Barf Forth Apocalyptica
powered by the apocalypse => Monsterhearts => Topic started by: mcdaldno on July 26, 2010, 02:14:49 PM
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Because it's started already...
1. I love the Twilight movies. I've never read the books and don't plan to, but the movies are painfully cheesy and just dripping with melodrama. There are so many slow motion close-ups of people making these anguished, pained expressions. There are crazy guitar riffs in the background to denote emotional tension. There are ten minute segments where nothing happens, except a retread of the previous ten minutes. So bad. So, so good.
2. I am incredibly serious about wanting to make a Twilight game, and be thematically faithful to the source material.
3. I want to draw from: Twilight, Buffy, Ginger Snaps, Christopher Pike novels, and that movie that takes place in a school and ends with a cheerleader being the alien queen.
4. John Harper says that Twilight and Buffy are opposites. He should explain how.
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Also consider Near Dark and The Lost Boys.
Note: I accidentally edited Bret's comment instead of adding my own. Thus, half of Bret's post was lost. I've removed my reply. -JM
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John Harper says that Twilight and Buffy are opposites. He should explain how.
Yep. I'll let John go first.
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Buffy and Twilight are opposites (on the same genre spectrum) for patently obvious reasons.
Do I really have to spell them out? Take every single element of each and contrast them. Buffy/Bella. Angel/Edward. One of the best pieces of media ever/Twilight.
See? There ya go. To quote Willow: "Bored now."
What isn't boring is when Joe talks about Monsterhearts. Because it is a thing with coolness. Teenagers, monsters, sex, yes. Source material wank? Feh.
Jeez I am cranky.
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The Lost Boys is in, 100%
I'm for some reason not remembering a lot of the source material I've seen.
Like, I know I'm well steeped in the genre, but can't name many names due to a cloudy memory block?
Jennifer's Body seems like it fits, but I need to see it.
Also, what's that movie from like two years ago about hot chicks who are actually man-eating aliens?
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Cool, John.
Buffy is good media, with characters who have integrity.
They wade through meaningful issues, that are presented by a strong storyteller.
Twilight is a pastiche of dysfunction, incomplete characters and hot ab shots.
It's written poorly.
They take similar elements and head off in different directions, with different quality levels. I get that. I was just making sure there wasn't something else I was missing.
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Yeah, Joe. That's what I meant. Sorry for the crankiness.
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Have you seen Roswell (the TV series)? (That's also where I thought your "alien" type would come in.)
Roswell starts with the heroine's life being saved by this guy with special powers who makes her swear to keep it secret, whose family of super powered Others want no involvement with humans... sound familiar yet? :)
Also: Sookie Stackhouse books (True Blood on TV), of which Twilight is a watered-down, pale YA copy.
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Hi there. Just dropping by to say I think this idea is awesome. Right now out there there are millions of kids creating stories about vampires and wizards in different forms of proto-roleplaying like freeform forum play and collaborative fan-fiction writing. They could easily be converted into role-players if something like this project goes big and appeals to them, adding legions of well-needed young people to our hobby.
We can despise the base material and call it sub-literature and sub-culture, but what did other people think of us when we dreamed about being barbarians killing dragons in dark corridors to loot their gold? The only difference between our old fantasy and this new kind of fantasy is that the later appeals to girls also, so it's made of win.
Just my two cents here.
In summary, keep it up and good luck.
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The only difference between our old fantasy and this new kind of fantasy is that the later appeals to girls also, so it's made of win.
I disagree with this; it isn't the only difference. And it certainly has nothing at all to do with my own distaste for Twilight, though I can't speak for others.
However, as I've said a few times now, distaste of Twilight aside, I think Joe is onto something kickass here. If it can help "recruit" teenagers to RPGs as a hobby, that's sweet as well, but not something I, personally am particularly worried about.
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Sooo... can Tommy or Abby from Christopher Moore's vampire trilogy be characters? Or are those books too silly and lacking in necessary angst?
