So it feels kind of weird posting in this thread since the game is probably going to be Primetime Adventures and not Monsterhearts. But I don't really know where else to go and you guys have been really helpful so far.

I need a place to actually find players. A play-by-post roleplay forum, preferably one that can grok the modern supernatural style without being irritating and pretentious about it. I realize that's kind of subjective but the basic requirements of "interested in games which are not very rules-heavy or dungeon crawl-y" and the unrelated but equally important "not elitist jerks" will hopefully be something people around here are already familiar with. You all seem pretty chill to me.

It's really weird that you single this out as a problem for male characters, because it's not like female characters can't be forced to go lesbian at a moment's notice in the exact same way.  The fact that you keep coming around to how its males being turned on by the same sex, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that lesbians are also a thing and also supported by game mechanics, suggests to me that yeah it's just latent homophobia, so get over it.

There isn't really a ton of loss of player agency, either.  Your character is turned on by something, but it's up to you what they do with that information.  Maybe they snap out of it a few minutes later and it's just a phase.  Maybe they're actually full on gay.  Whatever's cool with you.

Just from having read it, it seems to me like there's basically two ways to play Monsterhearts: Bella and Buffy.

The Bella method involves the supernatural monsters getting into teen drama with one another, and the supernatural world at large may as well not exist.  The local Camarilla knock-offs might show up to make trouble now and then, but even so only to exacerbate existing drama with the main cast.  The main cast aren't expected to actually care if villains are just doing villain stuff in the next town over.

The Buffy method involves using immediate physical threats as either a representation of, setup for, or even just exacerbation of existing drama (the Master, Spike, and Drusilla are all just jerks who eat people and don't have any specific ties to teen problems, whereas monsters of the week tend to be a monstrous personification of like nosy parents or something).  The protagonists are expected to know and care about the supernatural world, and in fact the total screen time given to fighting or planning to fight supernatural beasties dwarfs that of the teen drama they're emulating/exacerbating.  Sometimes the personal drama of the episode revolves around things that aren't actually common teen problems, like if you're prophesied to give your life to kill some dark lord or if your friends in the A/V club get murdered by a bunch of vampires.  Buffy wrings some really good scenes out of the emotional fallout of those two things exactly at the end of its first season, but for the life of me I can't figure out what they'd be a metaphor for.

I don't actually know if you can do the second one very well with a Monsterhearts game, though.  Even if you can't, I'm not sure if there's another system that would do it better.  What do you do when you have an interesting setting and no system to run it with?

I think what is alluded to is that you have everything mapped out, meaning you have basically already told the story.

It occurred to me that this might be what he was thinking, but I've been pretty explicit that this isn't what I'm doing, so I don't know why he would think that.  It seems to have been a common reaction, but I'm not sure why (and I don't mean that in a "you plebians can't understand my genius" kind of way, just genuinely uncertain what made it seem like that).  I don't have a whole plot.  I have five factions, a bunch of interesting (hopefully) personalities spread out between them, and an assortment of alliances of convenience, old grudges, and vengeance pacts that give all of them reason to be suspicious of and/or outright hate one another.  Then I rig two of them to go to war sometime during the first or maybe second session before the party is heavily involved.  With the setup I've got, that war should spiral outwards to consume the entire city.  Unless the party goes out of their way to stop it from doing so, but it's unlikely that the kind of parties Monsterhearts creates would put forth a ton of effort to do that.

When I was talking about season length, I didn't say I had like 25 adventures planned or whatever.  I said it was unlikely that the party could resolve a situation with this many moving parts in 5-7 sessions.  When I was introducing the concept, I explicitly said I wanted to light the fuse and then watch what happens.  When I talk about themes and etc., I'm talking about stuff the ~30 major NPCs seeded throughout the city are set up to exploit and provoke from players, and really I don't know how else you could carry a theme except on characters so I'm not sure if that even needs to be said, but whatever.  A lot of people seemed to have walked away thinking I have a whole plot thing, but what I've got is a setting, which is why the word "plot" never once appeared in my opening post (EDIT: No, wait, it did show up once, but not in the context of my having made one).

Besides, how involved are teenagers going to be? Who's going to take them seriously?

