Hi Mike,

I took Monster of the Week for another spin with my Tuesday night group last week. I think the results were a lot better than last time, but still patchy.


THE MYSTERY CLOCK

You might remember from my previous thread that I found pacing the story to be really problematic. In my attempts to emulate what you see a show like Buffy or Supernatural, I think we covered about 7 to 10 minutes of TV in a 2 1/2 hour session.

In this session I tried using a countdown clock to pace out the mystery. I found this effective, but there were still a few pacing problems and I think I can fine-tune it.

What I did was come up with a fairly generic mystery: a vampire travelling from town to town creating baby vampires. To start the session off, I created some simple story beats and put them around the countdown clock:

3 o'clock: Turn kid 1.
6 o'clock: Turn kid 2.
9 o'clock: Turn kid 3.
12 o'clock: Leave town.

I did one thing wrong and one thing right here.

The thing I did right was to adjust and refine the story beats as the game progressed. For instance, due to the way the hunters investigated I changed the story beat for six o'clock from 'turn kid two' to 'vampire confronts the character who's chosen to investigate the haunted house all by themselves'.

I think that flexibility and adaptiveness to the story as it's proceeding makes for a better mystery.

The thing I did wrong was to divide the countdown clock into 12 segments, one for each hour. I was using rules for battles as in Apocalypse World, giving each character the opportunity to make at least one move before advancing the clock to the next segment. In practice this made the story very slow (but I think a twelve segment countdown clock would be fine for a three or four hour game).

We talked about this by e-mail, but the principles I used to advance the countdown clock to the next segment were:

• Character makes an investigative move
• Character has an opportunity to protect someone and doesn't
• Character makes a move and misses
• Follow the fiction - announced off-screen badness as the monster does something to advance their plan
• Follow the fiction - the characters aren't doing anything particularly proactive or exciting.

Next session, I think I will use a countdown clock similar to the battle clock. From 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock, each quadrant will have just one segment. I'll divide the quadrant from six o'clock to 9 o'clock into two segments, and I will divide the final quadrant into three segments.


HISTORY

Jenni mentioned how in previous versions of Monster of the Week, she felt it was easy for the hunters to help each other. Hopefully she will drop in and talk more about that.

What her comment triggered for me was the idea of using History differently from the way it's used in Apocalypse World.

You could adjust History in a way that's similar to fan-mail in Primetime Adventures, so that history is awarded more times during a session (rather than just at its end) and there's the possibility of earning advances more frequently. In terms of genre emulation, I think this would (a) quickly turn the characters into badass monster hunters, and (b) reflects the way characters swing between betrayals and loyalty, love and rivalry in these shows.

Of course the rules for adjusting History would need to be carefully considered in order to create a sense of teamwork and rivalry.


OTHER THINGS

There might be something missing from the 'Investigate a Mystery' or 'Read a bad situation' move: quite often in these shows the monster hunters can tell that person is somehow' off' or wrong. I'm not sure which move reflects that.

It might be an idea to have a table of possible weaknesses for monsters, for the Keeper to create a mystery in a hurry.

We introduced a Mundane character this session, who was connected to one of the other characters but didn't know they were monster hunters. This created a bunch of good character scenes but also slowed down the pacing of the investigation a bit. I think that's fine for ongoing games, but you might want to consider a 'No Origin Stories' piece of advice for Keepers who are running one shots. Basically: just assume that it's episode two of the TV series and that everybody knows what's what.



Hope that's useful, Mike. The next session should be good - we didn't finish the mystery, and there are a lot of interesting plot hooks that have been left dangling.

So I'm starting to prep fires for the second session of my Monsterhearts game. (Fires are like Fronts in Apocalypse World, a way to present conflicts, antagonism and adversity to the characters.)

Jenni, Emma, Ellen: you can read this post, but there will be spoilers from the second post onwards!

Before doing anything, I decided to draw up a relationship map of all the characters and the NPCs they've met:

Monsterhearts relationship map

The first thing I noticed through doing this is that I hadn't finished determining the Wants and Methods for each of the NPCs. Rather than doing that all at once before writing up the fires, I've decided to wait and figure out each NPC as they get involved in a fire.

Hi Joe,

So we played today. I was MCing (I've played about 10 sessions of Apocalypse World, and read the main AW rules about 3 times). Emma, Jenni and Ellen were playing. Emma's played one session of AW; I don't think Jenni or Ellen had any prior experience with the system.