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Haven't read Christopher Moore yet. I should get on that.
Judging by the campy book covers, I don't really know.
I'm sure Monsterhearts can be played for dark laughs.
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Ahhh, okay. They are very much comedies and a lot of fun. I recommend reading them (though not necessarily as inspiration for this game). Abby (who is only in the 2nd and 3rd books, not the first) is very much a satire of a 16 year old goth girl.
Here's a quote from the beginning of one of the sections that's written from her POV:
"Much like the guy in Herman Hesse's novel Steppenwolf (which everyone knows means, 'wolf going up the steps') who runs into the ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY sign outside of the Magic Theater, when it comes to romance I am definitely not on the list. Loneliness is my 'plus one.' Bitterness is my boo."
Tommy is more of a normal 19 year old guy who wants to be a writer and ends up becoming a vampire. He's got some interesting stuff going on at some points because his girlfriend Jody loves being a vampire, but he wants to be human again (and this is possible).
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One of the actually-important-to-the-game differences between Buffy and Twilight, which Joe touched on already with his description of the Twilight movies, is that in Buffy, things actually happen at a remotely reasonable pace. The Twilight series, to the best of my knowledge, is predicated on a complete and utter lack of things happening -- they are 90% descriptive passages and wallowing in established-to-death 'conflicts' that the author is fundamentally unwilling to resolve at a rate of more than one per two books.
I have no idea if this is something Joe wants to support -- it could easily be replicated by a group playing AW if they simply did nothing but Barf Forth Apocalyptica for 95% of their play time, and rolled the dice like once per session. So it's possible that Joe is on to something by describing the difference primarily in terms of 'competent vs. incompetent', but if you were really devoted to Twilight (as opposed to the wider genre) you could add moves like 'When you consider how beautiful your lover is...' and 'When you are overcome by the emotion of the situation...' which would have results on some purely descriptive/internal level.
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I actually really, really like "When you are overcome with emotion..."
I already have a move called "When you gaze into the abyss..." which covers a lot of the same ground, but with a more psychic-maelstrom-y vibe.
"When you are struck by the awesome beauty of your lover, roll +[stat]. On a 10+, their Hot becomes +3 as long as you're both together. On a 7-9, [some stuff]. On a miss, they gain 1 String on you and nothing else happens."
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This last little while, I've been watching some more Monsterhearts media -
Cursed
An amazing, overlooked teen werewolf movie. A dorky boy and his uptight sister get bitten by a werewolf, and as their panic rises they learn that they must kill he-who-created-them. But who? The creative team behind Scream had their fingers in this production, and it shows in the best of ways.
Jennifer's Body
This movie was primarily about what Megan Fox looks like half-dressed, and secondarily about what happens when Megan Fox becomes a demon with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Pitch-perfect, and better than I expected.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Started watching the show again. On the first season. So amazingly good. So, so amazingly good. You already know that.
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When I watched Jennifer's Body people were like, "It was a rip-off of Ginger Snaps," and I was like, "What? It was a great movie." Then I watched Ginger Snaps and was like, "Oh, okay. I see. THAT was a great movie."
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I took different things from both, though.
Ginger Snaps was a grimy story about misfits, one of whom suddenly gets hideous power.
Jennifer's Body is the story of a popular girl who loses her remorse and inhibitions. You thought Jennifer had little remorse or inhibition before? Check her out as a fucking demon.
Ginger is a Werewolf. Jennifer is a Ghoul.
Ginger Snaps is a better movie.
Jennifer's Body has the best scene* (actually, the best two scenes**).
*Needy encounters Jennifer covered in a boy's blood, freaks out and drives home. Somehow, Jennifer beat her there, and she's all clean and gorgeous looking. WTF?
Needy is feeling betrayed and confused; Jennifer is feeling high on life and on her own power. Naturally, the two of them start making out. And it takes Needy a good 10 seconds to remember, "Wait, you're a fucking cannibal demon!" Burgeoning teen sexuality > murderous rampage.
