Monster of the Week again

After a bit of a hiatus since last year, my occasional online RPG group started up again this month, with me running my Monster of the Week one-shot The Seeds of Doom (which I’ve talked about previously here and you can download here).

The game went really well. Neither of my regular players were familiar with MotW (or any PbtA games for that matter), but they took to the playbooks like ducks to water. They chose a Flake and an Initiate. They decided their previous case involved the giant toad of Wigan, which sounded appropriately weird.

Last time I ran MotW I had some problems with the rules in that I wanted to roll for attack - this time I seemed to have overcome that block and was much more comfortable with describing what was going to happen and asking “What do you do?”

The players ran around and investigated the mystery and generally had a good time.

Feedback is good

I did note that the players were a bit too keen to shut down NPCs. I would throw helpful NPCs at them, but more than once they blocked them. That was a bit tricky, as it meant that information I had planned to give them via NPCs I had to manage in a different way.

I did wonder if that’s because players like to think that they’re in control, and aren’t keen on receiving help, but it was a shame as I like to run games with lots of NPCs.

Anyway, I shared my concerns with one of the players between sessions. I don’t know if that helped or whether I adjusted my play accordingly, but the problem seemed to go away in the final session.

Some other thoughts

• Once or twice I suggested that the players imagine that they were in a tv show, and it was okay if not everything was gritty and realistic. Normally when I run a modern-day game (even my Other London games) I try for a more realistic actions-have-consequences style of game - and my players know that. This time, I encouraged my players to be more proactive by making them imagine they were in a tv show and that seemed to work.
• I was a bit worried about them meeting the monster early, but I realised that they were unprepared and it was tougher than they were expecting, so it was fine.
• I still really like the way MotW handles NPC motivations - that worked really well as a simple shorthand for what they would do (often be a victim and need rescuing). MotW does the same thing with locations, but I didn’t find that to be as successful, except where I used the woods as a maze to hide the monster.
• I included a cut scene! Possibly my first. As our heroes were driving their gully sucker up to the lighthouse I cut to a scene showing the monster at the lighthouse menacing some teenagers. I should do that more.
• I bought a new gaming headset that’s much clearer than the old one I was using. However, the over-the-ear cups are so good that I can’t actually hear myself talk through my ears. I can hear myself through bone conduction, but I sound really muffled. That took some getting used to.

More MotW

Happily, both my players enjoyed MotW and would like to play more. So I’ve promised to run another adventure. I need to read up on the in-between moves first though.

But before that I’m running Achtung! Cthulhu which I’m looking forward to.