New skin: The Host

I haven't even found a group to play Monsterhearts with yet, but I'm addicted to reading the skins. I came up with the Host because I wanted to do something about possession, and it turned into a skin on mental illness. The Host is primarily inspired by Ava Ire from the webcomic Ava's Demon, and somewhat less by Naruto from the eponymous anime. Note that apart from limited personal experiences with people who are mentally disabled, I am not an expert on the subject, and I hope this doesn't offend anyone. It just seemed like a gap in the available skins. This is still very WIP, but I welcome any critiques!

The Host

It was fine when it was just a whisper. Sometimes it's still fine, now that it's louder - sometimes it's the only company you have. "I'll protect you," it said. "Just leave this one to me."

But then it changed. You've broken things, written horrible things on the walls. You can't hear people when they talk anymore, and you've even hurt some of them. You're slipping, and some others are starting to notice. The funny thing is... you might like it.

Names
Amelia, Mary Paige, Lauren, Christopher, Jonathan

a normal name, a Southern double name, a long name that's never shortened, referred to by last name

Look
distracted, dissheveled, cautious, worried, deliberate

faraway eyes, confused eyes, darting eyes, focused eyes

Origin
chosen at birth, summoned by accident, possessed, dead family member, past life awakened, schizophrenia

Stats
Hot -1, Cold +1, Overwhelmed/In Control 0, Dark 0

Abilities
Possessed: You're possessed by a spirit ("Guest") that you cannot control. It talks to you whenever it wants, and when you're weak, it acts and speaks for you. Instead of having a Volatile stat, you have a scale from Overwhelmed to In Control, and having any nonzero value counts as currently being Overwhelmed or currently In Control for the purposes of other abilities. If you ever reach 4 on either end, you trigger your darkest self.

Whenever you are given a negative social condition, roll to hold steady. On 10+, pick one from the list and carry 1 forward to doing it; on 7-9, pick two; on failure, pick three.

• lash out physically
• shut someone down
• give the aggressor a string
• tick towards Overwhelmed
• run away

Strange Aptitude: You can do things you shouldn't be able to. Pick a power from the list below, or pick your own with the MC's approval. Whenever you lash out physically (by Possession or otherwise), you use your power accidentally. If your power is primarily defensive or utility, associate it with a more appropriate action (i.e. someone with flight might use it when they attempt to run away). If you are currently In Control, you can use a watered-down version of your power.

Example powers: pyrokinesis, telekinesis, flight, speed, strength, plant powers, electric telepathy

Feels Like Home: You can get the voice of the Guest out of your head via the presence or absence of certain stimuli. Putting yourself there puts you one tick toward In Control; being in its opposite sends you one tick toward Overwhelmed. You get a +1 on any roll to hold steady while you are at Home.

Example stimuli: noise, silence, bright light, darkness, heat, cold, wind, water, dirt, sand, smooth things

Wait, You're Real?: You can speak with your Guest, but only verbally. You can speak with the Guest as "gaze into the abyss" with a +1 bonus. If anyone hears you talking to yourself, they gain a string on you.

Just Try It: Your Guest bargains with you; complete a simple goal, and it'll leave you alone for awhile. On the roll that completes the task, 10+ ticks you toward In Control, 7-9 either ticks you toward Overwhelmed or In Control with penalties, and failure ticks you toward Overwhelmed. Anyone who figures out what you're doing gets a string toward stopping you.

But It Wasn't Me!: Your Guest can influence you to do relatively harmless things that are outside of the social norm. Roll to hold steady at the start of a scene, where In Control is a bonus and Overwhelmed is a penalty. You continue until someone attempts to stop you

Oh, This is Nothing: Whenever you find yourself in a physically treacherous situation, roll to hold steady with Overwhelmed/In Control. On 7+, tick toward In Control.

Face-Blind: You have trouble distinguishing social cues, and frequently respond the wrong way. When someone attempts to turn you on or shut you down, roll to hold steady. On 10+, pick two; on 7+, pick one, and tick toward Overwhelmed.

• they become the recipient
• the moves switch
• they gain the condition "confused"
• they lose a string on you

On failure, you gain the condition "confused" and trigger Possession.

Your Backstory

You act and speak erratically. Everyone gains a string on you.

Someone has watched you struggle against the Guest in private. They gain two strings on you.

Your Guest has lashed out at someone before. Both of you gain a string on each other.

Advancement
-Take another Host move.
-Take another Host move.
-Take a move from another skin.
-Take a move from another skin.
-Take a move from another skin as Strange Aptitude.
-You find you have Therapeutic Connections.
-Add 1 to Hot.
-Add 1 to Cold.
-Add 1 to Dark.

