was told by his parents, specifically his father. Brom Silva, that if he followed in their footsteps, power would all but be given to him. Yeah, but what teenager wants to do what his “father knows best” father tells him? So he’s taken his inherent knack for getting his way, a household servant and a modicum of the family’s wealth (which is still quite a lot) to Hilldale. Unfortunately, there are always strings (get it, strings?) attached. His “servant” is more of a watcher than anything else. He’s gotten a job at the Hilldale highschool and now teaches History and Homeroom. Yay for our new homeroom teacher Mr. Drake!

Abraham has a posh apartment that overlooks the Hillsdale docks and next door is Mr. Drake… who has a key to Abraham’s place. Yay. His father has let Abraham go on his walkabout but holds him on a leash both with the presence of Mr. Drake and tight control over Abraham’s accounts.


Tiffany Darrens is a girl in search of who she is, or what happened to her. She lives in an abandoned house that is rumored to be haunted. She is a classic rock chick, a singer, and dressed the part. Tiffany has a reputation for being vengeful and wicked.

She is a ghoul who was burned to death in a fire. Unlike Fee, however, she ages, and when she was killed in 1990, was only a young child.

Strings

After going over the character concepts, we did strings and figured out how we all had hooks into each other.

Dante – Abraham likes his music, Tiffany hates it. Fee saw him stealing Tiffany’s amp but didn’t say anything about it.

Abraham – Knows where Tiffany lives (in the “haunted” house). His father Brom, also holds his purse strings and has Mr. Drake watching over him.

Tiffany – Dante reminds of her of what love means and she’s drawn to him (which sets up some awesome tension give that have such a contentious relationship otherwise). Fee saw Tiffany die and be reborn so many years ago, and is fascinated with her. Are the they same?

Fee – Fee sees the power running through Abrahams veins and she is drawn to him like moth to a flame. She wonders how someone can be so “alive”. Abraham has agreed to mentor Fee in history. Just before the game starts, Fee caused an accident at the docks. She made a cargo container fall from a lift. It crushed her underneath it and after she died, she burst into flames and started a fire on the dock. Tiffany saw it all.

Setting

Hillsdale is a small town in Oregon, near enough to the music scene to have aspiring musicians but far enough away for anything real to happen. It has some interesting features.

The abandoned house on the hill. Supposedly haunted.

Dudley’s Diner – Run by Mack Dudley (the chef) and his cougar wife that hits on every attractive boy or man who walks in the door.

A fishing port that primarily has locally owned and operated trawlers, but occasionally a massive commercial vessel will come into harbor. As mentioned above a big fire just broke out at the docks. Big enough that it is in the newspaper.

Mr. Drake is our Homeroom and History teacher.

Thoughts on this game

I think we created a rich set of characters and setting. It should give us plenty of fuel to start our own funeral pyre.

I was disheartened that we didn’t get to actually “play”. It took almost four hours just to create characters and the town/school were were in. Part of that was because of doing it online, with all the complications that creates.

I’m concerned about having very different play styles. We’ll see how that works out in game.

 

Actual Play-ish – “Ghosthorse: It’s in the Charter” (4/14/2012)

Bullshitters: Carl Rigney, Karen Twelves, and Sean Nittner
System: Monsterhearts (sort of)

After our afternoon session of Tiend High School Carl, Karen, and I went out for a nice relaxing dinner at Breads of India. I told them both of my frustrations with my character and Karen added another thought. In a four hour game, just having the characters in the same vicinity isn’t really enough to bring them together. It’s a problem I’ve hand in DRYH games as well. Just because we all have super powers and are next to each other doesn’t mean we care about each other.

