Monsterhearts, anyone? (interest check)

Started by Ouroboros, December 06, 2014, 10:25:21 PM

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Ouroboros

Nice!

How is everyone coming along with obtaining the rules, by the way?
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Cold Heritage

Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.


Ouroboros

I believe Angiejuusan might have been the only one of us who needed it?

Regardless, I will probably write more later. I need a refresher myself and with the holidays and various family members visiting I haven't had a chance yet.
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Angie

Avatar is by Lemonfont. Will remove it if he asks me to.

Come check the Cyberpunk Images Thread!

Ouroboros

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deadmanshand

While sitting here recovering from the plague - I refuse to call this affliction a mere flu - I discovered an old half finished Skin I made for Monsterhearts. Thought I'd share it here.

The Sandman

You walk in a world of dreams and nightmares. Of black miracles and wondrous terrors shaped by those around you. You can see their potential but it's obscured by all the petty bullshit they keep inside. And you envy them anyway because they can dream and you can't. Your dreams are their dreams and it gets so hard to see the real world through the haze of dreamstuff.

You are the kid everyone unburdens themselves on. That quiet kid with the nice smile who people always go to with their problems. The one who ends up spending too much time playing therapist without managing to stay out of their problems. The one who ends up with others secrets and the burden of what to do with them. Keep their trust or tell the truth?

Playing the Sandman

Darkest Self

You can see what they all want. What they all hide. Their guilt and their passion calls to you. So give it to them. What they want - what they deserve. Let them see how terrible it can be to have all their dreams come true. Come out of your Darkest Self when someone fulfills one of your desires.

Sex Move

When someone sleeps next to you they have vivid dreams. You choose if they are good or bad dreams. If they are good dreams they remove a Condition and you may ask them "What do you love?" If they have nightmares they gain the haunted condition and you may ask them "What do you fear?"

Names

Antique names, British names, fanciful names

Look

dreamy, sleep deprived, ethereal, shadowed

intense eyes, bedroom eyes, knowing eyes, haunted eyes, dreamer's eyes

Origins

A dream in human form, an open mind, incubus or sucubus, disciple of a dreaming god

Stats

Add 1 to one of: Hot 1, Cold -1, Volatile -1, Dark 1

Moves (Take Secret Keeper and two others)

- Secret Keeper

You live in a world of secrets. Some you divine and others given freely to you but all are in your trust. To share someone's most private thoughts is a betrayal and you know it to the core. Because who knows the power of a secret better than their keeper?

Whenever you share a secret given to you willingly give the target a String on you and you gain either the condition guilty or malicious. Until you lose the condition the person you betrayed may spend a String to cause one of he following effects:

To fail a single roll as if you had rolled a 6 or less
To take a 1 harm

- Dreamwalker

You can enter and explore the dreams of others. When you touch a sleeping person or lay your head where they last slept you gain +2 to Gaze Into The Abyss about them.

- Dreamweaver

Dreams are clay in your hands. To be molded to show what you want them to show. You may use this Move on a sleeping person you touch or one that has told you a secret. When you do roll with Dark. On 10+ plus choose two options. On a 7-9 choose one.

They take or heal 1 Harm
They gain one condition from inspired, terrified, or insomniac
They don't know you were in their dream and take 1 String on you

- Bedroom Eyes

When you roll to Turn Them On you gain new options. On a 10+ plus you may take a String on them or they dream of you the next time they sleep and trigger your Sex Move.

- Living Nightmare

Whenever you Shut Someone Down roll with Dark. If you have asked them "What do you fear?" gain +2 to your roll.

- Living Dream

You can seemingly make dreams come true. You can spend a String on someone to have the following effect:

Believe one false thing to be true till the next time you sleep.

- Shoulder to Cry On

When someone shares a secret with you about another they mark an xp.

- Maker of Dreams

When you help or harm someone using their secrets, mark an xp. If you brought them face to face with what they love doing it, they mark an xp. If you brought them face to face with what they fear doing it, take a String on them.

