I might think that if one were to object to loss of agency dictated by the Monsterhearts rules, it would be with the Darkest Self. "How come I have to go face the monster alone just because my Chosen had sex with the Mortal? That doesn't make any sense!" Singling out Turn Someone On seems... selective.

For history, I suspect managing the numbers of connections will increase the time to sort it out by at least as much as you will save by reducing it.

I'm planning to steal a technique from Todd Furler, who GM-ed a game I played at BigBadCon last year -- he had us create table tents for our characters, and as history connections were made to someone, that character's tent would get a red tab. The rule was that everyone had to have one red tab before anyone had two (and everyone ends up with two.) So the last player to select in the first round gets "stuck with" some given player for a history connection, but then the selection order reverses and that player becomes the first to select in the second round.

It went pretty smoothly and the management didn't add much time.

There's one situation that still frustrates me sometimes: hunters attacking (with ranged weapons) a monster that lacks a ranged weapon (or ability.) Without the opportunity for exchange of harm, it can't be Kick Some Ass. Unlike the situations in which it makes sense for damage to be automatic without a roll, it seems like ranged attacks are always uncertain and warrant one.

Mostly, I've been calling for Act Under Pressure, but at least once I didn't really like that option. In the Mongolian Death Worm scenario, the Summoned was lugging a water cooler bottle and had climbed on top of a dinosaur skeleton, lying in wait where he hoped a worm might appear (the Hunters had cleverly used the museum's air conditioning to make everything cold except one region to drive the worms there.) A worm did, and he threw. But it wasn't all that tense a situation -- the worm wasn't in position to hurt anyone; it was moving slowly and there would be plenty more opportunities to attack it.

 

any plans to offer this for sale to the missed-the-indiegogo-campaign crowd?

Toward making my own Keeper's Reference, I pored through all the playbooks' weapons and found some inconsistencies and oddities. Some of these I'm guessing were deliberate design choices; some I suspect are errors; some I think were cases of things intended to be distinct weapons but described with the same names, in which case I think distinct names would be helpful (so that, say, a reference sheet can list one "hunting rifle" and know its tags without worrying about the Mundane and the Professional meaning different things by it.) (I'll make up my own resolutions for my table, but I thought some of these might be of interest toward corrections for the second printing.)

9mm's (Flake, Initiate, Monstrous, Professional, Spooky, Wronged, Divine, Snoop) and assault rifles (Wronged, Professional, Hard Case) don't have reload. (I'm assuming this is on purpose to reflect large magazines that aren't liable to run out mid-battle.) 

The Snoop's .32 revolver isn't loud.

The Wronged's assault rifle is close; the Professional's is far; the Hard Case's battered assault rifle is close/far. I'd expect close/far to be appropriate for all of them.

The Hard Case's battered assault rifle doesn't have loud.

The Wronged's and Hard Case's hand cannons don't have reload.

The Mundane's hunting rifle has 3-harm and reload, but the Flake's, Professional's, Spooky's and Wronged's are 2-harm and don't have reload. I'd expect all hunting rifles to have reload.

The Wronged's sawn-off shotgun and the Hard Case's automatic shotgun have reload; others' shotguns (Expert, Flake, Wronged, Monstrous, Professional, Spooky, Hard Case) don't.

The Expert's, Flake's, and Wronged's shotguns have loud; the Monstrous', Professional's, Hard Case's, and Spooky's don't.

The Initiate's Sniper rifle has 3-harm; the Professional's has 4-harm; neither have reload. I'd expect a sniper rifle to have reload (though of course one could have a large magazine or just be an assault rifle with a scope.)

The Hard Case's sub-machine gun has 2-harm and reload; the Professional's has 3-harm and doesn't have reload.

The Wronged's huge sword is messy but the Monstrous' isn't.

The Initiate's big axe is slow, while the Wronged's huge axe isn't. The Mundane's fire axe is 3-harm like the big axe and huge axe, but is neither slow nor heavy.

I'd expect the Divine's trident to be hand/close like the Initiate's and Exile's spears are.

The Monstrous' brass knuckles are quiet (which isn't defined in the weapon tags) and small; the Wronged's is stealthy (which isn't defined in the weapon tags); the Flake's is none of the above.

The Wronged's fighting knife is quiet, which isn't defined in the weapon tags, and which none of the other knives are. What does quiet signify?

The Snoop's pocket knife/multitool is hidden (which isn't defined in the weapon tags); the Mundane's is small. Are hidden, stealthy, and small synonymous?

In general, starting ratings choices add to 3. But of the playbooks in the rules, Snoop, and Exile, the Mundane is the only one for whom all of the sets of ratings add to 3. There are a few 4's (all of the Exile's are 4), and a bunch of 2's.

Is all this deliberate?