If you know Jack can turn into a giant wolf monster and you really wish a few packs of vampires were more authentically dead than they currently are, you're going to want to point Jack at those vampires and pull the trigger on his darkest self if you can.  Sure, no one's going to care about the party's opinions on grand strategy or politics or whatever, but I'm going to guess that the party is going to want to make them care after the first time one of their buddies from home room gets eaten alive by a vengeful ghoul who doesn't want to risk a straight fight with another monster.

Have you ever had a certain setup, a situation, a massive fictional powder keg you want to plant a party on, light the fuse, and see what happens?  Most GMs probably get that occasionally.  I have been sitting on one such idea for about two years now because I didn't know what system to run it with.  When I read Monsterhearts, it occurred to me that running this setup with it would be a lot of fun.  But I'm still uncertain as to whether Monsterhearts is the right system to run this with.

While Monsterhearts leads to almost exactly the creation of the kinds of characters I'd like to see in the game (specifically, characters who have lots of teenaged angst, whose monstrousness is more than just a bunch of superpowers and a funny hat, and who have interpersonal relationships that are complicated and often strained), it also revolves around games whose plots are both short and very heavily focused on high school pettiness.  The first one is unambiguously a problem, in that the setting I've created is a large city with five different supernatural factions trying to control it, and that takes a lot of time to set up and then resolve unless you are extremely optimistic about how fast a group of dysfunctional teenagers with horror powers can end a shadow war.

I'm not sure if the second one is a problem or not.  On the one hand, growing out of the kind of pettiness that dominates both high school and vampire politics is an extremely fitting theme for the setup I've got.  On the other hand, you'd think it'd be hard to care about what Tricia said about Dess when the same basic thing is happening in supernatural politics except that executions are on the table.  You'd think a major theme of the first arc of the game would be a loss of innocence, a sudden realization that high school means jack shit and the world is full of much more important (and terrifying) conflicts, with much higher stakes, and Monsterhearts doesn't seem equipped to handle that realization at all.  I haven't actually played the game yet, so I can't say for certain, but I am worried I may end up with a major theme of my setting running in the exact opposite direction of a major theme of the system.

The end result of this being 1) do you think Monsterhearts would work for a game in which characters are to some extent involved in supernatural politics as well as being in high school and 2) if so do you think maybe you'd like to play in it?  I don't know if it would be a live thing or a play-by-post thing if we did actually run a game, but I'll worry more about that once I've gotten a good idea whether or not I have a runnable campaign at all.  I still don't know what I'm going to do about season length.  Would delaying advancements a lot kill the pacing?

I've got a couple I posted a while back, suppose I may as well repost them here.  Worth noting that my Hobgoblins are much more elite than the norm, and you might want to nerf them a bit if you want standard fantasy Hobgoblins.

Hobgoblins

Hobgoblin, Group, Organized, Intelligent, Cautious
Longsword (d8 damage), 6 HP, 3 Armor
Close

Instinct: Follow orders

Hobgoblins are brutal conquistadors, preying on weak nations nearby for fresh supplies of slave labor and natural resources.  The fact that they form organized, self-sustaining nations means you can establish surprisingly cordial trade relations, sure, but have you considered the drawbacks of combining a goblin's cruelty with a human's capability for strategy and logistics, not to mention their taste for imperialism?

-Volley with longbows from a safe distance
-Form a defensive formation with allies and advance into unconquered territory
-Make a tactical retreat, and return with reinforcements

Hobgoblin Champion, Solitary, Organized, Intelligent, Messy
Axe or Longsword (2d10+2*b damage, 2 piercing), 16 HP, 2 Armor
Close

Instinct: Seek glory in battle

Skilled warriors trained with an almost fanatical desire to win glory in battle, but no less capable of working within the strictly organized Hobgoblin warbands, these champions are fearsome opponents on the battlefield, an elite class that often come to receive more respect from their underlings than the officers who actually lead the armies.

-Charge heedlessly into battle
-Cleave through multiple opponents at once

Hobgoblin officer, Solitary, Organized, Intelligent, Cautious
Longsword (d10 damage), 12 HP, 3 Armor

Instinct: To conquer

Someone's got to be on top of the hierarchy.

