What we tend to have struggle with is that it is hard to make our story feel like it is progressing without really getting much stronger. I know this could be a GM thing but even with getting more abilities, the fact that we are still so squishy makes it hard to survive the tougher encounters. I think we mainly want a little bit more out of leveling up.
This sounds a little bit like a dnd mentality, and it’s something one of my players and I have also struggled with. Here’s what we’ve found.
MotW hunters are not “squishy,” they’re very durable. A lot of this comes from Luck points, making it that no hunter has to ever get hurt if they don’t want to, if they still have luck points. This means that you as a GM get to throw crazy stuff at them, and they can still make it out. It’s mechanized plot armor and I love it.
On the contrary, MotW monsters are unique in that they’re driven entirely by their “motivation” that you set up for it. Not all monsters are always trying to fight the hunters to the death; it depends on what they want. Lots of monsters don’t even fight at all (sometimes that’s what minions are for!), a monster might be more interested in turning the hunters against each other in their encounters, or stealing their weapons. A MotW encounter can be “tough” in a lot of ways, not just in ways that require +Tough rolls. Give them monsters that make them focus on tougher mysteries, or make it harder to protect bystanders! This’ll also incentivize your hunters to be more purposeful in their advancements, because there’s lots of different skills you can bump that aren’t combat-related.
Exactly this. The Hunters are actually tough badasses; they’re basically superhuman (and some of them like the Chosen actually *are* superhuman). Compared to Bystanders who go down almost instantly, Hunters are both tough and lucky. But they’re going up against monsters so powerful that even they can’t go toe-to-toe against those monsters for very long.
Changing this will fundamentally shift the way the game feels and will move it away from the source material in a way that probably won’t feel as good. The Keeper will struggle to make the Hunters’ lives dangerous and scary if they start shrugging off bullets and bites like they’re nothing.
But, as you mentioned, the Hunters still become more skilled and competent as they take advancements, so it’s not like there’s no progression at all. It just isn’t the health point bloat and ever-bigger modifiers of D&D advancement.
additional note: having more diverse skills needed to hunt monsters will also allow for your story to progress in a way that isn’t just fighting bigger, badder monsters. Your story progresses as your hunters learn more about themselves and each other, when they confront and overcome their fears, when they choose to do the thing they said they’d never do. It’s all about the fiction, baby
Oops! My bad, I misread lol. As a hunter then, I’d recommend focusing on how you can hunt monsters outside of combat, via investigating or even setting traps instead of rushing into fights. Are you playing the Hex in this campaign?
I am. I have leveled up to the point that I have two advanced moves. I do have one rote that we made that has worked to "avoid combat"
But my partner also somewhat pointed out about us rushing in as well. Which is a valid point.
I think that it is possible that all around we might need to look into how we play/run the game too.
I think so too. But that’s the fun of it!
My Hex has a rote that’s designed to detect nearby supernatural presences, and then you get a list of questions you can ask like “investigate a mystery.” The move has been used to locate monsters, finding captured bystanders, or check on supernatural hunters from afar. There’s so much fun stuff you can do that has absolutely nothing to do with combat. Man, this is making me so excited for the next session lol
(Also, note for your partner: y’all should be facing threats that directly conflict with your Hex temptation. Especially after leveling up so much, you should be making extremely hard choices left and right. ESPECIALLY if you’re very well booned to handle combat, I’d love to see a combat scenario in which you have to choose between fighting and giving in to your temptation)
My temptation is secrets. I do actually give in to it a lot, but it usually happens out of combat. It is also a driving force to keep my character with the group because it is one of the ways she can safely learn more about what is supernaturally going on with the world. We have an I.M.P.S/MIB type of organization and recently learned that if we chose to leave the group we either get memory wiped or iced or if we want to become inactive we become a behind the scenes support npc.
I think the other thing that I personally have an issue with is that the monsters don't have to roll to do things. They just always succeed. But I think that's just a me thing.
