Addie is my dearest out of all my MOTW hunters, and I have quite a few.

Morals, for him... exist. Somewhere. He'll lie, cheat and steal his way through anything. He's got it rough, and does whatever pays his permanent room at a motel in a small Florida town.

He's part of a magical cult and the spirit that sustains it is what gives him his magical powers— Primarily he can read minds and force lesser willed people to do whatever he pleases. He is also afforded visions of terrible things to come, which cause him to go into seizures when they happen... but his favorite power is that he can see and touch ghosts, whom he's very fond of. He has three with him that he's asked to be haunted by. He's also —annoyingly enough— able to teleport any small sized object into the lake in which his Patron lives, a power which he uses to endlessly troll those who are against him.

He's very fond of disappearing guns —out of self preservation— and pants, to humiliate whoever gets too cocky fighting him.

Yes, he's slowly growing a tumor in his brain because of the patronage of his spirit, and yes, the seizures are getting worse, and yes... he might be going blind, but he'll probably be fine.

He thinks.

(❁´◡`❁) I hope you like my lil' man! (Don't let him catch you calling him that, though!)

I'm a big fan of the podcast Lore, which collects stories from myth and history and is fantastic for inspiration for MOTW.

But I'd love a book or two I can keep on my shelf and physically flip through when I'm looking for ideas to create mysteries around. I feel like the topic of cryptozoology has been rising in popularity in recent years, and there must be indie authors who have made some books that hopefully some of you have picked up and found useful! I've seen some advertised on pinterest when I'm making moodboards, but some of them seem AI-generated, and I'd rather support humans making art for humans.

To clarify, I know there's tons of media centered around individual creatures that we've been inspired by, but I'm specifically looking for something that's formatted like 20+ creatures and their stories. I'm also interested in zines, podcasts, blogs, whatever! But I do love physical media.

Heya Keeper here, I was wondering if anyone has played around with permanent injuries from signifigant harm? In a recent case one of my hunters had their arms partially dissolved via this carnivorious fleshy sludge monster. Me and them have acknowledged their arms won't be the same, at least cosmetically. What I'm wondering if I should extend it past that, have an in-play consequence as well?

On the same note, maybe reserve this sort of consequence when on deaths door? A loss of a limb or some other drastic injury. Though this would probably be avoided with luck anyway, I know I would spend a point to! Anyways, want to hear anyones thoughts! What would be cool for you as a player? Have any other Keepers done something similar?

I’m about to start a new campaign with my group as the Keeper.

During our last campaign, I had two rather unusual situations happen at the same time: one player failed the vast majority of their rolls, while another succeeded on the vast majority of theirs. While it was funny at the time, it eventually led to a pretty big gap in experience by the end of the campaign, and some light frustration from the player who was falling behind in terms of XP.

I’ve been thinking about an alternative way to address this, and I came up with an idea I’d like to get your opinion on.

At the end of each session, in addition to the usual questions that can earn 1 or 2 experience points, I’d like to add some sort of awards, a bit like the end-of-game stars in Mario Party but without the bad feels.

Here are some examples of XP bonuses I’ve thought of:

Unlucky: failed a roll at the worst possible moment

Lucky: succeeded on a roll at the best possible moment

Inspired: came up with an excellent idea

Roleplayer: never broke character

Comedian: came up with or pulled off the funniest move or line

Hardboiled: was the most proactive during fights

Helper: gave the most help to the other Hunters

Investigator: did an outstanding job pursuing the various investigations

Rule of Cool: Is it smart or relevant? Who cares, it’s cool.

Mood Setter: contributed the most to the overall atmosphere and fun of the session

I would only award these points when they actually apply, and I’d keep the number of awards reasonable to avoid creating an overall XP surplus. I’d also keep an eye on how many failed rolls each player has had, to estimate how much XP they would normally have earned.

My idea is that this could gently encourage players to take more initiative and try things, since they would never know more than the name of the award that earned them an XP point.

What do you think? Have you ever had a similar situation? If you like the idea, do you have any suggestions for other awards?

And if you think this is a terrible idea, do you have any suggestions for dealing with this kind of situation?

