Overbrook Academy -- A Monsterhearts Romance Game (closed)

[meikle]

Overbrook Academy is an all-girls boarding school hidden away in a hilly, forested cranny of northwestern Virginia.  It is an old school with a long history, secluded from civilization, populated by young women from across the globe.  Overbrook Academy is fairly exclusive, and most of the students come from wealthy families; many of them are the daughters of the school's alumni.  By all appearances, it is an ordinary prep school -- but looks can be deceiving, and darkness gathers in the belly of Overbrook.

What Is This
  This is Monsterhearts, a storygame about supernatural romance and teenage desperation, a teen sex horror story.  It's not a traditional RPG in the strictest sense but it is easy to learn, and everything you need as a player can be found here and here.  If you want the complete book, you can buy it here.  Also, the author accepts good deeds as payment.

What To Expect
  You should expect (and contribute to) drama.  Expect romance and expect violence.  Expect sex sometimes and broken hearts most of the time.  You should expect things not to go your way and you should enjoy it when they don't.  Expect your character to be in conflict with the other PCs sometimes.
  You should expect to participate in the OOC just as much as the IC; this game is kind of meta, and you're going to be expected to participate on the meta level. 
  Expect characters at the younger end of Elliquiy's rules allowance:  these are high school kids, and 16 - 18 will be the age range for the students here.  If you're not cool with that, I'm sorry!  This may not be the game for you.
  You should expect a game that is focused much more heavily on character development and drama than on explicit sex!

If you're interested, tell us what skin you're interested in and maybe a little bit about the kind of character you intend to play.  Just a little bit -- how long they've been at Overbrook (it's a 4-year college prep school, and PCs should probably be juniors or seniors), maybe what cliques they run with, clubs they're in, whatever.  Things that help give us an impression of the sort of person they are.  We won't be using the Chosen skin; we're drawing from sources like Jennifer's Body and Ginger Snaps more than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Remember that this game is set at an all-girl school, so male-identifying characters won't really be appropriate.

I'm hoping to find 5 players who are on the same page as far as hopes and expectations go, and after I've got more than 5 applications or in a few days I'll take a look at who has expressed interest and make player selections.  From there we'll move to an OOC thread and start doing backgrounds!

p.s. I know the opening blurb is underwhelming.  The school will become more interesting and more fleshed out after getting characters created and backgrounds written up!

a short faq

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

I'm just going down the line here looking at Moraline's Topics to Cover post and addressing anything I didn't cover above:

The game will probably be set in noncon/exotic to set the upper limits of the game's content.  Noncon won't be the game's focus and isn't to be taken lightly here!
Characters should be appropriate for an all-girls boarding school setting; it isn't cisgender exclusive however.
Explicit sexual content between PCs other PCs or PCs and NPCs will take place outside of the primary IC thread(s).
We're probably not going to use any particularly complex tagging system unless people think it's necessary.
I'll aim to post ~3 times a week, and that's about the pace I'd like others to maintain a similar pace!
Everyone's o/os will be respected and nobody is expected to participate in anything that they are uncomfortable with.  I'll do my best to make sure that everyone is comfortable, and people should feel free to contact me if they aren't for any reason.

[Queluna]

yay count me in   monsterhearts is a pretty fun system and i know from experience that meikle is a totally kickass dm person!  le pm will be sent shortly.  looking forward to doing dramas and sexy things with monstrous yet sexy peoples!

[Dhi]

I'm interested in playing a senior-year ghost. She was a well-known, outgoing girl, star of the softball team, but things have changed for her recently, and increasingly she's grown somber in the company of goths and potheads. She's now on thin ice with the team, and perhaps one misstep from being removed. She is the voyeuristic sort of ghost, spying on others to get to the root of who they, as flawed human beings, really are.

I see her as a character like Holden from Catcher in the Rye, her undeath and holding onto her previous life as a metaphor for Holden's clinging to innocence against the corruption of the adult world. Because of this, her tenuous connection to the softball team is an important motivator.

Should a ghost have been a ghost before coming to Overbrook?

[Yukina]

I might play. It looks similar in system to apocalypse world, so it won't be too hard for me to learn.

I think I'll play a mortal skin. She will be a meek bookwormish nerd that has received a lot of bullying in her past. She is currently keeping sane however, by pursuing her true love (which ever it happens to be at the time). The girl is currently a senior and seeking a player to pursue.

