AP: Sherwood, OR

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AP: Sherwood, OR
« on: December 31, 2012, 01:45:13 AM »
Just ran my first session of Monsterhearts, which went surprisingly well.

Tonight, on a very special Monsterhearts…
Episode 1.1 - Pilot

Starring:
Camilla, the Queen: Lead singer and guitarist for the up and coming band “TBD”, Camilla is a rising star at Westerberg High. Will she burn bright or fade away with the dawn? Only time will tell.
Kyle, the Werewolf: Brash and impulsive, Kyle struggles to keep his lycanthropic heritage a secret from all but his closest friends. Dare he confide in his girlfriend Emily, or will she be safer not knowing?
Annalee, the Witch: That quiet girl, brooding in the corner? She knows a secret or two. And strange things happen to those who cross her. Best to stay on her good side (if she has one).
Stark, the Fae: Charming to some, eerily disturbing to others… everyone has an opinion about Stark. Some say his absentee dad is in prison, others say he is an important politician buying the family’s silence with money. One thing is for sure: he will hold you to your word, or you will pay.

The episode begins with Camilla, Kyle, Annalee, and Stark in homeroom. While classmate Isabella tries to convince Camilla to audition her for the band, Kyle is confronted by Kevin, who wants him to stop dating his sister Emily in exchange for a deal on a “new” used car. Kyle agrees to hear him out after school, but has no intention of giving up Emily. Meanwhile, Stark attempts to get Ursula to intervene with her younger sister, who torments his middle school-aged sister, but is shut down. At some point it is noticed that Angela is missing, and cannot be reached despite Camilla’s efforts to do so.

Later, Kyle informs Emily of her brother’s plan, and she agrees to meet later after he talks to Kevin. With Camilla’s assistance Stark gets permission to leave school to get flowers for their homeroom teacher Mrs. Romero, whose husband recently died in an auto accident. Annalee is mocked by Ursula in gym class, and steals a few strands of her hair from her locker while the other girls are in the shower.

After school, Kyle meets with Kevin, and rides with him to the used car lot to discuss Emily. Kyle informs Kevin that he will not give Emily up, and Kevin insults him. Kyle takes a swing at Kevin, but is beaten by the larger boy and left at the dealership. Meanwhile, Stark goes to the Burial Grounds, a hipster coffee shop built on the site of an abandoned cemetery, to talk the owner to let Camilla’s band play there. He is not entirely successful, but does extract a promise from the waitress Samantha that she will do her best to convince him that “TBD” would help improve the business.

Annalee spends her afternoon in her room, working a hex to get even with Ursula for taunting her. Camilla’s band practice is marred only by her growing worry for Angela, who still has not answered her calls. She swings by her house, but nobody appears to be home, so she finds Stark to talk about her concerns. Kyle meets up with Stark at the Burial Grounds and asks him to help get even with Kevin by humiliating him publicly. Stark agrees and begins plotting with Camilla on how best to go about this, while Kyle sits with Emily and tells her how the meeting with her brother went. She gently tends to his black eye and scrapes, then the young lovers sneak off to be alone.

At dinner, Annalee’s mother tries to get her to open up about her school day, but Annalee shuts her down. Camilla and Stark go back to Angela’s house to find it completely dark with a couple of days’ worth of uncollected mail in the mailbox. Not wanting to get caught by the neighbors, they leave.

Later that night, Camilla is playing her guitar and letting her mind drift when she has a sudden vision of Angela running down a corridor and screaming as she is enveloped by an ominous darkness. At the same time outside of town, Kyle’s evening run in the forest is filled with visions of him hunting down and attacking someone, perhaps Emily. Stark is troubled by strange sounds and winds that seem to come from the stones he can’t seem to help gathering, and Annalee uses her scrying mirror to witness a scene from the past – Stark’s mother dallying with a strange and otherworldly figure in the forest. All four of them go to bed with troubled thoughts.

Re: AP: Sherwood, OR
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2013, 03:00:52 PM »
Where's the "Like" button when you need it?

*

DannyK

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Re: AP: Sherwood, OR
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2013, 02:13:30 AM »
I'm totally stealing the Burial Grounds for my Monsterhearts game set in Seattle.  That's awesome. 

Did you have the whole episode planned out, or were you running it Sorcerer-style, just throwing out Bangs at the players and seeing what happens?

Re: AP: Sherwood, OR
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2013, 08:15:31 PM »
I can't take credit for the Burial Grounds - I stole the idea from an AP of Monster of the Week that the Jank Cast did a while back. It was just too good not to use.

The plot was completely emergent through play. The only prep I did for the session was to have a vague layout of the town and come up with names for the students in their home room and their teacher. I wrote up two questions per player and used the two most interesting answers to frame the session around. I plan on doing the same thing for every session, either adding more potential plot threads to follow or expanding on the ones they are already involved in.

Re: AP: Sherwood, OR
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2013, 01:37:08 AM »
Tonight, on a very special Monsterhearts…

Episode 1.2 - Dust

Starring:
Camilla, the Queen: Lead singer and guitarist for the up and coming band “TBD”, Camilla is a rising star at Westerberg High. Will she burn bright or fade away with the dawn? Only time will tell.
Kyle, the Werewolf: Brash and impulsive, Kyle struggles to keep his lycanthropic heritage a secret from all but his closest friends. Dare he confide in his girlfriend Emily, or will she be safer not knowing?
Annalee, the Witch: That quiet girl, brooding in the corner? She knows a secret or two. And strange things happen to those who cross her. Best to stay on her good side (if she has one).
Stark, the Fae: Charming to some, eerily disturbing to others… everyone has an opinion about Stark. Some say his absentee dad is in prison, others say he is an important politician buying the family’s silence with money. One thing is for sure: he will hold you to your word, or you will pay.

