Scandari playtest
Prep
Looking through, I saw the amount of paper involved and looked to make some rationalisations:
-   I put the Basic Moves and Other Moves back to back
-   I put a Household sheet on the back of every Character Playbook
-   I shrunk the Battle Moves and War Company and put them on the same sheet
-   On the back of that, I put A5 versions of the Peoples Setup and the People Playbook
-   I also put the Stronghold and the Map back to back

Setup
I gave everyone the Basic Rules sheet and gave one person the Stronghold sheet. They marked a box and then handed it around, everyone marking a box in turn. We did the same with the initial People Playbook as well. This felt lengthy; however, it ensured everyone’s contribution. I’m wondering if there was a quicker way.

Once they had filled in the Stronghold and People (using the Peoples set up, not the People Playbook), they then introduced and agreed an overall vision for themselves. They would be a crew of Finnish mercenaries (the Scandari) who had been hired by a local tribe (the Caspians) to defend them.

I then put all the Character Playbooks in the middle and had them pick up one that interested them and swap it with another if they wished. I then let them go through character creation, including the household. They chose War-Captain, War-Champion, Dragon-Herald and Court Wizard. The Court Wizard wanted to be from a different People (the local tribe who had hired them), so he went about creating that. The Court Wizard had been in someone else’s playtest. The War Captain and Champion were familiar and had played many PbtA games. The Dragon Herald had read AW, but not played it.

I then copied the options they selected from the People Set Up over onto a People Playbook. This may have been unnecessary, but I heeded advice on this forum that just writing down the selected options takes the players time.

As they had selected a Peoples option that meant that there was only one household, they asked whether they should coordinate what the household had in it. I said that they could individually mark what they liked and only worry about coordinating their position in the household. I said that anyone who finished before the rest could start drawing the Stronghold and the Map.

Meanwhile, I looked at their enemies per the Stronghold and filled out two Peoples for them. Considering their character choice, I chose a War-centered People to be the sea raiders and a Ritual People to be the local hostile clans, never conquered.

The War Champion asked about the Enchanted weapon; I referred them to the Enchantments moves and asked them to pick something appropriate. They selected Blood Thirst.

As they finished, I handed around the Basic Moves and Other Moves and asked them to think of what Season Move they would start off with. I looked through their characters and made a note of the significant Rights they had chosen, thinking of what kind of adventure their choices suggested.

When they were all finished, they introduced their characters and I jotted down a question for each of their characters based on their Rights and their character description.
My questions were:
-   To the War-Captain: You’ve heard reports of the sea-raiders nearby, what have you been doing to improve the military standing of the local tribe?
-   To the War-Champion: What injustice has occurred that is troubling you?
-   To the Dragon-Herald: You've sensed something unnatural in the nearby hostile clan, what is it?
-   To the Court Wizard: What celebration are you planning to help spread your faith to the local people and the mercenaries?
I took a short break and I asked them to discuss how the characters related to each other and also think about the answer to my questions.

When I came back, they replied:
-   The War-Captain: I've improved the military standing of the local tribe (the Caspians) by having their fisherman watch for the sea-raiders (the Tridents)
-   To the War-Champion: In our battle with the local hostile tribe (the Nandals), after we defeated them we took their champion as prisoner. We intend to sacrifice him. I consider this unjust and have become friends with the Nandal champion.
-   To the Dragon-Herald: Our Caspian fishermen have seen evidence of dark magic around the turbulent waters to the south of the Isle of Nand, drawing ships into it.
-   To the Court Wizard: I am planning the celebration of the pre-anniversary of the death of my god (the Hostess). It is known as the Hostess's Wake. I have sent out invitations to all the tribes across the sea.

I then asked for their season moves. The Herald spent the season celebrating the holy rites by inaugurating a new rite of swimming from the island to a rock he calls the Dragon's Foot. The Captain had been improving the Scandari's ship by making it faster. The Champion had been out hunting with the prisoner. The Wizard spent the season travelling with the invites and came back with news that the Tridents were mutineers from the Latin navy and that there was a bounty on their heads.