The session was pretty much a success. A story emerged pretty naturally out of asking provocative questions, asking what do you do, and (especially) picking up on the players' cues from what they were saying and the moves they chose. As an example of that, Ellen chose to play a Fay, which immediately brought the idea of promises into play. Not only did I write that down, I actually added it to my list of MC moves ('Make a promise to the Fay').

Ellen's Fay was also firmly committed to having sex with humans while she was in the mortal realm; after the third time she mentioned that, I started using that as a filter for describing things to her and deciding on other people's reactions. By about 2/3rds of the way through our session, she'd built up a little coterie of people who were starting to get obsessed with her, which almost turned into a dangerous mob at one point.

All three of the players found it easy to stay in-character, and said that calling for conflicts didn't really break them out of that. It was pretty fun to see, by the end of the session, Jenni say some in-character dialogue as her Mortal (to try and get away from her unbearably sympathetic parents), and then just look at me - and that look told everyone at the table that she wanted her Mortal to shut his parents down.

Hmmm. Jenni (who's a huge fan of the genre) also felt like there was a move missing from the Mortal. Something to do with 'Curiousity', finding out secrets, figuring out what's really going on. She said that was a huge part of the literature.

I'll write more later, but it was extremely successful: everyone had fun and is keen for a second session - so I'll post some stuff about Fires in a new thread soon.

Oh yeah, and the Mortal is great. We all agreed that the game wouldn't work nearly as well without one.

Can we brainstorm this? Because I've wanted to find a satisfying system to run a Stormbringer game for decades now, and the more I think about it, the more Apocalypse World might be it.

I've been re-reading the novels and short stories, to see how conflicts are resolved. So far I've found some common trends that I think are moves (see below) but I'd love it if people could either suggest some crunch or details for these moves, or suggest other moves I've missed. Here's what I've got:

... when you battle something mortal: roll+steel
... when you battle an eldritch thing: roll+steel

I'm pretty interested in John Harper's 'when you engage in violence' move; I'm seeing a real role for having a basic fighting move with a bit of detail in it.

There also seems to be a difference between fighting mortals and fighting demons (which are definitely tougher and less vulnerable).


... when you call on the demons for aid: roll+doom
... when you call on the elementals for aid: roll+secrets
I'm not sure if two separate moves are called for, but they have pretty different effects when you look at stories like The Dreaming City and The Stealer of Souls.

I think, however, when you call on the demons for aid you need leverage on them; you need to know what the demons want. The obvious example: blood and souls for Arioch. So to find out what they want you need a move like ...


... when you draw forth secrets: roll+secrets
This is about finding out the history and dark secrets about locations, people and things. I see it as a broader version of Reading a Sitch, coupled with the Quarantine's 'Past' move. I don't think there's a place for the by-the-book versions of Reading a Sitch or Reading a Person in the source material - but I might be wrong.


... when you use sorcerous knowledge: roll+secrets
Every once in a while the stories throw up an impassable doors, a minor illusion, or a creature that needs to be commanded with a specific word. Maybe this isn't a separate move; maybe it should get rolled into Draw forth secrets. Or maybe 'Sorcery' is a playbook-specific move, fuelled by the secrets that you've drawn forth.


... when you commit treachery: roll+doom
Seriously, there are a whole bunch of conflicts that are resolved or initiated via this move. And really interesting consequences always spin off from them. It feels like it should be a move.


... when you seek to escape a deadly situation: roll+doom
Elric consistently gets faced with death traps and inescapable situations that he escapes at great cost. On the one hand, this may not actually be a separate move: he's usually using sorcerous knowledge, battling something mortal or calling on the demons for aid to get out of things. On the other hand, it seriously happens all the time, and the situation usually gets altered in interesting ways as a result.


... when you lead soldiers into battle: roll+command
This may not be a basic move, but it shows up all the time. It's inspired by Simon's '... when you lead your armies into battle' move from his World of Conan hack. On the other hand, maybe this hack just needs a simplied version of the optional battle rules in Apocalypse World. Or maybe it's just about applying the rules for gangs. I dunno.


... when you debate a course of action: roll+command
In the stories there's a lot of plotting attacks and battle strategies, and a few Burning Wheel-esque duels of wits to convince your audience that you're in the right. Something like Vincent's 'sit in council' custom move from page 278 of the rulebook, giving these conversations a mechanical effect, might be nice.

... when you seduce or manipulate: roll+ ... I'm not sure yet
Yeah. This happens.


So that's what I have so far, when it comes to the basics. Anyone got any ideas about how to flesh out these moves?