Hi!
I am playing a Ghoul (a 16-years old flesh-eating resurrected with satiety and short rest for the wicked as moves) in a current game of MH, and I found that in play the playbook push for a different character than one with Dulled Senses.
Then I read the short description on page 46 and it makes much more sense:
"Cold, unwavering, hungry. The ghoul died, and came back with dulled emotions and a hunger for human flesh. The ghoul benefits from being disaffected and malicious."
The playbook says: "Death changed you. It took away your contemplative joy, it dulled your senses, and it left you impossibly hungry. That hunger is always with you, like a hum in your ears that swells and crescendos until you can’t hear anything else. Unattended, it will come to dominate you - but feeding it may be just as bad."
They talk about different monsters. The first one is the one depicted by the moves and the numbers on the playbook. Cold, hungry, he/she feed and the emotions that could resist that - pity for the victims, disgust, self-loath - are dulled. He is "disaffected and malicious"
The second one is a Zombie like the one depicted in the old Simon Garth comics: his mind separated from the world, inside of a dead corpse that can't feel touch or smells anymore, a world of dulled color and sounds. A walking corpse. The only thing he feels is hunger.
Now, let's look at the stats and the moves:
1) High stats: Cold, Volatile. Low stats: Hot, Dark. A carnal monster, low contact with abyss and the supernatural, he is violent, volatile, easy to anger, but very much in control of his emotions. He is made of flesh, he is not a ghost, and he eat meat.
2) Backstory: the only one mandatory is "Someone reminded you what love was, when you thought that death had stolen it away from you forever. Give them 2 Strings.". So you have dulled emotions (love), but you start the game in love anyway. Every Ghoul start the game with this in the backstory.
The moves: this is the sex move:
When you have sex with someone, add “having sex with [this person]” as an additional Hunger. If you already have this Hunger, mark experience.
So, we have that every ghoul in the game did forget the strenght of the love emotion, but now there is someone that make them feel it again. And if they have sex with someone, they become practically addicted to sex with that one person (so it can't be a matter of sexual satisfaction only, in that case anybody would do. This is about emotions, too)
So.. the entire playbook circle around emotions, and depict a character that had them dulled and is littler by little rediscovering them , to the point of becoming addicted to intimity with specific persons. The way to these new emotions? the Senses. How can they be overcome by hunger if they don't smeel the smell of food? (human flesh)? How can sex even work for them with dulled senses?
So, I think that the right description is the one on page 46. The one on the playbook is more about a different kind of zombie, the voodoo one (a walking corpse with a master who order you around).
It seems a little difference, but until I realized this, I had difficulties in visualizing my character, i could not play it as someone with "dulled senses" and justify half of the things on that playsheet.
P.S.: another question: if the Ghould doesn't take the move "Ending", does this mean that the character don't remember his own death, or it can simply mean that the character remember but get no benefit telling people about it?