Game
I started the game with the Hostess's Wake and asking which character was there (only the Herald wasn't, deciding he was on the beach). The Nandal headwoman tried to entreat with the Captain for the prisoner (her son), but the Captain was resolute. A Nandal warrior challenged the Champion for the life of the prisoner and they fought in single combat (this was done in a single roll). The Champion emerged unscathed (being better armed and armoured) and the Nandal was dragged off and tied to the blood-tree.

Meanwhile, the Herald saw a rowing boat pull up on the beach and recognised two Tridents step out, saying that they've been invited to the Wake. The Herald leads them to the party in time to witness the single combat. They see the fight and, subsequently, the Nandal headwoman take the life of her dying, captured warrior tied to the tree. The Herald leads the Scandari in a rite around the sacrifice of this warrior while the Nandals and Tridents slipped away.

The PCs argued between themselves as to whether the defeated challenger was a worthy sacrifice for the blood-tree and also what would be done with the prisoner. (This would be an ongoing point of contention between the three Scandari PCs.) The Herald consults the other world and has a vision that sacrificing the (less worthy) defeated challenger in place of the (more worthy) prisoner will cause the tree to die.

That night, the Wizard steps out of her earthly life to investigate the Island of Nand, but discovers little apart from that a Latin ship is pulled up there. She's not clear whether it is a Trident ship or a Latin ship looking for the mutineers.

The Captain, Champion and Herald agree that they will go hunting for the Trident ship and they will take the prisoner with them as a bondsman warrior.

The Champion awakes in the middle of the night to see a 'shade' detach from the blood-tree and start floating towards the Scandari's treasury. The Champion raises the alarm and, after some failed attempts, the Wizard is able to make it depart and send it fleeing back to the tree where the Captain hits it with a fallen branch. The spirit disperses.

The next morning, the Champion talks to the prisoner and the prisoner agrees to join them to fight the Tridents (but not his own kind).

The leader of the Tridents visits the Herald on Dragons Foot and asks what is so special about the prisoner. He attempts to bribe the Herald with Nandal amber jewellery (given in trade, not taken in raiding) and reveals that he's been paid to kill the prisoner.

The Captain musters his warriors successfully.

The Wizard leaves their body and talks with the Nandal headwoman who is back on the Isle of Nand. The headwoman reveals that the Nandals have hired the Tridents in the same manner that the Caspians hired the Scandari to protect them.

The Wizard tries to do the same with the Caspian fishermen, but only a few agree. They set sail for the Isle of Nand. The Captain seeks to arrive at dusk, sight the Trident ship, and then attack in darkness.

The two warbands clash, with neither having an advantage. The Tridents focus all their harm upon attacking the bondsman prisoner, however, so - while both sides take equal harm - the Scandari are unscratched, the Tridents are butchered and flee, and the bondsman prisoner is dead. (This combat takes two rounds, at the end of the second round, even though they've been cut off, throw the Scandari into disorder (by torching their ship), allowing the Tridents to flee while the Scandari reorganise.

The Captain looks around for a surviving Trident to interrogate, but could find none. He goes through the Nandal village but they've all cleared out and gone into the hills. He finds a few too old to go with them, but when he tries to interrogate one the old man takes his own life rather than betray his family. The Champion chases after the fleeing Tridents, but encounters the headwoman. The headwoman reveals that she has the ability to raise the dead and warns the Champion that the Tridents - for fulfilling their end of the bargain - are now under the protection of the Nandals and their dead. The shade of the bondsman prisoner appears and tells the Champion to depart.

Victorious, yet thwarted, the Scandari reluctantly leave and return to their home on Caspia.

Post-game
There was general agreement amongst the players that they'd enjoyed the game. I asked them to phrase their feedback in terms of stuff they felt the absence of rather than suggesting solutions:
- One said that he felt it was better at set up than resolution
- One said he liked the language
- Everyone agreed that they wanted to have individual characters to have greater involvement in battle and influence over the end result. This was particularly felt by the Champion who, despite being their fiercest warrior, their player had nothing to do in the battle as the Captain was rolling all the dice.
- One said that he felt it didn't feel smooth moving between individual acts and group acts
- Several said that they felt the absence of a 'threaten'/'awe'/'impose your will' kind of move. They were playing fierce and violent warriors, and so - when threatening an enemy - they didn't feel that 'Win someone over' fit the bill.

