Prepping to run Monsterhearts tomorrow

All right, I have a group of three players organised. All of them are interested in the genre and happy to play a three hour session.

I've googled 'rainiest place in New Zealand' and come up with Te Anau, a small town right next to the Fiordland national park (a mountainous rainforest with lots of lakes and inlets).

I'm writing up player handouts that contain all the moves, rules for Strings, and rules for experience.

I'm also writing up a GM reminder sheet. I've grouped the moves into categories that seem related, like this:

+ after every single move, ask: “what do you do?”
+ tell them the possible consequences and ask.

+ herald the abyss.
+ announce off-screen badness.
+ announce future badness.

+ leap to the worst possible conclusion.
+ expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person.

+ separate them.
+ put them together.

+ turn their move back on them.
+ inflict harm (as established).
+ make them pay a price.
+ trigger their Darkest Self.

+ build up some coals.
+ start a flame.

I put 'herald the abyss' up so high, because that seems like a really useful move to keep playing in the context of this one shot.

Now I'm thinking about examples of darkness to blanket the world in:

+ People keep going missing in the national park
+ a burned-down building where a murder took place
+ a persistant rainstorm that drowns out all conversation
+ a forest clearing where the trees are strung up with bones and runestones
+ an extremely proactive Abyss that wants to show you how to get what you need

Thinking ...

For my own benefit, I've just rearranged some of the Principles so it reads:

+ put them together.
+ separate them.

+ leap to the worst possible conclusion.
+ expose a dangerous secret to the wrong person.

This is just to remind me to have scenes centred around the characters. And I've put 'put them together' first because I feel like I'll have a tendency to forget that scenes with characters together are interesting.

After reading the rules to get the Basic moves and the MC moves in my head, I've decided to emphasise the Darkest Self to the players, and tell them that I'd like to activate it for one of them, to see what it does.

I'm thinking about some sort of incitig incident, or event to connect them. Perhaps asking them who they know who's died in the last week or so.

Got to remember to ask provocative questions based off the origins of each Skin's powers, and off their answers to their backstories.

I'm wondering about 'helping' someone else. Do you spend a String to add something to their roll, or (and this seems incorrect) roll+Strings to help them? Or maybe helping another character isn't in the genre / isn't an option in Monsterhearts.

I don´t think you can roll +String? I´m not sure though, but I think you use a string. Characters in MH arn´t a group who fight each other, they should depend on each other, hate each other, love, betray etc

So I think it´s like you say, helping isn´t a big part of the concept.

Really love reading this thread. We are playing MH also, and it´s really great to get some one elses take on the game!

/ Nils