This is who you want to fight:

You want the PCs to fight. I don't mean you want to have them swinging fists and firing guns all the time.

But you want the PCs to be getting Strings on one another, forcing one another into ugly situations, fucking one another, making promises to one another, loving one another, betraying one another, and doing horrible things for one another.

The PCs shouldn't ever "team up." They can depend on each other, and they can even do things to save one another... but they should never be... You know what, Spike says it better than I do:

"You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love until it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other until it makes you quiver. But you'll never be friends.

Love isn't brains, children, it's blood. Blood screamin' inside of ya to work its will. I might be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

You never want the PCs to be friends, in that sense that Spike is talking about friends. This is part of the agenda: make sure that they are unaccepted. Blind love is okay. Acceptance isn't.

This is what NPCs are for:

NPCs are there for a few things:

1.) To form PC-NPC-PC triangles.

2.) To force pressure on untenable situations.

3.) To infect the game with interesting conflict, in the hopes that the PCs become host to that infection.

4.) To provide countermeasure. EX: Jake is playing Sylvan, the emotionally-needy Fae, and Carly is playing Lillian, the tough-as-nails Ghoul. They're in a relationship, but it's mostly about Lillian pushing Sylvan around, and meeting her needs at the expense of his. This is awesome! But give it enough time, and the pattern will become stale. Your job, as an MC, is to use NPCs to provide countermeasure and infect the game with new conflicts.

So, you introduce someone that challenge's Lillian's resolve, maybe. How about a werewolf dude... One who's personality is half The Joker (from The Dark Knight) and half Faith (from Buffy: the Vampire Slayer)... out to provoke Lillian and to test her resolve and to force her to see the path of darkness.

Or you introduce someone who sees Sylvan as powerful and unwavering, who looks to Sylvan for salvation. You give him a taste of being a hero, and then you remind him that he's trapped in an abusive relationship with a cruel dead chick. What then?

PCs and NPCs:

So, I'd make some of those expectations and goals clear to your players, at the outset. It is absolutely not their job to get along. It's their job to form dysfunctional, imbalanced relationships with one another and to fight for the acceptance that just straight-up isn't coming.

Now, use NPCs to reflect this dysfunction and to fuel it when it's not coming naturally. That's what NPCs are for. That, and to give interesting options and outs.

NPCs and Strings:

NPCs can take Strings, and people can take Strings on NPCs.

If you're a PC, you can take Strings on NPCs in the normal ways: turning them on, and any other ways that your moves give you.

The MC has an MC move that I forgot to list: "Have an NPC take a String on a PC". Narrate how this happens: a big threat, a turn-on, a magical ritual, helping them out at a crucial moment, etc.

As the MC, you get to just take Strings on them whenever you get to do a move. If the PC is in a relationship with an NPC, use this move all the time.

NPCs don't take Strings on NPCs. Boring.

Playing with Few Players:

If you've only got one player, play something else. This game will not work. I recommend My Supernatural Romance, by Jamie Fristrom. Or S/lay w/Me (despite its title).

If you've got two players, then you've got just enough to play. But you'll want to lean more heavily on NPCs than in bigger games. During "your backstory" in character creation, have each player assign one of their backstory interactions to the other PC, and then invent an NPC to assign any other backstory things to.

Does that make sense? Like, for example, The Vampire has:

someone once offered themselves to you in a moment of weakness. gain 2 Strings on that person.

someone once saved your unlife. give them 1 String.

So, the other PC? Either they offered themselves to you in a moment of weakness, or they once saved your unlife. Choose which. Now, invent a new NPC to assign the other one to. Just a name and a title, like: "Mrs. Beckins, my biology teacher, offered herself to me in a moment of weakness. I cut her down, left her crying, and now use it as blackmail whenever I'm doing poorly in her class." And then the MC writes down "Mrs. Beckins - Biology Teacher / Cougar" on a sheet of paper.

Managing Strings:

So, at some point in the first draft, I suggest using pieces of string to track Strings. That's actually a bad idea, I think. Instead, just write names down and write the number of Strings you have on them there.

So, if you're a PC named Jake, maybe your page will look like this:

STRINGS
Lukas - 3
Windy (NPC) - 2
Molly (NPC) - 1

And if you're the MC, you'll have to keep tallies for each NPC that has Strings, on who they have them on. So, something like this:

WINDY'S GOT STRINGS...
Lukas - 2
Jake - 1

MOLLY'S GOT STRINGS...
Jake - 3

LUCIAN'S GOT STRINGS...
Lukas - 4

So, the MC has 3 different NPC's who have Strings on one or both of the PCs. Make sense?