Sex Move
If you had sex, roll to hold steady. If you succeed, tick once toward In Control; otherwise, tick twice toward Overwhelmed.

Darkest Self
You're not sure who's in control anymore, but you're listening to everything you hear, from anyone - your Guest, someone you love, someone you hate, someone on the street - and do what they say, unless what they say is "stop," or "kill yourself." You automatically fail any roll to hold steady relating to your abilities, and will strictly, joyfully follow them. If you have Strange Aptitude, you use it on anyone you find who has a string on you; otherwise, you either lash out physically or shut them down with Overwhelmed/In Control. Actually killing anyone is not important unless the Guest You keep moving no matter how crippled, and will only stop when you meet up with something impassable (i.e. ocean, ravine, busy highway, tall fence).

Playing the Host
Torn, impulsive, embarrassed, "touched." The Host is less about what's possessing you and more about how little you are in control of what you say and do.

The Host represents a person struggling with mental disorders. The defensive aspect of Possessed represents how much difficulty you have controlling yourself in social situations. Feels Like Home, which borrows from oversensitivity to stimulation, can also reflect physical/verbal ticks; a Host whose Home is noise can hum loudly, while a Host whose Home is heat might rub his hands or slap his arms. But It Wasn't Me! fills the trope of the manic who can't control her hands. Face-Blind is a common autism spectrum issue; where an autistic person may be blind to social cues, the Host is blind to them because of his constant internal distraction.

Mechanically, the Host is best played publicly. As you use your ticks and embarrass yourself, other characters gain strings on you; your darkest self weaponizes your weakness to them. That your darkest self triggers when you are fully Overwhelmed or In Control represents how you can never safely be either one, as you are fully possessed when Overwhelmed, and childishly enchanted with power when fully In Control.

You can play the Host as a fully mundane schizophrenic; if you take Strange Aptitude, your ability can be a really devastating right hook. Whether the Guest is real (or if there are more than one!) is completely up to you. The Guest can never take strings on you; it isn't independent of you, and causes enough havoc already with Possessed.

Cool! One of the characters in my AW game got possessed by something from the maelstrom recently. I posted some bad ideas for a corresponding playbook in http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6687.0, and this looks like something I might need to ponder over and point the player to and stuff.

Given the different rules systems (in particular the lack of formal conditions and Hx less volatile than strings) in AW, and the fact that at least for the specific character in question a full In-Control-mechanic sounds inappropriate, I want to steal and adapt Feels like Home and But It Wasn't Me! in particular.

On But It Wasn't Me!: So for every scene, you roll to hold steady+In Control, and if you fail, you are forced to break social norms in the scene until someone stops you? Or how is it supposed to work? That seems a lot of social norm breaking implied there, and a proportional amount of the MC taking over your character for “relatively harmless things that are outside of the social norm”? Sounds pretty hefty to me.

What's a physically treacherous situation here?

Cool! One of the characters in my AW game got possessed by something from the maelstrom recently. I posted some bad ideas for a corresponding playbook in http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=6687.0, and this looks like something I might need to ponder over and point the player to and stuff.

Given the different rules systems (in particular the lack of formal conditions and Hx less volatile than strings) in AW, and the fact that at least for the specific character in question a full In-Control-mechanic sounds inappropriate, I want to steal and adapt Feels like Home and But It Wasn't Me! in particular.

On But It Wasn't Me!: So for every scene, you roll to hold steady+In Control, and if you fail, you are forced to break social norms in the scene until someone stops you? Or how is it supposed to work? That seems a lot of social norm breaking implied there, and a proportional amount of the MC taking over your character for “relatively harmless things that are outside of the social norm”? Sounds pretty hefty to me.

What's a physically treacherous situation here?

Ideally, I want But It Wasn't Me! to be an ability where the Host marks experience if someone stops him, and the person doing the stopping gains a string on him. Or the reverse, because there are two scenarios: either the Host is embarrassed because they cannot control themselves, or the stopper is embarrassed because stopping you is uncomfortable (have you ever asked someone with autism to stop pacing or talking out of turn?). I'd like it to be triggered under certain conditions, like as a 7-9 penalty, so that you aren't rolling every scene to see if your character is getting railroaded.

While a lot of similar MH skins deal with a secret identity or power that you absolutely under no circumstances can reveal, the Host is the opposite. Everyone knows you're crazy, but you have no way of telling them that it's not you, because what does that make you sound like? Crazy still. Most of the abilities deal with ways of mitigating how much the Guest influences you, and ways of making you feel normal. Oh, This Is Nothing creates an aggressive playstyle for the Host, where putting yourself in imminent physical danger (surrounded by a gang, in a burning building) keeps the voices down. Successfully holding steady ticks you toward In Control, which allows you to use the power you have if you've got one, and possibly triggers your In Control darkest self. This sort of Host could be someone who regularly attempts heroics because staying safe is mentally unbearable, which lets the skin play a little differently. For your AW character, this might be less appropriate, since AW is generally a more violent world.

