Latest / Sessions Canceled / Tabetop Shout Out: MonsterHearts 2: Ep. 154

Transcript

Tabetop Shout Out: MonsterHearts 2: Ep. 154 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Hey everybody, so funny story. Originally we were going to play
• 0:20
  Vampire the Masquerade and then one of our players was like, I'm
• 0:22
  going to, you do research and get into character and I'm going
• 0:24
  to bump and grind my way across the tri-state area.
• 0:27
  And we literally haven't seen him in two weeks.
• 0:30
  So all my prep got thrown out. I, I guess we're going to play
• 0:34
  Monster hearts because I'm really on this monster vibe, so
• 0:37
  I fuck it. I I don't like the implication
• 0:43
  of everything you said there. Way better cold open than last
• 0:51
  week. It was certainly an open we've
• 0:56
  we've lost someone to drugs and hookers, yeah.
• 0:59
  Like, wait, he's some say he's still out there.
• 1:03
  Pacifier and mouth at the rave. Nice.
• 1:10
  Dude, it's crazy. I before I moved to Texas, I
• 1:13
  was, I was on a dating app and I saw one of my old classmates and
• 1:19
  her location was Manhattan, where I did not live.
• 1:22
  And she just went full rave kid, like, like full on.
• 1:28
  And then I found out she was like disappearing for like
• 1:31
  months at a time to like fly to California and do raves.
• 1:34
  And she just shows back up sometimes, Yeah.
• 1:37
  I always wonder when people do that shit.
• 1:39
  I'm like, how do you fund these adventures?
• 1:42
  I don't know. Yeah, I think it's a lot of
• 1:45
  hitchhiking and like odd jobs. I guess.
• 1:51
  I do all right. So I've I've picked as, as a
• 1:54
  listeners may know, I'm, I'm an Uber driver at the moment as one
• 1:57
  of my jobs, one of my three jobs.
• 1:59
  I suppose doing like Uber and DoorDash does make that sort of
• 2:02
  thing easier these days. Yeah, well, so I picked up these
• 2:07
  ladies and they were like, Oh yeah, I worked two whole, two
• 2:10
  whole weeks to fly out to Houston to go to this con.
• 2:13
  And I'm going to go back and I'm going to work another like week
• 2:16
  and a half, and then I'm going to get a plane ticket to fucking
• 2:19
  Morocco. And we're going to spend a week
• 2:21
  in Morocco. I'm like, what, ma'am?
• 2:24
  Where is your fucking stability? Nah, we don't need that.
• 2:30
  Apparently fucking not. We're off topic before we even
• 2:34
  said what the topic was. Hey everybody, welcome back to
• 2:39
  the Sessions Cancel podcast. It's me, Isaiah.
• 2:40
  I'm here with Josh. I am here and there was no lie
• 2:46
  really. I was the I was the bump and
• 2:49
  grind kid, by the way, and I've really been on like an urban
• 2:53
  fantasy kick the last yes amount of time.
• 2:56
  I do. Like maybe, maybe the next thing
• 2:58
  we should look at is urban shadows.
• 3:00
  That that or legally distinct jutsu kaisen our new RPG Kane
• 3:04
  which fox. Follow Urban Shadows is another
• 3:09
  Pbta game if we want to, you know, stay on the theme.
• 3:14
  I do want to read Kids on Bikes. Oh.
• 3:19
  That's an interesting one. Yeah, I know of.
• 3:21
  It like, yeah, ever since you brought it up, I was like, is
• 3:24
  there like a is it like monster hearts where there's no point
• 3:28
  other than like character progression, like personal
• 3:30
  character progression or is there like some sort of meta
• 3:33
  plot? I don't know.
• 3:36
  That's a good question. I'm not 100% sure.
• 3:38
  I don't know how the game tells you to structure that.
• 3:41
  Yeah, I'm super curious, but take a look at that after I read
• 3:45
  Kane because I just fucking bought the thing and I should
• 3:48
  probably read it before I buy another game.
• 3:51
  Anyway, what are we talking about this week?
• 3:54
  Well, we made a post about it today, Wednesday, June 4th,
• 3:59
  2025. We're talking about Monster
• 4:01
  Hearts and we're talking about it because I am currently on a
• 4:05
  little hiatus because Brett the Abandoner abandoned me and he
• 4:08
  will be gone doing his job like a human being for a couple
• 4:12
  weeks. So my Lancer game is currently
• 4:15
  on hiatus because we're like halfway through the campaign and
• 4:18
  there's a lot of plot stuff going on and I don't want to
• 4:20
  have to have someone miss out on all that that juicy funness.
• 4:24
  They're playing Monster Arts and you very justifiably might be
• 4:28
  like as a what the fuck is monster hunts?
• 4:33
  Wow, I'm happy you asked. Elevator pitch.
• 4:40
  It's like twilight. I'm kidding.
• 4:42
  No, actually I'm not. You're not that far off.
• 4:43
  Would you make that? Statement Monster Hearts is
• 4:46
  powered by the apocalypse system that Harkins back to to sweet
• 4:51
  melodramatic young adult fiction and 80s exploitation style like
• 4:57
  horror cinema. So great combination of genres
• 5:00
  right there right off the bat. And essentially you take the
• 5:08
  role of like angsty hormonally charged teenagers trying to
• 5:13
  survive the horrors of high school and puberty and like
• 5:17
  demons and shit while being secretly monsters yourselves.
• 5:21
  You know, like werewolves and vampires, Heathers, literally
• 5:25
  all that fun jazz. And I don't know about you.
• 5:30
  I, I did not, I, I know literally nothing about Twilight
• 5:33
  other than the one video essay Josh sent me like 3 years ago
• 5:35
  which was fascinating. But I do really like urban
• 5:40
  fantasy and I do really like vampires and werewolves.
• 5:44
  I was a Helsing Ultimate kid and a Lost Boys kid and a Van
• 5:48
  Helsing kid and a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen kid.
• 5:52
  I like werewolves and vampires. I can't Leave me alone.
• 5:54
  And Heather's the musical. It's a good musical, like the
• 5:57
  only one I like. I don't know Heather's.
• 5:59
  That's great. I'll see you like Rocky Horror
• 6:01
  Picture Show. I do love Rocky Horror Picture
• 6:03
  Show. I showed you Rocky Horror
• 6:05
  Picture Show and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.
• 6:10
  I to this day when when I showed it to Moogie when we all watched
• 6:14
  it together like right after gunzakimbo we showed it to
• 6:17
  Moogie and her boyfriend and I like I was like So what y'all
• 6:22
  think? And Josh was like Peek, and then
• 6:24
  Moogie was like Peek and then her boyfriend was like.
• 6:27
  What the fuck did I? Didn't get it.
• 6:28
  I didn't like it. I thought it was kind of mid.
• 6:30
  I was like I. Yeah.
• 6:33
  I can't believe you've done this.
• 6:36
  Jokes on you, I've been to that weird shit.
• 6:42
  Listen, my girlfriend recently made me watch The Greatest
• 6:46
  Showman. Oh, that's a good one too.
• 6:49
  Another good musical. I had a crush on the albino lady
• 6:53
  watching that movie. Albino lady.
• 6:56
  Yeah, so they were. There was 2 albino people in the
• 6:59
  troop camera. There was no, there was three.
• 7:02
  I think there was two women and one dude and the, like, main
• 7:05
  albino woman who did the dancing, like interpretive dance
• 7:08
  had like a weird crush on her. Oh, like my mom was like, oh,
• 7:13
  Zendaya is so pretty in this movie.
• 7:15
  And I'm like, yeah, what? No, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:22
  Fair enough. I, I had more way more respect
• 7:26
  for that movie once I saw the the test footage with Hugh
• 7:30
  Jackman tearing open the stick the the sutures in his nose.
• 7:34
  Oh God, Al, did you hear about that?
• 7:36
  I think you told me about it. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:38
  All right. So to the audience.
• 7:39
  So Hugh Jackman is had cancer, is in remission, as far as I
• 7:43
  know. Hopefully.
• 7:44
  Fucking fingers crossed. But he had it in his nose and he
• 7:48
  had, I believe he had the the tumor excised like weeks before
• 7:53
  he was supposed to pitch the greatest Showman to the
• 7:55
  producers. So they were doing like a read
• 7:58
  through and they were going to do a song.
• 7:59
  And he specifically was told like, Hey, I'm not going to
• 8:01
  sing. I can't if I RIP these sutras,
• 8:03
  I'm bone. And you can see in the video, he
• 8:09
  makes this decision as the music builds to like, fuck it, we're
• 8:12
  going to try it. And he started belting it out to
• 8:15
  the fucking back row. And he every so often he starts
• 8:18
  like pinching his nose and you can see they definitely ripped
• 8:21
  the sutras open. And he apparently he was like,
• 8:24
  I, I guess him really kicking it to 11 is what sold the producers
• 8:29
  on that movie. And you know, something
• 8:32
  something bleed for your craft. All of that notwithstanding, you
• 8:40
  might be like, OK, cool. I just wait.
• 8:44
  I Oh my God, I just had the thought of like one of the plots
• 8:47
  of your seasons in Monster Hearts as you're putting on the
• 8:49
  school play and everyone's part of the like either actors or
• 8:53
  part of the stage. Oh my God.
• 8:55
  Oh my God. You you have to get hammered for
• 8:58
  that. You just have to sit everyone
• 9:00
  down and get a hammered before session and just really go for
• 9:03
  it. I mean, I don't know if that's a
• 9:05
  requirement, but you certainly could.
• 9:07
  I mean, that would be the most fun, I think perhaps.
• 9:12
  Well, so you know, that's not too far off because I currently
• 9:14
  I have Sarah who's like jumping in on monster hearts because,
• 9:19
  you know, the second I told her about it and I showed her the
• 9:21
  the critical role like Cinderbrush one, she was like, I
• 9:24
  need to play this game. So I've let her in on mine and.
• 9:28
  Dramatic. I'm in.
• 9:30
  Yeah, yeah. She was sold immediately.
• 9:32
  So I let her in and she wants to run one now using the town that
• 9:38
  we built, which is based off my hometown.
• 9:41
  And she wants to do like a Halloween pageant as one of the
• 9:44
  seasons. And I like, I mean, that's
• 9:46
  pretty close to the school theater for sure.
• 9:49
  Yeah. It'll be great.
• 9:53
  I'm so excited. Anyway.
• 9:56
  Yeah, yeah, All right. So I mean, we, we've talked
• 9:58
  about a couple things already off to a great start going to be
• 10:01
  like, all right, yeah. But like, what's the what's the
• 10:02
  point? Like, yeah, sure.
• 10:04
  Hormones and monsters. What is what do you do?
• 10:06
  Hormones. And monsters.
• 10:09
  Monster Hearts is a game, and a system is designed to replicate
• 10:14
  the very messy, very complicated, often deeply
• 10:16
  uncomfortable social dynamics of young adult life through the
• 10:20
  lens of like late high school to early college ish.
• 10:23
  And what is the point of the game?
• 10:27
  Solid argument that there isn't one other than to explore
• 10:31
  characters and their growth. It's.
• 10:34
  For the drama. It's for the drama, yeah.
• 10:38
  Each of the playbooks, or skins, as they are called to this game
• 10:42
  are designed to replicate archetypes of the high school
• 10:44
  experience, specifically through like a neurodivergent, often
• 10:48
  very queer coded lens. This game is very gay.
• 10:52
  And mucho you. As the master of ceremonies
• 10:56
  present to them like meta plots that help push their dynamics.
• 11:02
  So, you know, if one of the characters is playing the queen,
• 11:05
  the Heather character, you could have one season or arc based
• 11:09
  around the new like Queen Bee coming to the school and
• 11:12
  usurping her spot and she might be like a vampire or something
• 11:17
  and who you know, And as the season goes on, she's gathering
• 11:20
  like vampire thralls and the players have to fight and like
• 11:22
  maybe kill if they're down for that.
• 11:24
  Like that's that's how the game sort of presents its general
• 11:29
  flow. And really, if that doesn't get
• 11:36
  you involved based on that elevator pitch alone, there is
• 11:39
  no pleasing queue. But don't worry, we've got more.
• 11:42
  Yeah, I mean, I do think it is worth saying as far as RPGs go,
• 11:50
  this game does a very specific thing, but it does it's very
• 11:53
  specific thing really well. So if you're into the premise,
• 11:55
  you're going to like it a lot. However, if you are not even
• 11:57
  remotely into the premise there's there's there's zero
• 12:01
  chance you're going to be into this.
• 12:03
  Yeah, you will very likely bounce off hard.
• 12:05
  Like it kind of in a similar sense of if you don't think
• 12:08
  running into running into or running around, I should say
• 12:15
  dusky dusty, nasty dungeons and fighting goblins and lizard
• 12:20
  monsters and shit. If that doesn't sound fun to
• 12:22
  you, you're not going to probably like DND, you know,
• 12:24
  like a similar kind of thing. You got to be ready for the the
• 12:30
  drama. I will say and we, and I'm
• 12:34
  really just parroting what Josh said last time in in the unaired
• 12:39
  episode, I will have to admit that as much as I like this game
• 12:43
  and I arguably like this game more than apocalypse and Dungeon
• 12:45
  world, it's not very good if you don't know this system already,
• 12:53
  if you're not familiar with powered by the Apocalypse, no
• 12:55
  it. Does not go out of your way to
• 12:56
  teach you. How it works any such like
• 13:00
  anything. So if you don't know Powered by
• 13:02
  the Apocalypse and you're not comfortable with that system,
• 13:04
  you can bounce off this harder than a fucking squash ball it
• 13:08
  would. Oh, got a problem.
• 13:13
  I was. Completely like I was like I
• 13:15
  need a sport squash. He said squash anyway it it
• 13:23
  comes from an era. So like Monster Hearts is a
• 13:25
  pretty old PBTA game, right? And so it, it comes from a time
• 13:29
  period where it's, I'm sure if someone did the like historical
• 13:36
  research, you could break it down into generations, right?
• 13:39
  But if you look at modern Pbta games, for example, Avatar
• 13:42
  Legends that just came out, it has stepped quite far from
• 13:48
  Apocalypse World. It has pushed itself away from
• 13:50
  Apocalypse World quite a lot. I mean, the bones are still
• 13:52
  there, but a lot of Pbta games now have move themselves away
• 14:00
  and stand on their own more and don't call back to Apocalypse
• 14:03
  World as much as like a like they don't call back to
• 14:07
  Apocalypse World as quote UN quote necessary reading.
• 14:12
  And then even beyond that, Blades in the Dark stepped so
• 14:14
  far. It created its own subculture to
• 14:16
  the subculture, right? So there's all this shit going
• 14:19
  on in terms of how it's evolved. Monster Hearts is from the
• 14:23
  earlier, especially 1st edition. It's from an earlier stage where
• 14:28
  basically all of the PBTA games that were coming out kind of
• 14:31
  assumed you knew what Apocalypse World was and had read it or
• 14:36
  interacted with it in some capacity.
• 14:38
  And so they didn't. I think there's there wasn't as
• 14:41
  much of an assumption that you needed to do as much teaching.
• 14:45
  Whereas now we've gotten to the point that PBTA has gone on long
• 14:48
  enough and it's far enough from way far enough away from when
• 14:51
  Apocalypse World first got published like 10 years ago, I
• 14:55
  want to say. Try. 15 Apocalypse World 20.
• 15:03
  Ten Yeah. Publication 2010.
• 15:05
  Oh OK, well either way it. Is first By the way, first
• 15:09
  edition published 2012. So you could argue this is first
• 15:12
  wave powered by the apocalypse. No, that's what I'm saying.