I was going to wait until I had the complete set and spring 'em all on you at once. But then I got way too impatient. Feedback Desired.

The Vampire:


The Witch:


The Fae:


That the Fae is a shirtless Asian boy delights me.

So, let's say I want to justify an apocalypse where there are no assault rifles, fighter jets and heavy transport ships. I want to de-militarize the world a bit, so that overwhelming force can only be achieved in numbers and skill, not in tech.

What are the possible explanations for this?
Brainstorm with me?

1.) In Dune, there are personal force-fields that prevent motion above a certain speed. Bullets are rejected, but knives & fists pierce it as long as they are moving slow enough.

2.) The Psychic Maelstrom is expressed through metal. To touch metal is to enter its world. Fighter jets, train tracks, cars & guns are all puppets of the maelstrom. It can control them, but it rarely rarely does so - and when it does, it's to build huge geometric constructs of trash, and so on.

True Blood (Season 2 Episode 8 "Timebomb")

Hoyt is a pansy-ass momma's boy. Jessica is a newly-minted vampire.
They've fallen in love. They're both virgins.

And so they make love, and it hurts for Jessica of course, but it's all so perfect.

And then the next night, they start to make love again. Except that Jessica freaks out. It hurts even worse than the first time, and she bleeds again. And then the horror dawns on her.

See, vampires have magical healing powers. And Jessica was vampirized with her hymen intact. Which means it's going to keep on healing, every time.

Jessica weeps blood. Hoyt tries to console her.

In every lock of hair, every furtive glance, every secret note that transfers hands during history class - there is an invitation. An invitation to be fucked with. Not that witchcraft is about fucking with others, but it's hard not to notice how utterly manipulable the world is.

Of course, a good witch like you knows restraint. A good witch turns a blind eye to all those invitations, and doesn't think about how sweet vengeance and control might be. A good witch is above that sort of thing. At least, most of the time.

Look

lithe, guarded, coy, edgy, brooding

calculating eyes, sinister eyes, playful eyes, smirking eyes, deep eyes

vodoun, wiccan, shamanic, dabbler, born gifted, awoken

Stats

Hot +1, Cold +0, Steady +1, Volatile -1, Dark +2
Hot +0, Cold +1, Steady +1, Volatile -1, Dark +2
Hot +2, Cold -1, Steady +0, Volatile  -1, Dark +2
Hot +0, Cold -1, Steady +1, Volatile +1, Dark +2

Basic Moves

You get all the basic moves.

Witch Moves

You automatically get these:

Sympathetic Tokens
You gain power from items representative of a person - a lock of hair, their diary, a shirt they wore in gym class. People won't normally just give you these things - you'll need to steal them, or manipulate people into giving you them.

Every Sympathetic Token counts as a String.

Hex-Caster
You can cast powerful hexes on people. The most common way is to obtain a sympathetic token, and then expend it during a ritual casting - bubbling cauldrons, burning candles, buried symbols and that sort of thing. The second way is by meeting the person's gaze, and chanting at them in tongues. Since they are right there, no sympathetic token is needed. Hexes almost always wear off after a while.

Roll +dark. On a 10+, the hex works great, and can easily be reversed when you want to reverse it. On a 7-9, the hex works, but choose 1: the casting requires a blood offering of 1 harm, the hex has unexpected side effects, trigger your Darkest Self.

You start the game knowing 3 hexes.

And choose one:

Transgressive Magic
When your ritual transgresses your community's standards of morality or sexuality, take +1 forward on your roll.

Charm
Gain +1 Hot (to a maximum of 3).

Coven
You belong to a coven. One of them doesn't like you. When you want the coven to help you with a hex, roll +hot. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2: they do it, you don't have to get mean about it, the mean one doesn't get a string on you, you don't have to help any of them with their hexes.

Hexes

Wither
The person loses all their hair, or their teeth start rotting and falling out, or their period comes now and it comes by the bucket, or their skin gets all sickly yellow and spotty. Whatever the specifics, it's bad.

Ring of Lies
Whenever the person attempts to lie, they begin to hear a piercing ringing noise. Big lies will often make their knees buckle and disorient them. Severe lies can cause harm and even brain damage.

Juxtapose
Two people (other than yourself) switch the number of Strings they have against one another. You'll need a sympathetic token for each, or to chant at both of them.

Illusions
Pick one: snakes and bugs, demonic visages, flashbacks, nonexistent subtext. The hexed sees that thing everywhere. You have no control over the exact images or iterations.

Binding
The person cannot harm others.

Sex Move
After sex, you can take a Sympathetic Token from them. They know about it, and it's cool.