Monsterhearts addresses this in an abstract way with strings, mechanical leverage we have over each other, but if those strings aren’t expanded upon, it means that “although we both lie close together, we feel miles apart inside” (thank you Poison). Our characters were passably interested in each other (really two of us were obsessed with the vampire and that was enough) but we didn’t have any tight bond, like say, you would in a band…

For the next two hours we sat around in the EndGame lobby bullshitting as though we were members of the band. Character roles were pretty ambiguous, I played at least two characters, we had mention of several NPCs, and it took us a while to figure out who/what Carl was. This is what I assertained by the end:

Carl – Our mortal band member who now had my guitar. He wanted to sleep with chicks in the crowd and liked antagonizing all of his monster band members.

Karen – Our werewolf drummer who would play 27 days straight and then take a break due to the moon. There were inferences that wolfing out and menstruating were related. At the time of play, we were supposed to go on any minute but never made it out the stage and she was increasingly anxious that she might wolf out during the concert. We assured her she could play from inside a cage if need be. She was also obsessed with charters and kept making new ones after the old ones got torn apart (often by her).

Sean – I started as the Ghoul manager hungry for fame and money.  I think I was a giant ass hat but I didn’t stay in that character for long. Soon I moved to the Ghost who used to be the guitar player but couldn’t any more on account of having no fingers, on account of being dead… for which Carl teased me incessantly about. I kept trying to get Carl to put his hands in machines so I could possess the machine to cut said fingers off. It never worked. What I did do though, was continually tell Carl to write it down when we had a good idea. “Write that shit down. It’ll be a great song.” The idea finally came around that we should murder a horse so I could ride a ghost horse on stage during concert. Nobody was willing to do it (fucking ingrates) but we did like the name “Ghosthorse” and that eventually

NPCs of note: Ted was a vampire who spent all his time in the trunk of the car masturbating under a blanket. He said that he wouldn’t come out because of the sun, but none of us were buying it. We also had an infernal that insisted the charters all be signed with bloody thumb prints. We teased both of them incessantly as well.

Thoughts on this game

Well, it wasn’t really a game. I mean we didn’t roll any dice or use character sheets. It was just taking tropes from Mosterhearts and playing them up. But damn did we have a good time.

I can’t imagine many games where kind of play would ever happen. Maybe XXXXtreme Street Luge or The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries, where the game is played by recouting the action, and thus is mostly dudes sitting around bullshitting (what it’s actually called in XSL), but still, I’m not sure that in a traditional game people wouldn’t want more action to progress. Never quite getting to the concert might not satisfy your typical gamer.

This Fiasco playset is begging to be created. Monsterhearts High School Rock Band anyone?

We did discuss how having a social construct that binds the characters together (a military unit, a band, employees assigned to the same project, Watchdogs, family, etc) does two really good things:

  1. It totally removes the “how do our characters know each other” and “why would we do stuff together” questions.
  2. It allows the characters to push very hard on each other, without fear of breaking the bonds that hold them together. You can hate your sibling but they are still your sibling, etc. Also, it means you can have emotional relationships that have nothing to do with the professions ones like “I work with you, but I hate you because you stole my girlfriend”.

Being in High School almost does this, but I think the characters need a bit more. Having strings helps as well, but  I still think the question of “why are your characters stuck together” is worth asking before the game starts.

 

Actual Play – Tiend High School (4/14/2012)

GM: Carl Rigney
Players: Morgan Ellis, Lisa Marcus, Karen Twelves, and Sean Nittner
System: Monsterhearts

For any buried under a rock like me, Monsterhearts is Joe Mcdaldno game of sexy teenage monsters and all their collective angst. It’s built on the Apocalypse World engine, but it is well enough developed that I don’t think of it as a hack. Rather another creation using many of the same first principals that Vincent employed.

When I signed up for this game, I misread the title. Which is incredibly odd since I was in charge of the scheduling for the minicon, so I probably only looked at the game title about fifty times. But like so many things, first impressions matter most, and when I first read “Trend” High School, I got images of Treandstone from Bourne and though we were going to be in a school for the “would be abducted and trained against their will secret agents”. Interestingly, I wasn’t completely wrong. There were students at the school against their will, but the moment Carl said “Tiend” I realized I had misread and misunderstood.  Replace agent with “Fey” and origination they are indentured to with “Hell” and I was set!