-Direct minions
-Sack vulnerable steadings

Bubgear, Group, Intelligent, Large, Forceful, Messy
Mace (d8+3 damage, 1 Piercing), 10 HP, 1 Armor
Close, Reach

Instinct: To bully weaker creatures

Rarely less than 8-feet tall, these creatures are what happens when you crossbreed goblins with ogres.  Though not quite as tall as their ogrish ancestors, they are more than willing to demonstrate that they are nonetheless quite capable of caving in the skull of anyone who should irritate them.

-Hurl boulders
-Accept tribute from lackeys

Demons and Devils

Succubus, Solitary, Stealthy, Devious, Intelligent, Planar
Barbed wings (d6 damage), 12 HP
Close

Special Qualities: Wings

If you don't know the gist of this one, you're probably too young anyway.  Steals your soul with a kiss, never seems to be wearing more than about a yard of fabric, etc. etc.

Instinct: To steal the souls of mortals

-Seduce a mortal
-Steal life and energy with a kiss
-Turn friends and allies against one another

Marilith, Solitary, Large, Messy, Intelligent, Cautious, Planar
Scimitars (2d10*b+3 damage, 2 Piercing), 16 HP, 2 Armor
Close, Reach

Special Qualities: Six-armed

Instinct: To slaughter the enemies of Hell

One of the most fearsome fiends the lower planes have yet produced, bottom half of a snake, top half of a woman, nearly ten feet tall all told, and with six arms, each wielding a hell-forged scimitar of steel that carves through armor like it were made of paper.  And worse, they're rarely caught without a posse of fiendish followers or cultists mad enough to summon the thing...

-Attack with multiple weapons
-Conjure Hellfire
-Direct fiendish minions

Balor, Solitary, Huge, Magical, Forceful, Intelligent, Planar, Terrifying
Sword of flame (2d10*b+7 damage, ignores armor), 20 HP, 4 Armor
Reach

Special Qualities: Wings, wreathed in flame

Instinct: To bring torment and despair to mortals

Demonic generals wreathed in fire and fueled by nothing but hate and the consumed souls of the innocent, the Balors are the most terrifying creatures ever to emerge from the pits of Hell.  Even to draw near to them is to risk your skin being melted off by the searing heat and raw evil that radiates from them at all times.

-Consume those nearby with overwhelming aura of evil and terror
-Direct the armies of Hell
-Conjure Hellfire
-Manipulate mortals into summoning itself or its minions into the Material Plane

Bearded Devil, Group, Large, Intelligent, Planar, Messy, Organized
Vicious spear (2d8*b+3 damage, 2 piercing), 10 HP, 2 Armor
Close, Reach

Instinct: To destroy the enemies of the lower planes

The feared shock troopers of the lower planes, powerful demons and devils are often accompanied by a squad of these creatures as bodyguards.

-Charge the enemy with spears leveled
-Intimidate mortals into offering tribute or summoning allies

Erinyes, Solitary, Intelligent, Planar, Messy
Burning longsword (2d10*b+2 damage, 3 Piercing), 12 HP, 5 Armor
Close

Special Qualities: Wings

Instinct: To conquer the enemies of Hell

These angels of Hell are some of the highest ranking officers in the hierarchies of the lower planes.  Though typically encountered alone (or at least, not with others of their own kind), demonic generals like Balors will often have two or three on hand as bodyguards and advisors.

-Conjure Hellfire
-Cleave through multiple enemies in one fell sweep of her sword
-Direct fiendish minions

I'm just curious here, since I seriously doubt I'll ever actually go past level 10.  With the rules in their current state, though, what level you are doesn't seem to make a huge difference.  Monsters don't have levels, your HP doesn't increase when you level up (unless you add Constitution, in which case it goes up by one), and your stats are capped at 18.  Given that, how much of a difference would it make if you went ahead and leveled up past 10?  You should still have some advanced moves left over to take, and you can keep on getting new stat points until somewhere around level 30.  You won't be getting any new spells, but you will be able to prepare more of them.  This'll break down eventually, but I'm pretty sure you could go to around level 13 or 14 without having to change anything.

Thoughts?

I'm just concerned with whether or not that can work out at all when you don't know the group in advance.  I can know what kind of game I'm getting into with an established group just from the people who are playing it, but I don't know you guys.