• 15:14
  It is. It is first wave power of the
• 15:15
  apocalypse. Yeah, like this monster hearts
• 15:18
  is one of the earliest ones, and it's one of the earliest ones
• 15:21
  that really took off. But because it was in that early
• 15:25
  wave, it kind of assumes you know what Apocalypse World is.
• 15:29
  All of this, all of this yapping is for me just to say this game
• 15:34
  doesn't do a great job getting the point across of PBTA on its
• 15:38
  own. Because this game, I think to a
• 15:40
  certain degree had a built in assumption that you knew what
• 15:42
  PBTA was already. Newer PBTA games do not make
• 15:47
  that assumption anymore. Right, you know what I'm saying?
• 15:51
  It's like when you play the sequel to a game and it doesn't
• 15:53
  tell you the controls 'cause they're the same as the first
• 15:55
  game, so it just assumes you already played the first game.
• 15:59
  That reminds me of a fucking Josh Drive.
• 16:03
  Hayes's video essay on Soul Reaver one to Soul Reaver 2.
• 16:06
  Yeah, exactly that. So yes, as like a teaching tool
• 16:16
  and a stand alone game, Monster Hearts doesn't almost sort of
• 16:21
  doesn't work entirely. Yeah, but it wasn't meant to to
• 16:28
  the point that I would love to see a Monster Hearts 3rd
• 16:32
  edition. MD.
• 16:34
  Two, modern PBTA climate and what that would look like.
• 16:38
  That would be amazing and like to really hammer this home.
• 16:42
  Monster Hearts does not at any point even tell you what dice
• 16:47
  you need to roll just to tell you D sixes, D 10s, D 20s D
• 16:53
  hundreds. I have a feeling that particular
• 16:58
  thing was an oversight and they just sort of forgot I I feel
• 17:02
  like that couldn't have been on purpose.
• 17:04
  Considering that it's still that way in second edition, I don't
• 17:08
  know. I mean, yeah, maybe.
• 17:12
  I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
• 17:14
  That's a little wild, right? Second edition.
• 17:16
  It's still not in there. It's a weird choice if it was a
• 17:20
  deliberate choice. Weird choice.
• 17:22
  Yeah, now this might sound like we're pooping on it.
• 17:26
  No, I love this game. But that is, no, we're not
• 17:29
  admittedly, very annoying. We're putting it in context.
• 17:32
  Is it right? Because it's the same ideas.
• 17:35
  If you go back and play, you know, if you go back, I'm going
• 17:42
  to say Doom because I've been playing Doom Eternal, so Doom's
• 17:44
  on the mind. If you go back and play the
• 17:46
  first Doom and you're running around, you're like, you're
• 17:51
  like, this is fucking stupid. I can't aim up right?
• 17:55
  Why can't I point up and there's no aim down sights?
• 17:58
  And why is the gun in the middle of the screen?
• 18:00
  Well, because in the context of when Doom came out, that, you
• 18:03
  know, aiming up was not a technology you could have
• 18:06
  because of how they faked a 3D in Doom, which is to say Doom's
• 18:09
  not actually 3D, but that's a whole other.
• 18:10
  Rabbit hole. I watched a whole video on how
• 18:12
  they faked 3D. How they faked it.
• 18:14
  Yeah, yeah. Great, cool technology.
• 18:17
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:18
  And like, the aim down sights wasn't a concept and the gun in
• 18:23
  the middle of the screen was just kind of because they
• 18:24
  thought that made sense at the time.
• 18:27
  You know, you have to put the game in the context and
• 18:29
  understand or yeah, put the game in the context of when it was
• 18:32
  made and understand why some of the the bits of it are the way
• 18:36
  they are. We're just putting monster
• 18:37
  hearts in that context to explain why some, you may notice
• 18:40
  some things if you go to read it and be like, why does it not
• 18:43
  tell me what dice to roll? That's why.
• 18:48
  I remember. So Paladin was like, hey what do
• 18:50
  I roll? You're on 2D6.
• 18:54
  And he goes, where does it say that I'm like, well, I should be
• 18:56
  in the beginning of the end? He goes, I don't see it.
• 18:58
  And I go, absolutely not. Of course they put Oh yeah, good
• 19:08
  times. And then you you hit the you hit
• 19:12
  the sponge Gar like, oh. Yeah, literally yes.
• 19:16
  I dude, I love. I think to this day Sponge Gar
• 19:20
  is still my favorite meme of all time.
• 19:23
  It's it's a pretty good one. If it's not that it's surprise
• 19:27
  Pikachu. Like I do also like surprise
• 19:30
  fair, Yeah. But I I ever eat while we were
• 19:33
  in school, I was like in fucking sponge car.
• 19:35
  But shit, that was early. That was like phase two memes.
• 19:39
  I was like 2014, 2015. I remember still.
• 19:42
  Phase two memes, but we don't need to get into that right now.
• 19:44
  Fair enough. Even in the year of our Lord
• 19:47
  2018 I saw a sponge guard meme instead of laughed my ass off.
• 19:51
  Never got, never gets old. It is.
• 19:53
  It is. It's kind of funny every time,
• 19:56
  yeah. Now, dear listeners, you might
• 19:59
  be asking. OK, well, they the game says
• 20:00
  that they like it. Doesn't explain how to play it.
• 20:02
  How do you play it? Don't worry, we figured it out.
• 20:04
  I'm kidding. No, the game does explain how to
• 20:06
  play the the minutia of the like.
• 20:08
  It doesn't get into the minutia. Yeah, it explains how to play,
• 20:11
  but maybe not as much as you would like.
• 20:13
  So you read Apocalypse World? 1st yes, you read your 500 page
• 20:18
  book to read your hundred page, your 200 page.
• 20:21
  Book Apocalypse World. 500 pages.
• 20:24
  Like 300 or something. Yeah, it's like 340 I think.
• 20:27
  Hold on. I have it open right now.
• 20:28
  It's 309. OK, OK.
• 20:33
  Now you might be asking how do you play that?
• 20:38
  Great question. The game as we've stated it
• 20:42
  references, you know, 80s style media like Stranger Things but
• 20:45
  also more contemporary melodrama like Teen Wolf or Twilight.
• 20:49
  And it acts as a fun like merger of interpersonal melodrama mixed
• 20:55
  with some really sick urban fantasy like gothic punk style a
• 20:59
  la World of Darkness. The game itself is driven by the
• 21:04
  narrative and by conversation, a lot of storytelling and very,
• 21:09
  very little, if any combat. The game doesn't really have a
• 21:14
  combat system of any kind. There is a method by which to do
• 21:17
  damage, but there is no talk about the back and forth forth,
• 21:22
  the back and forth, back and forth, because the game just
• 21:25
  doesn't really care about that. And as PBTA do, if it's not
• 21:29
  something the game mechanics are overly concerned with, they just
• 21:32
  sort of leave it up to let it flow like a conversation and do
• 21:37
  what do what honesty demands. To that point.
• 21:42
  I actually I, I really like the way that they talk about the
• 21:44
  rules for lash out physically, which is the main combat move in
• 21:48
  the game. And it it says outright, if it
• 21:53
  gets to a point where a character has to lash out
• 21:56
  physically, especially at another character, do not have
• 21:59
  your players just exchange, exchange, lash out physically
• 22:02
  roles. That's not the point, and it's
• 22:04
  going to be really boring. Yeah, it's not DND.
• 22:05
  You're not making attack rolls back and forth.
• 22:08
  Yeah, if a character lashes out physically, that means that the
• 22:12
  the the proverbial scratch on the record, it has been hit and
• 22:16
  characters go into a different mindset.
• 22:19
  Not that you should stop playing the game because the game just
• 22:21
  it says yeah. I mean PvP is probably going to
• 22:24
  happen just like Apocalypse World, but it's not point so
• 22:29
  don't treat it like a point. It's not.
• 22:31
  It's not a combat game like D and.
• 22:33
  D Can I just also say it's kind of funny?
• 22:35
  I just looked at the taking inspiration the the last chapter
• 22:39
  real quick just 'cause I was curious what it lists when you
• 22:41
  were mentioning the vibes and you know, a couple shows, couple
• 22:45
  songs like a movie, blah blah blah, mentions Buffy the Vampire
• 22:49
  Slayer and Vampire Diaries and then the very last thing on the
• 22:52
  inspiration list read Apocalypse World.
• 22:54
  Read Apocalypse World. Yep.
• 22:56
  Yeah, they're like, all right. Well, yeah, OK.
• 22:59
  That's pretty great. Fair enough.
• 23:02
  I like watch the Craft and lost boys.
• 23:04
  Yes, yes. Love that.
• 23:09
  I have no idea what Ginger snaps is though.
• 23:11
  I don't know. I haven't watched The Craft or
• 23:12
  Lost Boys either. I know of them.
• 23:14
  You've never seen a lost. No.
• 23:17
  OK, I know what we're doing. I we'll figure out a day.
• 23:22
  Don't worry, we'll watch The Lost Boys, OK?
• 23:25
  It's so peak, dude. It's so peak in the main
• 23:28
  character and oh God what the hell.
• 23:32
  Is a movie? I thought it was a show.
• 23:35
  I believe they're remaking it into a show, but I wonder.
• 23:40
  If I'm confusing it with. Something Yeah.
• 23:43
  Jason Patrick and Kiefer Sutherland's character have such
• 23:45
  gay energy. God like fever Sutherland is
• 23:51
  like the leader of the vampire gang of like hooligans and
• 23:55
  Michael is your your dreamy windswept hair just moved to not
• 24:04
  Miami wherever Malibu like dreamboat and they they have
• 24:09
  some energy brother. I see.
• 24:12
  Like specifically at the like in the amusement park at the.
• 24:15
  Santa Carlo, California. Yeah, OK, let's write about
• 24:21
  California. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:25
  Lost Boys reboot will star Noah Jupe and Jaden Martel.
• 24:29
  OK, cool. OK, I'm.
• 24:33
  I'm definitely going to watch that.
• 24:34
  That was like a fucking. That was a quintessential mover
• 24:36
  for me growing up. I don't know why.
• 24:39
  My mom just really liked the Lost Boys.
• 24:40
  Anyway, I feel like it is important to bring this up.
• 24:46
  We joked about it in the beginning, but it is a quite I
• 24:48
  don't know it's serious, but it is a very prevalent thing when
• 24:51
  it comes to discussing monster arts.
• 24:52
  It's being gay as shit. The game being gay as shit.
• 24:55
  Yes, this is a game of diversity.
• 24:58
  It is designed. It is built by minority groups
• 25:03
  to tell stories about minority groups, to bring love to
• 25:06
  minority groups, to tell stories about the quote UN quote rejects
• 25:13
  of society. And they are, the idea of those
• 25:19
  stories is inextricably linked to Monster Hearts.
• 25:25
  The game expects these things to happen and they are in some ways
• 25:27
  folded into the playbooks themselves.
• 25:30
  And you kind of have to recognize it.
• 25:32
  Like I, I don't really think it works if you don't do it.
• 25:36
  And then like to the point of do you need to be a non binary
• 25:43
  person of color? Like no, not at all.
• 25:47
  You can be your normal like cisgender white kid in high
• 25:51
  school. But the point of the game is you
• 25:54
  are supposed to play a character of whatever flavor you want that
• 25:58
  is overlooked by society and punched down on by the
• 26:03
  collective. And I think as someone who is,
• 26:08
  you know, someone who is of the LGBT community who is Latino, I
• 26:15
  really enjoy the fact that the game references this, references
• 26:19
  this and treats it with a level of sincerity and seriousness
• 26:24
  that I appreciate, frankly. You know, I mean, yeah, I don't
• 26:34
  have anything to add other than the fact that, yeah, it was
• 26:36
  written by a a very not straight lady who wanted to let you know
• 26:40
  about the very not straight no. Yes, I like it's it's we need to
• 26:45
  bring it up. It's not something I think we
• 26:48
  need to devote a whole bunch of time on, but it it did, you
• 26:52
  know, affect me meaningfully while I read it.
• 26:55
  There is it's a little unfortunate because the way that
• 27:00
  this the chapter is worded and it does have a full chapter,
• 27:03
  like straight up, it does seem a little finger waggling at you
• 27:09
  like you better do it. And that can and likely will rub
• 27:15
  some people the wrong way. And I don't necessarily think
• 27:17
  they're wrong about getting their, you know, getting a stern
• 27:22
  talking to by the game. You know, I think it's it's a
• 27:24
  justified response to be like game.
• 27:26
  I get it. I am I am an ally or I am part
• 27:28
  of this community. It is there worth reading.
• 27:35
  But yeah, you just got to let the game do what it do.
• 27:38
  And if you really don't like it, play a different game.
• 27:41
  I'm not going to hold it to you. This game has already got a
• 27:43
  bunch of stuff that is going to bounce someone off of it.
• 27:46
  So, Ed? What Ed.
• 27:49
  If you're homophobic, avoid. Avoid.
• 27:51
  Yes, avoid like the plague. It will kill you like the
• 27:54
  plague. All right, let's get to the
• 27:58
  basic shoes. So much like Apocalypse World,
• 28:01
  this game runs off of a system of moves, essentially narrative
• 28:05
  triggers that proc once specific actions or sets of actions are
• 28:08
  described in the narrative. Moves are supported by a set of
• 28:13
  stats, New stats. In comparison to Apocalypse
• 28:15
  World, they are as follows. Hot, old, volatile, and dark.
• 28:21
  They are pretty self-explanatory I think.
• 28:25
  The stats are essentially describing your ability to be
• 28:28
  passionate. Your ability to be cold and
• 28:30
  cruel. Your ability to be passionate
• 28:33
  and angry, and your ability to tap into your inner darkness, be
• 28:37
  it your depression or literally staring into hell.
• 28:42
  The game utilizes a new set of moves in comparison to
• 28:44
  Apocalypse World and distinctly lacks 1 as we thought, but
• 28:47
  apparently it's in the Werewolf. We'll get to it.
• 28:50
  The moves are turn someone on, shut someone down, keep your
• 28:57
  cool, lash out, physically run away, or gaze into the abyss.
• 29:03
  And for a quick rundown of those, turn someone on is your
• 29:09
  ability to be persuasive, charismatic, sexy, provocative.
• 29:18
  Like it's your charisma. It really is.
• 29:23
  It's your force of will. You're just sort of force of
• 29:25
  nature, personality that you can impose upon others to get the
• 29:29
  things you want. Shut someone down is sort of the
• 29:32
  opposite. Be it you shoving someone
• 29:34
  against the wall, giving them a stern talking to, telling them
• 29:37
  they're a bitch. It's your ability to enforce
• 29:41
  your will to stop other people from doing the prior action.
• 29:47
  And that can in fact take the form of shutting someone down on
• 29:53
  someone who's trying to turn you on.
• 29:55
  Like actually roll to turn you on.
• 29:57
  But it also just a good stand in for your character to act well,
• 30:03
  cold, right? Your your ability to sort of
• 30:05
  give people the shoulder and be a little standoffish.
• 30:08
  Keep your cool allows you to act under duress.
• 30:11
  Not really in like a wisdom save kind of way, but more like
• 30:17
  things are going down. This is a role that is you're in
• 30:21
  a situation where your character will likely be unable to roll
• 30:24
  due to their duress. So roll keep your cool to really
• 30:29
  afford you the ability to keep moving through the out the the
• 30:32
  scene itself, narratively speaking.