[meikle]

Hi folks!  Just checking in briefly before I get to bed.  I'm glad to see some interest!

le pm will be sent shortly.

Last I talked to Queluna he was planning on playing a witch.  I'm not totally sure why he left that out of his post!

Should a ghost have been a ghost before coming to Overbrook?

I like the sound of your ghost!  She doesn't have to have to have been dead before she came to the school; it might be the case that her body is half-buried somewhere in the forest surrounding Overbrook or something like that!  Something like that might be a appropriate if you were thinking of tying the change in her attitude & social life to her death. 

ps I never read Catcher in the Rye. :(

I think I'll play a mortal skin. She will be a meek bookwormish nerd that has received a lot of bullying in her past.

The mortal skin is a lot of a fun!  I'll be glad to see a little human presence in the game, and the mortal is great because it really exists to instigate drama and conflict.  Cool!

[Viper]

I may be interested in playing Viper in here, a very hot tempered boarderline cannablistic snake hybrid. She is not a naga type, but she does have a lot of snake attributes that make her worthy.

[Izaya Orihara]

Hmm. I'll probably do a trap.  
I'll figure out the skin and other specifics when I get the chance.

Interested, though I'm a bit busy lately, and I've got a trip to Italy next week.

[Yukina]

Character Sheet

Name: Robin Martin
Look: Quiet, Nervous Eyes
Origin: New kid in town

Hot: 2
Cold: -1
Volatile: -1
Dark: 1

Moves
-True Love
You always have exactly one lover. The first is chosen during your backstory. If you ever fall in love with someone else instead, give them a String and they become your new lover. You always carry 1 forward to earning your lover’s heart or fancy.
-Excuses Are My Armour
When you ignore some blatant problem with your lover or how they treat you, mark experience.
-Entrenched
If you and another character have a total of 5 or more Strings on one another, gain 1 to all rolls against them.

Experience: 0/5
Harm: 0/4

Strings List
N/A at the moment

[Dhi]

Yep, tying her change in personality to her death is exactly what I'd like to do! I'm not sure how important the details of her death will be, but right now I feel like she was probably offed by an older married woman who was having an affair with her. It gives her an irrational trigger for adult responsibilities that I think will fuel the blame ability ghosts have in pretty broad strokes.

Catcher in the Rye is about alienation and coming of age. It seems closer to the mark of inspiration than something like Skullgirls.

I'd like Dissipate for my ghost power, so I can phase through people and objects. It almost seems like more penalty than a benefit, but come on, you've got to be able to float through stuff if you're a ghost.

[Crash]

Is the three posts a week for just IC or is that IC and OOC combined?

[meikle]

Is the three posts a week for just IC or is that IC and OOC combined?

IC, ideally!  OOC stuff should be less demanding than IC stuff so it shouldn't be as hard to keep up.  I won't be upset with people who don't check in daily either way.

Catcher in the Rye is about alienation and coming of age. It seems closer to the mark of inspiration than something like Skullgirls.

I'd like Dissipate for my ghost power, so I can phase through people and objects. It almost seems like more penalty than a benefit, but come on, you've got to be able to float through stuff if you're a ghost.

I think so!  I'm familiar with the book but I've never read it myself.  I think it makes sense for inspiration here though!

Dissipate is cool!  I don't think it's an always-on situation where you can't affect things, so it shouldn't be too much of a drawback.  Even the ghost's Darkest Self isn't totally unable to manipulate objects and stuff!

I may be interested in playing Viper in here, a very hot tempered boarderline cannablistic snake hybrid. She is not a naga type, but she does have a lot of snake attributes that make her worthy.

Overbrook isn't really like a monster-people school; it's a normal school where some of the students are (secretly, for the most part!) monsters.  There is a skin called the Serpentine that deals with characters who have snake-people heritage and focuses on a theme of being from two different worlds / trying to fit in with human society while still being beholden to a family that doesn't understand it.

Hmm. I'll probably do a trap.  

I am not against trans characters at all, but I'll be up front and say that if anyone intends to play them, I expect it to be done respectfully!  That isn't an especially respectful definition of a transperson is it?  "due to insecurity" indeed.

