r/monsteroftheweek

Image 1 — A small collection of my drawings for my Hunter- meet Aodhan 'Addie' ó Dochartaigh!
Image 2 — A small collection of my drawings for my Hunter- meet Aodhan 'Addie' ó Dochartaigh!
Image 3 — A small collection of my drawings for my Hunter- meet Aodhan 'Addie' ó Dochartaigh!
Image 4 — A small collection of my drawings for my Hunter- meet Aodhan 'Addie' ó Dochartaigh!

A small collection of my drawings for my Hunter- meet Aodhan 'Addie' ó Dochartaigh!

Addie is my dearest out of all my MOTW hunters, and I have quite a few.

Morals, for him... exist. Somewhere. He'll lie, cheat and steal his way through anything. He's got it rough, and does whatever pays his permanent room at a motel in a small Florida town.

He's part of a magical cult and the spirit that sustains it is what gives him his magical powers— Primarily he can read minds and force lesser willed people to do whatever he pleases. He is also afforded visions of terrible things to come, which cause him to go into seizures when they happen... but his favorite power is that he can see and touch ghosts, whom he's very fond of. He has three with him that he's asked to be haunted by. He's also —annoyingly enough— able to teleport any small sized object into the lake in which his Patron lives, a power which he uses to endlessly troll those who are against him.

He's very fond of disappearing guns —out of self preservation— and pants, to humiliate whoever gets too cocky fighting him.

Yes, he's slowly growing a tumor in his brain because of the patronage of his spirit, and yes, the seizures are getting worse, and yes... he might be going blind, but he'll probably be fine.

He thinks.

(❁´◡`❁) I hope you like my lil' man! (Don't let him catch you calling him that, though!)

u/Exhausted_Deviless — 2 days ago

Book Recommendations for a Collection, Bestiary, or Encyclopedia of Different Monsters?

I'm a big fan of the podcast Lore, which collects stories from myth and history and is fantastic for inspiration for MOTW.

But I'd love a book or two I can keep on my shelf and physically flip through when I'm looking for ideas to create mysteries around. I feel like the topic of cryptozoology has been rising in popularity in recent years, and there must be indie authors who have made some books that hopefully some of you have picked up and found useful! I've seen some advertised on pinterest when I'm making moodboards, but some of them seem AI-generated, and I'd rather support humans making art for humans.

To clarify, I know there's tons of media centered around individual creatures that we've been inspired by, but I'm specifically looking for something that's formatted like 20+ creatures and their stories. I'm also interested in zines, podcasts, blogs, whatever! But I do love physical media.

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u/goodboyjonesy — 4 days ago

Looking to get started, but find it kind of baffling

Hey, I have mainly played D&D in the past. I listened to an As entire zone where the used MOTW and found it interesting and wanted to try it. However, the way the game play is structured, much more loosely than D&D I find difficult to get my head around and I think the players do too. Any advice on how to keep things on track, and generally how to play the game effectively?

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u/Sourbittles — 6 days ago

Permanent Injuries

Heya Keeper here, I was wondering if anyone has played around with permanent injuries from signifigant harm? In a recent case one of my hunters had their arms partially dissolved via this carnivorious fleshy sludge monster. Me and them have acknowledged their arms won't be the same, at least cosmetically. What I'm wondering if I should extend it past that, have an in-play consequence as well?

On the same note, maybe reserve this sort of consequence when on deaths door? A loss of a limb or some other drastic injury. Though this would probably be avoided with luck anyway, I know I would spend a point to! Anyways, want to hear anyones thoughts! What would be cool for you as a player? Have any other Keepers done something similar?

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u/Appleswashere — 6 days ago

Regarding experience

I’m about to start a new campaign with my group as the Keeper.

During our last campaign, I had two rather unusual situations happen at the same time: one player failed the vast majority of their rolls, while another succeeded on the vast majority of theirs. While it was funny at the time, it eventually led to a pretty big gap in experience by the end of the campaign, and some light frustration from the player who was falling behind in terms of XP.

I’ve been thinking about an alternative way to address this, and I came up with an idea I’d like to get your opinion on.

At the end of each session, in addition to the usual questions that can earn 1 or 2 experience points, I’d like to add some sort of awards, a bit like the end-of-game stars in Mario Party but without the bad feels.

