Monster of the Week

Monster of the Week Takeaways

Book Summary of sessions

Keeper Agenda & Principles

Refresh before every game Keeper Agenda and Principles

Your Agenda is Made up of Three Elements

  • Make the world seem real.
  • Play to see what happens.
  • Make the hunters’ lives dangerous and scary.

The Keeper Principles

The twelve specific ways to apply your agenda

  • Put horror in everyday situations.
  • Address yourself to the hunters, not the players.
  • Use the Keeper moves, never use their names.
  • Be a fan of the hunters.
  • Build up a coherent mythology of the world as you play.
  • Nothing is safe. Kill bystanders and minions, burn down buildings, let monsters be slain.
  • Name everyone they meet, make them seem like normal folks.
  • Ask questions and build on the answers.
  • Sometimes give the hunters exactly what they earned, rather than everything they wanted.
  • Think about what’s happening off-screen.
  • You don’t always have to decide what happens.
  • Everything is a threat.

Six Basic Elements of Story

A mystery is made up of six basic elements. You can create them in any order, but I’ll show you the order I usually use:

  • A basic concept for the mystery.
  • The hook that got the hunters’ attention.
  • The Threats
  • The mystery countdown.
  • Optionally: custom moves for special aspects of the mystery.

Keeper Moves

Basic Keeper Moves

  • Separate them.
  • Reveal future badness.
  • Reveal off-screen badness.
  • Inflict harm, as established.
  • Make them investigate.
  • Make them acquire stuff.
  • Tell them the possible consequences and ask if they want to go ahead.
  • Turn their move back on them.
  • Offer an opportunity, maybe with a cost.
  • Take away some of the hunters’ stuff.
  • Put someone in trouble.
  • Make a threat move, from one of your mystery or arc threats.
  • After every move, ask what they do next.

Monster Threat Moves

  • Hint at its presence
  • Display its full might
  • Appear suddenly
  • Attack with great force and fury
  • Seize someone or something
  • Attack with stealth and calculation
  • Order underlings to do terrible acts
  • Destroy something
  • Escape, no matter how well contained it is
  • Give chase
  • Return to home ground
  • Boast and gloat, maybe revealing a secret
  • Return from seeming destruction
  • Use an unnatural power

Minion Threat Moves

  • A burst of sudden, uncontrolled violence
  • Make a coordinated attack
  • Capture someone, or steal something
  • Reveal a secret
  • Deliver someone or something to the master
  • Give chase
  • Make a threat or demand on behalf of the master
  • Run away
  • Use an unnatural power
  • Display a hint of conscience or humanity
  • Disobey the master, in some petty way

Bystander Threat Moves

  • Go off alone
  • Argue with the hunters
  • Get in the way
  • Reveal something
  • Confess their fears
  • Freak out in terror
  • Try to help the hunters
  • Try to protect people
  • Display inability or incompetence
  • Seek help or comfort

Location Threat Moves

  • Present a hazard
  • Reveal something
  • Hide something
  • Close a way
  • Open a way
  • Reshape itself
  • Trap someone
  • Offer a guide
  • Present a guardian
  • Something doesn’t work properly
  • Create a particular feeling

First Mystery

The first mystery is going to be everyone’s introduction to the hunters and to your game’s world. Build a straightforward hunt, to give the hunters space to talk and get a sense of how the team operates. Pick a classic monster that everyone will recognize from folklore, urban legend, or pop culture.

Once you have a monster, come up with a basic concept. Think about what the creature could want, and what bad stuff is going to happen if the hunters don’t stop it. The bad stuff might be personal, local, or apocalyptic in scale.

MotW Session Zero

  • Session Zero
  • Explain & Guide Character setup
    • Ask if the team has a concept they want to start
    • Decide why you became a team
    • Else go right to picking playbooks
  • Create Hunters together
  • Come up with team history.
  • Break!
  • Game!

MotW Session Flow

End of Session Move

Ask the following and depending on how many completed everybody gets: 1-2 = 1 exp, 3-4 = 2 exp.

  • Did we conclude the current mystery?
  • Did we learn something new and important about one of the hunters?
  • Did we learn something new and important about the world?
  • Did we save someone from certain death (or worse)?

Ask everybody if they have plans for what to do next or ideas for later.

Think about whether the mystery gave you more ideas for your existing arcs, or suggested a new one.

Second Session

  • Let players swap out moves they didn’t like

Resources