Darkest Self
You hex anyone who slights you. All of your hexes have unexpected side effects, and are more effective than you are comfortable with. To reverse a hex requires that you try to hold it together, if the hex is even reversible at this point. To escape your Darkest Self, you must make peace with the one you have hurt the most.

Equipment

Generally, equipment doesn't mean a damn. You are not your fucking magnum. Generally.

There are two exceptions:
Adults carry +1 when using the most effective equipment for the job.
Teens carry +1 when using the most fitting equipment for the moment.

But astute readers will be in an uproar, surely! NPCs don't roll dice, so what is that adult +1 good for? Here's how: that +1 is fluid. Let's unpack an example:

Sheriff Dawson has wised up to Jason's situation. So when he pursues Jason into that locker room, he tells his men to hang back. And he pulls out his other pistol. The one with the silver bullets, each one sporting a cross crudely carved into its tip. Sheriff Dawson carries +1.

Right, so Sheriff Dawson doesn't roll dice. But he's pursuing Jason with a silver-bullet-and-holy-crosses pistol. So, "Jason, what do you do?" If Jason tries to seize something by force, and Sheriff Dawson is going to bring that gun to bare in process, then Jason is acting at -1. If Jason gets shot and then tries to get away, he's at a -1 because there's silver coursing through his veins.

Sheriff Dawson's +1 can be applied against a roll Jason is making. It can also be applied toward harm that Dawson is doing. That +1 is fluid, and it applies in the instances where Sheriff Dawson's equipment is most effective for the job.

If this sounds familiar, this fluid currency thing, you've read Sorcerer. It's a game about Infernals, only they call them something different.

Alright, teenager example:

Anita ("Needy") is straddling Jennifer, on her four-poster bed. She's got a boxcutter in her right hand, and is struggling to plunge it into Jennifer's heart. Yes, a boxcutter. Needy isn't the tried-and-true murderer here; she grabbed the only thing she could - something crude, and frail, but dangerous nonetheless. Needy couldn't have picked a more fitting murder weapon - it is a mirror into her state. It's poignant, or near fucking close. She carries +1 for it.

If Needy is a PC, then she just applies that +1 to relevant rolls, and to harm done. If she's an NPC, then it works like it does for Sheriff Dawson at this point: that +1 is fluid.

I stole that example from Jennifer's Body, by the way.

Harm

When you do harm to someone, if you're using your bare fists or a glass bottle or you're kicking at their groin, it's 1-harm. If you shove them down a small flight of stairs, or throw a chair at them, or ram their truck off the road but it doesn't flip, it's 1-harm.

1-harm is the kind of stuff that people gossip about in the change room.

If you shoot them with a gun, or you have giant fucking claws, or you get a solid hit to the temple with an aluminum bat, it's 2-harm. If you set fire to their house and they barely escape, maybe having to body-check a smoldering door in the process, it's 2-harm.

2-harm is enough to require medical treatment. It'll get you a couple days off school, if you let people know about it. It'll have the cops at your door, if it's reported.

If it's worse than that, and it's gotta be pretty bad, it's 3-harm.

3-harm is enough to make front page news, and to scare the shit out of the community, and to make small-town nurses queasy. When someone leaves someone else for dead in a movie, that's  3-harm.

Now, remember that adults can add +1 harm if they're using the most effective equipment for the job, and teens can add +1 harm if they're using the most fitting equipment for the moment. This +1 isn't factored into those break-downs above.

Harm & Theme

Monsterhearts isn't a game about vampire hunters sporting holy-water grenades, or special ops teams with assault rifles. It's about fucked-up teenage monsters.

It's important to keep your gun fetish out of your Monsterhearts game. If you're slinging 3-harm around, you better have a good thematic justification for doing so.

AGENDA

Make the players' characters' lives not boring.
Make the players' characters feel unaccepted.
Play to find out what happens.

ALWAYS SAY

What the principles demand (as follow).
What the rules demand.
What your prep demands.
What honesty demands.

THE PRINCIPLES

Blanket the world in darkness.
Address yourself to the characters, not the players.
Make your move, but misdirect.
Make your move, but never speak its name.
Make monsters seem human, and humans seem monstrous.
Give everyone a life.
Acceptance is never absolute (or: Accept people conditionally).
Happiness always comes at someone else's expense.
Always leap to the worst possible conclusion.
Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
Be a fan of the players’ characters.
Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.

YOUR MOVES

Separate them.
Put them together.
Announce off-screen badness.
Announce future badness.
Inflict harm (as established).
Trade harm for harm (as established).
Make them pay a price.
Tell them the possible consequences and ask.
Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost.
Turn their move back on them.
Expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person.
Trigger their Darkest Self.
Herald the Abyss.
After every move: “what do you do?”