# Monsterhearts tags: #game/rpg/monsterhearts ![[Monsterhearts (cover).jpg|600]] **Monsterhearts** is Avery Alder's **[[Powered by the Apocalypse|PbtA]]** game about being a messed-up teenage heartbreaker who just happens to be a monster — the horror rendered as a high-school metaphor, where the scariest thing in the room is a crush who knows your weakness. It's *The Vampire Diaries* and *My So-Called Life* and every queasy teen romance fused into one engine, and it's built to explore desire, power, and getting hurt through the lens of the supernatural. ## Setting There's no fixed world — it's your **school, your town, your mess**. A typical cast is a handful of teenagers who've each discovered they're something *other*: a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Witch, a Ghost, a Fae, and so on. But the game's real setting is the social minefield of adolescence — the cliques, the crushes, the parties, the betrayals. Monstrous powers are just the metaphor doing the heavy lifting for the actual subject: what it's like to be a teenager with no control over your own feelings and no one to trust. ## Mechanics The core is the standard **PbtA** move roll — **2d6 + a stat** against 10+ / 7–9 / 6− — and the moves cover the teen-drama beats: **Turns Someone On**, **Shuts Someone Down**, **Holds Steady**, **Lash Out Physically**, **Run Away**, and the rest. What makes **Monsterhearts** distinctive is the currency of **Strings**. Every character holds **Strings** over others — the accumulated weight of secrets, favors, and wounds that lets you mess with their lives; spending and collecting Strings *is* the game. Characters begin with **Hx** (history) to each other that sets how those Strings start, and each **Skin** (the game's playbook — Vampire, Werewolf, Witch, Ghost, Ghoul, Hollow, Fae, Queen, Infernal, Mortal, and kin) carries its own dark moves and its own **sex move**, a consequence that kicks in when your character gets intimate — because in a game about teenage monsters, that's the moment everything tends to spiral. It's a sharp, unflinching game that wants tables willing to engage with difficult material. ## Editions - **Monsterhearts** (1st edition, 2012) — Avery Alder / Buried Without Ceremony. *In the library.* - **Monsterhearts 2** (2017) — the expanded current edition (more Skins, tightened rules). *Not in the library.* ## References - [Monsterhearts — official site (buriedwithoutceremony.com)](https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts) - [Monsterhearts 2 — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/204125/monsterhearts-2)