What is Monsterhearts?

Kenzie:

Hello! And welcome to queeRPG! A TTRPG podcast by queer people, for queer people. My name is Kenzie Tartaglione. I am the creator of queeRPG and will also be serving as the Master of Ceremonies for our first season, Monsterhearts..

Monsterhearts is a game created by Avery Alder – a roleplaying game designer – and powered by the Apocalypse World engine. Quoting directly from the buriedwithoutceremony website, Monsterhearts is about “the messy lives of teenage monsters. By the time they hit adolescence, most people have gotten over their fear of the dark. They spend their midnight hour on gushy phone calls, diary ramblings, and wet dreams. They fall asleep peacefully, assured that the shadows hold no monsters.But the shadows do hold monsters. You know because you’re one of them. Wickedness dwells within your heart, hunger courses through your veins. High school weighs on you and teen drama puts you on edge, but you have power. What do you do next?”

Monsterhearts is a 2-die system, using 2d6 for any roll mad. Each player chooses a skin which indicates the type of monster they are. For instance The Witch, The Ghost, or The Chosen - which is a Buffy like skin. Each skin comes with a set of four stats: hot, cold, volatile and dark which each have certain in-game moves that call for their use. In addition to the general moves that any player can take while playing the game, each skin has their own specific moves that the players have chosen during character creation. Even so, Monsterhearts is not a die heavy game, relying much more on role-playing to drive the story.

This game allows players to explore some difficult themes: dysfunctional relationships, teen sexuality, coercive power, trauma, abuse, violence, and queer marginalization among many others. I think it is important in any role-playing game to discuss boundaries and off-limit topics with your players so that everyone can show respect and be comfortable at the table. It is even more so important with a game like Monsterhearts in which you have the point of the game and the space created is to navigate some rather problematic storylines and subject matters.

As a team, we sat down before we began telling the story and made sure that we were all aware and comfortable with how we were going to play the game. Everything you hear while listening to this podcast, has been approved by all parties to include.

<p<We’ve already taken the steps to keep ourselves comfortable and safe and want to extend that to our audience. Before each episode, we will have a content warning underlining the specific topics in the episode that some people may want to avoid. While we definitely want you along for the entire story, it is much more important to take care of yourself and we wanted to make that as easy as possible for our audience even if we are not choosing to shy away from challenging themes.,

That’s a little rundown about the game of Monsterhearts if you are not familiar with it. But I do have one more exciting announcement.

The inaugural season of queeRPG, a Monsterhearts story, will be premiering on Halloween, October 31st of this year! Keep your eyes on our social media for more updates and info. You can see the introductions of our cast – a wonderful group I’m excited for you all to meet. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @queerpgpod, on tumblr at queerpg.tumblr.com, and you can find the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

We are beyond excited for you to hear the story we’ve been working so hard on. Until next time!