Skin Deep

Yeah, that's more like what I was thinking of. That their one schtick (getting others to fight over them) generates strings efficently, not that they just get a bunch of strings for free.

Maybe when the Ghost pulls away from the world, he can still affect it, but only in vague, violent, lashing-out type ways.

This is exactly what I took away from the skin description -- it never occured to me that the ghost being invisible would interfere with her ability to mess things up. In fact my assumption was that the invisible ghost would be terrifyingly effective at messing with other people... after all, nobody can see them.

So, is this your working list? Just looking to keep up, and if the list is squared away, our comments can be more constructive.

Fae - as below
Ghoul- ?
Ghost - as below
Infernal - as below
Mortal - as below
Vampire - ?
Werewolf - as below
Witch - ?

Fae make promises and create beauty, and when betrayed they gain terrible power. Keep a fae happy, keep yourself safe. Keeping a fae happy naturally includes handing them your power, so the relationship gets more and more imbalanced until you're willing you escape it, no matter the consequences.

Ghosts channel their past traumas into deadly weapons. Their existence depends on them constantly having unfinished business. When they are their Darkest Selves, they are invisible. They have a messy co-dependency with their past.

Infernal are all about walking as close to the fire as possible, too. Except, they aren't playing with rage, they're playing with debt. Infernals can go into debt in a bad way, debts owed to the devil, or the stars, or the demon living inside their heads. Whatever. At their Darkest Selves, they aren't themselves. They're someone else, coming to demand repayment.

Mortals have only one card, and it's the victim card. Fortunately, they know how to play it in a million ways. Being a Mortal is all about meeting your needs through sacrifice - letting others have their way with you, and leveraging that in order to get what you want.

Werewolves are all about walking as close to the fire as possible, trying not to get burned. Werewolves have hungers, which are physical things they want, bad. They get a bonus to trying to seize them. At their Darkest Selves, they must attempt to kill or maim everything that stands in the way of their hungers.

The list ain't set, yet.

Vampire and Witch are going to be included. I just haven't nailed down their "spark" yet. I invite you to! Any of you!

Ghoul (the sexy makeover that "zombie" has wanted for a long time) is something I want in the game, but it's not *definite* yet.

And I'd love more.

So: jump in. Name names. Describe descriptions. Pull me in. Give me some meat to tenderize. Whatever you want!

Fae make promises and create beauty, and when betrayed they gain terrible power. Keep a fae happy, keep yourself safe. Keeping a fae happy naturally includes handing them your power, so the relationship gets more and more imbalanced until you're willing you escape it, no matter the consequences.

Ghosts channel their past traumas into deadly weapons. Their existence depends on them constantly having unfinished business. When they are their Darkest Selves, they are invisible. They have a messy co-dependency with their past.

Mortals have only one card, and it's the victim card. Fortunately, they know how to play it in a million ways. Being a Mortal is all about meeting your needs through sacrifice - letting others have their way with you, and leveraging that in order to get what you want.

Werewolves are all about walking as close to the fire as possible, trying not to get burned. Werewolves have hungers, which are physical things they want, bad. They get a bonus to trying to seize them. At their Darkest Selves, they must attempt to kill or maim everything that stands in the way of their hungers.

Infernals are all about walking as close to the fire as possible, too. Except, they aren't playing with rage, they're playing with debt. Infernals can go into debt in a bad way, debts owed to the devil, or the stars, or the demon living inside their heads. Whatever. At their Darkest Selves, they aren't themselves. They're someone else, coming to demand repayment.

Ghouls are beyond the realm of the living. Unlike the Ghost, there is no unfinished business. They are the living dead - gaunt, pallid, beautiful in their distance. Ghouls are good at heartless manipulation, severing ties, and they possess some cool beyond-the-grave powers.

Vampires are all about manipulation, seduction and insincerity. Their two strongest stats are Hot and Cold, and they are well served by jumping back and forth between them. Unlike Ghouls, Vampires have no motivation to sever ties, even when those ties are temporarily working against them.

Witches are all about wielding dark magick, manipulating from afar, and interfering with other relationships. If you like the idea of pitting your friends against each other, putting nightmares into peoples' heads, and wyrd magick, then you're probably a witch waiting to happen.

Ghoul feels really out of place to me -- maybe just because it doesn't have the same iconic status as the others. Also the name makes me think that they are all about eating the flesh of the living, not remaining aloof and distant? To my mind, vampires already cover the whole 'undead and sexy' thing pretty thoroughly -- if there's another kind of undead thing, it needs a new angle or it ends up feeling like an also-Vampire. If they're a zombie-remake the blurb should at least mention the overwhelming hunger, right?

Ghouls should be about hunger. Drugs, or food, or flesh, or brains, or excess, or denial.

Yeah,

I'm struggling with Ghoul a bit. I might need to scrap it, even though I like the concept a lot.

While Vampire is seductive and manipulative, Ghoul is cold and disconcerting. Vampire's best stats are probably Hot and Cold, but Ghoul's are Cold and Dark.

I think part of the reason I love the idea of Ghoul so much is that I have a really amazing move for them. So maybe I should just put that move out into the open, thereby getting it out of my system:

Short Rest for the Wicked
When you die, wait it out. After twelve hours, you wake up somewhere else (MC - make a hard move, here). You wake up hungry.

While we're on the subject of Skins - does anybody have any others to contribute?

If they're a zombie-remake the blurb should at least mention the overwhelming hunger, right?

Ghouls should be about hunger. Drugs, or food, or flesh, or brains, or excess, or denial.

Alright. Overwhelmingly clear feedback.

Ghouls are distant, disconcerting & hungry.

They have all the "I need what I want, I'm hungry" that werewolves have, and all the blackness of heart that vampires have.

An endless hunger, in the belly of a calculating monster.

The Ghoul.

Ghouls wake up hungry and go to sleep hungry. It's the only feeling that managed to make it through the afterlife and back. Everything else is gone.

Ghouls are gaunt and unnatural, beautiful in their disinterest. They're cold in demeanor and appearance. Their nerves are dull, their hearts are rotten, and their bellies are eternally wanting.

They sound pretty awful. Kind of worse than everyone else. I'd love it if there were room to be Gwen from I, Zombie - jaded but well-meaning. Or I guess there is room to play on the light end of all these skins, and your summaries are the extreme case of the archetype?

(Oh yeah, that reminds me: a frequent ghoul thing is to access someone's power/memories by eating their flesh/brain. I, Zombie is shaping up to maybe be great.)

I like Ghoul with the hunger and all, and the teen tie-in I see is the cool, beautiful, calculating, driven cheerleader. She's doing it for herself, not for 'school spirit', and no matter how much she eats, she stays bone thin and pageant perfect. She wants. To win, to overpower, to feed her need. But if she doesn't, she doesn't care at all, and all are nothing to her.

Amazing, Margolotte.

I totally see it, and at the same time... that is totally not the Ghoul I was going to play.

I was going to play the gaunt, distant kid who listens to The Smiths and wears too much black and is fucking his system up with crazy drugs because, like, who fucking cares anyways. And has this cold disinterested glamour to him, but also this insatiable hunger.

In essence, I was envisioning the boys I wanted to sleep with when I was in high school. It's amazing that you saw such a different vision - also, really cool. It means the Ghoul has legs.

Hey, if both visions are viable, that rocks.

So, I think you are perfectly capturing a game I have been trying unsuccessfully to design for a few years now.

What skin do you think Jason Voorhees would be?