• 30:34
  Yeah, I, I will say I find it kind of interesting how how this
• 30:39
  game words keep your cool because it says when you keep
• 30:42
  your cool and act despite fear, which is a different wording to
• 30:49
  Apocalypse's worlds. Apocalypse.
• 30:51
  I don't. My tongue got real tight on that
• 30:55
  one. I know it's happening to me
• 30:56
  constantly. Apocalypse Worlds act under fire
• 31:01
  move, which I'm actually hold on.
• 31:05
  Let me see if I can pull it up real quick because the wording
• 31:11
  oh God, where is it? OK, so act under fire says when
• 31:16
  you do something under fire or dig into endure fire.
• 31:21
  So act under fire having this kind of like something bad is
• 31:26
  actively happening right now, whereas keep your cool is saying
• 31:34
  when you keep your cool and act despite fear.
• 31:37
  So it has a little bit more of this kind of social bent to it
• 31:42
  where it's it's saying it's not necessarily that something's bad
• 31:47
  is happening right this second, but maybe you're worried about
• 31:50
  repercussions or something like that.
• 31:53
  It's just an interesting, I mean, it makes sense.
• 31:56
  It's just an interesting reframing of the move 'cause I
• 32:02
  could see you reading Apocalypse World and then seeing Keep Your
• 32:05
  Cool and just assuming it works like Acting or Fire and not
• 32:08
  reading it closely enough. Which honestly, is probably
• 32:13
  actually the case for a couple of the moves.
• 32:15
  Yes, and like to be clear, the the stay cool thing does allow
• 32:21
  you to like dig in while you're getting shot at, but it's also
• 32:24
  your ability to regroup after you just got schooled in like a
• 32:29
  debate. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:31
  It's less about it's less about immediate threat right this
• 32:35
  second and and more about a combination of threat and social
• 32:40
  pressures. Yes.
• 32:42
  Which I suppose you could say applies to almost everything in
• 32:45
  the game. Yes, very.
• 32:48
  We'll bring it up when it comes to the the move run away.
• 32:51
  There's not a there's not so much combat in this game, but
• 32:57
  there is a lot of social back and forth.
• 33:00
  You're sort of dancing around the, what's the word I want the
• 33:08
  what's the word I want? God, why can't I think, wow,
• 33:15
  I'm, I'm blanking really hard. But you're dancing around the
• 33:20
  culture of, you know, when you were actually in high school,
• 33:23
  right? There's this thing you have to
• 33:25
  do where you have to, should I say this?
• 33:28
  Should I not? Who do I talk to?
• 33:30
  Who am I not allowed to talk to? All that weird bullshit that
• 33:32
  high school students do when you're trying to figure out how
• 33:35
  you're how you fit in the social hierarchy and everything, of
• 33:40
  course, which all goes right out the fucking window once you get
• 33:42
  out of school, But whatever, the game focuses on that.
• 33:48
  The game focuses on that in a big way.
• 33:51
  So the the tension of the game a lot of the time is navigating
• 33:56
  the social landscape and the faux pas and the like, what the
• 34:00
  culture of the school is like. That's really, that's the combat
• 34:03
  of the game. Even though you have the throw
• 34:05
  hands move, the throw hands move isn't really the combat of the
• 34:08
  game. Not even a little bit.
• 34:11
  The throw hands, the throw hands move is the like, I'm done with
• 34:15
  this conversation. I'm pulling a grenade right?
• 34:19
  Like I'm just fuck this shit, I'm out.
• 34:26
  I'm sorry, just hit the other. You know what?
• 34:28
  Fuck this Tink birds like whoa whoa whoa.
• 34:32
  Yeah, well, it's kind of what it is, right?
• 34:34
  You just like throw a punch or whatever.
• 34:36
  Yeah, Yeah. It's a good segue to bring it
• 34:40
  up. Our next and arguably most
• 34:42
  controversial skill in the game, which is Lash Out.
• 34:45
  Physically controversial. You're going to say that one's
• 34:49
  controversial and not turn someone on?
• 34:52
  Well, so there I've seen some back and forth of of people
• 34:56
  saying like why is lash out physically even a move if
• 34:59
  there's no combat Like there's not even like there's no enemies
• 35:03
  in the game, there's no stat blocks.
• 35:05
  What is the? Point No stat blocks in
• 35:08
  Apocalypse World either. Is that true?
• 35:12
  Yeah, there's no stat blocks in Apocalypse, I thought.
• 35:15
  There was, I guess, that Dungeon World.
• 35:17
  Dungeon World has Dungeon World has very loose stat blocks for
• 35:21
  monsters, but even those are barely stat blocks.
• 35:24
  They're basically just HP, damage, couple of tags.
• 35:28
  That's mostly it. No Apocalypse World only really
• 35:33
  cares about how much damage is the person doing to you based on
• 35:36
  what kind of weapon they're trying to hurt you with and if
• 35:39
  they're wearing any armor. And that's kind of it.
• 35:41
  If you want to have a character who has anything special about
• 35:45
  them to give them like a stat block quote, UN quote, you make
• 35:47
  them as a threat and then you give them custom moves.
• 35:51
  Gotcha. So yeah, I do wish that Monster
• 35:56
  Arts had a little bit of like a this is how you make a queen at,
• 36:01
  you know, character. Like I can I can just read
• 36:07
  Apocalypse world and I'm I'm going to.
• 36:10
  But I do wish the game just had some bespoke shit for me.
• 36:13
  I. Mean you did already read
• 36:15
  Apocalypse or else. I yes, but I didn't read the
• 36:17
  like you mean. Read more thoroughly.
• 36:20
  Yes, I didn't read the like enemies stuff very much.
• 36:26
  I see. Yeah, Last shot physically, as I
• 36:30
  stated, it's your main method of attack.
• 36:32
  It's your really the way that you're doing damage outside of a
• 36:35
  couple unique playbook moves. And it is the only skill.
• 36:43
  No, no, sorry. Runaway also lets you roll with
• 36:45
  all tiles and say it's the only skill that has you run with all
• 36:49
  the time. The two physical things.
• 36:51
  The two physical things, yeah. Last shot physically is also
• 36:54
  cool 'cause it's the only skill that allows you to access your
• 36:58
  darkest self voluntarily and we'll talk about what your
• 37:02
  darkest self is. I mean TLDR it is your monster
• 37:06
  form right? If you're playing a werewolf,
• 37:08
  that is how you werewolf out is by accessing your it's.
• 37:10
  Also it's also just you being like kind of a piece of shit.
• 37:15
  You're like leaning into your. It's that moment you had in
• 37:20
  school where you curse somebody out even though you probably
• 37:22
  shouldn't. You know, like you got a little
• 37:24
  you, you said something a little too mean, you know, a little too
• 37:27
  in on them. It's that kind of like.
• 37:29
  Yes, it's it's you and your demon arc.
• 37:31
  Like you're just acting as your absolute worst.
• 37:34
  You're completely unabashed and uninhibited.
• 37:38
  You're cruel because you want to be.
• 37:40
  You're breaking shit because you want to be.
• 37:42
  You're breaking people because you want to.
• 37:44
  You really are just a fucker and it's really cool and a lot of
• 37:48
  fun. After that, we do have your
• 37:53
  runaway, and this is going to one of those really fun things
• 37:56
  because runaway can be many things.
• 37:59
  It can be your ability to regroup in a conversation.
• 38:02
  It can be you literally running away to some sort of hideout,
• 38:07
  some safe space. It could be you retreating into
• 38:10
  your own mind and just shutting yourself off from the
• 38:14
  conversation to stop the pain. So edge but like so edge given
• 38:20
  context. Oh I realized probably should
• 38:24
  have mentioned this is by fuck up each.
• 38:30
  Same thing with Apocalypse world.
• 38:32
  Each move rolls off a very specific stat.
• 38:34
  So turn someone on, obviously it's hot, shut someone down
• 38:36
  cold, keep your cool. Also cold.
• 38:39
  Lash out and run away are volatile, and then the one that
• 38:42
  we're going to talk about right now, Gaze into the Abyss is the
• 38:45
  only move that rolls with the dark gaze of Into the Abyss is
• 38:51
  what is the move called the apocalypse rolls.
• 38:56
  Connect to the psychic. Look into this.
• 39:00
  Open your brain to the psychic maelstrom.
• 39:02
  Yes, it is your ability to speak to the GM essentially in a weird
• 39:09
  esoteric, Riddle filled way. It's I I don't want to say it's
• 39:17
  that help me, I'm stuck button because it's not true, but it is
• 39:19
  something you can absolutely use.
• 39:20
  It could be. It could be not that it
• 39:23
  necessarily is, but yeah, it is. It is the the meta narrative
• 39:29
  button. Essentially.
• 39:30
  You can hit it to kill, to clue your yourself as the player into
• 39:34
  parts of the metaplot that allows your characters to be
• 39:36
  clued in and continue on with the game.
• 39:39
  And I do kind of like that. I really like when games have
• 39:42
  this thing built in because it means that you can create more
• 39:48
  disconnected stories and still present a through line to
• 39:51
  achieve those goals. You know, because you know, it's
• 39:56
  a real, very real thing. Not necessarily looking into the
• 39:59
  abyss, but let's say you're playing like detectives.
• 40:02
  You're doing like a Persona 4, you know, we're junior
• 40:04
  detectives thing. You can just have the case go
• 40:07
  cold. Because of some weird magic
• 40:09
  interference. And then you go, OK, well, you
• 40:13
  know, we've tracked this person down, but there's no hand,
• 40:16
  there's no fingerprints. What do we do?
• 40:17
  Well, let's gaze into the abyss and find out.
• 40:21
  It's really cool. That's a button it oh, it gives
• 40:22
  the the master of ceremonies a lot of fun options and it gives
• 40:25
  the players a guaranteed we can't soft lock ourself out of
• 40:29
  the the investigation. It can also just be, you know,
• 40:38
  I, I need some special extra details about a thing.
• 40:43
  Kind of like, it can also have a connotation of it.
• 40:48
  It can also be a little bit like you're taking the GM's notes and
• 40:52
  being like, can I have a little gander at those?
• 40:54
  Yeah. You know, there's lots of ways
• 40:57
  you could potentially use it. And as long as you and the GM
• 41:01
  are willing to have a little bit of back and forth about what it
• 41:04
  does, because obviously it isn't a move that can sort of get
• 41:07
  abused because you could be like GM, tell me exactly how to solve
• 41:11
  the problem. I would like to gaze into the
• 41:12
  abyss. And the GM might be like, no,
• 41:15
  fuck you. Or maybe they'll be like, well,
• 41:17
  no, but how about this? Or there's lots of ways you
• 41:19
  could go about it. You just got to have a little
• 41:22
  bit of a back and forth, same as open your brain.
• 41:26
  The one thing, the one thing I don't like or or not that I
• 41:32
  don't like, but I kind of am disappointed isn't there.
• 41:35
  I should say is that the move does not imply what Open Your
• 41:42
  Brain does where it's like you ask something and then also the
• 41:48
  abyss asks you something back. It it.
• 41:51
  They don't have that language for gays.
• 41:53
  It's the abyss, I don't think. They don't know.
• 41:55
  Yeah. It's sort of they they reference
• 41:58
  it as sort of this like a similar thing, this like
• 42:02
  supernaturally connected realm where all the supernatural
• 42:05
  people can sort of understand, like it's a collective
• 42:07
  unconscious sort of for monsters.
• 42:10
  But there's no explicit language.
• 42:11
  You I'm just sort of interpreting that based on what
• 42:14
  the game says, which isn't much. Yeah.
• 42:17
  I mean, I, yeah, I would like a little more about that, but also
• 42:20
  if you're playing this game, I would say treat gays Into the
• 42:23
  Abyss a little closer to open your brain to the psychic
• 42:25
  maelstrom and fuck with the players a little bit when they
• 42:27
  use it. Yeah, just like just peep into
• 42:29
  the warp. The warp will always peep back.
• 42:31
  Yeah, it adds a little. Licky in the face, they don't.
• 42:34
  Slurpy slurp. Delicious.
• 42:39
  Look, it's all fun and games until the The Demon of Zenge
• 42:41
  just gives you little let go. What's the oh God, what cartoon
• 42:49
  is it? I think it's SpongeBob where it
• 42:51
  like something like licks Suns Rob and it goes in one side of
• 42:55
  him, his head, and then like you see behind his eyeballs
• 42:58
  wriggling around and it pops out the other side.
• 43:00
  You're just like probably, probably SpongeBob.
• 43:06
  Yeah, just do that with the Abyss.
• 43:11
  Sorry, I just can't. Worth mentioning, because I did
• 43:15
  forget to bring this up again, Turn someone on is the main
• 43:19
  method by which you will be able to acquire strings throughout
• 43:24
  the game. And you might be asking.
• 43:26
  It's also the main method to get your friends to do gay shit.
• 43:29
  Correct. And you might be asking what are
• 43:33
  strings? Don't worry, I'll tell you.
• 43:35
  Strings are, as far as I'm aware, the first of two.
• 43:40
  Well, no, yeah, definitely first of two unique mechanics of the
• 43:45
  game, I would say. Between this and Darkest Self,
• 43:47
  the two very unique mechanics I would say.
• 43:49
  Strings is the main selling mechanic.
• 43:52
  It is for sure pulling strings and that's that's what the move
• 43:56
  is called. Is essentially the main mechanic
• 44:00
  that allows you to create a narrative currency and it's by
• 44:05
  which most of the mechanics are built around.
• 44:09
  They act as your ability as a player and as a character to
• 44:12
  hold power and influence others. They allow you to tempt players
• 44:16
  to do what you want, which is very cool and very specifically
• 44:19
  the wording there. Tempt them to do what you want
• 44:21
  with the promise of experience. No matter how much string
• 44:24
  pulling or rolling to turn someone on you do.
• 44:28
  The game is very clear. Characters are always in control
• 44:32
  of their own agency. You cannot force a player to do
• 44:36
  anything, but this game is sort of built on a trust system where
• 44:41
  you are willing to let things happen for the sake of the
• 44:45
  progression of the plot melodrama and, you know, to not
• 44:50
  break that code. You also have a carrot in the
• 44:55
  stick system to reinforce it. Yes, the aforementioned
• 44:59
  experience does go a long way. It also allows you to assign
• 45:03
  conditions to characters which have a unique function in the
• 45:06
  game. It allows you to get modifiers
• 45:09
  to your roles, allowing you to roll with forward, which is just
• 45:13
  a static modifier or floating modifier of giving you a ±1 to
• 45:17
  any to the next role you make. And, and this is a fun one, it
• 45:21
  actually allows you to increase harm whenever you hit things.
• 45:25
  If you're playing something like a werewolf, you're going to be
• 45:27
  using that a lot. Many playbooks also allow you to
• 45:34
  gain strings and pull them with their unique moves, and most of
• 45:37
  them have some really fun special effects.
• 45:40
  Yeah, that's, that's the, that's the most interesting interaction
• 45:43
  for me is that you can whip out strings as a mechanic to
• 45:47
  interact with your playbook moves or your skins moves in
• 45:52
  this case. And they do the thing that I
• 45:56
  love with game mechanics. I've talked about this a bunch,
• 45:58
  that I want this to be a thing in D&D.
• 46:00
  It's a recharging mechanic. You don't just run out of
• 46:03
  strings, you gain them. You actively trade them with
• 46:06
  other players and the narrative itself.
• 46:08
  They they go do the stuff you want.
• 46:10
  Yeah, frankly, you're supposed to spend them pretty regularly.
