5 Tips for New Monstrous Players
Never Stop Talking
In a collaborative project like this, OOC communication is key. Remember, at its core the Monstrous role is about bringing entertainment to players more than it’s about scaring or styling on their characters. Monstrous PC scenes can have an intensity and immediacy to them that a lot of other roleplay doesn’t because of the power imbalance inherent to them, so it’s even more important than normal to keep lines of communication open. You don’t need to explain or justify yourself, but you can reassure, telegraph your intentions, or just thank the participants once an encounter is over.
Choose your Victims
Some players are more interested in receiving the Monstrous PC experience than others, as well as openness to encounters changing depending on circumstance. Don’t waste your energy pushing an encounter on a player that doesn’t want to be there right now, or doesn’t have the time or energy to be fully present and to play back with you.
A good way to gauge whether a player or group wants to play with you is to open encounters from a concealed position using @voice. If they emote back being apprehensive and fearful, that’s a good sign they want to participate and you can continue. If they start buffing, popping See Invisibility potions or mysteriously stop and go silent (maybe they’re sending Tells or are talking in VC), maybe give that group a miss.
Finding victims in the game world can sometimes be a challenge. Use the @locate tool to get a general idea. Lurking in frequently-travelled spots like dungeons will usually net you a catch, but remember that dungeon groups are likely to be at the height of their powers (buffed), and ‘in the zone’ for dungeoning and may not want to be disrupted.
As you build relationships with characters and the groups they’re a part of, OOC coordination about times and places can yield very satisfying scenes. Although it may feel a little artificial, it’s ok to schedule encounters, just like you’d schedule regular sessions of a tabletop game.
Fill the World with your Presence
The amount of time you have to play, and the number of individual PCs you can interact with, is limited. But your actions can have a much wider reach indirectly. Your scenes and encounters will have knock-on effects as the participants talk amongst themselves, and to others, long after it’s over. Think about giving them material to work with – dilemmas, hard choices, betrayals. It’s important to leave enough room in encounters for PCs to do their thing too. Make use of @marks, notes/letters, MPC props and environment-focussed storytelling to build up a sense of mythos and mystique. Again, this is all good roleplay material that other PCs – maybe ones you’ll never meet one-on-one, can pick up and run with.
Conceal Your Nature
Stealth is a potent tool for Monstrous PCs. It gives you great control over how and when you launch encounters. Even in builds that don’t have great Hide/Move Silently scores, there are other options like animal forms or Invisibility.
When mechanically ‘hidden’ like this, you can not only select and stalk targets more comfortably, but you can also run encounters where you never reveal yourself at all – using @voice or henchmonsters to interact with PCs.
All Monstrous Templates, but especially Werecreatures, can conceal themselves socially too. The Disguise system can be put to great effect when building the ‘double life’ of Monstrous PCs; to build relationships and trust, only to have that cruelly pulled-away when the Monster is revealed for what they truly are. As scary as a monster popping out of stealth in the middle of the night is, it’s incomparable to the horror of discovering a friend and ally was a bloodthirsty killer all along.
The Fun Stops when they’re Dead
You can’t roleplay with a corpse. And a corpsed player can’t roleplay at all. Getting down to PVP shouldn’t be the focus of any encounter, and shouldn’t even be the culmination of all of them. PVP itself is not scary, but the threat of it can be. Make use of @subdual mode wherever possible. Showing that you’re willing to play ‘soft’ in PVP can lower the stakes on both sides and make players more inclined to treat you courteously too. But don’t be afraid to play ‘hard’ as relationships evolve and the stakes of the story rise too. Also, bear in mind that some players won’t feel bad about taking advantage of a softer approach.
Misc Tips and Tricks
- Always have an escape plan. Avoid running encounters in areas with only one way in or out; you can just as easily become as trapped as your victims.
- The longer scenes go on, the more risk you’ll be in of someone stumbling into you encounter, or from reinforcements arriving. Consider breaking up groups and then continuing with a new scene somewhere else.
- If you do abduct someone (ie, by corpsing them with the intention of raising them elsewhere to carry on), the plan should be to either have them found by their party, or that they will be returned to play once the scene has concluded.
- Traps are a great way of slowing down groups to make them more manageable and the environment more oppressive.