Backstory

Advancements

Cold Heritage

That's really cool! I hope you finish it someday.
Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.

Corinthi

I really like the concept and feel of The Sandman. If I had a criticism, it's that it looks a bit too competent at what it does. The primary move is nicely masochistic, although I'm not as thrilled about the Maker of Dreams XP move. If you're playing a Sandman, you're already buying into the idea of collecting and using secrets. I don't think you should further incentivize doing what the playbook was designed to do.

Still, it's flavorful and interesting. I think it'd be a nice addition with a little more workshopping.

Ouroboros

Hey, you guys are not forgotten! I'm just working up to MCing the game, and I think I am almost there. I will probably get something started today or tonight, so we can go over characters, strings, and the like before going IC and getting into the juicy drama of it all.

I will leave you with a question, however. Given the rating system, such as it is, where do you think this game should go? Probably not light, but bondage? NC? Extreme? Think we count as exotic based on the nonhuman characters? I am OK with most things, but if there are subjects best avoided now is the time to say.
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CarnivalOfTheGoat

I'm still working on upgrading my never-got-off-the-ground selkie to a collegiate environment and trying to find the rest of her background (there's more to her than is shown here but I need to sort it out and fix it up).

Mild older-Morgan musical inspiration for later.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

Angie

I would say extreme just in case, so we're covered.
Avatar is by Lemonfont. Will remove it if he asks me to.

Come check the Cyberpunk Images Thread!

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#62
Quote from: Angiejuusan on December 16, 2014, 01:10:22 PM
I would say extreme just in case, so we're covered.

Extreme is probably wise. Monsterhearts can get a little rough. If you play RAW the rules are actually quite explicit that your character can end up wanting to do things you wouldn't do, if the dice fall that way.

And I don't mean tearing people apart.



From p.20, probably one of the more controversial rulings in the game (although if read closely, it shouldn't be):

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide
Quote from: Monsterhearts, p.20This move implies something about sexuality, and
particularly teenage sexuality. We don’t get to decide what
turns us on. When you make a move to turn someone on
(with a character action or with scene description), the
other player doesn’t get to exclaim, “Wait, my character
is straight! There’s no way that’d turn them on.” That’s a
decision that we as players can’t make for our characters.
The dice are going to be the ultimate referees of what is
and isn’t sexy for these characters. Their own sexuality
will confuse them and surprise them; it’ll show up in
unexpected places and unlikely situations. Regardless of
the results of the roll, however, each player still gets to
decide how their character reacts. Being turned on by
someone doesn’t imply or demand a particular reaction.


The last two sentences are very important. Your character might want to do something...Doesn't mean you have to play that they act on that want.

I am super-busy until Thursday evening, but I will try to work on getting Morgan upgraded to 'college-level' and finding the rest of her background that I'd sent the GM for that other game, in my free time if I get a chance.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

Ouroboros

Oh, no rush at all you guys. I'm just moving sloooowly toward setting up an actual OOC instead of an interest check thread. Although I would like to get started sooner I don't really anticipate any real movement until after the holidays.
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CarnivalOfTheGoat

FOUND IT. Now I just need to fix it to be a bit more collegiate...

SPOILER ALERT
There's a diverse set of legends wherein an older married couple who cannot have children adopt a foundling, who later turns out to be either a prince or a monster. Then there are the many mermaid and selkie stories that involve a fisherman catching a woman in his nets and marrying her, and her later proving to be a mermaid or a selkie...And the biggest selkie story of them all (the Great Selkie of Sul Skerry) is about a mother who has a child and doesn't know who the father is until he comes to claim the child, and the father and the child both turn out to be selkies.

