Monsterhearts AP: Blue Ridge High

A game of Monsterhearts!

Misha, Lani, and Divya. Lani has played a good deal of 5e. Misha has played my vampire game and some OSR. Divya completely new.

I explained the concept of the game -- play out the messy lives of queer teen paranormal romance and horror, like in Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and similar. Turned out we had very view Twihards in attendance (actually I was the only one) and the most common reference point was Riverdale.

I also explained the medium of roleplay, conversation. You say what happens for things under your authority. In this case, just one character, for whom you advocate, their thoughts and actions. I say everything about the other people and world, though I'll often ask the others to say things instead. We read aloud the principles for the game.

We read aloud the skins and everybody picked one. Lani chose werewolf, Misha vampire, and Divya infernal. This got the group buzzing. The skins are such fun!

I talked about the dangerous topics we might bring up, and the orientation of the game towards danger: "I will not abandon you". Prima facie no topic is off limits, though we can always zoom out of detail. The media that inspired this is often problematic and rarely carefully considered. We don't have to worry about having our characters act ethically. They are messy and figuring shit out.

We made a town, mostly inspired by my childhood home, Redlands.

Blue Hills, Socal, pop 20k, primarily lower middle class, ethnicities: majority white, Hispanic underclass, large SEA population from the nearby medical university.

The mascot of Blue Ridge High, Rocky Road the Mountain. On the bottom right, Damien's Dark Power

We talked about the rules and finalized the characters.

Then we made the seating chart. This was surprisingly fun. Everybody bounced off each other's suggestions and reincorporated each other's statements very well. A clear picture of the characters emerged.

Seating chart

Starting the scenario. Damien gets to class early. His Dark Power orders him to steal a box of matches from Stu, and he does it. Cassius gets to class on time and greets his friends and lovers. He flirts with his seatmate Apple, Turning Them On, and they offer to bring him a sheet of acid if he has a party tonight.

Flinch gets to class late.

Cassius and Co plan the details of the party, including who they invite. Flinch is left out. Damien, oddly, is invited, as everyone is curious what he'll be like on acid. I don't remember who suggested that.

One student, Steve, never shows up. The police do, however. They take the teacher outside. Damien gazes into the abyss to get insight -- what are they talking about? He learns that the student has been torn to pieces by a wild animal on his own doorstep.

The teacher announces the news. Damien reacts strongly, conquering his fear of attention (Keeping His Cool) and leaving the class in front of everyone. Steve is one of the only people in class he has had postive interactions with. Divya says that the Dark Power appears before him and orders him to solve the murder. This is technically my authority -- I say what the Dark Power says. But it was a good idea. We'll talk more about authorities next time we play.

After class ends, Flinch takes a claw molded from a paperclip and scratches "STEVE WAS HERE" on Steve's desk. Lucy notices this, and talks to them after class. They commiserate about the death, and not being invited to Cassius's party. Flinch suggests they crash.

Cassius has lunch with his crew. His secret squeeze, Nico, has blamed the death on the werewolf he thinks is stalking the countryside and boasts that he will kill it. He says he will bring his rifle to the party to protect everyone. Cassius tries Shutting Him Down but fails, gets the condition Snowflake.

Chad and Triple-T gang up on Damien and try to bully him, but Damien Shuts Them Down successfully.

Cassius and Flinch get assigned to work together in chem lab. Flinch cuts himself intentionally to check Cassius's reaction. I decided to play this as Consult the Void, but it would have been fine to just ask Cassius how he responded. Roll fails, Flinch learns nothing and gets a bunch of medical attention from the teacher, Abs, acting as the school nurse.

After school, Damien goes to Abs to investigate the murder. He tells her he wants to talk about the death, and she (acting as the guidance counselor) starts to therapize him before turning the conversation to her own problems. Damien gathers that the dead kid was eaten by a huge bear or similar, and that the attacks have been happening every full moon, escalating in size. Tonight is the second night of the full moon.

All three characters get ready for the party. At this point it's 11 pm in real life and I'm moving things quickly. Misha is visibly checking out but we're close to the end of the scenario, and everybody else is invested, so we push through.

While preparing, Flinch talks to their two friends, who decide to tag along to the party. They steal a bunch of school hats.

Cassius can't get drunk and so he pressures his friends to drink heavily in his stead.

Damien arrives early to the party. Everybody takes acid. He talks to the girl he likes, Harmony, but inadvertently Shuts Her Down, failing the roll and earning a Condition.

Half an hour later, the crashers arrive. At the same instant, Cassius decides to feed on one of his partners, and flips a coin. Rather than actually flipping a coin, I ask Misha to say which way the coin lands. At the same instant, Harmony transforms into a werewolf.

Cassius screams for Nico to get the rifle, losing his Condition Snowflake. He grabs the rifle to take a shot at the beast. Damien looks for the girl to protect her, and Gazes into the Abyss to understand the true situation: the girl was the werewolf who killed Steve! Flinch transforms as well and attacks the other wolf. Damien attacks as well, just trying to restrain her. Everybody fails their roll. Cassius triggers his darkest self. Damien flees to the kitchen and starts a fire at the bidding of his Dark Power. The house burns down. Everybody has an easy out except for Flinch, who is locked in melee with the wolf. They fail their Escape roll and are stuck inside the burning building, suffering massive Harm. Fortunately, they have an ability which reduces their harm while in moonlight, so they survive.

We ended there. The conclusion was not super conclusive, in the sense that it didn't address any of the main characters' conflicts with each other, but then again, they weren't set up against each other like we might expect in Monsterhearts. Most of the action was main character against side character. The biggest change was in Damien, who lost every single person (all two of them) who had ever been nice to him.

Later, we debriefed about the session. Everybody thought it was great fun and wanted to play again. Unfortunately, Lani left for California and we didn't have time for another session.

I do think we'll play again without Lani -- Divya's boyfriend has expressed interest, and I expect others in the friend group to follow suit.

Next time we play, I'll ask the returning players to think about three things:

• the string economy and how they can use it to achieve their desires
• their skin-specific moves
• playing a character as "authoring" them; rather than thinking, "What would my character do?", instead ask "What do I want my character to do?"