This game was played on Saturday, Feb. 15th.

Irene: Vampire, Popular Girl
Tucker: Werewolf, Former Hunter (aka Supernatural)
Lucca: Witch, Aiming for the top and willing to step on others
Andrew: Ghost, Loner who eavesdrops and likes chaos
Robin: Mortal, The new girl

The only new person to the game appeared to be the ghost. Which was unfortunate, because as the ghost he was frequently left out of off campus scenes. This could have been remedied had we agreed to let him follow objects belonging to the school. I felt this left his character out for too much of the time, and wouldn’t recommend new people to the game play the ghost their first time.

Set up took a very long time, almost an hour and a half, but after that things went smoothly. A good portion of that time was dedicated to learning about NPC’s. My memory starts the game in the hallway where Tucker forcefully asks Robin to the dance.

Attempting to learn more about Irene, Lucca asks her to the dance in a group. Ending poorly, Irene ends up realizing that Lucca is a witch. The ghost continued to float in on random scenes, but never really driving his own story. Rather only nudging others. This may have been because he was new to the game.

Lucca makes a deal with Andrew in order to steal something from Irene. In exchange Lucca owes him a favor. In a twist the vampire and ghost turn out to be friends, so he informs Irene of the plan. Lucca watches this happen through magical means.

The characters continued to develop their own plans, while adjusting to new ideas, and plot twists. Overall I’d say things went rather well.

Eventually the werewolf bites his mortal lover, and ends up turning her. As a hunter he claims that if she eats the heart of the man he just killed, she will be cured. This is where the game mechanics failed a little. As the witch I claimed the spell he asked me to perform would cause a bonding between them. There was nothing really to say which was correct. Things ended up based purely on who she believed to have the true spell.

Set-up for this game can indeed be extensive (which is why this game really sings in a longer format when all those leading questions and Backstory assignments can bear fruit) especially when introducing the rules. It can really pay off though. We had a lot of PC/PC interaction this time which was awesome.

As for The Ghost, it can be a tricky skin in that regard. I think for a new player who wanted to play The Ghost I'd recommend giving them an agenda, a reason for them to interact with the people around them. (Not a bad advice for any skin but for The Ghost especially you don't want them to unintentionally isolate themselves.) I felt bad that this character never seemed to find his own niche, though he did stir things up a bit!

As for what the real outcome of the spell would have been, in a more traditional game, the MC would have had made the final say or maybe had The Werewolf and Witch make a Dark roll with the higher result being correct? In the MC-less format, we could have talked about it and decided which we thought would be more interesting or, again, had them both roll. In retrospect, I realize I could have maybe rolled to Hold Steady to see if Robin would avoid jumping to conclusions and give her true love the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, it was a pretty good time. :) I had fun with everyone around the table. I wish I'd have taken on a few more of the NPCs and been more vocal with suggestions but Emily sure knows what she's doing. :D

Thanks to Sarah for facilitating and to the others for playing!

- Dani, aka Robin the Mortal

I think one needs to count the setup as part of the game, in this as in several other higher-prep story games. Coming up with who everyone is and how they relate is fun, not just preparation for fun, as far as I'm concerned.

I think our Ghost problem was less a ghost-per-se problem and more a painting yourself into a corner problem. There's a trick in not saying anything super rigid about your character early on, in case it turns out to write you out of the story. But our ghost was very committed to being unable to leave the school, so there wasn't much to do but contrive reasons to go back to school in the middle of the night. If was MCing, I would just look for an opportunity for a failed roll to make him haunt one of the other characters instead of the school (Hard Move: Put Them Together). I guess I could do that in the GMless game too, it's just harder to think of when so much else is going on.

I didn't actually think the player had a bad time, though. Particularly when it's your first time, hanging back a little and not controlling the plot too much can be comfortable, and picking the Ghost kind of points to that.

Anyway, it was a good game and I had fun. Thanks!

As for what the real outcome of the spell would have been, in a more traditional game, the MC would have had made the final say

If was MCing, I would just look for an opportunity for a failed roll to make him haunt one of the other characters instead of the school (Hard Move: Put Them Together)

Yeah, what Dani and Emily said. The MC is a pretty fundamental part of the mechanics of Monsterhearts and all the Apocalypse World-based games. Playing it without an MC changes the whole game. It totally voids the warranty.

I think one needs to count the setup as part of the game, in this as in several other higher-prep story games. Coming up with who everyone is and how they relate is fun, not just preparation for fun, as far as I'm concerned.

This is definitely true. But if it *feels* like setup is taking a long time, as Sarah said, that's meaningful.

Half the time when I feel like my game is taking too long to start it's because another group at a nearby table is playing something really simple and they're already role-playing scenes when we're still brainstorming out our setting. Of course the flip side is that most games with super-light setup wind up with super-light stories. You burn through the hijinks and you're done. Both are fun, it just depends what mood you're in.

I just wanted to point out that another way to play MCless is to basically make the scene-framer the MC for one "round", then the person to their left does the same, etc. It's creates a different experience IMHO.

Yeah, it's too bad we aren't allowed to play it with an MC. It would have made it much easier to incorporate our new player into the game on a more even and level basis.

Manu, that's definitely true, and I've tried it like that. It can definitely work if everybody is creatively in resonance. What's lost is the continuity of the MC agenda. When you Announce Future Badness and the scene changes, it's somebody else's job to decide what your hints were hinting at, and usually they have no idea what to do so they drop them. This is the problem Durance has in spades- if the players are out of sync, they just all fly off in different directions. I think it actually makes it harder to correct a problem like our non-mobile Ghost, not easier.

If playing Monsterhearts without an MC is causing all these problems, maybe it’s not such a good idea. Anyone interested in playing it as it was intended to be played should take a look at the outside Monsterhearts game being organized.

On a related note, check out Dream Askew. It’s also an Apocalypse World based game by Joe Mcdaldno, the author of Monsterhearts. And it’s designed to be MCless from the ground up.

Oh, I don't think MCless Monsterhearts has more problems than any of the other games we play. We don't know any perfect games. I'm just mentioning a particular imperfection that we could easily fix.

Emily, I see what you mean but I think there are some strategies that can help. For example, when I announce future badness I shouldn't be too attached to it, and can actually purposely leave it open to some interpretation, being curious what others will do with it. To keep things from being dropped, why not write them on an index card? The next player on the MC rotation then has something to refer to, and won't feel like they have to make things up in a vacuum. Just some ideas...