Nice work, gents, ladies, and nbs!
What I'm picturing is a Germanic/Baltic mid-sized city, population 20k. Hard winters and hot summers. I'll keep the exact geography vague as I don't have personal experience, but feel free to specify if you feel like it. Cues from fiction: think Nordic thrillers, the TV series DARK and The Killing, Let The Right One In, etc.
Main industry is Blaze Pharmaceuticals, secondary being the crazy underground nightlife: they often intersect in interesting ways. Three landmarks leap to mind: the
Blaze Pharmaceuticals Development and Manufacture Facility,
The Wolf's Den (a scummy gaybar slash copbar) and
X-TREK SKATE PARK AND SNOWBOARD ZONE which is beside the Wolf's Den. All of these are located near each other in the
Jazz Industrial Park, an estate filled with factories whose fire safety regulations are as freeform as John Coltrane.
I'm seeing your police station as being in Jazz. You're kind of out in the 'burbs of this town, a good spot to dump the Arson department.
Anyway, Let's call the town
Varme. Please leap forward with better names, since the Norwegian name for "warmth" is a little on the nose.
Onto
backstories. On your sheets, you will find a section marked Your Backstory, which lets you get strings on players and have strings get put on you. But what are strings?
Strings represent the emotional power you have over others. You get strings on specific people, then spend them as a sort of a currency during interactions with those individuals. Using it you can make your roll better, or tempt to do things, etc, etc. Strings can be earned by Turning Soemone On, Shutting Someone Down, or part of specific Skin moves. Strings are abstract, representing a general shift in power within a relationship. You don't have to do anything in particular when someone gains a string, just play with the fact you have power over somebody or somebody has power over you.
Remember, when you spend a string or get a string, describe how it happens in the fiction. Let me give you an example.
Sugar having an argument with Cutthroat in her office. They're yelling in her face, going "I may be a loose cannon, but goddammit, I get results!"
Cutthroat then arches an eyebrow and says, "Really? Could have fooled me."
She's Shutting Somebody Down, which is rolled with Cold. She gets a hit, so she can choose one of four options. She picks the one where she gets a String on Sugar. They can take this in a few different ways: maybe Sugar backs down, sensing they've been burned, or perhaps they storm off in a huff and slam the door as an attempt to save face. Whatever they do, it's clear the dynamic's shifted.
Later, Cutthroat is in a gunfight with Sugar in the backroom of the Wolf's Den. They're trading insults in-between volleys of shots. Right now Cutthroat is Lashing Out Physically, but the problem is she's got Volatile-1. What's a girl to do? Spend the string she has on Sugar to get a plus one on her roll against them, of course.
Remember, she can't just go "I spend the string, gimme the plus one", she has to say how it happens in the fiction. How does she show her emotional power over Sugar in this situation?
Let's say she goes "Sugar fires off another round that misses completely and breaks a mirror. As I'm reloading, I yell 'No wonder you couldn't crack the Firefly Case, you can't even shoot straight!' before jumping up and firing at him."
That's strings, in short.
So, what I want you guys to do is assign the strings in your backstory to one of the other players. Remember, it's a back-story, so don't just say "I'm following you, so I have two strings on you". Give it a beginning (how it started), a middle (a complication or a twist), and an end (the start of this game).
Remember too, Monsterhearts isn't like a game where the characters are in a party together, or even like a PvP game where you're constantly against each other. Rather than being Player Vs. Player, it's Character Vs. Character. The game's really at it's best when all the PCs are in Mexican standoffs in physical, social, and psychological senses. As players, we should do our best to have fun and get along even though our characters may despise each other. Remember, it's a game, and we're all here to have a laugh. With that in mind, work together to make the most unstable and deliciously conflict-filled situations you can.
Now, this is important:
I won't be keeping track of Strings. We'll have loads of them and I have a terrible memory. Instead, I want you guys to keep a note of when you get a string on someone. You don't have to keep track of who's got strings on you, that'll be my job for the NPCs and the other player's job for their own characters.
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Topic: !!NAKED IGNITION!! {ARSON COP MONSTERHEARTS} (Read 5877 times)