Here are some examples of XP bonuses I’ve thought of:

Unlucky: failed a roll at the worst possible moment

Lucky: succeeded on a roll at the best possible moment

Inspired: came up with an excellent idea

Roleplayer: never broke character

Comedian: came up with or pulled off the funniest move or line

Hardboiled: was the most proactive during fights

Helper: gave the most help to the other Hunters

Investigator: did an outstanding job pursuing the various investigations

Rule of Cool: Is it smart or relevant? Who cares, it’s cool.

Mood Setter: contributed the most to the overall atmosphere and fun of the session

I would only award these points when they actually apply, and I’d keep the number of awards reasonable to avoid creating an overall XP surplus. I’d also keep an eye on how many failed rolls each player has had, to estimate how much XP they would normally have earned.

My idea is that this could gently encourage players to take more initiative and try things, since they would never know more than the name of the award that earned them an XP point.

What do you think? Have you ever had a similar situation? If you like the idea, do you have any suggestions for other awards?

And if you think this is a terrible idea, do you have any suggestions for dealing with this kind of situation?

reddit.com
u/Mochronio — 10 days ago

Looking for Actual Play recommendations with newer playbooks

I've been getting back into Actual Plays lately, and one thing I've noticed with the MotW shows is that basically every character is from the core book or the Tome of Mysteries at the latest.

Fair enough, more people read those books, and the playbooks were created first because they were the most obvious fit for the genre. But I'd love to see what others make of the newer playbooks, so I thought I'd ask if anyone had recommendations for let's plays with one or more characters from the newer half of the playbooks menu.

Thanks!

reddit.com
u/eliza_tantivy — 11 days ago

Encouraging Luck

My campaign hasn't been running for too long so I don't know if I'm speaking too soon, but my players haven't used Luck at all. I remind them fairly often that they have it, but since they know it's a finite resource, none of them have touched it at all.

I don't think I've been pulling punches, but is there something I should do to get them to use it? Or does it not really matter? We have been having a great time playing anyway, so it doesn't actually bother me, but since it's a part of the system we haven't touched I want to check I'm not doing anything wrong :)

reddit.com
u/InfiniteLactose — 11 days ago

The Professional: Deal with the Agency

So I've realized that Deal with the Agency has the potential to be extremely powerful- and abused.

• Deal with the Agency - This is the one move that every single Professional starts with and must take. When you deal with the Agency, requesting help or gear, or makiną excuses for a failure, roll +Sharp. On a 10+, you're good -your request for gear or personnel is okayed, or your slip-up goes unnoticed. On a 7-9, things aren't so great. You might get chewed out by your superiors and there'll be fallout but you get what you need for the job. On a miss, you screwed up: you might be suspended or under investigation, or just in the doghouse. You certianly aren't going to get any help until you sort it out .

Resources:

• Cover identities

Good intel

• Offices all over

• Official pull

• Recognized authority

• Rigorous training

• Support teams

• Weird Tech gadgets

Well-armed

Well-financed

My questions are: how often do you let the player roll? Right now they basically get 1 "free" roll, then after that they have to justify a new roll / more assistance.

Do you rule it so the only assistance they get is the tags they chose?

Cover identities - this seems kind of weak. How do you make this interesting / cool / useful?

Good intel - how do you stop this one from eliminating the need to investigate?

Offices all over - this one totally stumps me.

Official pull - how do you make this useful, without allowing them to call SWAT?

Recognized authority- how is this different from from the above?

Rigorous training- totally stumped again. The rigorous is reflected in the stats, Moves etc - what benefit does this give.

Support teams - how to stop this from becoming NPCs handling the problem?

Weird Tech gadgets- how do you define / limit these?

Well armed - "i rolled a 12, can I have a tank?"

Well financed- what do PCs do with this? Bribes? Buy stuff? How much stuff?

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u/DMfortinyplayers — 11 days ago

PCs from a campaign

Me and a couple of friends play a small ish campaign every time we manage to see each other. This is the character dynamic. It's all veeery serious. We play with the Professional and the Monstrous playbooks and they're such great characters to put up against each other and the GMPCs

u/Imsdalvannflaske — 12 days ago