Ideally, I want But It Wasn't Me! to be an ability where the Host marks experience if someone stops him, and the person doing the stopping gains a string on him. Or the reverse, because there are two scenarios: either the Host is embarrassed because they cannot control themselves, or the stopper is embarrassed because stopping you is uncomfortable (have you ever asked someone with autism to stop pacing or talking out of turn?). I'd like it to be triggered under certain conditions, like as a 7-9 penalty, so that you aren't rolling every scene to see if your character is getting railroaded.

Cool.

While a lot of similar MH skins deal with a secret identity or power that you absolutely under no circumstances can reveal, the Host is the opposite. Everyone knows you're crazy, but you have no way of telling them that it's not you, because what does that make you sound like? Crazy still. Most of the abilities deal with ways of mitigating how much the Guest influences you, and ways of making you feel normal.

Yep, I get that. And it's particularly those abilities that I consider worth stealing. (The character in my AW game does not try to blame it on someone else, she's pretty much accepted the memories from the maelstrom as hers, but she's indeed considered quite crazy now, claiming she has a wife down in London, which everybody knows is a large crater and wasteland, but that she isn't gay, and would appreciate some way of control over herself and feeling normal.)

[…] putting yourself in imminent physical danger […]

I wasn't sure if “imminent physical danger” was what you meant, because to me “treacherous” has some other connotations, as well.

Currently I think the easiest way to give the decisions about the character to the player, while still making them act strangely, is:

? But It Wasn't Me!: Your Guest can influence you to do relatively harmless things that are outside of the social norm. When you act like a social norm from this place and time does not concern you at all, and you pull it through until someone speaks up against you or forces you to stop, mark experience.

(The “from this place and time” is due to how I want to see it in Apocalypse world. I don't know how experience works in MH; maybe them gaining a string on each other might be appropriate, as well?)

Very cool! Some thoughts I had while reading it:

Sex Move, why does failure move you two ticks while success only moves you one? Why not one and one?

Darkest Self: How it can be ended is sort of unclear. Just being physically stopped, that's all? It seems a little...uneven that a tall fence could potentially be all it takes to end one's Darkest Self. I'd go with something that more actively involves other players (as at least one potentially way to end it).

Moves: Some cool moves in here, but they feel like they could use more potential benefits of being in the Overwhelmed end of things. There are a few that benefit from being In Control, but unless I missed something (possible!), only stronger rolls in Strange Aptitude get a benefit there.

Some things:

-I'm thinking of erasing Oh, This is Nothing and adding "danger" to the list of stimuli for Feels Like Home. It's not that I don't think This is Nothing is a bad move, it just seems like danger is a Home in this case. High, drunk, well-fed, starving, and moving are also going on the list.

-@Anaphory: I like your edits to But It Wasn't Me! to let the player trigger the behavior (what was I thinking? silly me). I'd still like to keep it so that one player marks exp and the other gains a string, though, so that the other players have an excuse to try to stop the Host. So:

But It Wasn't Me!: Your Guest can influence you to do relatively harmless things that are outside of the social norm. When you act like a social norm from this place and time does not concern you at all, continue until someone speaks up against you or forces you to stop. Whoever has the advantage socially when this interaction ends gains a string, and the other marks experience.

-@KatieHal: Good question about the sex move! I guess I'd considered it as a way of asking the Host whether she believes she had sex of her own accord. If she did, it's a gentle boost to In Control; if she didn't, it's devastating to her sense of self. I wrote it while fairly tired, so it probably needs a rewrite. Your comment on the Darkest Self got me thinking again. Initially I imagined it as the mentally-plagued scatterbrain suddenly transforming into an unflinching ogre who cannot stop or comprehend logic, and only ceases feeling and hearing everything when it reaches a physical barrier that it cannot break, cross, or solve. The idea is that there is a problem to solve, but when the Host finds that not everything can be solved or broken, the serious/violent facade breaks down.

And you're right: in general, there could be more ways to use the Overwhelmed/In Control mechanic, rather than just move the scale around. Slight rework coming soon!

@both: Thanks for all your comments, it's really helped. :)

Glad to offer feedback!

For the Sex Move, make it more clear that there are some consent issues involved here. I hadn't thought about it until you said it, but that implication is there and should be clear to the players (both the one choosing this skin, and those playing with it in their game in general). Maybe be more elaborate about it: If your Guest chose to have Sex with this person, roll to Hold Steady, etc. Maybe that can be the difference in moving one tick or two, depending on who's choice it was to have sex.