Category: The Gauntlet: Our Games

Here’s the latest write up of the Saturday Morning Cartoons Monsterhearts game.

Originally shared by Yoshi Creelman

Mercy Falls High [MH2] – Session 1

This was the first session of the latest Saturday Morning Cartoons Gauntlet Hangouts game.

Setting

Set in Mercy Falls, Washington. It’s a pacific northwest, twin peaks vibe. The forest that surrounds Mercy Falls has an ancient evil (or is itself an ancient evil). When things start to go wrong, the old timers start “Woods are acting up again” or “Woods will have their due”.

There’s a large High School, Mercy Falls High, which is fed by a lot of the smaller surrounding communities. It’s got a moose for a mascot, and they’re known as the Mercy High Big Horns.

Characters

Serina – Vampire played by me.

Margo – Werewolf Kevin Lovecraft

Jonah – Queen Phillip Wessels

Lillith – Fae Fraser Simons

Everyone else (MC) – Jason Cordova

Serina is a newly turned asexual female vampire, who moved here somewhat recently. She’s got some of the vampire tropes but not all. Sunlight doesn’t kill her, but she has no reflection. She can enter public spaces and buildings, but anywhere where someone “lives” builds up a barrier she can’t cross unless invited. The forest is a place she couldn’t cross but was invited in by Lillith, but now doesn’t venture there as the life force there is vehemently opposed to her undeath.

Lillith is a female fae born, with red hair that has recently started to grow with rapunzel like rapidity. She was adopted and has a sort of Pan’s labyrinth discovering her Fae blood vibe going on. Comfortable in the forest

Margot a recently turned Asian female werewolf. She was jumped by a guy, who bite her and turned her. That werewolf is still on the loose somewhere. Margot spends a fair amount of time running through the forest. Very poor, just recently got on the subsidized lunch program.

Jonah is the leader of a small cult. He leads other boys deep into the forest for rituals and orgies. They will often skinny dip in a pond after to “clean up”. Margot has run across them once but kept her distance.

NPCs

Rody (one of Jonah‘s members) and Serina dated, broke up cause *Serina8 wouldn’t sleep with him.

Tony (also one of Jonah‘s members) does water coloring, sketches and paints Serina, he seems to be keeping it a secret from others, just how into water coloring he is. So far his interest seems limited to having a pretty model.

Allen has been a willing donor of blood to Serina. He sits next to Margot. Serina and Allen keep looking at Margot whenever they notice her staring at them. Serina thinks it’s odd how much Margot is paying attention to her and Allen.

Kyle Norwood the missing kid. A childhood friend of Lillith. Altar boy. Worked at the dinner and gave away free food to people who flirted with him (soon got fired). One of the few who was comfortable around Margot also had the best weed Margot ever smoked. The lover Jonah cared the most for, someone who actually had power over Jonah.

Ben Awkward boy who emulates all of Jonah’s styles.

Chad The worst, total jock, thinks he’s hot shit. Captain of the football team. Constantly shirtless.

Serra hippy parents, but super over achiever, definitely going to Harvard.

Austin glazy eyed drug dealer and procurer of illicit goods. Wears way too much Axe body spray in a failed attempt to cover the pervasive scent of marijuana.

Mr. Tompson super nice guy young teacher, who occasionally lets Jonah stay over when his parents are fighting.

Don another one of Jonah‘s members.

Scenes

A scene of Margot trying to get a baggie from Austin for free, “I’ll hook a gal up if that gal has money, Chad owes me $120, get him to pay up and I’ll hook you up.”

A scene in homeroom where Ben sneaks his head in, sees Jonah, with his pants tucked into his boots, Ben pops out and come strutting in with his pants tucked into his shoes. Tries to casually show it to Lillith, and call attention to it from Jonah, who quickly untucks his pants and shuts Ben down. Serina comes over leans on Rody‘s desk with her foot on Jonah‘s desk, her pants are tucked into her boots. “Ben, I dig the look.”

At lunch Jonah is eating family style with his members, Rody, Tony, and Don. Lillith comes over and talks to Jonah and convinces (used a string) to get him to promise to use his popularity to make her more popular.