• 46:16
  Like, there's not a like, unless you're playing something like
• 46:19
  the witch or the vampire. And their whole kit is about
• 46:22
  specifically saving your strings and not spending them, which is
• 46:26
  why a lot of their mechanics do not involve directly spending
• 46:29
  strings. And when they do their powerful
• 46:31
  abilities, 'cause you're giving up the thing that you want to
• 46:33
  hold onto. Every other playbook is just
• 46:36
  like, yeah, this uses a string, this uses a string.
• 46:38
  This uses it just goes buck wild Strings again, are a way that
• 46:45
  you can gain something called conditions, which is another
• 46:50
  unique mechanic of the game. It's not entirely like, you
• 46:52
  know, conditions are universal, but the way that monster hearts
• 46:57
  handles them is, I think, kind of unique and pretty fun.
• 47:02
  They are as opposed to what you would think are like a poisoned,
• 47:05
  A stunned, you know, the the you're the whatever your DND
• 47:09
  brain is telling you about conditions kind of, but like not
• 47:13
  really, if that makes sense. Essentially what they are.
• 47:18
  Yeah, it's like they could be poisoned or stunned, but that's
• 47:20
  not exactly the idea. They're a little more free form
• 47:23
  fiction based than that. Yes.
• 47:26
  Conditions are essentially narrative tags that are assigned
• 47:30
  to players or NPCS that, when you proc them through the
• 47:33
  narrative, give you a role that 1 + 1 forward, you know gives
• 47:38
  you a + 1 to your next role whenever the relevance of the
• 47:41
  attack of the tag is used against him.
• 47:44
  For example, if a character is given the condition Nerd,
• 47:48
  anytime someone brings up the fact that they're a nerd, or,
• 47:52
  you know, verbally lashes them for being a nerd, uses it
• 47:56
  against them in any way, they roll at +1 forward and they are
• 48:02
  permanent. Effectively, you can get rid of
• 48:06
  them. You absolutely can do it, but
• 48:09
  they can only be removed if you, as a player or an NPC, take
• 48:14
  steps to revolve them at their source.
• 48:17
  So in the aforementioned bully example, if you stand up to your
• 48:21
  bully and you punch that motherfucker in his face, that
• 48:24
  will effectively cure your resolve, your condition.
• 48:28
  You've stood up and against the label, therefore it no longer
• 48:33
  effects you, therefore it is resolved.
• 48:37
  I like this a lot. Yeah, Conditions is fun.
• 48:40
  Any, any kind of any kind of game that lets you slap on
• 48:47
  fictional hold on, how how do I, how do I describe this so it
• 48:53
  makes sense? I know what I mean, but I how do
• 48:56
  I convey that by what I'm trying to say, a status effect of some
• 49:03
  kind where it is fictionally derived, and then can I guess I
• 49:11
  actually, OK, I'm going to use Apocalypse World's language.
• 49:14
  That's what we're going to do here.
• 49:15
  A game where it lets you apply a status effect of some kind
• 49:20
  descriptively that then can be used prescriptively in a
• 49:24
  mechanic later on is like some of my favorite shit in pretty
• 49:31
  much any game. Another great example of a game
• 49:34
  we're playing right now is Fabulous Trait System where you
• 49:37
  have your origin, your what? Is it your, your dry or your
• 49:42
  your origin, your theme, and your what's the other one I'm
• 49:47
  forgetting? 1 background?
• 49:50
  Oh yes I don't know that. Yes, you have your 3 character
• 49:54
  traits and those are descriptive in that my character is a fallen
• 49:59
  knight or whatever and then they're prescriptive
• 50:03
  mechanically when you tap into your character's theme of fallen
• 50:09
  knight and then or identity of fallen, that's what it was,
• 50:13
  identity, theme and origin. You tap into your identity of
• 50:15
  fallen knight to then re roll dice and potentially, you know,
• 50:20
  make a roll better or whatever. That kind of back and forth of
• 50:24
  like fictional idea fueling mechanical thing basically.
• 50:29
  I'm always into that, and that's exactly what the conditions are
• 50:32
  in monster hearts. Yeah.
• 50:35
  I will say though the thing that is funny about them and I I said
• 50:40
  this on the Lost recording but I I was confused when I first read
• 50:48
  them because I thought conditions were going to be
• 50:50
  health in this game. Because a lot of newer
• 50:53
  Apocalypse world games or a newer PBTA games use conditions
• 50:58
  as a health tracker. The two prominent examples I can
• 51:02
  think of are Masks, a new generation, and Avatar Legends.
• 51:07
  Where you take a condition and it mechanically effects you in
• 51:11
  some fashion. So it'll be like, oh, you're
• 51:13
  angry, so you have -2 to this stat or whatever, but also your
• 51:18
  conditions are your health tracker because if you Max out
• 51:20
  your conditions, you're out of the scene, you're out of the OR
• 51:23
  you're out of the potentially the session, the scene, the
• 51:26
  situation, you know, it kind of depends on what's going on, but
• 51:28
  you're, you're taking out you're you're dead quote UN quote.
• 51:32
  There's no normal health tracker in those games because in young
• 51:40
  superhero fiction and in Avatar, characters don't really die
• 51:44
  unless it's like a really, like, it's a big deal.
• 51:46
  It's dramatic, right? When Plea dies in Legend of
• 51:49
  Korra, it's a big fucking deal that she just, you know, popped
• 51:54
  her head like a kumquat. Like it's a big moment.
• 52:00
  Characters don't just die randomly from Gabo Shito
• 52:03
  shooting, you know. Little glubshitter.
• 52:07
  Glub glubshit. Yeah, characters don't just die
• 52:10
  from glubshito shooting them in the ass with an arrow like they
• 52:12
  do in D&D, so those games use conditions to represent health
• 52:18
  instead. Monster Hearts doesn't do that,
• 52:21
  which is what I thought conditions was gonna be.
• 52:25
  It does use traditional harm and Monster Hearts does say you can
• 52:28
  die in the traditional way, although that it's very hard to
• 52:32
  die in Monster Hearts because you have two very reliable
• 52:35
  protections. I think honestly probably if
• 52:42
  there was a monster hearts 3rd edition I bet you money that
• 52:45
  they would look conditions and probably use them a bit more
• 52:50
  like they are in masks I would think.
• 52:55
  I could see that for sure. It's.
• 52:56
  Just it's just another. It's another interesting example
• 52:59
  of Monster Hearts being Monster Heart's design being an older
• 53:04
  version of PBTA as opposed to the current 1.
• 53:07
  You know what I mean? Just another weird little spot I
• 53:10
  noticed. To that point, I I don't
• 53:13
  necessarily dislike that there is harm because I think it feels
• 53:17
  harm. Probably feels better if you're
• 53:18
  playing the werewolf or the ghoul where, you know, sort of
• 53:23
  my beef with Avatar Legends is if I shoot a fireball at someone
• 53:26
  as a firebender, in my head there was like some weird Luno
• 53:29
  narrative disco biscuits where I'm hitting them with a
• 53:31
  fireball, but they're getting the conditioned of like down and
• 53:33
  out versus just hitting that motherfucker with a fireball.
• 53:38
  Well, it is worth pointing out that when you attack MPCS they
• 53:40
  don't use conditions, they use a fatigue track.
• 53:44
  True. So it is a little different for
• 53:46
  them, but I, I, I do get what you mean in that sometimes yes,
• 53:49
  conditions they aren't they, they are damaged mechanically,
• 53:54
  but they don't always feel like damage and there can be some
• 53:56
  weirdness with that depending. It just feels a little weird to
• 54:00
  use normal normal harm in monster hearts because
• 54:05
  presumably characters aren't dying a lot or getting into
• 54:09
  fights a lot, you know? Yeah, it's not expected that you
• 54:13
  get into fights a bunch, so that's why they they bring up
• 54:15
  the aforementioned. If you punch someone in the
• 54:17
  face, that's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, I I could see it
• 54:25
  going either way, but I let's I just wouldn't be surprised if it
• 54:30
  got reworked into something the like health system got reworked
• 54:33
  into some kind of condition thingy if there was a third
• 54:36
  edition of monster art. Right, right.
• 54:39
  On the topic of skirting death, worth bringing up.
• 54:42
  So pretty similar to Apocalypse World with some key deviations.
• 54:45
  In AW you can in theory die up to four times before death is
• 54:49
  permanent In Monster Hearts, technically there is no hard cap
• 54:54
  on how many times you can avoid death, but the wording is broad.
• 54:59
  Essentially what that means is you could go down infinite times
• 55:03
  so long as you either have strings to burn or just you are
• 55:09
  not in your darkest self. You just want to keep being an
• 55:12
  evil shit Lord. Yeah, the, the 2 qualifiers for
• 55:17
  being unable to skirt death, and we're sort of inferring, it
• 55:20
  doesn't actually say this, but you can pretty much come to this
• 55:23
  conclusion is if you have no strings.
• 55:25
  And what that means is every time you go down and skirt
• 55:28
  death, you lose all of your strings on everybody to sort of
• 55:33
  narratively describe that you are, you've lost face.
• 55:37
  You've, yeah, you've lost face. You're at your most vulnerable.
• 55:40
  You look like, yeah, you got the shit beat out of you got the
• 55:44
  shit kicked out of you. So nobody, everyone's like, oh,
• 55:48
  I'm not, I'm not. I don't know that guy.
• 55:50
  Yeah, or you die while in your darkest self.
• 55:54
  If you are not in your darkest self and you go down, you go
• 55:57
  into your darkest self. So those two conditions are met.
• 56:03
  Presumably you can actually die. If not, you can have like a game
• 56:09
  doesn't say this, but you can sort of extrapolate with some
• 56:11
  advanced fuckery and say maybe if you go down a certain way,
• 56:15
  you let's say you go from you're a vampire and then you are
• 56:21
  unable to skirt death. You come back as a ghost.
• 56:24
  And that could be a narrative enough for why you are a
• 56:26
  different thing now, but you're still playing that character.
• 56:30
  Yeah, the game does actually excur and encourage you though
• 56:33
  to say sometimes you just don't get back up.
• 56:37
  You can you could have all your strings.
• 56:38
  You could be not in your darkest self, but if you go down and it
• 56:41
  makes narrative sense, just die. If you get shot, just go down.
• 56:43
  Let it happen, is it? And sometimes that could be more
• 56:48
  interesting narratively than being a sort of unstoppable,
• 56:52
  unkillable little demigod, you know?
• 56:55
  Sorry, did you just hear my phone go off?
• 56:57
  No. No, OK, I somehow my phone's
• 57:01
  ringer just got turned on for a second there and it just went
• 57:03
  off and I was just like who the fuck?
• 57:04
  Where the hell? Because I literally never have
• 57:07
  my ringer on. So it just like freaked me out.
• 57:09
  I was like, what the shit was that?
• 57:11
  Yeah, I don't either. I I literally never couldn't be.
• 57:14
  Sorry that just that threw me off completely yes, the game
• 57:18
  does say yes. Maybe sometimes you should just
• 57:20
  you know, eat shit and die. I guess yeah, it doesn't phrase
• 57:25
  it that way, but you know, be kind of funny if it did though
• 57:28
  it. Really.
• 57:30
  Would I kind of love it? Eat shit and die.
• 57:34
  And you know, you do, you go down you you begin to skirt
• 57:38
  death once you hit 4/4 harm as opposed to apocalypses 6.
• 57:43
  Six, Yeah. So it is easier to go down in
• 57:46
  this and the way it's, it's actually pretty effective.
• 57:49
  The way it's described, if you take one arm that's like someone
• 57:54
  just busted your nose and you are bleeding profusely from the
• 57:57
  face to harm is you essentially got stabbed or have a broken
• 58:02
  bone. 3 harm is you are severely hurt, 4 harm is you are mortally
• 58:08
  wounded. They described 4 harm as getting
• 58:11
  hit by a car. So you know it's just about how
• 58:15
  sturdy the players are. Now you're getting.
• 58:20
  Hit by a car in the real life could be lethal.
• 58:22
  So yeah, yeah, absolutely makes sense.
• 58:25
  And you might be like OK well if I get hurt how dost one fix my
• 58:30
  Boo Boo in question? Asphyxiation.
• 58:34
  Literally healing in this game as opposed to Apocalypse World,
• 58:39
  is universal. You do not need to be an Angel
• 58:41
  to effectively heal or be healed by someone.
• 58:44
  It can be done by any player, though typically you are only
• 58:49
  able to heal one harm per scene unless another character heals
• 58:55
  you. And I quote delicately and
• 58:58
  intimately with some erotic undertones.
• 59:02
  So have fun with that. That's yeah, that's good.
• 59:07
  And if that happens? Basically what we're saying is
• 59:10
  you heal better if you kiss the homies goodnight.
• 59:12
  Yes, if you kiss the homies goodnight, you're going to you
• 59:15
  just give him a little slap on the ass on the way out.
• 59:17
  That can heal them an additional slot to two.
• 59:20
  So that could be, you know, help me.
• 59:22
  I'm dying to. I have Boo Boo baby have Boo
• 59:26
  Boo. Worth bringing up gains.
• 59:32
  Gangs are a returning feature from Apocalypse World.
• 59:36
  They are almost painfully simplified, which is to say they
• 59:39
  have no mechanics. All they allow you to do is when
• 59:42
  it's relevant, you get plus one forward.
• 59:44
  That's it. No, Isn't it all?
• 59:47
  No, it's plus one harm, isn't it?
• 59:49
  Oh no, it's. Harm.
• 59:50
  Yeah, Plus one. It's harm, yeah.
• 59:51
  And and a + 1 to roles. Yeah, I mean, they're not.
• 59:55
  Here's the thing. Gangs in gangs in Apocalypse
• 59:59
  World itself weren't that complicated anyway, so it's not
• 1:00:03
  that simplified, but it is, I don't know, yeah, it is a little
• 1:00:10
  bit toned down, but I kind of get it.
• 1:00:14
  Like it's not as big of a deal. Well, I don't know.
• 1:00:19
  I don't know that it's not them. Every every single playbook has
• 1:00:23
  a gang option, and there's a whole playbook built around
• 1:00:26
  having a gang with the Queen. Drew.
• 1:00:31
  I feel like at the very least we should have gotten some expanded
• 1:00:33
  rules for the Queen gang. Maybe you'd make them a little
• 1:00:36
  cooler, but you also give them bigger stipulations.
• 1:00:39
  I. Mean again, Apocalypse World
• 1:00:42
  didn't really do anything with it, so I'm kind of fine with it
• 1:00:45
  as is in Apocalypse World. I liked it as a just a good
• 1:00:49
  simplified way to bring in mass combat, you know?
• 1:00:54
  I suppose so. I don't know.
• 1:00:56
  I didn't want anything else out of it that really.
• 1:01:01
  Fair enough. We sort of already spoke about
• 1:01:05
  darkest self, so we will move on to seasons.
• 1:01:09
  So we talked about those early on.
• 1:01:10
  I believe seasons are the de facto.
• 1:01:13
  What's up? I believe it's summer right now.
• 1:01:17
  Not yet got 17 days. Whatever.
• 1:01:24
  Seasons are the de facto arcs for this game.
• 1:01:27
  Anytime the game moves from like maybe 1 semester to another
• 1:01:31
  school year or through graduation, that's considered a
• 1:01:33
  season. And typically the game does say
• 1:01:37
  that it's meant to be played in short one off contained
• 1:01:40
  campaigns. But they do give you the option
• 1:01:43
  if you want longer form content to run seasons as an
• 1:01:46
  alternative. At the start of a new season,
• 1:01:50
  the players are given several advance, several advancement
• 1:01:53
  options to keep playing and having things feel fresh and
• 1:01:56
  fun. When you start a new season, you
• 1:02:01
  at the very least you reset all of your advancement options.
