View source for Monsterhearts: DexCon 2013 LongCon: Part 3

7 July 2013, 10 am, Monsterhearts Part 3 of 3

This was the third session of Melissa Spannenbert's 3-part Monsterhearts game at DexCon. She and I were the only ones who made all three parts. Adrian Stein and Joann Clark-Stein returned for part 3, and Bob Dushay joined us. Josh, Lena, and Martin did not make this session, but their PCs were easy to write out, Josh's Ghoul, Quietude, was trying to find out where she came from, and clearly wasn't starting her search with Cassidy. Lena's Infernal, Ophelia, had broken her ties with Poseidon and begun a romance with Goliath Bodi, while Martin's Werewolf, Luke, had begun one with Goliath's sister, Fiance. None of the four were deterred by either the fact that the Bodis were all vampires or that one of their number had cursed Luke's family.

A happily ever after is not the usual Monsterhearts situation. But, it is fine for writing characters out.

This session, we had:

Melissa Spannenbert: GM

Me: Russell Place, the Serpentine. This session, his highlighted stats were Volatile and Dark, which meant that I got to mark experience when I used them, whether or not my roll succeeded.

Adrian Stein: Cassidy Greene, the Ghost
Joan Clarke-Stein: Meredith Pierce, the Witch

Robert Dushay: Baby, the Hollow. Baby was the notion of Perfection given human form. But she was a perfect _what_? She had not yet decided, although she was sure that she was not the Perfect Girlfriend. She was uncomfortable with the whole Dating Thing.

If I recall correctly, Baby had been found on the road as a baby, although the couple that picked her up was disappointed because she was not what they had hoped for. Perhaps, they thought, they might find a better baby somewhere else on the road, if they put her back and tried again. I don't think they did that, but certainly, Baby knew that, for them, at least, she was not the Perfect Daughter.

Baby had been in town for about a year, so, like Meredith, she was a new student. She had never seen Cassidy alive. She and Cassidy each had a string on the other. Meredith saw through her, so he had two strings on her. Baby was taking her social cues from Russell, so she had two strings on him.

Perhaps she was meant to be the Perfect Student? Or perhaps she was meant to be the Perfect Politician.

Babe / Bob: If I have to be Perfect Politician, I have to depose you [Russell]. I hate you and I have to depose you -- you're making me be something I don't want!

Naturally, this was not something Baby ever said to Russell. It was more of an internal monologue.

Last session, Russell had learned that his grandmother, the Serpentine family matriarch Camilla had killed his fellow student, Broy Sheely. Camilla had also told Russell that "animals", by which she meant vampires, had killed Maggie Grubbs because of a power struggle among the vampires. Maggie was not a vampire herself, and I think the vampires who killed her were the ones from the oil refinery. These vampires were making waves, trying to force the Bodis out. The Bodis came to town once a year to run the summer carnival.

Meredith had scried and received some visions of the oil refinery vampires, although he wasn't entirely sure what he was seeing or how it all fit together. Unlike the typical teenager, Meredith had shared what he had seen with his father, who was also a witch. This made Meredith's arc atypical for Monsterhearts.

Cassidy was trying to find out what had happened to Broy, and he was angry about the obvious cover ups. He had spurned Broy's advances, back when they were both alive. He had tried to contact Broy despite Broy's being dead, albeit with no success. But, he remained convinced that Broy was out there in some sense. After all, death had not been the end for Cassidy either.

Cassidy had picked up an earring from the scene of the crime. This belonged to Camilla, and she had charged Russell with retrieving it from Cassidy. And that wraps up the What Has Gone Before.

Meredith went to the home of the Chief of Police, Sheriff Beatty, as he had promised to go on a date with Beatty's daughter, Anna Sama Beatty, taking her to the carnival. The sheriff opened the door, recognized Meredith, and was very polite.

Beatty: Would you like to come in? She's not down yet.

Meredith did. They had the semi-awkward conversation that parents have with people who've come to date their children.

Beatty: What does your father do?

Meredith: My Dad was in the war, and he was injured pretty badly. My Mom grew up here.

Beatty: How long do you think you're going to be in the States?

Meredith: It depends. My Dad is still recovering. I suppose it might be possible for us to stay maybe -- he used to be a college professor.

Beatty: Something to drink?

Meredith: No, no that's fine. What time would you like me to bring Anna home?

Beatty: 10 at the latest.

Anna came down, and she and Meredith got into Meredith's car.