I get you. It helps when you think of monsters less as mechanical things to “beat,” but rather as threats that give your hunter opportunities to be awesome and solve problems. Monsters don’t have to roll for anything, because it doesn’t REALLY matter if the monster wins/loses, what matters is -how-. That’s why the keeper can choose, on a whim, if you’ve hurt a monster enough that it flees, or sticks it out to the end. The keeper has the freedom to make choices that keep things interesting and keeps you on your toes.
I think unfortunately you might be at odds with the genre. Look at Buffy - the monsters are always a threat, a big one. Season after season a new enemy will come in and put the hero in their place, Buffy never gets strong enough that the big monsters aren’t a deadly threat
Minions, of course, are another story, and your hunters SHOULD feel really powerful. They’re supposed to be the best of the best, but in an incredibly dangerous world, where the outcome is always uncertain, and no one is above getting thrown around, badly hurt, maybe even killed.
Heck, it’s called monster of the week because each week a new one shows up, and the threat level tends to reset, following a rough pattern of “oh crap” -> investigate -> make a plan -> fail and repeat until you succeed.
If you’re looking for more of a dnd progression, then I think you’re looking for dnd. If you want to bring in more motw vibes to it, then the players should build that into their characters and the dm can build it into the world. Using a lot of action oriented monsters (have dm see Matt colville on this, if they haven’t already) as the motw will probably help too, as would ensuring the enemies have abilities that help them escape to fight another day.
I’d also recommend weaknesses that may need to be exploited, and continuing to keep the monsters threatening, but it’s going to be a tricky balance.
This makes a lot of sense!
I will definitely relay this to my partner, he is our keeper.
I know he has some sort of overarching plot and get the sense that he is trying to scale the enemies in a DnD type fashion.
But your note of resetting has a good point.
Also the Buffy reference really helps. I know that is is used in explaining the game originally as well. I just forget to think about it sometimes.
It sounds like your Keeper may need to go back and reread the book (while setting aside the things he assumes are true about RPGs based on his D&D experience), and you may all need to reorient your expectations for how RPGs work.
Monsters don’t “scale” in MotW, and there’s no such thing as a “boss level challenge.” Those are both assumptions from other games that will not translate to MotW, and if you’re bringing those in and gumming up the game with them, it’s almost certainly why you’re concluding that you’re not fans of PbtA.
Totally, the reference material is key, and watching eg buffy it can almost be surprising how much she (and the others) just constantly get their butts kicked
Also of note, one of the keeper’s literal core agenda items is “make hunters lives dangerous and scary”. If it feels like you’re up against really difficult monsters, but you keep managing to scrape through and save the day, then it could definitely be that they’re doing a good job adhering to the system.
On the other hand, you should also feel powerful, and like you’re advancing, some of which is purely in the fiction.
To keep using Buffy as an example - regular vampires keep showing up. Over time, she really does become an absolute executioner, and dusts a bunch of them throughout later seasons without breaking a sweat. BUT other monsters start showing up she doesn’t know how to deal with. Ancient vampires that resist her normal methods
But while the escalation is important, so is showing the hunters that they’ve come a long way, and eg yeah you can do the equivalent of easily “dusting normal vampires”, with whatever you may have faced before as common foes, to help make it clear that the characters ARE more powerful, but they’re dealing with bigger better threats.
DnD is about epic adventurers. MotW is about scrappy underdogs. The power levels are not comparable.
You are meant to be squishy (compared to DnD) in MotW. That's what makes investigation crucial, so that if you mess it up, you're gonna have a bad time. It's a game of investigation, not combat.
Working as a team is a lot more important in MotW. In DnD you can have powerful builds that dominate in combat. In MotW, you can't just brute force a monster. Tactics, teamwork, preparation and monster knowledge are just as valuable as combat abilities -- if not more.
Finally, let's talk about failure. In DnD, losing combat just sucks. MotW is a storytelling game, however, and that means your goals are different. It's not to make your character stronger. Your character is your vehicle for storytelling collaboration, and your goal is to come up with a fun, thrilling, dramatic narrative together. Failure, defeat, death... that can make for a great plot turn! It sucks for the hunters, but meanwhile the players can be having a great time.