The next morning begins in homeroom again. Angela’s seat is still empty, and Annalee smiles mysteriously as Ursula enters the room with bandages over her ears and sits at her desk, pretending to not hear anyone’s inquiries. When pressed, she makes up an excuse to leave and does so, wincing when she gives her reason to the substitute. Curious as to Angela’s continued absence, Camilla asks the substitute if the office has mentioned her being sick or on vacation, but Mrs. Carter seems strangely vague and uncaring.

After some discussion, Stark decides to ask about Angela at the office. He is given the brush-off by the school secretary, who also appears to be nonplussed by Angela’s lack of attendance and becomes irritated when he tries to push the issue. Meanwhile, Kyle meets with Emily and asks her to meet him after track practice, as he has something important to tell her. Camilla continues working on the lyrics to a song intended to publicly humiliate Kevin, and is not at all surprised to discover that yet again her band member Scott has already begun composing music that seems to go with the lyrics as if he knew what she was writing all along.

After school, Stark sneaks into the school office with Camilla keeping watch at the door. He hacks the school records and discovers that Angela’s absences have not been noted at all. He then rushes to the Burial Grounds to meet with Chelsea, Kevin’s girlfriend, and begins to lay the groundwork for a plan of his own. Kyle meets with Emily after track, and reveals his wolf nature to her, leaving her shaken and terrified but willing to trust that he is still the same person.

Later that afternoon, Stark, Kyle, and Annalee meet with Camilla and her band mates at Angela’s house. While the band keeps watch on the street, the four check around the house for anything odd. Kyle notices that there are no animal sounds in Angela’s yard, but the rest of the neighborhood seems fine. Stark slips off into the bushes and communes with nature, discovering that for some reason nature itself seems to be rejecting the house and grounds. Kyle forces the back door, and they enter.

Inside, Camilla notices that although nothing appears out of place, there is a layer of dust across everything as if much time has passed since the house was last cleaned. Kyle and Annalee look in the bathrooms and bedrooms, and Annalee takes some hair from the hairbrushes they find. Camilla notes that the cat dish in the kitchen is half full and moldy, and that the cat is nowhere to be found. She and Stark decide to check out the basement.

Downstairs in the converted rec room, they discover Angela’s parents sitting on a couch in front of the television and are filled with dread. They have elated expressions on their faces, but are not breathing and are covered with the same layer of dust that covers everything else. Camilla attempts to call both the house phones and Angela’s cell phone, and hears it ringing upstairs. Kyle and Annalee come downstairs and take off in terror at the sight, and Camilla and Stark dash upstairs after them. Stark plans to call 911 while Camilla heads to Angela’s room. She finds Angela’s phone under her bed next to finger marks in the dust as if she were dragged out from under the bed. On the phone is a single photo taken in the daytime of the room from under the bed, with a dark indistinct shape filling one corner of the screen.

Camilla and her band go home to rehearse their fears away. Stark tries 911 several times, but nobody comes out to investigate. When he goes to the police station to file a report, the duty officer begins to lose interest as soon as he starts describing the place and what they have found, eventually tuning Stark out entirely. He finally gives up, and he and Camilla meet Kyle and Annalee at her house, where they are attempting to drink their terror away in her room. Annalee drunkenly attempts a scrying ritual to find Angela, and sees a vision in her mirror of Angela trapped in a dusty, cobwebbed room that appears to have been ravaged by fire. When she mentions this to the group, Camilla recalls the fire at Tomlinson High School across town. Kyle remembers the night that it burnt, as he witnessed Franklin Watts entering the school shortly before the fire began. The four of them resolve to skip school the next day and investigate the school, and Kyle decides he will also try to contact Franklin in the morning to see what he knows.

There are again troubled dreams and visions all around, with Camilla seeing herself singing in the darkness, Stark seeing himself entering the school with a backpack full of Angela’s textbooks, and Annalee seeing herself attempting to rescue Angela from something, brushing away enormous webs. Kyle again runs under the light of the moon, which appears in his eyes to be covered with a shadowy cloud.

Re: AP: Sherwood, OR
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2013, 03:13:42 AM »
Again with the "Like" button.
The campaign sounds really interesting, with a good amount of ideas that can easily be borrowed. Also, it's very well and concisely written, so points for literary style as well :-)

Re: AP: Sherwood, OR
« Reply #6 on: January 07, 2013, 12:12:40 PM »
Again with the "Like" button.
The campaign sounds really interesting, with a good amount of ideas that can easily be borrowed. Also, it's very well and concisely written, so points for literary style as well :-)

Thank you. It will be interesting to see where the story goes, as I have scripted almost none of it. I'm just reacting to what the players give me via their actions and speculations, and usually don't know until a few minutes beforehand where the action will take us.

As far as the writing goes, I make a point of typing it up right after everyone leaves so it is still fresh and I don't miss any important details. I told my players not to expect every session synopsis to be like these, but I'll do my best.