**Needy pins Jennifer to the bed. She's got an X-acto knife in hand: it must be done. Needy drives the boxcutter down into Jennifer's chest.
"My.... tit..."
"No," says Needy, "your heart."
Jennifer crumples into her covers. And then her mom walks in and flips on the light. Cut to Needy in an insane asylum.
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Yeah what happened to Needy and the way the movie transformed her character was really cool.
Ginger Snaps didn't have the transformation. I really feel like the younger sister ended the movie the same way she started it, and her sister was the one who changed and that was a bad thing.
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Oooh! Oooh! Joe! Can I play Saya or Fuminori from the hentai visual novel Saya no Uta in Monsterhearts? Saya would probably take some tweaking since she doesn't "pass" to anyone except Fuminori, but by the end of the game/story, Fuminori is the more monstrous of the pair for my money, anyway.
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Needy drives the boxcutter down into Jennifer's chest.
"My.... tit..."
"No," says Needy, "your heart."
Shut up! There is no way that's what happens. I refuse to believe that's what happens in the movie. Hahaha. :)
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Holy shit, that's exactly what happens. Hahaha.
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Holy shit, that's exactly what happens. Hahaha.
That scene is like the pitch-perfect distillation of everything I love about this genre.
Someone murdering their best friend.
Hot teen girls wading their way through their messy and burgeoning sexuality.
Punchy, over-the-top dialogue.
Betrayal melodrama.
Crude violence.
The sudden juxtaposition of the "mundane world" rearing its head.
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So I talked to some non-rpger friends of mine, of the chick persuasion, about playing this game. I pitched it from the True Blood angle.
One thing I'm worried about:
While I love how completely f-ed the people are in the genre, I'm worried about being able to be a fan of them as player characters. I read the first two Twlight books (because I'm comfortable with my masculinity) and I HATED Bella. Same with Sookie Stackhouse and most of the guys in the genre as well. They have no redeemable qualities whatsoever. You've nailed the little codependencies and such of the genre, but in a genre where 90% of the drama comes from how batshit stupid the characters are, the disciple required not to murder them might be overwhelming.
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I'm actually very surprised there's so little True Blood in here. Yeah, ok TB maybe isn't about teenagers, all the characters are supposedly adults. But they
a) fucking behave like teenagers half the time
b) constantly have sex with monsters (vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, witches)
c) overact and secrete melodrama from all of their pores, breathing each other's names out with pained expressions on their faces
d) betray, cheat, trick, lie and generally throw themselves (or are forced into) all kinds of fucked up relationships
e) there's at least one bucket of blood per minute (obbpm)
f) juxtapose their fantasy world problems with real world issues (God hates fangs!)
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Gregor,
True Blood's fingerprints are all over the playtest document! I suggest "backwoods Lousiana" as a location to base the game in, the Maenid plot is the example Fire, and Sookie's relationship with Bill is the basis of one of the Mortal moves.
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that movie that takes place in a school and ends with a cheerleader being the alien queen
The Faculty? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133751/
Ginger Snaps had two sequels. I wouldn't say they're as good as the original, but I would say they're worth seeking out.
And its monsters are all human, but Winter's Bone would be good source material for its sense of place and desperation. "Talkin' just causes witnesses."
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Winter's Bone! What a good thought, Carl.
I'mma watch that again, from a Monsterhearts perspective.
Kaboom is a Monsterhearts play session, absolutely. Also, by my favorite director.
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I've been watching The Vampire Diaries lately, and it may be the most perfect Monster Hearts show I've ever seen. The pacing is crazy ridiculous, with huge things happening and resolving in nearly every episode. It's also a great guide for how you can have really fucking evil characters that are still likable protagonists.
Damon is like Spike with the Evil and Charming dials up to 11 and any sense of camp or tongue-in-cheek removed. He's awesome.