• 1:02:05
  You keep what those advancements were.
• 1:02:06
  So like, let's say you you're playing a ghoul and you want the
• 1:02:09
  vampire's hypnotizability. You uncheck the fact that you
• 1:02:13
  took another skin ability, but you keep hypnotize.
• 1:02:16
  It just become part of your core sheet, which is cool because you
• 1:02:19
  can over the course of Four Seasons, if you're doing
• 1:02:22
  semesters, amass a huge quantity of unique abilities.
• 1:02:28
  The game does warn that maybe you shouldn't go that long
• 1:02:32
  because then the the, you know, the magic of gaining a new move
• 1:02:35
  kind of loses its luster when you're just sort of min maxing
• 1:02:37
  at that point. But you do have the option for
• 1:02:39
  those of you maniacs out there. Yeah, you can.
• 1:02:45
  Are you sorry? You have the opportunity to
• 1:02:46
  change your skin if you want. So if in the narrative you were
• 1:02:49
  a ghost who got brought back to life, maybe you can play as a
• 1:02:52
  queen or a mortal or. Seasons are how you for the
• 1:02:57
  apocalypse sort of comparison or how you whip out the advanced
• 1:03:00
  moves. Yes, and we do have our own
• 1:03:03
  advanced moves called Growing Up moves over here in Monster,
• 1:03:06
  which is cool. Well the stuff like the taking a
• 1:03:12
  new playbook I think is also phrased as an advanced move in
• 1:03:15
  Apocalypse World or no? It's an advanced improvement.
• 1:03:18
  Sorry, that's what I meant to say.
• 1:03:19
  Advanced. This is This is how you unlock
• 1:03:21
  your advanced improvements. Right.
• 1:03:24
  That's what I was looking for. The growing up moves are pretty
• 1:03:28
  cool. We're not going to go into them
• 1:03:31
  in too much detail here, but they effectively allow you to do
• 1:03:35
  interrupts essentially. Well, one of them allows you to
• 1:03:40
  do an Internet. One of them does the the other
• 1:03:42
  ones allow you to just shut down.
• 1:03:43
  Like literally shut down the bullshit in a very grown up way.
• 1:03:45
  Right? If someone is spreading rumors
• 1:03:47
  you can just tell them to fuck off and that's your grown up
• 1:03:49
  move. And it removes like it for free
• 1:03:52
  removes conditions. It it removes strings it can
• 1:03:56
  give people conditions they are. Are just cool because they
• 1:04:01
  really give their their mechanical backing to really
• 1:04:05
  reinforce that narrative of your character literally growing up
• 1:04:09
  and learning things and getting better in life.
• 1:04:11
  Masks also has something similar to because interesting and masks
• 1:04:17
  may have actually taken this from from monster hearts.
• 1:04:19
  I don't know. But Masks has a mechanic where
• 1:04:24
  grown-ups are a specific type of NPC and if a grown up tells you
• 1:04:30
  to do something in Masks, grown-ups have their own moves
• 1:04:33
  that only they can do that can actually influence your
• 1:04:38
  character in different ways. So a a grown up can literally
• 1:04:41
  alter your stats in masks because your stats are not
• 1:04:44
  static in masks. So if like if a grown up
• 1:04:49
  basically scolds you for being too violent, it can increase
• 1:04:53
  your, I forget what the stat is called, it might be called
• 1:04:56
  violent. It can increase your stat that
• 1:04:59
  is involved in like fighting and doing shit like that and
• 1:05:01
  decrease a different stat. So this is this is a similar
• 1:05:07
  thing. It's an interesting way to take
• 1:05:10
  be like these, these little shithead kids are, you know,
• 1:05:14
  learning through life. And it gives you that mechanical
• 1:05:17
  backbone. It's just a good, elegant,
• 1:05:21
  elegant, elegant marrying of fiction and mechanics.
• 1:05:29
  It really is elegant. I think that's the perfect way
• 1:05:31
  to put it. It's effective, it's simple and
• 1:05:35
  it works. And that is one of the things I
• 1:05:38
  feel like I have to praise Monster Hearts for and Powered
• 1:05:40
  by the Apocalypse in general. But I really like the way
• 1:05:42
  Monster Hearts does it at times. It just, it's no nonsense and
• 1:05:48
  like there's no fat in like the best way possible.
• 1:05:50
  I just, yeah, I like it a lot. You know what to say.
• 1:05:54
  Yeah. Now you might be like, all
• 1:06:00
  right, cool, so you're talking about the monsters.
• 1:06:02
  What can I be? What can I play as?
• 1:06:03
  What? How can I embrace my shuest
• 1:06:05
  cringe? You don't want to go over the
• 1:06:07
  grown up moves. Yeah, that's what I said.
• 1:06:09
  We can sort of. We don't have to like we can.
• 1:06:12
  If you want, I can I. Mean there's, there's only four
• 1:06:14
  of them. I don't know, just describe them
• 1:06:16
  broadly. I mean, not like I need to get
• 1:06:18
  super detailed but I don't know. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:06:21
  All right. Let me just let me just let me
• 1:06:22
  just find, let me just find them real quick.
• 1:06:25
  They go. Oh no, I don't know why I'm
• 1:06:32
  doing breast efforts right now. Let me on.
• 1:06:34
  I was going to say you're voice acting PDF.
• 1:06:43
  There we go. The grunt moves are make others
• 1:06:48
  feel beautiful. This is sort of the It's funny,
• 1:06:50
  they're almost like evolutions to the base.
• 1:06:53
  Moves. Well, yeah, that's because
• 1:06:55
  that's how they worked in Apocalypse for us.
• 1:06:57
  Right, right. Make others feel beautiful is
• 1:07:00
  kind of like an evolved version of turn someone on.
• 1:07:03
  You're recognizing someone and acknowledging them for what
• 1:07:06
  makes them great. That isn't their body.
• 1:07:09
  You know, you essentially use this as a buff, essentially to
• 1:07:14
  give people or to remove things like conditions or allow them to
• 1:07:18
  mark experience. Yeah, just give them forward.
• 1:07:21
  Yeah, it's it's whereas turn someone on is your, you are
• 1:07:28
  rolling on someone to take something from them with make
• 1:07:31
  other people, yes. With make others who are
• 1:07:34
  beautiful, you are sort of doing the opposite.
• 1:07:36
  You are giving to them, which is very nice.
• 1:07:41
  The second one is call people on their ship.
• 1:07:43
  Obviously it's the evolved version of shut someone down.
• 1:07:46
  And this is really fun because you essentially just go no and
• 1:07:53
  you can remove strings from people or force them to back
• 1:07:57
  down narratively. So even if another player is
• 1:08:00
  losing the argument, if you just call someone on their shit, you
• 1:08:05
  create a an opening in the narrative for someone to maybe
• 1:08:08
  roll again or roll against them or bring up a different point,
• 1:08:11
  which is very fun. Finally, you have or sorry you
• 1:08:17
  have, you have intervene on an act of violence.
• 1:08:20
  This is the interrupt. So if someone rolls to lash out
• 1:08:22
  physically or there's an MPC attacking, you can intervene to
• 1:08:26
  just interrupt that and stand in front of it.
• 1:08:29
  And now that does say that you are likely to take whatever harm
• 1:08:32
  that someone else will give you, but there is an equal chance
• 1:08:35
  that you force that person to stop attacking and effectively
• 1:08:40
  just make them waste the turn, which is kind of cool in of
• 1:08:42
  itself. After that, there is Share your
• 1:08:47
  Pain, which is sort of again like an opposite to run away,
• 1:08:51
  whereas run to raise is is specifically about protecting
• 1:08:55
  yourself. Share your opinion is about
• 1:08:57
  allowing someone to become vulnerable and help them through
• 1:09:00
  whatever they're going through. And it allows you to remove a
• 1:09:03
  condition from yourself, remove, allow someone else to remove a
• 1:09:06
  condition from themselves, take forward or give it away.
• 1:09:13
  The mechanics in each of these moves are quite similar, but the
• 1:09:16
  avenues by which you can use them shift.
• 1:09:18
  I think that's what makes them particularly interesting.
• 1:09:20
  Yes, and they all the avenues of which you use them, but and they
• 1:09:26
  all are, they all Pooh, I'm blank.
• 1:09:31
  And again, God damn it, fictionally, they're all saying
• 1:09:35
  something a little bit different about your character, right?
• 1:09:38
  When you intervene on acting violence or call people on their
• 1:09:41
  shit, you're fictionally doing something a little different
• 1:09:46
  that everyone has to acknowledge.
• 1:09:50
  Like if you call someone on their shit, it's like you're
• 1:09:52
  making a point of being like you're being a fuck head.
• 1:09:55
  Sir, please stop. You know, there's a it has like
• 1:09:59
  a poignant moment to it almost where I share your pain is like
• 1:10:04
  you're being consoling. It's like different.
• 1:10:08
  It's different kinds of being grown up, right?
• 1:10:11
  Consoling someone versus getting in the way when somebody is
• 1:10:14
  doing something they shouldn't versus calling a stupid kid out
• 1:10:18
  because he really is just being a dumb Jackass, you know?
• 1:10:22
  It's different ways of adulting. Exactly.
• 1:10:27
  It hits a little too close to home if you think about it too
• 1:10:28
  much. So don't think about it too
• 1:10:29
  much, yeah. Yeah, yeah, now we can get to
• 1:10:33
  the skins as they're called. Josh doesn't like the word
• 1:10:36
  skins. I kind of.
• 1:10:36
  Like I still don't. I still don't like the word
• 1:10:38
  skins. I kind of love them, I'm not
• 1:10:40
  going to lie. I think it works.
• 1:10:42
  The idea that you are stepping into the skin of someone else.
• 1:10:45
  I I get it, I do like I fully understand it, I just don't like
• 1:10:48
  the word. But I also don't know what a
• 1:10:50
  better alternative is, so I just begrudgly go with it.
• 1:10:53
  Yeah, I I think that's that point exactly.
• 1:10:55
  I don't know what else I would call it given the only other.
• 1:10:57
  Word I'm going to say is playbooks, so.
• 1:11:00
  And like, yeah, that works man, I don't think.
• 1:11:03
  It doesn't. No, it doesn't.
• 1:11:04
  No playbooks. I'm not going to say playbooks
• 1:11:06
  fits better than skids in this context.
• 1:11:08
  Yeah. It's like that's what I'm used
• 1:11:10
  to. It does the job.
• 1:11:14
  Now the skins that you can be are.
• 1:11:17
  We'll do it like we did before, brief, just go over them by
• 1:11:20
  proper noun and then we can kind of get into some of the
• 1:11:22
  descriptions. The fae, the ghost, the ghoul,
• 1:11:26
  different thing. The Hollow, the Infernal, the
• 1:11:29
  mortal, the queen, the vampire, the werewolf and the witch.
• 1:11:33
  The the Witch. Burn the witch.
• 1:11:37
  Burn the witch, I want to what is your favorite skin through
• 1:11:42
  his hair and I'm just a voice only what?
• 1:11:47
  Is your favorite stupid theme. Oh my God, brother.
• 1:11:51
  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know.
• 1:11:58
  I like ghoul and werewolf also like which?
• 1:12:05
  Sharon brain cells, yeah, I mean werewolf is probably werewolf
• 1:12:09
  and ghost are tied for my favorite.
• 1:12:11
  I like ghoul. I don't necessarily know how
• 1:12:14
  much I like how one note ghouls mechanics are makes it sort of
• 1:12:19
  not as good for. I like being a little bit of a
• 1:12:21
  slave to my like, to my short, like having a chore to deal with
• 1:12:27
  kind of thing. I like the chore, I just don't
• 1:12:29
  like that the chore is the whole mechanic.
• 1:12:32
  I guess it doesn't. It doesn't bother me, I I do
• 1:12:37
  like the witch a lot though. The witch has some really fun
• 1:12:41
  shit the. Hexes are very fun.
• 1:12:43
  I do the I think my favorite one is wither it just it it do be a
• 1:12:50
  hit you just. Have a bad time?
• 1:12:53
  With some not like specifically, the last thing it suggests is
• 1:12:58
  kind of wild. Yeah.
• 1:13:00
  We'll get into it, I. It's probably still werewolf for
• 1:13:07
  me, but I also just because. Werewolf has the only you
• 1:13:10
  straight up transform into a monster 1.
• 1:13:14
  That helps, but also because I just like werewolves in fiction
• 1:13:20
  a lot. I do so like.
• 1:13:21
  Werewolf. I just like werewolf.
• 1:13:22
  Ironically, like in the whole vampire versus werewolf thing.
• 1:13:25
  I've always thought werewolves are cooler.
• 1:13:27
  I am, yeah, that's fair. I'm I'm pretty much in the same
• 1:13:30
  boat. I do really like vampires.
• 1:13:31
  Shame I don't really like vampire in this game because it
• 1:13:33
  is a different vampire than the one that I want, which is the
• 1:13:36
  like slave to my fucking inside. Yeah, it's a very specific kind
• 1:13:41
  of vampire. Yeah, I for me, peak vampires,
• 1:13:45
  World of Darkness vampires. This is not that.
• 1:13:49
  Ironically, the the World of Darkness vampire is the ghoul.
• 1:13:53
  So if you wanted to, yeah, like, you wanted just to say you're
• 1:13:57
  playing a goal, but you're like, actually, I'm just a different
• 1:13:58
  kind of vampire. I think that's valid.
• 1:14:00
  And the game sort of tells you you can do that anyway.
• 1:14:03
  You can retool a skin to fit your needs.
• 1:14:08
  You might be like, all right, how are these different?
• 1:14:10
  How do they play? What do they do?
• 1:14:11
  What's going on here? I got you, bud.
• 1:14:15
  We'll start at the top. The Fay, AKA the Manic Pixie
• 1:14:18
  Dream Girl. The Fay is built around and
• 1:14:22
  rely. It's built about making promises
• 1:14:24
  and relying on other people by learning their secrets.
• 1:14:27
  What can I just say for a brief moment?
• 1:14:30
  I really don't like the art for the fame.
• 1:14:33
  Yeah, something about that dude makes me uncomfortable and I
• 1:14:37
  really cannot explain or put into the words.
• 1:14:39
  I don't like. I don't like the way he's posted
• 1:14:42
  up. I don't like his.
• 1:14:43
  I don't like his face, his nips out.
• 1:14:45
  I don't know. There's something going on
• 1:14:46
  there. I don't know, I know that's
• 1:14:49
  probably a photo of a real person so like I am sorry but
• 1:14:51
  something about that picture makes me uncomfortable.
• 1:14:54
  Almost certainly, yeah. I don't know what it is.
• 1:14:58
  Your main method of play are promises and you might be like.
• 1:15:01
  What does that mean? They're fairy what?
• 1:15:03
  Does it mean next? That's kind of up to you.
• 1:15:05
  You have your fairy contract, which is to say anytime someone
• 1:15:08
  gives you their word, makes a promise to you, swears you an
• 1:15:11
  oath, just tells you that they're going to do something
• 1:15:15
  and they don't do it. You have a narrative compulsion
• 1:15:23
  to seek revenge on them for it by either manipulating them,
• 1:15:26
  physically attacking them, getting back at them however
• 1:15:30
  they may, that may manifest. It's about retribution and it's
• 1:15:35
  about following your passions, right.
• 1:15:36
  You rely on Hot a lot as the Faye because you are tempting
• 1:15:40
  people to make those promises to you.
• 1:15:43
  It's funny, it has a in some weird ways, it has a really
• 1:15:46
  strong moral implication, and it does a pretty good job, I think
• 1:15:51
  when outside of the promise stuff at embodying people who
• 1:15:55
  just live alternative lives. I think it's kind of fun.
• 1:16:00
  Oh sorry, worth mentioning the sex moves are back and they're
• 1:16:04
  better than ever. 6 moves. Yes, that that's where we go
• 1:16:10
  back and they're better than ever.
• 1:16:11
  Each one is unique. Each one feels good to to like
• 1:16:14
  use and I know that sounds weird.
• 1:16:15
  I'm sorry. I should say it feels fun.
• 1:16:16
  That makes more sense. It feels fun to run and it has
• 1:16:19
  like. Yes, it has like.
• 1:16:22
  Actual it's the one I didn't like.
• 1:16:25
  I think it's there was one I was like.
• 1:16:27
  Most of these are good. This one sucks.
• 1:16:30
  Can't remember what it was though.
• 1:16:31
  I think it's the ghoul. You just get another hunger.
• 1:16:34
  No, that was you who didn't like that.
• 1:16:36
  Oh, right, that was me. That one didn't bother me as
• 1:16:38
  much. Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  What was the anyway? Keep talking, I'll look.
• 1:16:43
  Fair enough. On the topic of morality, I
• 1:16:44
  think it's worth mentioning before we go into the other
• 1:16:46
  ones. Skins can essentially play
• 1:16:48
  essentially be played two ways. Either you play against your
• 1:16:53
  skin and narratively this is like a desperate attempt to
• 1:16:57
  maintain your humanity against your monstrous side, or you
• 1:17:02
  completely embrace your skin and all of its faults.
• 1:17:05
  And the thing that you're fighting in that case is
• 1:17:07
  morality. That that pesky morality that
• 1:17:10
  just sort of itches at the back of your brain.
• 1:17:13
  So characters like the Faye and the witch play really hard on
• 1:17:15
  the do you embrace or do you fight it?
• 1:17:19
  But after the Faye, you have the ghost.
• 1:17:22
  I, I gave each of these a little tagline.
• 1:17:24
  So for Faye, the manic Pixie dream girl, for ghost, the
• 1:17:27
  embodiment of trauma, the ghost personifies pain and the
• 1:17:32
  isolation of trauma in all its forms, physical, mental,
• 1:17:35
  emotional. The trauma in this game takes
• 1:17:39
  takes the shape of your death. As a ghost, you died.
• 1:17:42
  You were a normal person who died, and a part of that trauma
• 1:17:48
  and resolving that trauma is finding out how you died, who
• 1:17:50
  killed you, where's your body, All of the above.
• 1:17:55
  But it really focuses around resolving that trauma and being
• 1:18:00
  a weird loner. Part of your abilities is just
• 1:18:03
  to like, walk through walls and stalk people.
• 1:18:06
  You know, just follow people around for no particular reason.
• 1:18:09
  Yeah. The one that annoyed me, by the
• 1:18:12
  way sex move wives the infernal because it's just the dark power
• 1:18:15
  loses a string on you and gains a string on whoever you had sex
• 1:18:18
  with. Right, right.
• 1:18:19
  Yeah, yeah. Which is not.
• 1:18:23
  It's kind of a basic one. It does play into their other
• 1:18:26
  abilities so it's not as bad as I initially thought once I
• 1:18:30
  considered a little bit more, but it is a little basic on the
• 1:18:32
  face of it. But yeah, yeah, I mean it.
• 1:18:37
  It has some fun implications, but it in of itself is kind of
• 1:18:41
  just all right. By itself it's not clear what it
• 1:18:44
  does 100%. The the one that I love the most
• 1:18:47
  is the hollow though. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:51
  The Hollow's the one where you both secretly write down if the
• 1:18:53
  sex was confusing or soothing and then reveal it at the same
• 1:18:56
  time, and if you pick the same answer you both get XP.
• 1:19:00
  Yup, Yup, that that one. And.
• 1:19:02
  I just love that one because every time you both pick up the
• 1:19:05
  card and it's a different answer, you just look at each
• 1:19:07
  other. Like what you mean, bud?
• 1:19:09
  Yeah. You're like, oh, yeah.
• 1:19:11
  You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I don't know how.
• 1:19:18
  I don't remember that, yeah. I'll remember that.
• 1:19:25
  The ghost gets heavy and I think you as someone who's picking the
• 1:19:32
  ghost need to be prepared because you function off of like
• 1:19:39
  you taking conditions from people.
• 1:19:43
  Either the condition traumatized when someone brings up your
• 1:19:45
  death or well you know any other condition.
• 1:19:51
  Like so far I'm running a one shot of this.
• 1:19:53
  Our ghost player already has two conditions, terrified and
• 1:19:56
  traumatized. Because people keep bringing up
• 1:19:59
  the fact that she died unknowingly, but they are
• 1:20:01
  bringing it up. I would like to point out you
• 1:20:06
  could. There is also some potential to
• 1:20:08
  play the ghost as a. This is very much not the
• 1:20:11
  intention, but if you wanted, I feel like there's a lot of
• 1:20:14
  potential to play the ghost as a as a big joke character if you
• 1:20:21
  wanted to. Because I think you could do a
• 1:20:25
  thing where you kind of like make a little bit of like you
• 1:20:33
  have their death be something ridiculous and then make a funny
• 1:20:36
  out of the how they died all the time.
• 1:20:39
  And then them following people around and stuff.
• 1:20:43
  You just make awkward and weird like.
• 1:20:45
  I think you could reframe it. You should play Sam's character
• 1:20:48
  too. Kind of get plays in the dark.
• 1:20:50
  Yeah, like you could reframe it in such a fashion where it's
• 1:20:53
  like very much from kind of a goofy angle.
• 1:20:57
  If you really like your death, could be you got hit by truck
• 1:21:00
  Coon or something, you know what I mean?
• 1:21:02
  Like I could see a realm where you could do that if you really
• 1:21:07
  wanted to. It's very much not the
• 1:21:08
  intention, but I I was just throwing it out 'cause I had the
• 1:21:10
  thought. I, I don't know, I I, I was not
• 1:21:14
  as I bored, but truck could kind of convince me I'm not going to.
• 1:21:17
  Yeah. I mean like if you reframe it, I
• 1:21:20
  think that potential's there. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:21:25
  After the ghost, we have the ghoul feed your addiction.
• 1:21:29
  I I mean hunger do drugs plays on the idea of addiction and
• 1:21:34
  urges and is represented through your hungers.
• 1:21:37
  They aren't specific right? There's not a hunger for flesh
• 1:21:41
  or sex or drugs. The hungers are thematic so
• 1:21:46
  either you're an adrenaline junkie.
• 1:21:48
  You are although. If you pick the one thrills, you
• 1:21:51
  could definitely be doing a lot of drugs with the Thrills 1.
• 1:21:54
  You can, yeah, but it really it it.
• 1:21:57
  Let's see. They are fear, power, plunder,
• 1:22:00
  or thrills. So you might have a hunger and
• 1:22:03
  just terrorizing people and being a piece of shit playing
• 1:22:05
  towards your bad side. Power, trying to be the most
• 1:22:09
  popular kid in school and reveling in like powering over
• 1:22:12
  people. Plunder, That's probably going
• 1:22:15
  to be the sex one if not for thrills or just stealing, just
• 1:22:19
  being a fucking klepto. You can do that too.
• 1:22:22
  And then finally, thrills, boning, drugs, adrenaline,
• 1:22:27
  skydiving without a parachute because you're going to walk it
• 1:22:30
  off. Literally the ghost is you are a
• 1:22:33
  zombie. You died and came back with a
• 1:22:35
  hunger for flesh actually in your darkest self.
• 1:22:39
  The ghoul is, you said ghost before ghoul, but I would say
• 1:22:45
  it's not so much that you're as like, yes, you're zombie coded,
• 1:22:48
  but I think it's much more you're a fantasy DND esque
• 1:22:52
  ghoul, which is to say you're a little more awares.
• 1:22:58
  You're not just shambling around.
• 1:23:00
  But yes, you definitely have that urge to like eat flesh or
• 1:23:03
  something like that. You are?
• 1:23:04
  Yeah. You're a sentient zombie.
• 1:23:06
  You did die like the ghost. The sentient zombie, Yeah.
• 1:23:09
  Really. Your soul departed, your body
• 1:23:12
  remained and it is hungry. Well, actually that that could
• 1:23:17
  be a kind of fun if two players played the same character, but
• 1:23:20
  one was a ghost, the other was a ghoul.
• 1:23:25
  Oh. Yeah, and like, the argument
• 1:23:28
  could just be that they're twins.
• 1:23:30
  Or or or. It's the same.
• 1:23:32
  It's literally the same person. It's just one's the spirit of
• 1:23:35
  the person who died, and one's the body.
• 1:23:38
  Well, yeah, but like how it like the the characters would just
• 1:23:41
  lie and say that they're twins because they look these that
• 1:23:44
  same because they still have to go to school together.
• 1:23:46
  Right, right, right, right. The the ghoul is kind of funny
• 1:23:53
  because like the werewolf, it is about as close as you're going
• 1:23:57
  to get to a combat class. It's and it and the werewolf are
• 1:24:04
  the only never mind. The hollow also gets volatile
• 1:24:07
  too, but they're the ones that like really have the you hurt
• 1:24:11
  shit like hell. The ghouls darkest self is your
• 1:24:14
  dull hunger sharpens. You can't focus on anything, you
• 1:24:16
  must crave flesh, so you just got to RIP and tear until it is
• 1:24:21
  done. Also you get satiety which is
• 1:24:24
  when you satiate your hunger. You can or no?
• 1:24:27
  Oh sorry I read that wrong. Nevermind disregard that.
• 1:24:29
  You heal one harm, so nevermind that.
• 1:24:31
  Yeah, you got 1 harm. Yeah, like, yeah, the ghoul, the
• 1:24:35
  ghoul and the werewolf are a little more violent for sure.
• 1:24:39
  Yeah, I don't know. I, I was kind of the teenager
• 1:24:44
  who like people. I, I wore a lot of black and a
• 1:24:47
  lot of baggy clothes and I was definitely that kid to brought a
• 1:24:53
  knife to knife, brought a knife to school.
• 1:24:54
  So everyone thought I was going to be a quote UN quote problem
• 1:24:57
  child. I mean, I still wear a lot of
• 1:25:00
  black I. Don't know I'm allowed to say I
• 1:25:05
  was. You know I brought a knife to
• 1:25:06
  school since I was in middle school.
• 1:25:08
  Was probably like 13 when I started.
• 1:25:12
  That doesn't even remotely surprise me.
• 1:25:15
  It was never about self-defense. Hilariously, it was always about
• 1:25:18
  like cutting paper or like eating an orange or something.
• 1:25:24
  It just made practical sense to have this thing on me, so I did.
• 1:25:29
  That's the most Isaiah answer. I carry that look.
• 1:25:32
  That's why I carry a knife for me.
• 1:25:33
  I'll talk. We, the college we went to was
• 1:25:35
  like no knives allowed on a campus.
• 1:25:38
  And I brought that knife to school every day and every
• 1:25:40
  professor knew I had it. No one questioned it.
• 1:25:44
  In fact, one of our professors was like, I got to cut some.
• 1:25:47
  I say, I know you have give me a knife.
• 1:25:49
  I just kind of looked at him like, OK, and what am I going to
• 1:25:56
  say? No, I don't.
• 1:25:56
  And do I you can call me a liar. No.
• 1:25:58
  Yeah, he could call you a fucking liar.
• 1:26:01
  Yeah. I called you, I said.
• 1:26:02
  No, you know, like. A liar like a liar.
• 1:26:09
  Look I I'll say this till the cows come home.
• 1:26:13
  Knife is the first tool infinitely useful.
• 1:26:15
  A good knife's got 1001 uses anyway.
• 1:26:18
  Put on. I think the first tool is really
• 1:26:19
  just big rock, but yeah, sure. I mean yes, but egg done.
• 1:26:24
  The argument is that the knife was the first ever tool.
• 1:26:27
  Yeah, broadly speaking, yeah. Up next, we got the Hollow.
• 1:26:31
  Literally the saddest. Boy, that was the playbook soul,
• 1:26:37
  right? Yes.
• 1:26:39
  Yeah, you're a person without a soul.
• 1:26:40
  So yeah, I guess, right. The Hollow is a person without a
• 1:26:42
  soul. The Hollow plays more towards
• 1:26:44
  like the Frankenstein's monster kind of vibe in my opinion.
• 1:26:50
  Sort of. But the Hollow is deeply
• 1:26:55
  ingrained in the in the ideas of depression and imposter
• 1:26:58
  syndrome. In fact, its abilities actively
• 1:27:02
  reward you for failing and almost incentivize you to fail,
• 1:27:06
  and allow you to not only bother for a borrow from other
• 1:27:10
  playbooks, but switch your stats kind of on a whim.
• 1:27:13
  Switch your stats on a whim. What?
• 1:27:16
  Well, so it is permanent, but you can take it several times to
• 1:27:19
  keep changing your stat. Strange impressions or or is it?
• 1:27:26
  There's one of them that lets you when you gaze into the abyss
• 1:27:32
  on A7 or higher? You can, yeah, permanently.
• 1:27:36
  Swap your stats. Yes, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
• 1:27:39
  I I love the one that says add a + 1 to any roles you make while
• 1:27:42
  lying. Yes, it's just called fake.
• 1:27:46
  Yeah. It's a good one.
• 1:27:50
  That that, that almost feels like a queen coded move.
• 1:27:55
  Sort of clearly not, but it almost feels like it should be,
• 1:27:58
  you know? It's not, but yeah, I kind of
• 1:27:59
  see what you're saying the. Hollow is cool because it it
• 1:28:03
  also serves as like the I don't really know what I want to play,
• 1:28:07
  so I'm going to just play the hollow because again, you can
• 1:28:11
  like you have an easier time taking moves from other classes
• 1:28:14
  or from other playbooks. Yeah, kind of funny that way.
• 1:28:21
  It also is is one of the few skins that do not have a
• 1:28:24
  mandatory move. So with Ghoul you have your
• 1:28:28
  hunger, Ghost has unresolved trauma, and Fey have the ferry
• 1:28:33
  contracts. Hollow is the first one that
• 1:28:35
  does not have them. The one that that comes after it
• 1:28:40
  though, the Infernal does also have a mandatory move, and the
• 1:28:45
  infernal is the demonic sugar daddy.
• 1:28:50
  Mnemonic Sugar Daddy. The Infernal deals with vicious
• 1:28:53
  cycles of abuse, both mental and emotional, and, you know, brings
• 1:28:57
  up some pretty uncomfy topics, like power dynamics in
• 1:29:01
  relationships. Yeah.
• 1:29:02
  It's it's specifically about like a relationship abuse
• 1:29:06
  situation because you have a dark power that has control over
• 1:29:11
  you in some capacity. Yes.
• 1:29:15
  And that that is literal when you enter your darkest self,
• 1:29:17
  your patron, the it's one of those things where you have
• 1:29:23
  consent but are heavily not quite punished, but you're
• 1:29:30
  effectively told like you do on some level kind of got to go
• 1:29:33
  with it to a point, right? Yeah, because if you, if you are
• 1:29:37
  the player, are made uncomfortable, you at any time
• 1:29:39
  can say no, I'm not doing that, but.
• 1:29:42
  Well, if you go against it, what what is there is some one of the
• 1:29:48
  moves has a punishment or something, doesn't it?