So...Throwing all of that into the blender and adding a bit of spice,

Her 'uncle' is a very old fisherman, retired now. He and his wife never had children. He found the girl huddling asleep in soaking-wet rags beneath the dock the day after his very last voyage was cut short by a tremendous storm. That was three years ago. She spoke almost no english. As best can be guessed, she was swept off the deck of some vessel in the storm...but she didn't match any missing persons bulletins. The state tried to put her in a foster home but she was so visibly terrified of being separated from the fisherman that the social workers themselves advocated that the old couple try to raise her. Paperwork was filled out. Identity was created. She is officially adopted. She has been home-schooled for the past two years, as best her adopted parents could, but they're old, indulgent, and physically incapable of keeping her from going out, so better that she has some experience in school with other children.

And here we are.

Her english is...okay. Not wonderful. As best she can explain, her first memories are of the sea and the storm (not true, but she knows better than to say otherwise). Her understanding of human society is a mixture of 'If a martian watched from the shore' with a strange muddling of awareness of human interventions around the ocean...And the peculiarly distorted views her adoptive parents have given her to expect of school, remembering that they attended high school probably six decades ago. She's clever...Her math scores are fantastic barring deliberately confusing word problems...she just has no social context for a lot of things, and more importantly no experience interacting with people her own age.

Oh, she has undoubtedly picked up some ideas from books, from movies, and from television...But how much bearing on reality do those have?

Short and lithe, but most people would assume short and dumpy because even the least fashionable person can tell she has no idea how to dress well...So she resorts to 'comfortable' clothing which does nothing at all for her...And then there's the sleekly muscular young woman who just joined the swim team and shares her name, who moves like an otter once she's in the water. Standing ready to dive? Nothing to see here. Barely in
balance. Awkward. And then a moment after the splash she's furrowing the water a full body length beyond anyone else and any onlooker can see that the gap between her and the other swimmers is only going to increase. Her dark hair hints at curl just below her waist, and lacks any styling or even the gloss of proper maintenance. As for her eyes, it isn't that they seem too large for her face, it's that there's a distance in them; they are far away, somehow, even when she's looking right at you. Drowning pools that take the color out of their surroundings: murky, dark sea-grey-green or green-black with the occasional angry flicker of deep blue jade. Hard to say where she's from, exactly. Her name taken together with her pale skin, dark hair and eyes suggests what used to be called black Irish...But the fullness of her lips and something about her nose echo Polynesia.

Curious, and curiously lacking in social skills. She'll chew her lip in hesitation until the strain of waiting or wanting overcomes whatever fear or uncertainty was holding her back...And then explode into talk or action, either clumsy-sullen or flailing-passionately. Can't talk without moving her hands. Asks stupid questions. Accent from where-is-that? No, I know a guy from Russia and he sounds nothing like that. Lost her memory, if you believe that. Speaks as clumsily as she moves, has trouble finding the right word about everyday things, waves her hands and points and gets frustrated. Good math grades, though.

Michael MacLear was a fisherman...From a long line of fishermen. He spent most of his life fishing well off the Pacific coast, working his way on far-ranging tuna trawlers. His wife Tracy was a good, stubborn woman who adapted well to the life of onshore waiting which has plagued sailor's wives since time immemorial. By the time Michael took on his last five-year gig, captaining a tuna trawler out of Ensenada, the couple had been long-resigned to their inability to have children. They were good, Christian folk, and while advancing medicine and the bureaucracy of adoption might be options for some, they felt unaccountably wrong to the MacLears.

"And then," as Michael would later tell his drinking buddies, "...the miracle happened."

It was meant to be his last trip out. He'd filed his resignation beforehand. That threw some official scrutiny on what happened, but it was officially decided that Hurricane Rick had skewed around far too sharply for anyone to predict, and the rogue waves which forced him to turn the Rosa Maria towards land so as to take shelter near Bahía Tortugas were perfectly capable of swamping the old CMT fishing boat...Other, similar vessels were lost.

