YMMV / Monsterhearts

• Audience-Alienating Premise: While the game has been praised for its unique rules, powerful use of allegory, and careful handling of taboo subject matter, the focus on sex and puberty makes all versions of the game a very difficult sell to most casual roleplaying groups.
• Author's Saving Throw: The first edition of the game was quite queer-friendly and the mechanics for sexual attraction made it so players couldn't be sure about their characters' sexual orientation since they could potentially react to any other character's attempt to Turn Someone On. The problem with that was that it erased Asexuality in turn. Monsterhearts 2 has an entire chapter on Asexuality and specific rules for characters that can not be turned on... though it's been pointed out that this doesn't address the issue of it erasing every sexuality besides bisexuality and asexuality.
• Even Better Sequel: Monsterhearts 2 is less of a change of content and more of a revision. Its refinement of the original's rules and the addition of more advice means that the sequel is the more popular of the editions.
• LGBT Fanbase: Thanks to the basic rules, any character can roll to turn on any other character, regardless of the genders involved. Beyond this, the core book has an entire section on including and handling queer content. The very makeup of the game encourages self-examination and exploration of one's identity.
• Sequel Displacement: Since Monsterhearts 2 is an Even Better Sequel that's a direct revision of the original's contents, the first Monsterhearts is rarely played compared to its 2017 counterpart. Contributing to this is that Avery Alder's official storefront only sells physical and digital copies of Monsterhearts 2.
• The Scrappy: Some Skins tend to be disallowed from Monsterhearts games more often than others:
  • The creator recognized that in the first edition, The Chosen's inclusion drastically changes the tone of the game in ways that deviated from the reasons why players wanted to run Monsterhearts. In the second edition, The Chosen is downgraded to a supplemental Skin and The Hollow takes its place in the core rulebook.
  • The Disciple, an official supplemental Skin for the second edition, is an allegory for youth radicalized toward enacting great violence. The website recognizes that The Disciple is "not for every group," and many players concur.
  • Of the core skins, The Mortal tends to get forbidden from campaigns the most. While The Mortal may be the most mundane of the Skins, this same mundanity makes their co-dependency issues feel too real. Therefore, players who might not have an issue with the other Skins' allegories may prefer to preemptively strike The Mortal from their experience of Monsterhearts.
  • The Cuckoo from the fan-made Second Skins tends to also be excluded even if their counterparts are allowed. The Cuckoo's central monstrosity revolves around Shapeshifting, and both their Skin Moves and the Core Moves predispose such characters to attempting the Bed Trick via shapeshifting. Some groups prefer to avoid rape by deception and X-card The Cuckoo.

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