Meanwhile, Baby was at the carnival.

Baby / Bob: I go to the guess your age ad weight person, and they don't get it. Every Time -- I can go to same person every half hour and they forget.

Meredith tried to pump Anna for information. She was surprised that her father was home that night. She also wanted Meredith to kiss her.

Meredith / Joann: It's... early in the date for that -- I'm British...

He said none of that aloud, of course. Instead, he glanced over at her and raised an eyebrow. At the next traffic light, I think he did kiss her, but off the lips.

She told him what she knew about Broy.

Anna: Well, actually, what they didn't tell a lot of people but did tell me -- he _wasn't_ hit by a car.

Actually, technically, no one had told Anna this. She had found the paperwork and read it. She also knew that the police had received a phone call from anonymous woman, which is how they knew to collect the body. Broy had clearly been into "weird weird stuff". He had hooked up with "that Lorelei from Crab Shack".

Anna: But of _course_ I'm sad that Broy died.

Meredith: I guess you never know. (He thinks of his father floating a beer can towards himself.)

At the carnival, Baby won a prize and threw it in the trash.

Girl with lollipop and smashed face: Hey -- why you throwing that in the trash?

(I have no idea what I meant by "smashed face".)

Baby: I. Don't. Want. It.

Girl: Can I have it?

Baby (retrieving it and handing it to her): Here.

She saw a group of men with slicked hair and white rolled up shirt sleeves. With them was a bright bleached blond girl, very sycophantic, and also named Baby. I think these were the oiler vampires that Meredith had seen in his visions.

Baby (NPC): Can't you win me a prize, Bing?

She was clearly playing the men against each other. The Hollow Baby walked over. I forget whether she tried to shut them down on general principles or whether they'd said something to her first. I do remember this:

Baby / Bob: He's trying to -define- me -- I'm not that.

The attempt to shut down one of the men resulted in both sides getting a Condition.

Baby / Bob: So I'm angry.

Baby (out loud, to Tanzy, one of the men): You 'fraid?

Tanzy had the Condition: Confused
Baby had the Condition: Bitchy

Tanzy: No, I'm not scared.

He slapped her butt as she walked by.

Meredith saw this and recognized the predatory guys from his vision. The Other Baby was not happy at the attention being paid to the Hollow Baby.

The Hollow Baby slapped Tanzy in the face. I'm not sure whether she did any Harm. I do know that the Condition of Bitchy was now discarded. She became her Darkest Self, I think voluntarily, and cut loose. Tanzy grabbed her and pulled her closer. He smelled of camphor, but the camphor smell was hiding some other smell. The other men tried to circle the pair to keep anyone else from seeing what was going on.

Tanzy: You shouldn't have done that.

Cassidy went looking for Russell. When he found him, the two boys went to the slideshow, which was not currently running, as they wanted some privacy.

Meanwhile, Meredith gave Anna a dollar.

Meredith: I want you to go play a game over there -- there's a problem. I'll meet you.

The player rolled to manipulate Anna, but failed.

Anna: No -- Are you trying to get rid of me? I -know- I'm not prettiest girl, but --

Meredith tried to shut her down, and the player rolled a 10, which was a success. Meredith now had a string on Anna. Anna had the Condition: Obedient

Meredith tried to cast a binding to stop everyone from hurting each other. Alas, the player rolled a 5, which was a failure. Meredith started glowing, although most folks did not notice. Unfortunately for him, Anna did notice. The year was 1947, she was a fairly ordinary girl, her boyfriend was being manly, and he was glowing.

Anna (to herself): I am going to marry that man.

Thanks to Meredith's botched spell, it begin to rain blood. Excellent for vampires! Meredith was the only one not getting hit by the rain.

Old Lady: You shouldn't be doing magic here!

She peered to see who he was.

It was now misting blood.

Parent (to a child with something sweet, ice cream or cotton candy): Don't eat that -- there's blood on it!

Child: It still -tastes- good.

Baby (to Tanzy): -You- stink!

She tried to Shut him Down. Both got a Condition.

Tanzy: Livid

Baby: Dead Meat

Meanwhile, the old woman introduced herself to Meredith. Her name was Helen Byrne.

Helen: It's been a really long time since I've seen another witch. My nephew Cassius is a ne'er do well. He never took after the family tradition. What's your family?

Meredith: The Pierces.

Helen: I would recall like you to meet Mildred, my sister.