My thoughts
From my perspective as MC, not being familiar with AW (though I am with a couple of hacks), I was cautious before getting into this game - even running my own mini-game by myself to try out the battle moves. Once I did this, though, I felt I understood how it fit together. There is a lot of paper and stuff to fill in as part of set-up. I know that this isn't unusual for AW where you typically have a full session to create the world, but for a one-shot you don't have that luxury.

The set-up took about an hour, which is about the same as a Monsterhearts game when explaining it to folk who haven't played it before. The time that you lose with all the household stuff and map drawing, you probably make up with the lack of strings and backstories.

All the basic moves got used at least once bar Undertake Great Labor (which one person felt a little undefined, but I felt was fine as a catch-all for physical non-violent tests) and Call on Another's Aid.

There is obviously the question left of what to do with bounties.

The Captain had obviously put some thought into the tactics of their approach to the Tridents and - had I agreed that his approach was a good idea - I felt the absence of any way to mechanically reward him. Is there any option for pre-battle maneouvre before on side leads an attach here?

I also wondered what would have happened had I not focused the Tridents on the prisoner, this would have resulted in both sides being butchered in two rounds. With the PCs having no source of new recruits (within this particular session's setting), I wonder what that would have done to their enthusiasm to playing on.

In terms of prep, I didn't do any content prep. I felt fine reading the rights they'd chosen to get an idea for a question, then using their answers (and the enemies they selected) as a basis to improvise the whole adventure.

I will be offering it again in a couple of weeks time at a player's request, however I'm not sure where this game will fit in my future. My gaming is almost exclusively made up of one-shots, whereas AWDA feels like a game that should take a few sessions to get to the good stuff. Additionally, I'm not sure that I find anything particularly compelling in the AWDA setting. I enjoy the more unusual aspects like the rights and the battle, season and people moves, but I'm not clear on how this is pushing me to tell a different sort of story. I'll read some of the other playtests to see what kind of stories others have come up with.

I really like the examples of Hard Moves in the MH rulebook, but I would be really interested in more (either from actual play or just proposed). I've seen a couple of threads around for AW for people to post examples of Hard Moves or Bargains they have seen or would suggest for certain situations. As one who can sometimes seize up creatively in the moment and just settle for taking a string, I would find it useful to have something similar for Monsterhearts  (if one already exists, please just point me at it!) where we can post real examples or suggest ideas for particular combinations of Move/Hard Move.
- Separate them.
- Put them together.
- Announce off-screen badness.
- Announce future badness.
- Inflict harm (as established).
- Make them pay a price.
- Tell them the possible consequences and ask.
- Leap to the worst possible conclusion.
- Turn their move back on them.
- Expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person.
- Take a String on someone.
- Trigger their Darkest Self.
- Herald the abyss.

Here are some examples from me:

Separate them.
Turn someone on - At a night-time beach party, the target pulls the PC away from the campfire and into the dark water.
Lash out physically - In a midst of a fight, a part of the floor collapses, separating the PC from their allies.

Put them together.
Turn someone on - As the PC makes their move, bring in the rival for the target's affections (even better if the rival's a PC as well).

Tell them the possible consequences and ask.
Turn someone on - Have the target demand a dangerous favour in return, such as theft or breaking and entering into the school at night.
Run away - (In the case of a Ghoul) The monster has your arm in a tight grip, do you still want to run away?

Announce future badness
Shut someone down - The target vows revenge.

Turn their move back on them
Turn someone on - The target develops a stalker-like level of interest.
Shut someone down - The attack is so below the belt that bystanders leap to the target's defence.

Expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person.
Lash out physically - A disguised or transformed PC is knocked unconscious or otherwise unmasked, allowing the target to see their true identity.

Herald the abyss.
Run away - The PC runs away physically, but ends up running into their own mind.
Turn someone on - The abyss takes control of the target.

We played this at London Indiemeet to coincide with the MH release party in May, but I just finished writing up the last part. I figured I would cross-post it here as perhaps the best repository of MH AP.