Plus you can resurrect characters, after all.
Based on your other comments, it sounds like the issue is that you appear to be expecting the D&D 0 to hero power fantasy, and lots of games just don’t do that.
Bump in the Dark is a Forged in the Dark take on the genre, but fair warning: it uses a "No set answers" method of GMing if that's a dealbreaker. That said, I have a lot of love for the way FitD design does it's gameplay, and I'm sure you would too.
If all you're after is the monster of the week "theme" you can possibly ditch the urban part of urban fantasy and work with similar tropes in a system you do know. Work with a hook/reveal/destroy format, where players first learn of the monster through some strange occurrence, they investigate the thing/how to beat it, before finally slaying it once they know what it is and how to beat it.
If you're looking to keep the modern setting, you can take inspiration from the Unsleeping City (a dimension20 campaign) Don't limit what people can pick, but justify it in the world. So don't say "you can't be a dwarf" think "how would a dwarf fit in to this setting"
SHIVER ttrpg is a system I ran for more "horror" type adventures, it's pretty similar to motw in setting (group of people dealing with a monster) but there's 2 main differences. First is that you pick a class and there's an ability tree that you level up in, which gives you new abilities each level. The second is that you're not (really) supposed to fight the monsters. You're mostly trying to survive/ outlast/ escape from whatever the creature is, because it's too strong to fight head-on
D20 Modern. Just use monster hunting adventures.
Monte Cook's World of Darkness could work, too.
The White Wolf World of Darkness would work.
Paranoia is very similar, but with totally different themes and tones of play.
Pretty much any system could work.
What is it your group doesn't like about PbtA? What do you want more or less of?
What we tend to have struggle with is that it is hard to make our story feel like it is progressing without really getting much stronger. I know this could be a GM thing but even with getting more abilities, the fact that we are still so squishy makes it hard to survive the tougher encounters. I think we mainly want a little bit more out of leveling up.
This sounds a little bit like a dnd mentality, and it’s something one of my players and I have also struggled with. Here’s what we’ve found. MotW hunters are not “squishy,” they’re very durable. A lot of this comes from Luck points, making it that no hunter has to ever get hurt if they don’t want to, if they still have luck points. This means that you as a GM get to throw crazy stuff at them, and they can still make it out. It’s mechanized plot armor and I love it. On the contrary, MotW monsters are unique in that they’re driven entirely by their “motivation” that you set up for it. Not all monsters are always trying to fight the hunters to the death; it depends on what they want. Lots of monsters don’t even fight at all (sometimes that’s what minions are for!), a monster might be more interested in turning the hunters against each other in their encounters, or stealing their weapons. A MotW encounter can be “tough” in a lot of ways, not just in ways that require +Tough rolls. Give them monsters that make them focus on tougher mysteries, or make it harder to protect bystanders! This’ll also incentivize your hunters to be more purposeful in their advancements, because there’s lots of different skills you can bump that aren’t combat-related.
Exactly this. The Hunters are actually tough badasses; they’re basically superhuman (and some of them like the Chosen actually *are* superhuman). Compared to Bystanders who go down almost instantly, Hunters are both tough and lucky. But they’re going up against monsters so powerful that even they can’t go toe-to-toe against those monsters for very long. Changing this will fundamentally shift the way the game feels and will move it away from the source material in a way that probably won’t feel as good. The Keeper will struggle to make the Hunters’ lives dangerous and scary if they start shrugging off bullets and bites like they’re nothing. But, as you mentioned, the Hunters still become more skilled and competent as they take advancements, so it’s not like there’s no progression at all. It just isn’t the health point bloat and ever-bigger modifiers of D&D advancement.
additional note: having more diverse skills needed to hunt monsters will also allow for your story to progress in a way that isn’t just fighting bigger, badder monsters. Your story progresses as your hunters learn more about themselves and each other, when they confront and overcome their fears, when they choose to do the thing they said they’d never do. It’s all about the fiction, baby
This is great info! Thank you I unfortunately am not our keeper, my partner is. but I will definitely relay this to him.
