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Monster of The Week: Hardcover Edition
- GenresRole Playing Games
344 pages, Hardcover
Published February 27, 2023
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22 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 8, 2024
Who wants to play?
February 14, 2025
Super easy to pick up. I love the ways the playbooks really feel like linked ecosystems - allows for some really cool combos. Choices made have a huge effect down the line in terms of resources and abilities.
December 26, 2025
Monster of the Week is a game that has given me so much over the years so it’s admittedly a bit hard to stay unbiased when taking objectively about it. That said, I have both positives and negative opinions which I’ll try to properly explain here.
First of all I’d like to say that MOTW is an easy to pick up game for anyone regardless of TTRPG background/skill level. Being a Powered by the Apocalypse game, the gameplay of Moves and the character creation Playbooks are easy to understand and accessible. My own players (some of whom were completely new to the system) were able to fully immerse themselves relatively quickly in part to MOTW’s ease of access.
On the Keeper’s side, MOTW offers multiple different tools to create impactful mysteries. More specifically the templates for monster/phenomena design as well as the “countdown” made planning easy and fun!
My only gripes/complaints come with the combat system the game offers. Coming from D&D, the switch from HP to Harm was a difficult swap to make, especially when trying to create scenarios that felt balanced for my players. The lack of a proper turn order is still an issue I have trouble acclimating to.
This mainly happens during more dramatic moments when I’m trying to describe a monster’s actions only to be interrupted by multiple members of the party attempting to say what they’d do to interrupt/stop the action. This though is more of a group issue than an issue with the system itself. What feels a bit more hard to properly implement is equipment and its tags. I personally just wish there was more of a mechanical explanation aside from “This weapon can do x”
All of that said these were nitpicks at the end of the day. I adore Monster of the Week, it’s an amazing game, and it’ll be my forever recommendation to any new tabletop hobbyists/GM’s.
First of all I’d like to say that MOTW is an easy to pick up game for anyone regardless of TTRPG background/skill level. Being a Powered by the Apocalypse game, the gameplay of Moves and the character creation Playbooks are easy to understand and accessible. My own players (some of whom were completely new to the system) were able to fully immerse themselves relatively quickly in part to MOTW’s ease of access.
On the Keeper’s side, MOTW offers multiple different tools to create impactful mysteries. More specifically the templates for monster/phenomena design as well as the “countdown” made planning easy and fun!
My only gripes/complaints come with the combat system the game offers. Coming from D&D, the switch from HP to Harm was a difficult swap to make, especially when trying to create scenarios that felt balanced for my players. The lack of a proper turn order is still an issue I have trouble acclimating to.
This mainly happens during more dramatic moments when I’m trying to describe a monster’s actions only to be interrupted by multiple members of the party attempting to say what they’d do to interrupt/stop the action. This though is more of a group issue than an issue with the system itself. What feels a bit more hard to properly implement is equipment and its tags. I personally just wish there was more of a mechanical explanation aside from “This weapon can do x”
All of that said these were nitpicks at the end of the day. I adore Monster of the Week, it’s an amazing game, and it’ll be my forever recommendation to any new tabletop hobbyists/GM’s.
June 18, 2024
This is the first PbtA/Apocalypse Engine game that I fully grokked. I love pretty much everything about the engine and this game. Near zero prep for a GM/Keeper is perfect. I will be running more PbtA games because of this one. Awesome.
October 25, 2023
I’ve been playing this game weekly with my friends for over a year. Hardcover adds phenomenons which are my favorite type of mystery, and 2 highly engaging character sheets.
December 24, 2023
One of my favourite RPGs to run and play if I want heavy RP.
December 30, 2023
Fun and easy system to get into. Great for short campaigns (not sure how it would go for anything really long).
December 20, 2024
I did’t mean to to read this, but the book just pulled me in and kept me reading. A really nice PbtA-game!
May 30, 2025
This system is awesome, and the book is great to read.
My players love to play those kind of sessions. Adventures wrote themselves thanks to easy-to-learn principles straight from screenwriting guides. Monster of the week is MY system. I’m always coming back to it.
Feels like home. Spooky, weird home, but home nonetheless.
My players love to play those kind of sessions. Adventures wrote themselves thanks to easy-to-learn principles straight from screenwriting guides. Monster of the week is MY system. I’m always coming back to it.
Feels like home. Spooky, weird home, but home nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews