Still trying to process what makes this game special. There's lots of little things, but it still feels like there's something big that I'm not wholly able to articulate yet.

The closest I can get is that the game encourages you not just to be terrible, but to be believably terrible. To be terrible in ways that actual living people around you might be or have experienced. And maybe as a result you'll learn how to be a slightly better person for real.

I heard Avery Alder on a podcast where she said something along the lines of "the great thing about tabletop RPGs is that you can have experiences, without having the same *responsibility* to them that you do with actual events in your life."

That's really stuck with me.

On the other hand, sometimes I worry that Monsterhearts can be misery tourism. That trying to imagine abusive circumstances I've never actually experienced firsthand does a disservice to people who have been there.

I don't know, really?

@starkatt I have certainly encountered people who play it that way. You can tell the difference.