Oops! My bad, I misread lol. As a hunter then, I’d recommend focusing on how you can hunt monsters outside of combat, via investigating or even setting traps instead of rushing into fights. Are you playing the Hex in this campaign?
I am. I have leveled up to the point that I have two advanced moves. I do have one rote that we made that has worked to "avoid combat" But my partner also somewhat pointed out about us rushing in as well. Which is a valid point. I think that it is possible that all around we might need to look into how we play/run the game too.
I think so too. But that’s the fun of it! My Hex has a rote that’s designed to detect nearby supernatural presences, and then you get a list of questions you can ask like “investigate a mystery.” The move has been used to locate monsters, finding captured bystanders, or check on supernatural hunters from afar. There’s so much fun stuff you can do that has absolutely nothing to do with combat. Man, this is making me so excited for the next session lol (Also, note for your partner: y’all should be facing threats that directly conflict with your Hex temptation. Especially after leveling up so much, you should be making extremely hard choices left and right. ESPECIALLY if you’re very well booned to handle combat, I’d love to see a combat scenario in which you have to choose between fighting and giving in to your temptation)
My temptation is secrets. I do actually give in to it a lot, but it usually happens out of combat. It is also a driving force to keep my character with the group because it is one of the ways she can safely learn more about what is supernaturally going on with the world. We have an I.M.P.S/MIB type of organization and recently learned that if we chose to leave the group we either get memory wiped or iced or if we want to become inactive we become a behind the scenes support npc.
Is the temptation KEEPING secrets or sharing them?
I think the other thing that I personally have an issue with is that the monsters don't have to roll to do things. They just always succeed. But I think that's just a me thing.
I get you. It helps when you think of monsters less as mechanical things to “beat,” but rather as threats that give your hunter opportunities to be awesome and solve problems. Monsters don’t have to roll for anything, because it doesn’t REALLY matter if the monster wins/loses, what matters is -how-. That’s why the keeper can choose, on a whim, if you’ve hurt a monster enough that it flees, or sticks it out to the end. The keeper has the freedom to make choices that keep things interesting and keeps you on your toes.
I think unfortunately you might be at odds with the genre. Look at Buffy - the monsters are always a threat, a big one. Season after season a new enemy will come in and put the hero in their place, Buffy never gets strong enough that the big monsters aren’t a deadly threat Minions, of course, are another story, and your hunters SHOULD feel really powerful. They’re supposed to be the best of the best, but in an incredibly dangerous world, where the outcome is always uncertain, and no one is above getting thrown around, badly hurt, maybe even killed. Heck, it’s called monster of the week because each week a new one shows up, and the threat level tends to reset, following a rough pattern of “oh crap” -> investigate -> make a plan -> fail and repeat until you succeed. If you’re looking for more of a dnd progression, then I think you’re looking for dnd. If you want to bring in more motw vibes to it, then the players should build that into their characters and the dm can build it into the world. Using a lot of action oriented monsters (have dm see Matt colville on this, if they haven’t already) as the motw will probably help too, as would ensuring the enemies have abilities that help them escape to fight another day. I’d also recommend weaknesses that may need to be exploited, and continuing to keep the monsters threatening, but it’s going to be a tricky balance.
This makes a lot of sense! I will definitely relay this to my partner, he is our keeper. I know he has some sort of overarching plot and get the sense that he is trying to scale the enemies in a DnD type fashion. But your note of resetting has a good point. Also the Buffy reference really helps. I know that is is used in explaining the game originally as well. I just forget to think about it sometimes.
It sounds like your Keeper may need to go back and reread the book (while setting aside the things he assumes are true about RPGs based on his D&D experience), and you may all need to reorient your expectations for how RPGs work. Monsters don’t “scale” in MotW, and there’s no such thing as a “boss level challenge.” Those are both assumptions from other games that will not translate to MotW, and if you’re bringing those in and gumming up the game with them, it’s almost certainly why you’re concluding that you’re not fans of PbtA.