[Crash]

Even three IC is pushing it for me to be honest.  Looks like fun.  If you feel you need someone with more like one IC post a week on average then let me know and I would be happy to give it a go.

[Dhi]

What I mean about Dissipate seeming like a penalty is that the other powers give you things like strings, harm, or experience, while Dissipate just says that if you take advantage of it in a tense situation, you're counted as running away. But, regardless of how it works in the mechanics, I'd like it for how it works in a story.

I was showing the game to my gaming group, and we noted that Frankenstein girls seem strangely omitted. Is that not in genre, or is it just elsewhere like Serpentine?

[Crash]

Loving the morbidity of Ghoul and the chaos of Fae personally.  I think ghoul is actually where they put Frankenstein girl Dhi.  It mentions the possibility of being a corpse stitched together there.

[Dhi]

If you consider the skins as reading like the World of Darkness lineup, something like Promethean is missing. Although you could be a ghoul, the horror there seems to stem from their unwholesome hunger, rather than the Promethean themes of existing as an object of vanity without purpose, struggling to attain the nobility of just being human, science gone mad, that kind of thing.

[meikle]

If you consider the skins as reading like the World of Darkness lineup, something like Promethean is missing. Although you could be a ghoul, the horror there seems to stem from their unwholesome hunger, rather than the Promethean themes of existing as an object of vanity without purpose, struggling to attain the nobility of just being human, science gone mad, that kind of thing.

It depends on what you're looking for from the Promethean I guess.  The distance from everyone else is in the Ghost; the ghost is like, teenage PTSD.  She's separated from everyone else by an experience that nobody can relate to.  Her experience is changed and shifted in a way that other people can't piece together.

I guess the ghoul is closer to sociopathy, and not really much like the promethean; they're about, I think, needing something totally apart from other people.  A drive that is distinct and self-sustaining and not just foreign but outright disturbing to other people.  Maybe sociopathy isn't the right word.

Most of the Monsterhearts skins are built on something that real teenagers might experience; the Serpentine covers from coming from a social upbringing that is distinct & separate from the world the character is living in, but even then, that's not what the promethean theme is.  I'm not sure that coming into being wholly formed and totally distinct from the rest of the human race is a teenage issue though so there's nothing that covers that explicitly.

[Dhi]

Whoa, very illuminating. Thanks!

[persephone325]

So someone posted a Monsterhearts game idea quite a while back, and I expressed interest but it never even got off the ground. So I would love to be a part of this. ^^

[The Jackal]

The Serpentine skin caught my eye.  I would like to express interest, but I'm unfamiliar with the system.  Is that an issue?

[Crash]

I am going to try to get a couple of concepts up tonight.  One for Fae and one for The Ghoul.  Just to see if one jumps out.

[meikle]

The Serpentine skin caught my eye.  I would like to express interest, but I'm unfamiliar with the system.  Is that an issue?

the system is really simple and i'm fine with players who are new to it & happy to help anyone who has questions about it!

i realized i didn't actually finish my last post.  oops! and i broke my keyboard (posting from my 3ds here) so i'll be quiet until i get a new one tomorrowish.  i'm really excited to see so many interested people here!

[The Jackal]

the system is really simple and i'm fine with players who are new to it & happy to help anyone who has questions about it!

Thanks!

Let me know if there's anything missing.

The Serpentine

Name: Dana Welsh
Look: Sleek, snake eyes
True Form: Slimy scales all over, a forked tongue
Origin: A family with unknown origins
Stats:
Hot: 2
Cold: 1
Volatile: -1
Dark: -1

Moves:
Failing Dynasty: Family wants to regain web of secret allegiances.  When doing the bidding of a family member, carry 1 forward to doing it and that member gains a string.  Mark experience whenever family regains some former glory.
Mesmerizing: Roll with Hot, when staring at someone.  10+, they freeze until they get touched or blink, and gain Condition dazed.  7-9, they become dazed.

Experience: 0/5
Harm: 0/4

Backstory: 
Some people would call Dana's family situation weird, but to her it was just the way things were done.  The Welsh Family is, and always will be, a matrifocal family with the current head being Adelinde, Dana's grandmother.  According to Adelinde there has never been a male born to the family, due to this odd...abnormality, male 'lovers' are chosen very carefully.  Dana has two older sisters, twins Ella and Emma. Dana spent her pre-Overbrook years being taught by private tutors.  Her favorite tutor happened to be the Overbrook Art teacher, Miss Kate Hogan, whom jumpstarted Dana's passion for drawing.  When the twins came of age they were immediately sent off to Overbrook, with Dana following a year after.  Since Dana has gone to Overbrook she has joined the Art Club, and is part of the Swim Team.  Now in her third year Dana is now more aware of how close the twins are to graduation, but the constant calls/texts from Adelinde keep her from completely enjoying herself.

Strings: N/A

[Queluna]

Easter West
Lithe Build
Deep Eyes
Pagan Origin

-1 Hot
+1 Cold
-1 Volatile
+1 Dark

Sympathetic Tokens
You gain power from sympathetic tokens - items of
personal significance that you take from others. Each
sympathetic token counts as a String.

Hex-Casting
You can cast Hexes. Choose two that you know. To cast
them, either expend a sympathetic token during a secret
ritual, or meet the target’s gaze and chant at them in
tongues. Then roll with dark. On a 10 up, the Hex works,
and can easily be reversed. On a 7-9, it works but choose
one:
}} the casting does you 1 harm;
}} the Hex has unexpected side
}} trigger your Darkest Self.

Transgressive Magic
When your ritual transgresses the community’s moral
and sexual standards, add 1 to your hex-casting roll.

Sanctuary
You have a secret place for practising witchcraft. Add 1 to
all rolls you make within this space.

Ring of Lies
Whenever the person attempts to lie, they hear a piercing
ringing noise. Big lies will often make their knees buckle
and disorient them. Severe lies can cause harm or even
brain damage.

Watching
You enter a deep sleep, and begin to see the world through
the eyes of the hexed. You can feel their reactions to and


Easter is a shy and solitary girl.  Her family were not alumni of the Overbrook Academy, nor are they wealthy or famous.  They simply wanted the best for their beloved young daughter, but perhaps they didn't realize the trouble she would face with peers that considered her poor and worth less than the rest of the students, making her more introverted and reserved.

She did have a girlfriend for a year.  Another strange girl that all the other students teased and made fun of, but she seemed to care far less about their insults, both thick-skinned and quick-witted, easily able to shirk off their attacks and dish them out even colder.  Her strength of personality and will led a lot of the girls to just ignore her instead, figuring she wasn't worth the effort.

Now, though, her girlfriend has moved out of town.  In addition to being a fragile creature, she is now also saddened by the fact that she finds herself alone again without any friends.  She did learn a trick or two from her ex-girlfriend, though, the sorts of tricks that have never exactly been welcomed in the history of New England.

[meikle]

Hooray!  A new keyboard.

I have some ideas for an origin story, but it looks likes that will have to wait until Meikle chooses characters.  I do want to use the resurrected origin route though.

When I say backgrounds come after player selection, mostly I'm talking about the Background part of the mechanics -- assigning strings doesn't work if you don't know who else is around to assign them to!  If you have ideas in mind for that kind of thing, you should feel free to knock them around.  The form her Hunger takes might be fun to play with too; I don't think the "Playing the..." part is in the skins summary pdf, but the Hunger is meant to be a really constant and imposing limit (like, if your Hunger is for Flesh, that might be like, people flesh, or like you have to eat pounds and pounds of  meat every day, or whatever -- "scary and messy" is how the book puts it.

Let me know if there's anything missing.

Feel free to take a look at the OP for what I'm looking for in interest submissions/character outlines!  I'm more interested in the background stuff than the mechanics here -- attitude, friends, clubs, whatever.  Enough to have an idea of the kind of person they are!  For a Serpentine it'll be important to have an idea of how her family impacts her life, especially since it's a boarding school.  Does she have siblings there?  Family among the faculty?  Maybe not if they're nomads.  The boarding school setting gives a little bit of a sense of isolation from familiar comfort, so I guess a character in the Serpentine skin will be dealing to some degree with themes of being unable to escape them even if they're nowhere to be seen.

So someone posted a Monsterhearts game idea quite a while back, and I expressed interest but it never even got off the ground. So I would love to be a part of this. ^^

Tell us a little bit about what you'd like to play!

edit3?  4: okay it should be good for now.

[Crash]

Hooray!  A new keyboard.

Woohoo!