Game Preview: Monsterhearts 2

Monsterhearts 2 (2016) is the second edition of a character-driven role-playing game designed by Avery Adler, with art by Avery Adler and by Cecilia Reis, published by Buried Without Ceremony.

Adolescence can be a frightening time. Just as we’re moved into a new school, it seems like everything else is changing as well. Our bodies shift and stretch in new and unsettling ways and our emotions join in this betrayal. New hungers. New fears. Dangers and temptations unthinkable mere months prior. And from every corner, eyes are on us. Judging, dismissing, demanding we fit in when we don’t fit in at all. It’s all we can do to keep from screaming in frustration, or running and hiding in the night from the whole mess.

That’s Monsterhearts 2, a game where you and many others at your school are teenage monsters right out of the worlds of horror and science fiction. The darkness and struggle to belong becomes literal as students learn to navigate hunger, pain, angst, and desire while still trying to fit in with the cool kids.

First Impressions

Beautiful.

At first glance, I’m pretty sure that werewolf in the center is gonna tear me to shreds, but the more I look, the more I wonder. I might be able to outrun her, outsmart her, get away…but that witch behind her has already thought of all of that. Whose plan is this, anyway? We’re expressing a lot of emotion with a limited, focused, color palette here. If nothing else, Monsterhearts 2 looks good on your game shelf.

Gameplay

In Monsterhearts 2, the main characters very seldom get to work together as a party. If the Master of Ceremony is doing their job right, the player characters are almost always at odds with one another, with side characters pouring fuel on the fire of adolescent hearts. This could be as petty as competing over who gets to take Jake to prom, or as gruesome as the Vamp trying to conceal a feeding gone fatally wrong… but these are high schoolers. Jake’s dance card might be the more important of the two plot points.

The website freely offers all the Character Skins as downloads.

Monsterhearts 2 focuses pretty heavily on basic moves that any character can make: “Keep Your Cool” to stand firm against fear or social stigma, “Turn Someone On” to distract someone from working against you or to convince them to do what you want, and “Gaze Into the Abyss” to see what’s going on and pray that you’re strong enough to handle the truth. These actions are flavorful and impactful on their own and while the special moves your monstrous nature gives you are wild and not to be ignored, these basic moves help you express the humanity that is at the heart of even the most monstrous of characters.

It’s important to note that “humanity” doesn’t usually mean nice. To “Shut Someone Down” with a barbed tongue when the opportunity arises is very human, but it’s not really a tool for making anything better. Just as in real high school, pushing people’s buttons is so much easier than helping.

Character Creation

Mechanical decisions are fairly streamlined in Monsterhearts 2; soon after you’ve decided on your “Skin” (the sort of monster you’re going to play, akin to classes in other games), your stats and abilities are ready. Each skin can lean towards one of two archetypes; then you pick the shiniest abilities out of the box, and we’re done with the numbers.

Most of your time in character creation is spent on connections between characters. Each character is prompted to give or take leverage over one another in the form of “Strings.” Each string represents a favor, or a secret held, or a deep and painful one-sided crush. They tell a story that immediately binds characters together and sets them against one another.

Rick’s customized Witch character.

Like most witches, Tiana’s low “Volatile” stat makes her pretty useless at both physical fighting and running away, and her low “Cold” stat will hamper her in facing down her fears and in shutting people down socially.  Instead, she plays to her strengths: keen insight into the “Dark” and gathering tokens for “Hexes.”

Her two chosen hexes make her something of a kingmaker. “Binding” prevents a physical character from lashing out at people, and “Ring of Lies” makes life difficult for a social character by restricting them only to the truth. If she can do her research and get the proper materials, she stands a good chance of controlling the field of play and getting what she wants with no one else being the wiser.

One interesting thing about Monsterhearts 2 is that even from where she is at the end of her character creation, Tiana is already connected to every other member of her gaming table; I can't talk about her meaningfully without talking about them. She has Sympathetic Tokens and a bit of history with her Fae classmate, Ping, and the upperclassman Warlock, Chloe. She has an indirect connection with the Mortal, Valerie—and Spencer the Ghost holds a secret and a String over her head. As the rest of the characters are introduced in the next few minutes, she will only get more embroiled in the messy web of connections here. People will give her Strings and take them over her, her relationships with the others will be fleshed out a bit, and by the time we actually start playing she’ll have a decent idea of how she fits into this world.  No awkward meeting in a tavern, here; everyone will already have rivals and uneasy alliances and crushes ready to go and work off of. A lot of modern games are doing this nowadays, but for a game like Monsterhearts 2 where social conflict is so important, it’s quite helpful to get the engine primed.

Anything Else?

I love the “Growing Up” moves that a player can select once a full season is done. It is so amazing to transfer from a move like “Turn Someone On” into a move like “Make Others Feel Beautiful,” or from a move like “Put Someone Down” into "Share Your Pain.” Suddenly, you’re not just lashing out at people who’ve hurt you. You’re equipped to reach out, understand, and build community—to break cycles of pain and vengeance.

I’m also pleased to note that Monsterhearts 2 is wonderfully queer and inclusive—a critical step in the right direction for art, for gaming, and for life. It also plays with themes of violence, desire, and dysfunctional relationships. That subject matter may not be for everyone, but the text spends a good deal of time talking about how to explore these topics responsibly and how to back away when players accidentally hit a nerve.

On their website, Buried Without Ceremony also offers three additional Skins and a collection of eight Small Towns in which to set your adventure. Additionally, they’ve got the character sheets for starter Skins freely accessible over there; seems they’d rather help your whole crew play on the cheap than force each player to buy their own book.

Conclusion

If you’re far enough removed from high school to brave its halls again, and if you have a gaming group ready for some bloody, sexy roleplay, then I highly recommend Monsterhearts 2. It’s a rare game that can throw in everything that’s ever gone bump in the night but still model social situations well enough that the drama holds its own against the magic and the blood. Monsterhearts 2 nails it.