Helen was 80 while Mildred was 78. They worked with another witch, Pearl, who was 67, and who my notes indicate was "spec. friend", which probably means that she was Helen's lover. There may have been one other witch in that group, as young as 35.

Helen: We must do dinner some night!

Meredith: Would it be all right if I brought my father?

Helen: Absolutely!

Meanwhile, the Other Baby grabbed and bit someone. Hollow Baby lashed out at random people.

Russell tried to convince Cassidy to give him Camilla's earrings. He admitted that his family had been responsible for Broy's death and warned Cassidy that Cassidy would probably wind up dead if he didn't turn over the earring. Russell was not threatening him -- indeed, iirc, Russell managed to trip and give himself a bloody nose during all of this. But, he was quite sure that his family, or at least Camilla, would go to any lengths to get the earring back, and, as he pointed out, the Places pretty much ran the town behind the scenes and controlled the police.

Cassidy, who is already dead, being a ghost, was disgusted, rather than cowed, but nevertheless, he tossed the earring at Russell and stormed out. I think I rolled for Russell to Turn him On, but it was an abject failure. Cassidy went home.

Meredith: Anything we can do about -- (gestures at the rain of blood and the ensuing chaos)

Helen: Help is coming, actually -- if you can just get me some of the sand.

I don't recall what sand she was talking about, but I think Meredith did and that the rain of blood died down. The oiler vampires left. Sheriff Beatty and his deputy arrived. Baby punched the deputy.

The GM bribed Bob with xp for Baby if she calmed down. For the Hollow to stop being her Darkest Self, she needs to find someone more trapped than she is. Sheriff Beatty fit the bill.

My notes say "Makers vs parents". While they don't elaborate, that is an interesting theme in the three parter.

Russell tried to be helpful, and I rolled for him to Turn On the sheriff. Alas, this did not go well, and the sheriff accused him of being "queer", giving that to Russell as a Condition. (Russell may not have been trying consciously to turn on the Sheriff, but that doesn't matter for the mechanics.)

When Cassidy arrived at his home, he saw that there were no lights on. He used his ghostly abilities to walk through the wall. Inside, he found that his mother was dead. He looked around for his father and saw, from the back, someone sitting in the easy chair and someone on the floor.

Moving closer, he found that it was Broy Sheely in the chair.

Broy: I've been looking for you everywhere, Cass.

Cassidy: What did you do?

Broy: What do you mean? Your mother asked me to let her go, and I did.

Cassidy saw that the person on the floor was his father, tied up. Cassidy started untying him.

Broy: It's pointless, you know -- when we're like us, what's the point in having parents?

Cassidy: I'm nothing like you.

Broy: You told me to come find you. Clearly you wanted me to be with you.

Cassidy: I wanted to know what happened -- I didn't want you to hurt my folks!

Broy looked hurt. Also, he was now a ghoul.

Broy: This isn't going the way it should have been. I thought we were friends!

I think Broy may have started to retreat. My notes say that Cassidy went after him and shoved him.

I forget which one of them said this: What's your problem? What are you -doing-?

Cassidy Lashed Out physically, and I think dealt Broy 2 harm.

Broy: Is this how you want to live forever? I know your mom was holding you here. I'm trying to let you go, man.

Cassidy: Go where?

Broy: Go to the abyss, man. You did a good turn for me

Cassidy: And -this- is how you repay me?

He tried to manipulate Broy, who clearly had not thought this through, and rolled a 9 for a partial success. He wanted to know what it would take to get Broy to do what he wanted Broy to do.

The answer was to find out who made Broy a ghoul.

GM: He has no idea. If you hurt him enough, his maker might show up.

But, apparently, Broy thought that Cassidy was stuck there if Cassidy's parents were alive.

Cassidy / Adrian: This'll make it worse later between Dad and me -- now I'm the reason she's dead.

Cassidy used the ghostly Unresolved Trauma to put the condition of Blamed on Broy. This made Broy reenact the scene of Cassidy's death, with phantoms of Charles and Joe, who'd chased Cassidy, calling him queer.

His father had some idea that Cassidy was homosexual, but also decided that there was No. Way. that was true. His mother, when she was alive, was Not Talking about it.

Phantom Charles and Joe Broy into the phantom barn loft. Cassidy had died in the real one, stabbed or fallen onto a pitchfork.

One of the phantom murderers: Make sure he's dead.

Broy (to Cassidy, realizing this is what happened to Cassidy): I'm so sorry.

If I read my notes correctly, Cassidy took 1 harm, and his father, John Greene, got the Condition: Blamed.

Meanwhile, Russell, earring in hand, stood outside the family home, pondering his next move. He Gazed into the Abyss.

He saw Broy on his bike, touching his neck. Was it itching?

There were two puncture wounds on the neck. He went to the carnival. Fiance was awaiting him, smiling.

Fiance: I'm glad to see you.

Broy: Where else would I go?

Fiance: Yeah, I was getting kinda hungry.

She fed on Broy, but did not kill him. They weren't lovers; she was just feeding on him. She did occasionally give him things to keep him coming back, money and other things. I don't think he knew what was happening -- that she was a vampire, that he was being drawn back to feed her, and so on. And, I don't think he was involved with other vampires.

Then, Russell saw Broy heading back, I think riding on his bike. Broy saw a Rolls Royce tailing him and paused.

Russell knew that this was Camilla's car, and that she never drove it herself. Indeed, her normal driver was behind the wheel. She snapped her fingers at Broy and told him to get in.

At first, Broy didn't, wanting to know who the heck she was. It's not as if they had ever met, after all; she was the powerful Place matriarch and he was a poor boy. Camilla used her Snakey charms to get him into the car. She said that she was tired of "animal warfare". Broy had no idea what she was talking about. Then, she killed him, making it clear that this was intended as a sign to the Bodis that the Places were watching them.

Then, he saw the book that Camilla had been interested in.

GM: You see your best friend, Lorelei.

This was ironic / sarcastic, as Lorelei had tried to drown Russell and was very much not his friend. The book was in her bedroom, wrapped in sealskin, under the floor boards. Then, the vision ended, as the book did not want Russell to see any more.

Russell decided that what he needed was leverage to challenge Camilla. She had killed Broy for a stupid reason, and was endangering the family. I think he went to the morgue to take a look at Broy's body, though I don't recall why or what he found. I do remember that Pauline was there, and was willing to help him in return for his having sex with her again, which he did. He may have pondered the wisdom of going to Magdalena Bodi, but decided that he needed to return the earring to Camilla, get some of his younger cousins on his side, and get Lorelei's book, which shouldn't be too hard, as Lorelei worked all day.

Meanwhile, Meredith rejoined Anna and tried to convince her that the red rain was caused by chemicals in the refinery. I think he failed, but that may have been simply because she wasn't paying attention to anything he said.

Anna: Meredith -- you're glowing.

I don't think she had a problem with that, and I'm not sure she thought it was anything other than her finding him hot. They drove to the police station, I think because she wanted to make out with him in her father's office. However, when they came into the office, her father was there.

Meredith: Oh, um, Anna noticed your car outside...

I think the player rolled a 6. Chief Beatty didn't believe Meredith, but he didn't challenge Meredith either, being in a compromising position himself, for one of Meredith's classmates, Charlie Wall, was in also the office, giving Beatty a blow job, I think. I'm not sure whether Meredith realized this, but he may have, given that my notes say that he and Beatty each got a string on the other. I don't think Anna figured it out, but I could be wrong.

Naturally, this was all going on while Pauline and Russell were in the morgue, which was in the police station. Who knew that the police station was a hotbed of passion?

Meanwhile, Baby wondered what to do now. Her parents wanted the Perfect Daughter.

Baby: They didn't want me -- they -found- me.

Broy Sheely mother needed a kid. But, perhaps being the Perfect Child was not the path for Baby. I think she tried Gazing Into the Abyss and rolled a 3.

Baby: Where shall I seek perfection next?

Poseidon and the Clam Shack both came to mind. Baby walked to the beach.

Baby: I could just keep walking right into the ocean.

She started to do just that, and she felt a presence, Poseidon's. He was full of anticipation.

Poseidon: Well, what do we have here? Welcome home. I think that we can work really well together.

And so, Baby became Poseidon's Perfect Servant. After all, with Ophelia gone, he had an opening.

It's possible Bob wouldn't have gone that route if he hadn't been looking for a way to write Baby out and leave early, but there was a certain aesthetic satisfaction to this ending.

That said, Baby's story was very much on a tangent with everyone else's. She never dealt with Cassidy. Russell was a hated rival, but there was no confrontation. Meredith acted to help her, but the two never spoke.

