Monster of the Week - character playbook brainstorming

I'm rebuilding my long in creation game Monster of the Week as an Apocalypse World hack. The game is supposed to get into the zone that Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer inhabit.

It's going well, but I feel like I need a couple more character types in there. Currently it has:

• Tough Guy: Dean Winchester
• Spooky: Sam Winchester/Willow
• The Chosen One: Buffy
• Expert: Giles/Bobby/Walter from Fringe
• Mundane: Xander
• Monster: Angel/Spike/Castiel
• Avenger: Gordon from Supernatural
• Professional: Riley/Olivia from Fringe or indeed the whole other world Fringe team
• Paladin: Member of an ancient monster hunting order - there were some short-lived examples on Buffy, and the Watchers Council fits here too

In particular, another playbook each that emphasizes Hot (currently just Mundane) and Sharp (currently Expert and Professional) would be good.

Any ideas welcome!

I wonder if there's a role for a Femme Fatale / Siren / Con Artist type. I've seen that a few times in these shows.

Huh. There's also the character who's connected to everything, knows all the backstory and secrets but never tells you everything they know. The 'Enigma', maybe?

I'll think on it a bit more, but those are my first ideas for Hot and Sharp.

Hey I noticed a thing about the names of the character types. Tell me if this seems cool to you:

Tough
Spooky
Chosen
Expert
Mundane
Wronged
Professional

Yeah?

With that in mind, maybe you could have:

Broken (like season 7 Spike)
Wanted (like Cordelia maybe)

I like Steve's suggestions too.

Mike,

Color me intrigued. I'm knee deep in my own hack that draws from Buffy as a primary source (along with True Blood, Twilight, The Craft & such) - Monsterhearts.

Though, clearly, the two games seem to be about very different things. Mine's about sleeping with monsters, and yours appears to be about slaying monsters.

Thanks for your ideas Steve, Simon. Pondering...

Joe, yeah... I've been reading your stuff about Monsterhearts with interest... we're definitely going different places, even if some of the source material is the same. Monster of the Week is action monster slaying and how that affects the characters - romance certainly isn't out of the picture, but it's not the focus.

I thought of a more 'protagonist'-centred version of the guy who knows everything: the Conspiracy Theorist. The one who's assembling all the facts, trying to fit everything in patterns, but is considered to be a little bit crazy, a little bit fringe.

That feels like the sort of playbook you take and then shift to something different after you feel like you've transitioned into the real world of the monsters.

Oh! And what about the crazy person? Fresh from the nut-house or totally grief-stricken. Sure, you could say that's emphasising 'weird' but the shows usually portray characters in these positions as hot and vulnerable.

That's good, Steve. I like the idea of a flakey/crazy dude who knows a lot of useful stuff in a huge mountain of pure looniness. Also a good genre trope (like X-Files's lone gunmen, etc).

The lone gunmen would be a threat witha custom move:

When you go to the Lone Gunmen for help, roll +sharp (or whatever)

On a hit, you can sift some useful information from their rambling conspiracy theories. On a 10+ ask 3. On a 7-9, ask 1.

- What is this thing's weakness?
- Who knows more about this thing?
- Where can I find this thing?
- What does this thing want?

Or something like that. Another way to do it would be "Ask three, the MC will answer two truthfully, and one with a lie". For that guy eho runs the demon bar in Buffy, it's the same rules but you roll +hard.

That brings up a thing: In Apocalypse World, everything is a threat. Possibly in Monster of the Week you could have allies as well? Then add some mechanics around them, like you could have:

informant (agenda: protect themselves)
secret society (agenda: maintain the cover)
outsider (agenda: preserve the balance)

and so on. Maybe make up a list of sample custom moves for them? Anyway, that's a thing I would do.

Simon, threats are going to be very different - not everything is a threat in MotW. There's going to be stuff like what you suggest in the game, too.

I'd love to see The Skeptic (based on Scully, and Velma).

The person who returns to rational science, over and over again, in an attempt to disprove what lies immediately before them.

It'd be rad if certain moves "That's just a mask!" were able to denounce certain things as being NOT SUPERNATURAL.

Thoughts?

Maybe... at first glance, I'm not happy with a move that can change what the prep says that the monster is. There might be a place for it applying to certain events rather than the whole mystery. Hmm.

By the way, the "Wanted" playbook I suggested above would have moves like:

Irresistable: When you offer someone sex, it always counts as leverage, and take +1 forward (straight from my "slave" playbook for Conan)

Ingenue: When you ask someone's advice and then act on what they tell you, take +1 forward and mark experience

And some things like that.

As an aside, is it weird that I tend towards designing no-roll moves far more often than other kinds?

Those are pretty cool, Simon. I think that I do need a character who is in that space - the Mundane kind of is, but more in a "easy to trust" way rather than a "hot & sexy" way.