• 1:29:55
  Oh, well, I guess basically the idea is it can the dark entity
• 1:29:58
  can forcibly trigger your darkest self is kind of the
• 1:30:01
  main, right? Yeah, that's the main thing.
• 1:30:07
  It's sort of the warlock, but the warlock in the very
• 1:30:11
  melodramatic teen drama. Kind of.
• 1:30:13
  Way right. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:14
  So yeah, if you don't do it, it gets you it brings you closer to
• 1:30:16
  your darkest self. And then essentially your your
• 1:30:19
  patron can just start fucking with you by pulling strings.
• 1:30:24
  So correction what I did say, you can say no at any time, but
• 1:30:27
  you know those strings will just keep stacking and then it's
• 1:30:29
  harder and harder and harder and harder to get rid of.
• 1:30:32
  Yeah, you could say. No, but there is a degree of
• 1:30:38
  punishment, mechanically speaking.
• 1:30:42
  Yeah, I really like the The Infernal.
• 1:30:49
  I wouldn't play it. I I would have no reason to want
• 1:30:51
  to play one. But I do like the idea that you
• 1:30:54
  have a more narratively justifiable reason to gaze in
• 1:30:59
  the abit gaze into the abyss constantly with your patron just
• 1:31:03
  being like Papa. Help I I have a question.
• 1:31:09
  Papa says no, you suck and then you're like, I am sad now.
• 1:31:13
  Yeah, you're like, but why? I said so.
• 1:31:18
  Got to do it to him. My least favorite skin is next,
• 1:31:21
  the mortal. I deeply dislike the mortal.
• 1:31:26
  What's my sideline for it? The girlfriend, Yeah.
• 1:31:30
  I feel like your hatred for it is a little overblown, I'll be
• 1:31:32
  honest. It just, I don't know what it
• 1:31:35
  is. It makes me irrationally mad and
• 1:31:37
  I'm I'm aware that's rational. The mortal is also.
• 1:31:43
  It's also about power dynamics and a relationship abuse.
• 1:31:46
  But you are the abusee, which is kind of fascinating.
• 1:31:50
  It's about codependency. That's not exactly how I would
• 1:31:54
  phrase it. The abuse thing maybe, but it is
• 1:31:58
  about codependency. Like it's about codependency,
• 1:32:01
  That part I get, yeah. But like to a toxic degree, like
• 1:32:07
  a very toxic degree, it's main moves involve around the lover,
• 1:32:13
  which is a another character that you pick at the start of
• 1:32:16
  game and giving them bonuses and receiving bonuses from them when
• 1:32:21
  you rely upon them. So they're moved.
• 1:32:23
  I'm not going to go into them, but like their names.
• 1:32:26
  Mess with me, mess with him. Entrenched sympathy is my
• 1:32:29
  weapon. Excuses are my armor.
• 1:32:31
  Downward spiral and down the rabbit hole.
• 1:32:36
  You, you, just, you. Just the most pathetic little
• 1:32:39
  shit. Right?
• 1:32:44
  What is it? Right?
• 1:32:46
  Yeah. Their sex move is kind of fun.
• 1:32:48
  When you have sex with someone, it awakens something sinister
• 1:32:51
  within them. Next time you take your eyes off
• 1:32:53
  of them, they become their darkest self.
• 1:32:55
  Yeah. You just make people really
• 1:32:58
  unhealthily codependent and trigger their worst traits when
• 1:33:01
  they're not allowed to. Yeah, that's kind of wild.
• 1:33:06
  It's a choice that. That one creates a really funny
• 1:33:10
  conflict with, for example, the werewolf, because you cannot
• 1:33:14
  enter your darkest self while the sun is up.
• 1:33:19
  Like specifically like if your darkest self ends when the sun
• 1:33:22
  rises. So you are kind of immune to
• 1:33:23
  that. You're just so independent that
• 1:33:26
  you ignore the codependency until the sun goes down.
• 1:33:29
  I mean, I would, yeah. I was going to say I would
• 1:33:30
  probably rule that it happens later, like once the sun does go
• 1:33:33
  down, it just happens no matter what kind of thing.
• 1:33:36
  Yeah, unless like, well, yeah, there's nothing you do.
• 1:33:39
  Once they leave your their sight, you're cooked.
• 1:33:42
  Yeah. Up next we have the Queen, AKA
• 1:33:47
  the Heathers. Alexa, play Dead Girl Walking,
• 1:33:50
  my favorite song. The Queen's whole thing is
• 1:33:53
  manipulation in a similar way to the Fae and the Witch, but
• 1:33:59
  ultimately different. The Queen is about being on top
• 1:34:02
  of the hierarchy in putting everyone else around you down to
• 1:34:06
  your own benefit. You get a unique skill, your
• 1:34:10
  clique, which is like just a straight up gang that you get to
• 1:34:13
  start the game with. And they have some pretty fun
• 1:34:15
  narrative implications like them being like them having guns.
• 1:34:20
  Your characters are are late high schoolers, so characters
• 1:34:23
  just having guns that go to school with you kind of crazy.
• 1:34:26
  Having money and designer drugs, being in a band or sports team,
• 1:34:30
  or being cultists with dark oaths and willingness to die.
• 1:34:33
  I'm just, I just so far, I would love to play the queen and, and
• 1:34:38
  it doesn't say this, but I would love the idea of playing the
• 1:34:41
  queen and you're actually like a weird insect bee lady.
• 1:34:47
  Yeah, you're just fucking tephora.
• 1:34:48
  That would be cool. Yeah, you're some sort of weird
• 1:34:50
  insect creature that hides it most of the time because like
• 1:34:54
  the queen is not is sort of is sort of vague on whether you
• 1:34:58
  have any kind of magical influence over them or not.
• 1:35:01
  But I don't know. I love the idea that you have
• 1:35:03
  like weird pheromones or some shit.
• 1:35:06
  For sure. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's it is.
• 1:35:10
  Or or if you go with the cultist option, you have a weird spell
• 1:35:13
  on them and you're a, you know, crazy witch lady.
• 1:35:17
  It is one of the unfortunate ones that like, not all of the
• 1:35:21
  Botster, Forbes, or your darker selves are explicitly monstrous
• 1:35:24
  forms. I kind of wish they played into
• 1:35:26
  that more. I know the point is that it's
• 1:35:27
  supposed to be metaphorical, but yes, it's one of the ones where
• 1:35:30
  I kind of wanted to be more literal like me personally.
• 1:35:33
  Honestly, I would say like it's kind of half and half if your
• 1:35:36
  monstrous form is actually monstrous.
• 1:35:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the vampire is not.
• 1:35:44
  Vampire. Well, vampires don't look that
• 1:35:46
  different, so, you know, but like, ghoul and ghoul and
• 1:35:49
  werewolf probably are. Faye is kind of up in the air.
• 1:35:53
  Infernal maybe you deem it out. Maybe.
• 1:35:57
  I guess that's up to you, you know, like, yeah.
• 1:35:59
  The ghost you shredded? Go poltergeist.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah, the ghost. Hollow and Werewolf are the two
• 1:36:04
  like explicitly monstrous ones, whereas like they describe it in
• 1:36:10
  the move itself. Yeah.
• 1:36:14
  After that, though, we have the vampire, which is really it's
• 1:36:19
  it's got a lot of really fun stuff, but it it it kind of
• 1:36:23
  makes me sad how much I don't really care for it.
• 1:36:28
  The vampire your consent is unnecessary because while the
• 1:36:31
  Infernal immortal play with the idea of problematic power
• 1:36:34
  dynamics, the vampire embodies it and you are the top of the
• 1:36:40
  food chain there. Your whole thing is about
• 1:36:43
  manipulating people by just taking their ability to say no
• 1:36:46
  away with hypnosis. And granted there are caveats to
• 1:36:50
  hypnosis, It's not just you can do I, I can make you do whatever
• 1:36:53
  I want. But there is a lot you can make
• 1:36:56
  them do. And unlike any of the other
• 1:36:59
  ones, the vampire is the most to do with temptation but never
• 1:37:07
  giving people what they want. Get them close, make them
• 1:37:10
  promises. Don't break the promises, but
• 1:37:13
  always lead them on just by a little bit.
• 1:37:16
  You just pull the carrot away just enough to stop them from
• 1:37:19
  grabbing it. So much so that their sex move
• 1:37:23
  is actively A debuff. If you have sex with someone,
• 1:37:26
  you lose all of your strings on them.
• 1:37:29
  That's it. That's the whole move.
• 1:37:31
  So you're actively de incentivized from using your sex
• 1:37:34
  move. But you should still use it if
• 1:37:37
  the narrative says or if the narrative makes sense if your
• 1:37:41
  cold hearted vampire manipulator does fall in love.
• 1:37:44
  Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that you lose your ability to
• 1:37:46
  manipulate someone you genuinely care about.
• 1:37:49
  That's the magic. That's the sows.
• 1:37:53
  The sows. Next we got the werewolf.
• 1:37:57
  My favorite skin hashtag in all ways beside physical.
• 1:38:02
  I am a wolf, except I am physically a werewolf, so it's
• 1:38:05
  fine. You know, maybe maybe my beef
• 1:38:07
  with the word skins, I just realized is because I just have
• 1:38:10
  associated the word skins with video game skins and like a free
• 1:38:14
  to play game and that just that's fair.
• 1:38:17
  That just fucks with me. That's completely possible, I
• 1:38:20
  could see that. I just thought about it randomly
• 1:38:23
  for some reason. When you said that, I was like,
• 1:38:25
  maybe that's why I don't like that phrase anyway.
• 1:38:30
  Yeah, yeah. The werewolf The werewolf.
• 1:38:33
  Yeah, it it really the werewolf embodies passion.
• 1:38:37
  The angriest. Form of passion.
• 1:38:39
  Be that rage, desire, love. Whatever you do it, you do it in
• 1:38:44
  the highest decibel and you make sure everybody knows.
• 1:38:49
  But also doggo want friends? Yes, but also doggo want
• 1:38:52
  friends. Because your your sex move for
• 1:38:55
  the werewolf is when you have sex with someone, you establish
• 1:39:00
  a deep spiritual connection with them until either of you breaks
• 1:39:02
  that spirit connection by having sex with someone else.
• 1:39:06
  Add +1 to all roles made to defend them.
• 1:39:08
  You could tell when you can tell when the connection has been
• 1:39:11
  broken. You just doggo want friend.
• 1:39:16
  Yep. Like, very deeply offended if
• 1:39:19
  somebody like cheats on you basically.
• 1:39:22
  Yeah, if you get cheated on. So I took that shit personal,
• 1:39:26
  yeah. And then you turn into angry
• 1:39:28
  monster man and smash. Yes.
• 1:39:31
  And there's only two ways to leave your darkest self as a
• 1:39:34
  werewolf. Either hurt the person you care
• 1:39:36
  about the most or wait for the sun to go up.
• 1:39:39
  And that is some heek melodrama. Both which are rough.
• 1:39:44
  Yeah, the werewolf, as you could probably assume given that, has
• 1:39:49
  deep mechanical and narrative connections with their darkest
• 1:39:51
  self. And I think this is, above all
• 1:39:54
  else, what exemplifies the idea of either combating or embracing
• 1:39:58
  your darkest instincts. Do you just go ape shit or do
• 1:40:02
  you desperately try to hold it in?
• 1:40:03
  Because if you just go ape. Shit, everyone you love.
• 1:40:05
  Because if you just go ape shit, you could just solve this
• 1:40:08
  problem. Right now you'd kill everyone
• 1:40:11
  you love, but you would solve the problem.
• 1:40:14
  Well, yeah, you kill everyone you like, but you also kill
• 1:40:16
  everyone you don't like. Yeah, and then there's no one
• 1:40:19
  left to bother you. I see this as an absolute win.
• 1:40:23
  Yeah, something like that. Finally, we have the witch
• 1:40:29
  Isaiah's personal trauma made manifest.
• 1:40:32
  The Vivich. Vivich the Witch is an
• 1:40:36
  interesting skin because, like the other manipulators, it plays
• 1:40:40
  on those themes. But the Witch is not about being
• 1:40:46
  the top of the food chain. It's not about exacting some
• 1:40:49
  sort of moral justice. The Witch is about revenge, flat
• 1:40:55
  out. Yeah.
• 1:40:57
  You put people in positions to where you are wronged and then
• 1:41:02
  you exact your revenge by cursing them, which is kind of
• 1:41:06
  wild. It is sort of like they're
• 1:41:08
  hexes. OK, yeah, sure.
• 1:41:11
  All right. My ex-girlfriend.
• 1:41:13
  Yes. Prize.
• 1:41:17
  That's why it's Isaiah's trauma made manifest.
• 1:41:21
  Yeah, you just hexed the poor fools who pissed you off,
• 1:41:23
  knowing Lear otherwise. Because you set odd arbitrary
• 1:41:26
  standards for justice. And then you get pissed when
• 1:41:31
  people don't match those unfair standards.
• 1:41:33
  It's great. It genuinely is so funny.
• 1:41:35
  Yeah, also you your your sex move is you get a sympathetic
• 1:41:40
  token, which is a special mechanic where the witch games
• 1:41:44
  tokens to create strings on people, which is, you know, it's
• 1:41:48
  the idea of like I have a lock of their hair or a piece of
• 1:41:51
  their clothing and thus I have power over them, that kind of
• 1:41:54
  vibe. Just make start making straw
• 1:41:57
  dolls. Yeah, yeah, Yep, yeah.
• 1:42:01
  The witches, the witch is really fun.
• 1:42:03
  The hexes themselves are kind of great, the ones we were talking
• 1:42:05
  about before. My favorite of the hexes is
• 1:42:07
  called the Wither. It is.
• 1:42:09
  And I quote, it's the only one I'm going to quote.
• 1:42:11
  The Hexed lose all of their hair, or their teeth begin to
• 1:42:15
  fall out, or their period arrives unexpectedly and
• 1:42:19
  heavily, or their skin gets all sickly and yellow and spotty.
• 1:42:22
  Whatever the specifics, it's bad.
• 1:42:24
  That middle one there the literally I cast menstrual
• 1:42:27
  cramps. That is menstrual cramps.
• 1:42:31
  You can literally cast fucking testicular torsion on someone.
• 1:42:35
  I cast testicular torture and. I love that it's my favorite
• 1:42:41
  one. It's so rude.
• 1:42:42
  Dude, it really fucking is. Just like it's also unnecessary
• 1:42:47
  like chill out what the fuck? Yeah, yeah, Look, I'd be doing
• 1:42:50
  it constantly, understand? Like, like, Sir, Miss, can I
• 1:42:55
  please use the bathroom? Yeah, sure.
• 1:42:57
  In the bathroom. Speaking in tongues, the school
• 1:42:59
  bully. Just like guys, what's
• 1:43:04
  happening? You just fuck with someone and
• 1:43:10
  give them their hit them with the period hex like every week
• 1:43:14
  and. You're so it's like whatever it
• 1:43:17
  is is bad, right? You can literally go in there
• 1:43:19
  and make someone violently shit their pants.
• 1:43:22
  You could, yes. I feel like that's on the table,
• 1:43:26
  yeah. Oh my God, can you?
• 1:43:28
  Oh God. Even worse.
• 1:43:29
  If you go there, you're like I. I cast dysentery.
• 1:43:32
  Yeah, I cast nut and so. It's like, oh.
• 1:43:38
  In the middle of the classroom. Oh God, full vinegar strokes.
• 1:43:44
  It's just you just do it to them like five times in a row.