As for Meredith, he returned to his father, telling him about the refinery people and about the witch he had met and her fellow witches. His father warned him that different witches had different traditions -- but he was also looking happier and more alive in years at the prospect of getting together with the other witches.

This is a very odd ending for Monsterhearts. One doesn't usually get this kind of sweetness between parent and child. This probably has to do with the principles of Monsterhearts, which do not necessarily reflect reality. In Monsterhearts, love is always conditional and happiness always comes at someone else's expense. But, here, there was unconditional love between Meredith and his father. Indeed, his father backed him up in his scrying. I think this is one of the reasons players and GMs are cautioned about making families too much in the know. In other words, Meredith had a good ending, but I'm not sure it was a very Monsterhearts ending.

Meanwhile, Russell learned hexes. That is, he gained enough experience for another advance (we'd all been doing that to some degree over the three sessions), and I decided to take the advance Buy a Move from a Different Skin. The Witch was in play, and hexes are powerful. Russell could cast Wither on Camilla.

But, he needed a power base. So, he gave his younger cousins a string on him for a +2 to get Bought Loyalty, which may have been another advance. I forget (and am pushing deadline). He talked about how Camilla was unwilling to ask for the help everyone in the family would gladly give her, even when she needed it.

Russell: She looks so tired.

And her actions were hurting the family. He got an agreement from his younger cousins to back him when he made his move.

The next day, he snuck into Lorelei's room, which was unlocked and empty. He found the book under the floorboards, wrapped in sealskin, just as he'd seen it in his vision. The book was The Apaureya, and it had its own custom move which triggered when he brought it to the town's library and started reading it. Alas, this required me to roll with Dark, and my total was 4. Everything went horribly wrong.

What this meant was a matter of group consensus, which worked oddly, but ultimately well. Russell found himself sucked into the book and then popped out, apparently in the same place, but everything looked slightly off. It was all a mirror image of the world he had left.

Russell tried to figure out how to get back, which also required a roll with Dark. Alas, I rolled a 2, and his Dark is -1, for a grand total of 1.

At first, we figured that Broy would approach Russell, smiling. Only, it wasn't Broy -- it was Mirror Broy, and this was not a good thing. Then someone, I think Adrian, had a different idea. It wasn't Mirror Broy approaching. It was Mirror Russell.

Somehow, changing Mirror Broy to Mirror Russell made me feel much better about how things shook down. I'm not quite sure why. Either way, it was the end of the scene and of Russell's arc. But, with Mirror Broy, it had a sort of "meh, I guess so" feeling, and with Evil Russell about to leave the mirror world and take over Russell's life, it was awesome.

Meanwhile, moving back in time to the confrontation as Cassidy's house, my notes say "Killing Broy = Killing Cassidy's Mother". I'm not sure what that means, unless it meant that doing one set in motion the chain of events that lead to the other, which meant that the death of Cassidy's mother could be laid at the door of the Places.

In any case, Cassidy was convulsing. His father came over to him, currently still unaware that his wife was dead, and realizing that at base, he loved his son. He pointed a gun at Broy (I have no idea whether it was a shotgun or pistol and had forgotten there ever was a gun).

Mr. Greene: Leave my son alone or I'll shoot you.

Broy ran off. Mr. Greene put the gun down.

Mr. Greene: Cassidy, are you okay?

This was the first time he had put his hands on his son in a long time.

Cassidy: I'm sorry.

And again, an interesting moment atypical of Monsterhearts, with its conditional love.

It wasn't a full four hours at this point, but we agreed that we'd all gone about as far as we could in our respective story arcs, and worked out a minor coda. The Chief of Police would, no doubt, investigate the death of Cassidy's mother. Evil Russell would take care of business, giving Mr. Greene a huge cash payment. If I read my notes aright, Adrian thought that Cassidy might leave, by which I think he meant move on, accepting his own death, with his mother buried next to his own body. And, Melissa said that she might well use Evil Russell Place as a villain in her future games of Monsterhearts that used this setting.

I enjoyed the game, but I would have preferred the PCs to have had more to do with each other. I also think I spent a fair amount of the game watching other people play, which might just be my perception, and might have been the same way for everyone. I am not sure whether having two feuding groups of vampires was ideal, and that gets into the question of running Monsterhearts with a pregenerated setting over which the players have little or no control.

As written, Monsterhearts calls for the entire group to create the town in which the PCs live. This gives the players a lot of buy in and makes their characters the focus of the game. Sure, the PCs are the focus regardless, but there's a very different feel when the GM comes to the table with a setting in her pocket, and with secrets that only she knows about that setting, particularly when those secrets involve one or multiple supernatural beings or factions.

So, while Melissa noted that the PCs could pretty much do anything or go anywhere, and that she was not mandating any course of action, from the moment in the first session where school was interrupted by the news of Broy Sheely's death, she was shaping the game in ways that Monsterhearts is not necessarily shaped.

This doesn't mean one shouldn't do that. The author of Monsterhearts created a setting for a 3-part campaign, complete with player characters, called The Blood of Misty Harbour. I have mixed feelings about this campaign, as it mandates certain events in ways I am not sure I like. However, it also demonstrates that Monsterhearts is not intended to be played in only one way. (Some games are, even if only broadly. Fr'ex, Dogs in the Vineyard is intended to played with the town structure, always, regardless of whatever other variations one introduces.)

Certainly, I enjoyed Matt Weber's Monsterwarts game, the mashup of the Monsterhearts system and the Harry Potter Hogwarts setting. But, there were some crucial differences between what Matt was doing and what Melissa was doing.

First of all, the players and the GM started the game knowing what the Hogwarts setting was like. There was a body of source material to which we all had access, and which we had all read at least once. Second, the focus was firmly on the PCs. Sure, there was a whole supernatural world around them, but every element Matt introduced in play grew out of choices players and PCs made. There was a vampire and a fae student at the school, secretly. Therefore, a guest lecturer who was an Augur raised the tension in some interesting ways. This was a threat to those students. Another student botched a roll; therefore, a vampire NPC was able to materialize in Hogwarts.

The PCs did not, fr'ex, stumble across a sinister plot to take over the school or find the body of a faculty member who had vanished a generation before their time. These are perfectly fine things to have in an RPG -- and the first was something I encountered in a delightful game of Fate Accelerated that I played at GenCon. And, if either of these elements had grown out of the questions and answers from the beginning of the game, or from player or PC actions during the game, Matt might well have added them to the mix.

Does this mean that one shouldn't have these elements in Monsterhearts? No. But, it does mean that if you're adding them, you're changing the feel of the game, and you need to consider that.

Both Melissa and the man who ran Monsterhearts at NerdNYC wanted to use a setting that a) they had created and b) they could reuse. And, they wanted to use it at one or more venues where they had no control over who would show up. They wanted their setting, their world to have depth and a lived-in feel. And they succeeded in creating this. But, the trade off was certain elements that follow one of the key Monsterhearts agendae: Keep it feral.

This is a separate issue from having the PCs interact. A large part of that rests on the players' shoulders, of course. But, a GM can help. GMs have moves, just like players do, and the GM's moves include "Put them together."

Several of the players didn't seem to have a lot of interest in getting their PCs together. I'm not sure if that was actually the case, but Josh and Lena were the ones most active in getting PCs together, and I think that made the second session the best. I wanted Russell getting together with other PCs, but I think I played him too much the loner. The only time he sought out a PC -- and was sought out by one -- was when he wanted to get Camilla's earring back from Cassidy. I think that was the only time Cassidy sought out another PC, and I don't think Meredith ever did seek out another PC, nor did Baby. I remember Baby avoiding Russell at the beginning of the third session, but that may have had something to do with her discomfort at dating and at the fact that Russell ended the second session and began the third having just come out of the Tunnel of Love with someone's underwear on his head.

When the PCs don't interact with each other, the GM's playing the world with a heavier hand. When you combine that with having a premade setting, complete with secrets and supernatural creatures, you lose a bit of the potential awesomeness of Monsterhearts. In contrast, John Farrish's game started slow, but gathered momentum as we discovered the secrets of the town together. There were other supernatural creatures, but all of these were tied to the PCs or to player ideas or both. The PCs also interacted more with each other, and the final scene at the dance was both awesome and horrific, much like the final scene in the first Monsterhearts game I ever played.

I like the idea of the Long Game that folks are floating at conventions, where there are three or four sessions of a game over the course of a convention. And, that's definitely compatible with Monsterhearts. Melissa's game was not bad, and there were a lot of good parts and some amazing parts. But, I think the predefined setting, with predefined secrets and NPCs who would react in certain ways because the GM knew what was going on rather than because of what the PCs and players were doing and the feral nature of the game, meant that we lost some of the potential of Monsterhearts.