Margot sees Chad leaving the lunch room and takes the opportunity to try and get him to pay up. They have a little back and forth, it seems like Chad has the upper hand, and leaves to go to the bathroom…. until Margot walks right in after him.

Seeing this, Serina sashays across the room, silently reaches over and grabs the cheeseburger from Rody and Tony, continues on to right outside the bathroom where Margot and Chad just entered. She licks the ketchup off her fingers and she exaggeratedly listens to the bathroom… everyone else comes over. Lillith takes out her phone and starts recording. Serina goes to the bathroom door and just slides the door open with her foot, giving everyone (and Lillith) a beautiful view of Margot shoving Chad hard into the sink and mirror. Chad gives in and promises to get the money, but doesn’t have it on him at the moment. In the mirror (and the video), you can see Serina in the foreground…. but not in the mirror behind Chad.

next session, scenes & follow up ideas

Get in a fight with Margot (so she can get strings on me for hurting me, and I have some harm, so I can go feed on someone else).

Get locked out of some place because I’m a vampire and can’t get into someone’s home. Be all sulky on the porch.

Venture into the forest (maybe with Lillith guiding me), cause the forest is creepy and wants to kill me.

Get in between Jonah and his followers. Maybe convince Tony he’s too good for Jonah, and that he doesn’t need him.

Thoughts

I really enjoyed. I thought Jason did an excellent job of giving us enough direction and focus. We had just enough to work together and create a setting that felt real, and relevant to the type of story we wanted to tell.

I really enjoyed the emphasis that this was a story about “teenagers”. Monstrous things may happen, but first and foremost it’s about teenage melodrama.

I know Jason wants to do a Twin Peaks missing kid thing, which I’m into… but we’ve already got so much other interesting threads, that we could totally have 4 more sessions and never get around to looking for Kyle.

I’m intentionally playing an A-sexual character because I want to see how the mechanical rules affect the fiction. I think I know how things will play out, but I want to see it in play. I picked the Vampire, because of this, because their sex move is to deny sex to others.

One thing I noticed, in the very short time of play so far, is that it requires the other players to try to turn me on. I mean it’s obvious, it’s right there in the mechanics… but it means that it doesn’t really have much of an effect on NPCs, who don’t trigger that move.

It’s also interesting, cause I’m the character with the highest Hot stat. I’ve ended up being this sexy vamp, who uses her body and sex appeal to get what she wants… even though she explicitly doesn’t want sex.

I’m really digging the creepy forest, and how the other 3 characters all have some deep ties to it… and it actively wants to kill (re-kill) me. I want there to be things or reasons for Serina to go or want to be in the forest so she can need to convince others to do it for her… or be her bodyguard when she does need to go in there.

I really appreciate how Margot has some drive and initiative to do something proactive and get entangled. Too often I see werewolves be silent stalkers from the outside, and end up being disengaged from the group. So I really appreciate the proactive approach. She is definitely going to be my go to protector… if I need one.

I’m really glad Lillith has already got one promise. I really want to figure out what I can accidentily promise to her. There were some hints that Lillith might be into Serina… so I might have to try and turn her on, and see where that goes.

Jonah is interesting… he’s totally all about sex, which would be great for looking at the A-sexuality mechanics… but he doesn’t seem to be interested in girls…. I think I’ll just have to break up and try to “take” over some of his lackeys… maybe then he’ll try to use sex to control me…

Lilith is also the ONLY character with a positive dark score. I wonder what this is going to mean for investigation and trying to find Kyle. Monsterhearts doesn’t really have a lot of “gather information” moves… the only basic move is gaze into the abyss, and with a lot of negative dark scores… it might not be all that fruitful.

I really like change to social interactions to be reliant on strings. It does mean that getting strings has become much more important. Right now I like how really the only basic move to get strings is “turn someone on”. This seems good, it encourages us to tell stories about teens where the only tool they have to get what they want is to try and be sexy.

I do worry though if a character had a starting hot value of -1, they might not be able to acquire strings in any meaningful way… maybe that’s okay, but it might just not be fun either.

I’m totally the sexy virgin in the horror movie… the bad guys can’t kill me until I have sex… so I won’t do it!