Having picked skins and talked through the set-up, we decided we were in Purgatory, Nebraska: a medium-sized mid-west town with farmers, cattle ranchers, religious types, a biker gang and, of course, a high school containing:
- Raksha Jones the Chosen, who had moved to Purgatory because her father had taken a job there, and quickly adopted Scoobies Tracy and Brad.
- Eva Tinman the Hollow, an abandoned child in a foster home and also a genetically engineered construct from some illegal or secret scientific project.
- Chase the Werewolf, a scruffy trailer trash teenager from a broken home who turns into a wolf but doesn’t know why.
- Georgia the Ghoul, a love hungry goth resurrected from a car crash that killed her boyfriend.
- Logan the Infernal, an addict, chasing the latest high who’d done a deal with a Trickster demi-god (though what the Trickster got out of it was never really that clear).

Going through the backstory, we were found ourselves in quite a nice, almost Fiasco-style, starting position with everyone connected to two of the other players. Raksha the Chosen was idolised by Eva the Hollow who follows her around, copying what she wears and how she behaves. Eva was in turn stalked by Chase the Werewolf because she ‘smells wrong’. Chase meanwhile already sniffed out Georgia the Ghoul who has developed a pseudo-brother/sister relationship with him because he’s unwilling to give her the physical love she craves. Georgia meanwhile has a bone to pick with Logan the Infernal because he sold her boyfriend the bad batch which led to the car crash that killed her. Logan meanwhile is running out of bones to be picked on as he has been increasingly pissing off every single ne’er-do-well in the town, however Raksha the Chosen keeps dragging his sorry ass out of trouble because she’s convinced that he can be saved.

The story kicked off with Logan hanging out in the biker bar at the edge of town and getting himself into trouble blood-gambling with the local vamp gang. Nathaniel, Aloysius and Trevor the vamps round on him and it turns out that Logan’s in debt, pints and pints of debt.

Just as they start roughing him up, Raksha the Chosen appears on the scene (reasoning that this was just the sort of place that she’d go looking for trouble) and starts laying the smacketh down on the vamps and getting a smack back in return. Pulling Logan from the bar, she makes another attempt to get Logan on the straight and narrow. He promises he’ll keep his nose clean in the future, then steals one of the biker’s bikes and races off.

Eva the Hollow, meanwhile, has been carrying on her daily routine of stalking Raksha. Following her through a car-park, however, Eva discovers that she’s been followed herself as Chase the Werewolf decides enough is enough and goes and confronts her. Chase demands to know who she is, what she is, because he knows she doesn’t smell right. Eva, not knowing how to lie, responds truthfully that she’s Eva. Eva drags Chase into a nearby café run by Joe who is a former minor league baseball player who turned to an unsuccessful career in armed robber (yes, that was Eva’s player’s initial description of some random café owner). Chase continues to pressure Eva as to her nature and it was then that we discovered that, not only did Eva not know how to lie, she also didn’t know how to shut up!

(Eva, with her blank stare and child-like, innocent, questioning monotonic voice) “Chase, why are you getting angry?”
“I’m not getting angry!”
“Yes, you are. Why are you so angry all the time? Is it because you live in a trailer and you smell pretty bad and all your clothes are really old and torn? Is it because your father ran away when you were only a baby and now you’ve got a step-father who hits you and because your mother sleeps with a lot of other men and because you’re not very smart and so you probably won’t graduate from high school and that means you won’t get a job and have to live on the streets and let old men do things to you in alleyways so that you can get money to eat-”

At this point, Chase lost it a little and gave Eva a shove to shut her up. Eva stays inhumanly rigid as she falls, hitting the ground perfectly flat and giving Chase another hint as to her true nature. Joe doesn’t like to see a girl being roughed up and starts on at Chase, but Chase pulls up his hoodie and is out of there.

Stomping away, Chase picks up a familiar scent, that of a lust-filled Georgia the Ghoul. He traces it to the backyard of the biker bar where Georgia has picked up Harry the Biker and is just about to make his solar year. Already on edge, Chase squares up to Harry. “I hope you brought protection.” But then tries (and fails miserably) to shut Georgia down or manipulate Harry away. He reminds Harry that she’s underage, which makes him pause for thought, but a quick Turn On roll from Georgia dispels any such concerns. Harry mocks the teenage Chase and he and Georgia head into the cornfield out back. Chase loses it, his temper lost, he transforms into his Darkest Self and launches himself on Harry. Harry, horrified by the teen’s transmutation into a wolf-monster is defenceless, however Georgia is not. She went Dark, grabbed a rock and smacked it over the back of Dark-Chase’s head.