The fact that the boat was silted in...unable to leave the bahia until after the storm's wrack had been dredged from the bay was quite beyond his control. It was an unnecessary lot of excitement for a sixty-five year old captain on his final voyage, but he'd lost neither his ship nor a single crewman, only those tuna they were unable to keep iced in the tropical heat.

And of course they tried to stick him with that. Failed, but they did try.

But the miracle was not the survival of the Rosa Maria. Rather, it was the survival of another storm-tossed arrival on the shore of Bahía Tortugas. The girl looked to be about thirteen, didn't seem to speak any English...or Spanish, or any other language they tried her on for that matter...But she latched onto Michael MacLear the instant she saw him.

It was a strange situation. During the weeks which the Mexican Federal bureaucracy tried (and failed) to establish who the girl might be, she refused vehemently any attempts to take her away, first from Michael, and then from his wife when she came out to Bahía Tortugas to stay with him until matters with the Rosa Maria were resolved. By the time the old couple moved to Mexico City, it was fairly well established that the young girl didn't fit the descriptions of anyone lost at sea, or even missing from the Pacific coast of north and central America, during the past three months. And she seemed to have no memory. She picked up a little English and a little Spanish quite quickly, and seemed determined to disavow knowing of any family or friends, and just as determined to stay with the MacLears.Eventually, after much prayer and counseling (and a look at some unfortunate aspects of the Mexican foster care system), the elderly couple decided to adopt her. It took a bit more clearing with the U.S. embassy, but surprisingly little effort before the way was smoothed and the three of them retired to [OH HECK IT'S NOT LOS ANGELES].

In the intervening three years, 'Morgan' has mostly been home-schooled, but as time has worn on it has become apparent to all involved that her elderly parents really aren't up to dealing with a sometimes-rebellious teenager, more socializing will be better, not worse, despite her lack of it to date, and that she's coming and going out into the wide world regardless of their heartbroken desires. Morgan's relations with her foster-parents aren't hostile, but her side of it has been much more about 'take' than 'give' from the moment she first decided Michael MacLear was the one.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

deadmanshand

Can we give a bonus experience point to Carnival for using a gif from the Room?

Ouroboros

Yes, but it's from another system so I don't know how useful it will be.

(And now I need to write a freeform story based on The Room, thanks guys.)
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CarnivalOfTheGoat

Just an FYI I will be indisposed and likely AFK for most of this weekend.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

Ouroboros

Arrrgh so much to do, so little time! Offline, anyway.

I'm going to get our OOC set up in the proper area today, but before I do that I wanted to open the floor, so to speak, to suggestions for the name. Left to my own devices, names can get a little obtuse, so if you'd prefer something like [University Name] or similar now is the time to say something.
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Corinthi

Since we're in college, the home room setup doesn't really work, so why don't we all belong to a student organization of some sort. Maybe a theatre troupe, a film club, or something else entirely. We can use the organization as the thing that causes us to all circle one another. We could name the game after the club. Something like 'The Jaded Order' or some such.

Ouroboros

There's a thought - and it would be a lot easier than trying to shunt all of you together via a freshman cattle-call class. Either that or the same dorm.
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Angie

Jaded club, I kinda like that. I assume none of us knows shit about the others?
Avatar is by Lemonfont. Will remove it if he asks me to.

Come check the Cyberpunk Images Thread!

Ouroboros

Well, you will sort of know some of the other people to begin with. We'll be assigning your starting strings in the OOC once I get it started, which gives you some shared backgrounds.
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Cold Heritage

The exact nature of this club should be decided before we starting giving out strings. I'll have to change the fluff side of my character to be someone who'd be part of it.
Thank you, fellow Elliquiyan, and have a wonderful day.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

So this kind of begs the question of the nature of the club...

As in, 'what sort of club could all these disparate people belong to?'

Morgan's an athlete (swimmer, competitive), and good at math, but she's socially kind of...Yeah. What's socialization again?

What do people think? Anything that might be relevant. Skills, hobbies, whatever.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.