Monsterhearts and the prison pipeline: a play report.
Last night, I had the pleasure to play Monsterhearts with Tony Lower-Basch. We had three players: myself as the Chosen, Em as the Wyrm, and Zed as the Calaca. The Chosen is your standard buffy type, the Wyrm is covetous and wealthy, and the Calaca is a skeleton wearing a human suit.
From the beginning, I wanted a Chosen different from normal. Instead of having an armory and a watcher and a history, I played a dumb jock who stands up for himself and does what needs to be done ... by killing vampires.
Em was delightful as the Wyrm. For introduction backstory, the Wyrm choses if the other player characters are treasure or mere currency. I was treasure, the Calaca merely currency. The Wyrm wanted to possess my chosen, and it was delightfully creepy.
The Calaca is a tough playbook, but Zed pulled it through.
Anyway, I really want to talk about something that went exactly as it should. While vaping his cherry bubble gum, my Chosen was attacked by one of the other jocks. Kids asserting dominance, whatever. And if characters were reasonable human beings, that's where it would have ended.
Instead, the chosen fought back. 10+ on Volatile, choosing to deal great harm. The kid lost teeth and broke an orbital socket. The Chosen was arrested for assault.
The next scenes for our Chosen involved time with adult criminals in the holding cell (kid, you are fucked. Have a cigarette. ::smokes, cough cough cough:::), and being interrogated by cops who have security camera footage of the Chosen murdering vampires. And the little idiot doesn't realize he should shut up and not talk to cops until they start showing him cold case files, and asking if he made sure vampires don't come back.
Meanwhile, the Wyrm manipulates the family of the kid in the hospital by promising to pay for their medical expenses, but only if they say he started it and it was all his fault. The cops drop the assault charges, but not so much the murder charges. The Chosen's public defender suggests he pleas guilty to murder in the second degree, and take just 20 years.
Our Chosen gets out on parole, and returns to the playground. With an ankle bracelet. And cigarettes. And a whole new attitude problem.
The Wyrm informs the Chosen that she got him out. And that she'll continue to help get rid of the charges, but only if he is her boyfriend. She invites the Chosen to her place, but ankle bracelet. Instead, the Wyrm comes over to "study".
That's pretty much that. The Chosen disgusts himself, and makes the Wyrm promise to get him out of this.
Don't talk to cops.
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I find that, too often, monster hearts characters aren't played as monsters. These characters absolutely were.
ReplyDeleteDid my Chosen actually kill vampires? Never established! Did he believe he killed vampires with his NPC sidekicks? Absolutely!
ReplyDeleteThis was my first time seeing two parts of the rules system really click (and click together).
ReplyDeleteFirst: The Chosen's Nemesis (who wants him dead) was Officer Parker. So that cop was in the interrogation room, helping work him over.
Second: Said nemesis has strings. When an NPC uses a string, they can gain an advantage. When they already have enough support and position (as nemeses should often have, narratively) that lets them set themselves up for a perfect follow-up move. Get one Hard Move, follow it up immediately with another.
So poor Gabriel flubbed his dice on one "Hold Steady" check under interrogation, and this horrifying cascade of follow-up punches poured out. It was pretty cool.
That worked out really well.
ReplyDeleteIt perfectly robbed the character of agency. Gabriel was putty in their hands. And it did it without meaningfully robbing the player of agency. I remember when Zed asked "is your character really this stupid?" when Gabriel was talking too much to the cops, and it was this nice moment combining hard moves and how people actually react to the cops.
That's something we forget too often: Cops are trained to manipulate and extract the details they want. Miranda tells it like it is: anything you say can and will be used against you. The cops do this everyday, and when you find yourself face to face with one, you are at the disadvantage.
Stupid has nothing to do with it. Flustered kid versus trained professional manipulators goes only one way.
As usual: Don't Talk To Cops.