The premise, was however that every seven years seven fey were sent to hell to abide by some pact between the Fey and the Infernal. Hell of course, was high school, and we were the attendees.

Our characters were a distant vampire, a curious witch, a desperately trying to be human Hollow, and a love struck Infernal. One important NPC (beside the fey) was also created. Monsieur Voltaire was our french teacher that insisted students always speak (even when he was teaching Homeroom) in French.  He was also the devil and the power that fueled my infernal.

We did Vampire Diaries/True Blood/Buffy-esk drama throughout the game. Our characters all longed for something, and, as fitting the game, someone else had to lose something for us to get it.

Thoughts on this game

There were some mechanical bits that I really like and I’m going to consider steeling for Apocalypse Glalatica.

  • Conditions: A mechanical effect to cover all the wacky “conditions” that effect our the characters. We ended up with “In Trouble”, “Terrified” and “Fatigued” though I can imagine many more.  For Galactica, I’d might use these to represent problems with the Fleet/Battlestar: Insubordinate, Paranoid, Afraid, Hungry, etc. Worth much musing.
  • Joe replaced Hx with Strings. Strings are built in some of the same ways bonds/Hx are in that you start with some strings on each other based off descriptors at the start. My character (the infernal) was in love with the vampire, so I gave him two strings at start. Instructions for how to do this are in the playbooks and many of the moves create ore remove strings. Strings are then spent to affect the other person: aiding, hindering,  or manipulating them. I like the idea of having strings on people for all kinds of reasons (healthy and un): because they care about you, because you are friends, because you have blackmail on them, because you seduced them, because of a lie, etc. It seems like there are a lot of moves in AW that allow you do affect people in different ways, Strings consolidates those in a pretty cool way. I’m down for it.

My character was, story/character development speaking, a total one trick pony. She was in love with the vampire the entire game and all she did was plot to make him love her too. It was lame. Really, really lame. First off, she never changed (that was bad). Second, she didn’t escalate or change tactics (which was worse). I’m not sure exactly why I did this except that I was myself stuck in a rut. I wasn’t thinking of any creative alternatives and so, just kept trying the same thing. In different contexts, of course, but it always led to me getting a string on Morgan’s character and then using it to offer him XP to have sex with me. The major problem with this is that Vampires sex move specifically benefits them if they turn down another’s advances. So… mechanically and in the fiction, his best option was to keep blocking. Now, in the real world, people keep trying the same thing over and over hoping one day it will work (how many of us play the lotto). But in a game if you do the same thing twice without changing, it’s already old. I was very disappointed with my performance in this game.

Despite the repetitive behavior in game, I felt like I added are really awesome element to the story before game. Monsieur Voltaire was awesome. Not only because he made my “dark power” someone that every could (and had to) interact with, but he also insisted everyone speak in French… which was a killer affectation for an NPC.

Karen’s Hollow had this awesome move at the very end. Her darkest self was exposed and she needed others to understand the isolation she felt. So she took my character and trapped her in a locker and laughed while I screamed in terror. It was pretty bad ass.  I realize that I could have made the game much better if that moment of terror changed my character and instead of chasing after the vampire (again), I turned to her, addressed the horror she just inflected on me and said “hey, that was pretty awful. I’ve done some awful stuff too. Want to be friends?” In fact, I like that ending so much more Carl suggested I just say that’s how it was. A better story for sure.

Bad ass cool moments:

  • Morgan’s vampire sucking a Fey dry and tasting Sunlight
  • Karen’s hollow “hunting” with the vampire but accidentally killing the fey, and it’s blood tasting like ashes in the vampire’s mouth.
  • Lisa’s witch casting “wither” on the hollow to stop her from tormenting the infernal and our horrible descriptiion of that hex.
  • Really fun conversation in French with the Fey. “You have parents? Is that what most people have?”

I’m very impressed with this game and I want to play it A LOT more.

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