Backed.

Posted on by Paul Beakley

Backed.

That said, I’ve never been able to make Monsterhearts work! But I think several things were in my way:

1) I dipped into it pretty early into my phase where I was getting comfortable with sexuality in my games (2012, I think, is when we first messed with it). I’ve learned a lot! And my friends have learned a lot!

2) I don’t know the supernatural teen genre that well. Clip my nerd card, but I just don’t like Buffy. Sorry. :-/

3) I wasn’t quite ready to embrace a PbtA game that wasn’t just a reskin of Apocalypse World. It took Sagas of the Icelanders to get me past that! Aaaand now I sort of hate just-reskins, which MH is decidedly not.

All that said, I’ve got mad respect for the game, the design, and for Avery. And I’m super intrigued by the list of updates, in particular revisiting how Strings work.

Don’t know that I’ll really run this much here at home, but maybe. Maybe. In any case, most definitely backed.

Published by Paul Beakley

I founded the Indie Game Reading Club in 2010. I've written and developed RPGs since the mid-90s, now I mostly talk about playing them.

0 thoughts on “Backed.”

  2. I respect the system, but it’s too far out of my realm of interest. Not the sex bit; like you, clip my nerd card, but Buffy style magical realism just isn’t for me.

  3. MH is the first game I came back to after a loooong RPG hiatus, and I LOVE it. I was trying to get many of these elements into my games back in day, but I couldn’t get dudes to get over their angst over a) sex as a feature and b) dealing with feminine themes of any kind.

  4. One of the most awkward, awesome scenes I’ve ever been in was from a year-long Monsterhearts game. I knew that, after a moment where I literally couldn’t look my fellow players in the eye, that this game was going to be a favorite.

  5. But how is MH a game about Buffy? I mean, it’s totally not MotW!
    Sure, it looks like you can, but no, you won’t play Buffy with this game. Not the monster hunt, any way.

  7. And I’m certain Darkest Self takes a lot of its cues from the Angel-goes-full-bond-villain episodes and Willow’s evil witching spree. If you’re not a Buffy fan I can definitely see how it’d be hard to appreciate the non-Buffy bits of MH. At least at first go.

  8. I straight up can’t stand Buffy-the-show (I’m a fan of the original film, though!), and I find MH to be much richer than a monster-of-the-week serial.

    If I had to point to a show that captures the intricacies of relationships between teen characters: Scream: the series is a good analog.

  12. I’m not seeing anyone saying superhuman. I feel like you’re bringing objections to a thread where everyone else is agreeing really hard about what we’re talking about.

  14. And there’s also a long and sordid history of confusing those two: see Vampire the Masturbate Masquerade. Perhaps they were just lousy players but nerds ruin shit with ease!

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