Dark-Chase left the terrified Harry and turned on Dark-Georgia. During set-up, we’d agreed that the player wouldn’t have control of Chase as his Darkest Self and so his reaction to Dark-Georgia was left to the group. He was either going to lay into Dark-Georgia or _lay into_ her. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a close call. We drew a veil at that point, noting only that Harry the Biker was not having a good day. Having thought he was going to get lucky with a goth nymphette walking on the wild side, he ended up not only being forced to witness some punk teenager transforming into a wolf-monster, but that same wolf-monster and goth nymphette going at it hammer and tongs in a bestialphilic/necrophilic/quasi-incestuous congress until both their Darkest Selves were exhausted. And to top it all off, the only reason he was still at that bar was because earlier his bike had been stolen by some junkie kid. And this was just the third scene.

Cue the next day at school. Eva the Hollow, with a shiner from her fall the day before, was at the front of the class, freaking out the Mormon kid sitting beside her. The rest of the cast made up the back row, with Raksha the Chosen typically late, Logan the Infernal listening to his ipod and clicking his pen incessantly and, in the corner, Georgia the Ghoul cosying up to the extremely uncomfortable Chase the Werewolf who still had cornstalks in his clothes. Chase already hated his werewolf side, now he hated what it had made him do with someone who he really wasn’t into. And what made it worse was their respective Sex Moves that had a) had given Georgia the ‘sex with Chase’ hunger and b) given Chase a spirit connection with her so that as soon as she did hump someone else he’d know all about it.

Recess came and Georgia got bustled off to the washroom by the class alpha-girl who wanted Chase for herself. Meanwhile, who should appear at the school, but Harry the Biker in the company of two police officers on the quest to find the kid who stole his bike (which, as it turns out, Logan has left in the school parking lot). Turns out that in Purgatory, Nebraska, the bikers are so outgunned by the other nasties around the place that they feel perfectly at ease calling in the police to settle their disputes (and the police are so underworked that they’ll actually do something about it). Harry and the cops come into the classroom and he fingers Logan for stealing his bike, then he sees Chase, his heart freezes and he stammers out that he was involved too.

One of the cops knows Chase well and figures him guilty of something. Logan denies everything, Chase refuses to defend himself. Eva rises to his defence however saying completely sincerely “Chase can’t have stolen the bike because when it was being stolen he was hitting me!” and points to her black eye.

The cop’s eyebrows shoot up, the cuffs go on, and Logan and Chase are hauled away. Eva’s perplexed as to why her statement didn’t clear everything up and walks out of school after Harry the Biker, determined to get him to tell the truth.

Georgia the Ghoul meanwhile returns from her altercation with the alpha-girl in the washroom to discover Logan and, more-importantly, Chase gone. She feels the hunger and needs Chase, preferably Dark-Chase, back again. She’s not confident of her ability to flirt her way into the police station’s holding cells however, so she figures she needs some help from Raksha the Chosen. Raksha doesn’t play ball. Tired of getting Logan out of supernatural trouble, she’s more than content to let him cool his heels for a while. Georgia goes after the Scoobies instead, figuring if they get in trouble Raksha’s going to come after them. Tracy’s a no-go, unwilling to hack into the police computer and get Chase released. Brad the idiot, however, is far more pliable.

Eva the Hollow, having calmly absconded from school, follows Harry the Biker into a shooting range where he’s meeting up with his old buddy Joe to blow off some guns and some steam. Eva walks right down the alleys, taps Joe on the shoulder and convinces him to let her have a private word with Harry. Harry ignores her until she picks up Joe’s pistol and, without looking away from Harry, unloads the clip into the target in a perfect vertical line. This further weirdness gets Harry’s attention and, when he tries to threaten her, she calls immediately for Joe who returns, ready to defend her. Harry looks at Eva’s shooting and crumbles, and Eva leads him out of the range and back towards the police station.

Not long after, Tracy the Scoobie alerts Raksha to the fact that Georgia and Brad the Idiot are heading down to the cop shop. Sighing, Raksha decides to go after them.

And now, everyone’s converging on the police station to get Chase (and maybe also Logan) out of hokie. Of course, right then, another power intervened…