• 1:43:47
  That's incredible pain. Every time they take a step it
• 1:43:52
  just happens again. Oh my God.
• 1:43:55
  On the floor, crying, writhing. Bro.
• 1:43:59
  Hands soiled. Oh my God dude dude I I
• 1:44:06
  shouldn't play a wish I would have used my power far too.
• 1:44:10
  Much that's what makes the Wish fun is you're like, I just get
• 1:44:12
  to throw spells at people. Fuck yeah, dude.
• 1:44:15
  Yep. Oh, it does say you have to meet
• 1:44:17
  their. Gaze, which is.
• 1:44:20
  That's fine. Oh, that's even OK.
• 1:44:22
  That's worse though because if you went to a high school like
• 1:44:24
  mine, I don't, you know, my graduating class was 100
• 1:44:27
  students, very small. You could just stand outside the
• 1:44:31
  door while someone is like taking a test and then they look
• 1:44:34
  at you and you're already mid cast and they're like what the
• 1:44:36
  fuck? Oh, well, you, it does say,
• 1:44:39
  either expend A sympathetic token during a ritual, oh true,
• 1:44:43
  or meet their gaze so you could go into the bathroom with their
• 1:44:47
  voodoo doll and, you know. Fuck with them, violently shit
• 1:44:50
  their pants. Yeah, yeah, no biggie.
• 1:44:56
  Oh, the ideas are already coming together.
• 1:44:58
  Oh yeah, it's all coming together.
• 1:45:01
  It's all coming. Together there is some like
• 1:45:04
  advanced fuckery shit going on, but for the most part that is
• 1:45:06
  the end of the book. I did want to bring up the
• 1:45:10
  session 0 stuff because I think it's really fun and it works
• 1:45:14
  really well in establishing the story as it is.
• 1:45:18
  So essentially what happens right, is once your characters
• 1:45:23
  establish their backstories in session one, you set up a
• 1:45:27
  seating chart, you literally create your homeroom class.
• 1:45:30
  And that's really dope because it represents not only a like a
• 1:45:35
  hub for your characters to play in.
• 1:45:38
  It provides them like a space where they can interact with
• 1:45:43
  each other whilst like also creating a main cast of
• 1:45:48
  characters. Like you are creating your
• 1:45:50
  ensemble cast. You're, you're literally doing
• 1:45:52
  like save by the bell thing, which is really fun.
• 1:45:56
  And the players make those characters.
• 1:45:59
  So the way that it works is once the characters are made, once
• 1:46:01
  everything's done, you create like a little seating chart, a
• 1:46:05
  little classroom. I did it using some like basic
• 1:46:07
  shapes in Photoshop. And you ask, you go around the
• 1:46:11
  room, you ask which player is the most popular.
• 1:46:13
  I forgot to do this, admittedly. I just let people pick where
• 1:46:16
  they wanted to sit. And what you're supposed to do
• 1:46:19
  is each time someone picks a seat and you, you should only
• 1:46:22
  have like the game says, if you've got four players, make it
• 1:46:28
  like 12 to 16 Max. I'm running six players, so I
• 1:46:33
  have 20. But 12 to 16 is a good number.
• 1:46:37
  And you basically just go, OK, who's sitting next to you?
• 1:46:40
  Encourage them to make allies and enemies and just ask who's
• 1:46:45
  sitting next to you. And they can give you a name,
• 1:46:48
  they can describe a person. And then you ask them
• 1:46:50
  provocative questions. Is this person gay?
• 1:46:53
  Why did they get arrested? Who got into a fight with them?
• 1:46:56
  Who owes them money? And you can extrapolate out on
• 1:46:59
  that and create an interwoven web of characters who like each
• 1:47:03
  other and you essentially make mini clicks like a real
• 1:47:06
  classroom, right? People have friend groups.
• 1:47:08
  Those friend groups don't get along.
• 1:47:09
  One, there's a bully in the class, there's the class nerd.
• 1:47:14
  And it, it works. So I've tried this beautifully.
• 1:47:20
  I like I said, I forgot about the the most popular thing and I
• 1:47:22
  didn't really do it on like a who does what.
• 1:47:25
  I let the players pick where they wanted to go and then I
• 1:47:27
  tried to do the like who's here? And that didn't really work out.
• 1:47:32
  I think the players were sort of already in a mindset and kind of
• 1:47:35
  struggled. I also told them to think about
• 1:47:36
  the NPCS because they, we are bringing the Lancer characters
• 1:47:40
  into monster hearts for the sake of expeditiousness.
• 1:47:43
  So the players are just keying off of the NPCS that they know
• 1:47:46
  in Lancer to bring them into this weird monster hearts AU.
• 1:47:50
  And it, like I said, it works great.
• 1:47:55
  And the game asks it it, it advises you, right?
• 1:47:59
  You want to make the knit as tight knit as you can, because
• 1:48:01
  when you pull one string 1 thread on the web, the whole
• 1:48:04
  thing reverberates. And if you do it right, it does.
• 1:48:07
  And it has, it's just, yeah, it's it's honestly, it's the
• 1:48:14
  coolest session 1 slash session zero thing I've ever done.
• 1:48:18
  And I wish more games did it like this.
• 1:48:20
  And I know that this is that sort of PBT as whole thing,
• 1:48:24
  Correct. Yeah.
• 1:48:26
  Of of all things, I think the classroom was the coolest.
• 1:48:28
  I mean, Fabulous Ultima has a some similar kind of vibe to the
• 1:48:34
  session zero run through. It does, yes.
• 1:48:37
  I think Fabulous does it better than Monster Hearts, admittedly
• 1:48:40
  because it it gives you comprehensive rules for going
• 1:48:43
  into your an area's history. Like this game does not do that
• 1:48:49
  it it. Also doesn't care as much about
• 1:48:51
  that right? Like history of the town and
• 1:48:53
  stuff is probably is not really as important as everyone's juicy
• 1:48:57
  social. Drama kind of, yes, it does give
• 1:49:00
  you rules for going into building your town.
• 1:49:01
  I forgot to put it in my notes, but essentially characters can
• 1:49:04
  go around and say like, OK, what's what's a place that your
• 1:49:08
  character spends a lot of time in in the town?
• 1:49:11
  So for us, we have like the junkyard that one of my players
• 1:49:15
  works in that is uncle owns. There's the rich part of town
• 1:49:18
  where one of my players, she's like her father is a, or her
• 1:49:22
  mother's a congresswoman. There is the like nicer
• 1:49:26
  apartments and then there's the projects.
• 1:49:28
  There's like a restaurant. So like it, it allows you to set
• 1:49:32
  scenes or build sets for your characters to play out scenes
• 1:49:37
  in. But fabulous is way more
• 1:49:40
  comprehensive. And I, I probably should have
• 1:49:42
  brought some of that in, but this, this mini campaign was a
• 1:49:47
  rush job, so. I mean, it's not surprising
• 1:49:50
  fabulous building upon Pbta broadly as a as a like design
• 1:49:55
  culture and has come out way out, you know, 10 plus years
• 1:50:01
  after monster hearts, so or over 10 years after monster hearts.
• 1:50:06
  So yes, and it makes it does have the the omniscient power of
• 1:50:10
  hindsight. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:50:15
  But yeah, that's that's pretty much it.
• 1:50:18
  That's monster hearts. I didn't think we were going to
• 1:50:23
  hit it in one episode. We did it.
• 1:50:26
  I mean, I, I will say because we didn't hit like principles and
• 1:50:31
  GM moves and stuff, which is fine, but I will or MC moves if
• 1:50:36
  someone is, if you are listening and you're like, I feel like I'm
• 1:50:41
  still a little confused. I didn't go over the core like
• 1:50:44
  some of the stuff that the GM does or the core way that this
• 1:50:47
  works. So that way go go listen to the
• 1:50:50
  Apocalypse World episodes that will fill in the gaps in monster
• 1:50:57
  hearts. Yes.
• 1:50:58
  And we we didn't really bring it up because there isn't a lot to
• 1:51:02
  bring up in monster hearts. There's not as much for sure,
• 1:51:06
  like almost none. And again, Monster Hearts is is
• 1:51:10
  sort of assuming you know about Apocalypse World already.
• 1:51:13
  So yes, go listen to the Apocalypse World episode or read
• 1:51:17
  Apocalypse World I suppose yourself.
• 1:51:22
  I methinks I'm going to do an episode next week as like a
• 1:51:27
  first impressions played the game, had some thoughts.
• 1:51:30
  So probably a shorter episode because we're only doing 2
• 1:51:34
  sessions total, yeah. Hopefully he doesn't come back
• 1:51:41
  and say it was terrible. Well, we've already done one
• 1:51:44
  session and it's it's fantastic, but we'll get into it next time.
• 1:51:51
  Any closing thoughts? No, I don't think so.
• 1:52:01
  I mean, like I said, Monster Heart looking at monsters.
• 1:52:05
  I've always heard about Monster hearts, of course, because being
• 1:52:08
  a fan of Apocalypse World, you're going to hear about
• 1:52:10
  Monster Hearts at some point because it's one of those Pbta
• 1:52:12
  games that gets brought up all the time.
• 1:52:15
  But it is interesting actually reading and going through it
• 1:52:17
  because it's clear to me looking at it that it's an early, it's
• 1:52:25
  an early example of that big Pbta movement that happened.
• 1:52:29
  It's kind of interesting going back and looking at an older
• 1:52:31
  Pbta game and sort of analyzing being like, huh, yeah, we've
• 1:52:35
  moved on from some of this stuff and in some ways we've like
• 1:52:38
  improved it. In some ways we've changed it
• 1:52:40
  quite drastically. In some elements.
• 1:52:43
  I kind of feel a little like maybe we're trying to move too
• 1:52:47
  far away from Apocalypse World and maybe we should reel it in a
• 1:52:49
  little bit. Not in the case of Monster
• 1:52:52
  Hearts, but in the case of other games.
• 1:52:55
  Lazaro. It's just, it's just interesting
• 1:52:56
  to, it's, if nothing else, I mean, it's a, it's an
• 1:52:59
  interesting game and it's, it's a good game, but it is also
• 1:53:01
  interesting to look at it in a cultural design ethos kind of
• 1:53:05
  way. That was a thinly veiled way of
• 1:53:10
  me saying I'm a little concerned about the direction Dungeon
• 1:53:12
  World 2 is going in. Oh, you want to?
• 1:53:15
  You want to go into a little bit.
• 1:53:17
  I don't know that we have the time to go into it right now.
• 1:53:20
  I'd say like it'd be a long rambly thing, but they're
• 1:53:23
  they're making some choices that I feel are a little strange and
• 1:53:27
  perhaps trying. They're very much making a
• 1:53:32
  modern Pbta game and dropping some of the stuff that Dungeon
• 1:53:37
  World One had, I think in the effort of trying to make it more
• 1:53:41
  modern, but I think perhaps throwing the baby out with the
• 1:53:43
  bathwater a little bit in some cases.
• 1:53:46
  For example, gear. So, you know, Dungeon World is a
• 1:53:51
  fantasy adventure, you know, go out into the dungeon, collect,
• 1:53:54
  you know, to fight the monster, get the loot or whatever.
• 1:53:58
  Character gear has no mechanical effect at all.
• 1:54:02
  It's purely fictional based. Don't love that decision.
• 1:54:07
  Yeah, no, that's that's one of the things I actually liked
• 1:54:09
  about Dungeon World is that your the gear hid things.
• 1:54:12
  It's also the thing I like about things regardless, I think
• 1:54:16
  that's I think Apocalypse World hit a very good middle ground
• 1:54:21
  between a little bit of mechanical crunch and choice for
• 1:54:26
  the people that wanted to lean into that stuff, but but still
• 1:54:30
  mostly focused on the fictional. Lean into the strengths of the
• 1:54:37
  game's fiction first focus, You know, like the tags on the gear.
• 1:54:42
  Some of them have more fictional stuff, some of them are a little
• 1:54:45
  more mechanical, but they all they have, you have choices to
• 1:54:48
  make about, especially if you're like a battle babe, for example,
• 1:54:51
  and you're making a custom weapon.
• 1:54:52
  There's choices to be made in a game, game mechanical sense, but
• 1:54:57
  they flow into the fictional aspect of the game, like
• 1:55:01
  seamlessly. So yeah, removing that in a game
• 1:55:05
  like Dungeon World, I understand removing gear.
• 1:55:08
  Like Monster Hearts doesn't have gear, Masks doesn't have gear,
• 1:55:11
  Avatar Legends doesn't have gear, but I understand those
• 1:55:15
  games not having gear because it's not really a crux of the
• 1:55:18
  genre that they're trying to invoke, right?
• 1:55:20
  Like it's not a character in Avatar has one or two things on
• 1:55:26
  them that's their like cool piece of gear, right?
• 1:55:28
  Eng had his staff, Saka had the boomerang and then the sword
• 1:55:31
  later. But it's not like AD and D
• 1:55:34
  character where you're like, I have my magic sword and my magic
• 1:55:37
  sealed and my sick cloak and my magical ring and shit.
• 1:55:40
  You know, part of the fantasy thing is collecting like gear
• 1:55:45
  stuffs. That's kind of part of the vibe.
• 1:55:48
  So it feels weird that they took that away.
• 1:55:52
  It feels a little off genre to me.
• 1:55:56
  And, and I've seen a couple of people make comments that
• 1:55:59
  they're trying to make Dungeon World Masks edition and I'm kind
• 1:56:02
  of like, yeah, I don't know if that's what I want.
• 1:56:07
  So, yeah, yeah. Farindel so.
• 1:56:11
  Interesting looking at an older Pbta game and going like Oh yeah
• 1:56:15
  this is how the older Gabes did it.
• 1:56:18
  Perhaps we should look at Saga of the Icelanders soon.
• 1:56:21
  I really like that game. It's an intriguing.
• 1:56:24
  One I remember liking that game. I read it back when we were in
• 1:56:28
  college. Yeah, it's been a minute since
• 1:56:29
  I've looked at it too. Maybe I feel like we got to do,
• 1:56:34
  we got to do Kane next. I just and then there's then
• 1:56:37
  there's other games like fucking.
• 1:56:41
  City of Mist I want to read. City of Mist and then have you
• 1:56:44
  ever heard of Iron Sworn? Yes.
• 1:56:48
  That's another game that like sort of came out of PBTA but is
• 1:56:52
  almost not recognizable as PBTA unless you really know what to
• 1:56:56
  look for. Kind of like how Blades is is
• 1:57:00
  technically APBTA game but also kind of not Iron sworn similar.
• 1:57:04
  Yeah, that's yeah, Yeah, that's fair.
• 1:57:07
  Yeah. Anyway.
• 1:57:12
  The the the culture of who designs based on who and who's
• 1:57:15
  taking from who is always interesting stuff.
• 1:57:21
  But yeah, that, that'll be us. That's been us.
• 1:57:26
  I forgot to say hit subscribe or follow on your podcast platform
• 1:57:29
  of choice at the beginning, so you should do it now.
• 1:57:32
  Yeah. And follow us on.
• 1:57:33
  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, something.
• 1:57:36
  No, no, no, no, no. Just hit subscribe.
• 1:57:38
  I don't care about social media. OK.
• 1:57:41
  You can if you want. Social media is in the
• 1:57:44
  description if you're so inclined.
• 1:57:46
  We'd appreciate. It I'd appreciate this, I'd
• 1:57:51
  just, I'd appreciate the Subs more.
• 1:57:53
  Yeah. I mean, I'd appreciate the Subs
• 1:57:54
  more, but like Subs more probably would be nice too.
• 1:57:58
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• 1:57:59
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