Monsterhearts is a tabletop RPG by Avery Mcdaldno. It is about teenagers being monsters in high school and the unending drama that this causes, inspired by Buffy, Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, and that entire genre of teen monster drama. It's super fun, one of my absolute favorite games! It is also a hack of Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, the same game that my own games Avatar World and The Shining Void are built off of.
One important mechanic for the game is the Skins. Skins are the Monsterhearts terminology for what Apocalypse World (along with Avatar World and The Shining Void) call playbooks, or self-contained character sheets that allow you to play an archetype of the genre the game is trying to emulate. It is presented as a concept and a series of lists from which the player picks options, customizing the character while staying genre-appropriate.
The game comes with a selection of 10 Skins. A number of special "Limited Edition" skins have been released as well.
One interesting thing about the Monsterhearts skins is that, as a general rule, each of the types of monsters represented is actually a metaphor for some kind of problem that teenagers go through - addiction, obsession, fear of one's body, and so on.
I thought up an idea of a major part of teenagers' lives that I didn't see represented: self-loathing, hero worship, and wishing you could be just like someone else. After some thought, I came up with the perfect monster to represent it, one who just so happens to be one of my favorite monster types in folklore and myth: the doppleganger. And so I designed the Skin!
Latest Version (vFinal) Download:
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE DOPPLEGANGER
This Skin is final; I am no longer performing active development on it. Should I think of some major change I really need to make, I will, but I have no plans to change it at this time.If you play this Skin, I'd love to hear about it! Hearing stories about what people do with my designs is a big part of what motivates me to keep sharing them, so leave me a comment here or drop me a line on Twitter (@Logbook_Project), Google+ (+Max Hervieux), or on the Story Games forum (horn_head_o)!
Before I stop writing, I want to talk about The Cuckoo for a moment. Jackson Tegu did a Kickstarter called Monsterhearts: Second Skins, where he revealed designs for a Skin called The Cuckoo. This matters because The Cuckoo is superficially very similar to The Doppleganger! It is a skin that steals people's clothes to transform into them. However, the major difference is in the skins' motivations: while the Doppleganger is about wanting desperately to be like someone else so much that you change yourself, the Cuckoo keeps their identities while taking what others have. This is reflected in the stats and moves; the Cuckoo is Hot and manipulative, while the Doppleganger is Dark and brooding and desperate. Consider which type of teenager you're interested in being when choosing which Skin to play.
Permanent Link to this Page: bit.ly/TheDoppleganger
Check out Monsterhearts, and Avery's other games: http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts/
Check out Jackson Tegu's games and the Monsterhearts Second Skins: http://www.photographsoflightning.com/mhss/
End Recording,
Ego.
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