Monsterhearts, Art: The Doppleganger (PDF Available)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgpPszYb2mQ&feature=player_embedded
I came across Acacia while reading a bit more about Imogen Heap. They were a short-lived project, only managing to release one album, but it's a varied and wonderful affair. This is a great song from it. It reminds me of an odd combination of Vas and Juno Reactor. Pretty awesome dark ambience with middle-eastern sounds.

Hey there, sorry for the silence! I've been pretty busy working on The Doppleganger. Thanks to the repeated help of the folks at Story Games (especially cneph) I've really refined the content from what we saw a week ago.

So let's go over it in text form real quick. The actual link to the PDF is going to be near the end of the post, so if you really don't care about anything else, just jump down and read from the bottom up.

Se here's what we've got.

The Doppleganger

You idolized them, their icy glares, their smoldering looks, their razor intellect. You had none of it. You tried to act like them, pretended to be like them, but it never worked.

Then you started to become them.
Now none of it is outside your grasp if you can just find the right person.

Names: Alex, Cameron, Chris, Emily, Hailey, Jennifer, Jordan, Michael, Sarah, Taylor, Tommy.

An unassuming name, a gender-neutral name, a plain name, a common name

Look: Choose one from each list:

* Paper-white skin, Boring and average, Unappealing, Inconspicuous, Forgettable

* Prying eyes, Jealous eyes, Distant eyes, Harmless eyes, Brooding eyes.

Origin: Circle one: Rich and neglected, Fanboy, Wannabe, Depressed, Stalker

 Stats: Add 1 to one of these: Hot -1, Cold -1, Volatile +1, Dark +1.

Backstory: You've been impersonating someone recently. Who? Gain a string on them.

Someone caught you while reverting to your own form once. They get two strings on you.

Advancement:
* Add 1 to Hot (max+3)
* Add 1 to Cold (max+3)
* Add 1 to Volatile (max+3)
* Add 1 to Dark (max+3)
* Take another Doppelganger move.
* Take another Doppelganger move.
* Take a move from another skin.
* Memorize a person's form. Pick one character you have at least one String on and have studied closely. You can take their form at will, as if you'd rolled a 10+.
* Take a dead PC's form permanently. Take the discarded Skin sheet and just start using it, with their stats and selected moves and remaining Strings and all.

 Moves:

 Transform: When you take the form of someone whose mannerisms and habits you've studied closely, roll+Dark. On a 10+, you've got it just right and can stay that way as long as you desire. On a 7-9, choose one:
* Your impersonation doesn't hold up under scrutiny,
* Assuming the disguise is an agonizing process. Take 1 Harm,
* The disguise won't last very long.
On a 6-, the MC chooses any or all of the above and makes a hard move.

Walk Like You, Talk Like You: "While you're disguised as another PC, use their stats instead of your own."

Personality Bleed: When you return to your original form, alter your stats based upon the stats of the form you just changed back from. Whichever stat they had highest, increase your own stat by 1 (to a maximum of +3). Whichever they had lowest, decrease your own stat by 1. If you had been copying an NPC, the MC will tell you which stats to change.
These alterations go away when you next Transform.

Crawl Inside Your Head: When you spend time and intimacy with someone, it counts as closely studying their mannerisms and habits. From then on, whenever you assume their form you may ask one question of the other character's player. It needn't be something you could reasonably know, and they have to answer completely and honestly. If you do ask a question, they get to ask one in return, same rules.

Your Evil Twin: When someone is blamed for something you did in their form, mark experience.

Be Like You: When you Transform into another PC's form, you get one of their moves. If you rolled a 10+ on the Transform roll, you select one of their Skin moves and consider yourself to have that move until you change form again. If you rolled a 7-9, the MC chooses the move instead.

Linked: While in the form of another character, you both know and experience the emotions of the other, though you cannot necessarily distinguish those emotions as being from a foreign source. When you allow the other's emotions to affect your behavior, you can take an appropriate Condition (eg Furious, Despondant, Elated) to take a String on the other character.

Darkest Self: You despise yourself. All these other pretty people have everything you've ever wanted but could never have for yourself. In fact, no one would even notice if you were just...gone. Just be someone else - ALL the time. And if you need to get the "real" them out of the way to pull it off, so be it. Escape your Darkest Self when someone calls you on not being who you say you are.

Sex Move: When you have sex with another character, it counts as studying them closely. You can assume their form at will, but it always counts as if you'd rolled a 7-9. If you are transformed, Hold Steady or  return to your original form immediately afterward.

Playing The Doppleganger: The Doppleganger is about jealousy and hating yourself and wishing you were more like your heroes. Transform gets done by abandoning yourself to try to take on their form, but they often find the flaws in the people they take on, resolving to find a new, perfect person to copy.

Ultimately though, The Doppleganger wants to become the person he thinks is perfect, the person who has the most that he thinks he's lacking. They aren't likely malicious at first. As they discover the flaws of the new body, however, they may desire revenge over being "deceived."

It can be very hard to strike back at The Doppleganger - continued picking on a single PC could annoy the other player, so bear that in mind.

Your moves all are functions of your transformation. Some, like Personality Bleed, are statistic-based, while others, like Linked, are purely narrative.

In your Darkest Self, you're abandoning your own shape in favor of being a certain someone else - that would be a single someone else.

Beware using your memorization advancement lightly - you only get one perfect other form. You can get a partial memories from your sex move though.

The final advancement is forever - you give up Doppleganger-hood for it. You keep no moves or stats. You could take Transform with your new skin's advancements, but that will never be your core identity ever again.

And that's the mechanical bits of the Doppleganger. Am I still unhappy with anything?

Hell. No.

I'm willing to augment things still. I'm not saying I'm done. But there remains nothing that I am dissatisfied with, as opposed to before where there were things I didn't like and wanted to change. Now everything is fine-tuning.

So here's the art! I made this from Male Stock 140 of Kevin Leon by birdsistersstock.deviantart.com. Kevin is a great model, he has some great stock art on that account, and her other stock is great as well.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b330/maxdxam/Doppleganger_art_zpsc8220805.png
Click the link for a real full-view.
I'm happy with it. Kevin's hair is a bitch to render around. But I like it. It's supposed to be very blank and featureless and using negative space since I wanted to give the impression that you don't really know precisely what The Doppleganger looks like. He's so fluid in his form that the best way to convey "could be anyone" is to leave out features. I'm very fond of it.

Anyway, I think that's all I have today. Now that I'm done with that:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mmqs62dwgqxhnj4/Monsterhearts%20Doppleganger%20v1.pdf

That's a DropBox link to the PDF of The Doppleganger. If you have any trouble, let me know. Once I finalize this completely I might pull the PDF and get it moving in the Playbook/Skin trading circuit, but for now, it's an open download.
I'd love to get feedback. If you read it and have comments or questions, share, and I'll answer as best I can or change the Skin so I can. If you play it, PLEASE let me know how it goes - playtesting is the next step.

Enjoy! Later folks, hopefully it won't be very long til I post again. I'll probably be back on Avatar World right away now.

End Recording,
Ego.