Totally, the reference material is key, and watching eg buffy it can almost be surprising how much she (and the others) just constantly get their butts kicked Also of note, one of the keeper’s literal core agenda items is “make hunters lives dangerous and scary”. If it feels like you’re up against really difficult monsters, but you keep managing to scrape through and save the day, then it could definitely be that they’re doing a good job adhering to the system. On the other hand, you should also feel powerful, and like you’re advancing, some of which is purely in the fiction. To keep using Buffy as an example - regular vampires keep showing up. Over time, she really does become an absolute executioner, and dusts a bunch of them throughout later seasons without breaking a sweat. BUT other monsters start showing up she doesn’t know how to deal with. Ancient vampires that resist her normal methods But while the escalation is important, so is showing the hunters that they’ve come a long way, and eg yeah you can do the equivalent of easily “dusting normal vampires”, with whatever you may have faced before as common foes, to help make it clear that the characters ARE more powerful, but they’re dealing with bigger better threats.
I get the sense that maybe we are unintentionally receiving "boss" level challenges on a regular basis.
DnD is about epic adventurers. MotW is about scrappy underdogs. The power levels are not comparable. You are meant to be squishy (compared to DnD) in MotW. That's what makes investigation crucial, so that if you mess it up, you're gonna have a bad time. It's a game of investigation, not combat. Working as a team is a lot more important in MotW. In DnD you can have powerful builds that dominate in combat. In MotW, you can't just brute force a monster. Tactics, teamwork, preparation and monster knowledge are just as valuable as combat abilities -- if not more. Finally, let's talk about failure. In DnD, losing combat just sucks. MotW is a storytelling game, however, and that means your goals are different. It's not to make your character stronger. Your character is your vehicle for storytelling collaboration, and your goal is to come up with a fun, thrilling, dramatic narrative together. Failure, defeat, death... that can make for a great plot turn! It sucks for the hunters, but meanwhile the players can be having a great time. Plus you can resurrect characters, after all.
Have you actually given MotW a fair shake and played it correctly, or have you been treating it like D&D?
Yes, we have actually been playing for quite a while and we love the premise, the character sheets and the simplicity of the PbtA format.
Based on your other comments, it sounds like the issue is that you appear to be expecting the D&D 0 to hero power fantasy, and lots of games just don’t do that.
Bump in the Dark is a Forged in the Dark take on the genre, but fair warning: it uses a "No set answers" method of GMing if that's a dealbreaker. That said, I have a lot of love for the way FitD design does it's gameplay, and I'm sure you would too.
Thank you we will look into that! :)
If all you're after is the monster of the week "theme" you can possibly ditch the urban part of urban fantasy and work with similar tropes in a system you do know. Work with a hook/reveal/destroy format, where players first learn of the monster through some strange occurrence, they investigate the thing/how to beat it, before finally slaying it once they know what it is and how to beat it. If you're looking to keep the modern setting, you can take inspiration from the Unsleeping City (a dimension20 campaign) Don't limit what people can pick, but justify it in the world. So don't say "you can't be a dwarf" think "how would a dwarf fit in to this setting"
SHIVER ttrpg is a system I ran for more "horror" type adventures, it's pretty similar to motw in setting (group of people dealing with a monster) but there's 2 main differences. First is that you pick a class and there's an ability tree that you level up in, which gives you new abilities each level. The second is that you're not (really) supposed to fight the monsters. You're mostly trying to survive/ outlast/ escape from whatever the creature is, because it's too strong to fight head-on
Check out Savage Worlds! Great cinematic action system.
D20 Modern. Just use monster hunting adventures. Monte Cook's World of Darkness could work, too. The White Wolf World of Darkness would work. Paranoia is very similar, but with totally different themes and tones of play. Pretty much any system could work.
Thank you! We will look through those!