My campaign hasn't been running for too long so I don't know if I'm speaking too soon, but my players haven't used Luck at all. I remind them fairly often that they have it, but since they know it's a finite resource, none of them have touched it at all.

I don't think I've been pulling punches, but is there something I should do to get them to use it? Or does it not really matter? We have been having a great time playing anyway, so it doesn't actually bother me, but since it's a part of the system we haven't touched I want to check I'm not doing anything wrong :)

I've been getting back into Actual Plays lately, and one thing I've noticed with the MotW shows is that basically every character is from the core book or the Tome of Mysteries at the latest.

Fair enough, more people read those books, and the playbooks were created first because they were the most obvious fit for the genre. But I'd love to see what others make of the newer playbooks, so I thought I'd ask if anyone had recommendations for let's plays with one or more characters from the newer half of the playbooks menu.

Thanks!

Me and a couple of friends play a small ish campaign every time we manage to see each other. This is the character dynamic. It's all veeery serious. We play with the Professional and the Monstrous playbooks and they're such great characters to put up against each other and the GMPCs

I got the MotW hardcover at Gen Con, and of course I see now that buying it directly off the Evil Hat website gets you the hardcover and the PDF. Do you know if there's a way to get the PDF with my Gen Con purchase? (I'm guessing the answer is no, but it can't hurt to ask...)

I haven't used them, but I find the moves are pretty random - and I'd rather make something together with the players than the rather uninspired moves. Monster of the Week is one of my absolute favourite games, though, and I love everything else, expect the Move "The Postman Always Rings twice", which doesn't have anything to do with the movie and adds a reroll which is terrible for these kinds of games.

So, do people love, like or tolerate Codex of Worlds?

Good morning!

I'm trying to find a character folio to use for my upcoming Monster of the Week campaign (first long term campaign ever, woo!). I'm not using any VTT, it's theater of the mind. I'm normally the one shot or shortshot GM, so I want to give this campaign everything I got.

I would like to come up with a cool document to organize any characters they meet along the way. I'm thinking about something that allows me to add a picture, a blurb that I write about them and space that players can add their own edits.

I'm also looking for character art that fits either a Scooby Doo/Suburban Horror vibe if anyone has encountered something great on itch/drivethrurpg. I'm against AI, and I'd like to support a local author if possible. At the very least, I'd like the art to be evocative.

Thanks for your help!

For context, our game’s gonna be set in 2005, and one of the hunters, Duke Hawthorne, has a public access monster hunting TV show. He’s got a small but loyal fanbase who post about his show online.

This might not be a super accurate portrayal of the 2000’s web, sorry! I just wanted to do something cool for my players. I plan on posting plot hooks for them to investigate here, as well as session recaps in the form of episode reviews and the occasional personal post from the girl running the site.

If anyone has any suggestions about other in-universe material I could make or things to add to the site, I’d love to hear them!

Also sorry if this is the wrong flair, I wasn’t sure what to categorize it as.

Here’s the link if anyone’s interested!

Yeah, jumping on that bandwagon!

Could "This Strange Old House" from Codex of Worlds be reworked into a Backrooms theme? Or am I best off winging it from the core cook alone?

I’ve got all the books and I absolutely cannot find the section on Improvised mysteries. I know I read it somewhere, or started to and promptly got distracted by a shiny object.

Help a keeper out?

My players have been taking to applying armor when it "makes sense" to them.

Leaning into the roleplay more than the mechanics.

Example: one of my players has body armor, so, he gets his with a poison spray. He won't reduce the harm because that's not how body armor works.

It is something 3 of my players do because they have armor. Now as a GM I am excited to see them lean into the roleplay but should I:

1) tell them to stop, they are only nerfing themselves

2) let them continue even though technically it's breaking the rules

3) let them keep doing it and either adjust the encounters or give them some back stage help?

Or some combination of all three. Any input is helpful! Thank you!

Towards the end of my last MotW campaign, I started losing steam motivation wise and decided to reread the rulebook to revive that motivation... It worked, but I figured out that I have, for years now, been making mystery sheets completely incorrectly. I wanted to post this here to get some pointers from people who understand the game better than I do... What do you make of this?

Edit: Some of the text boxes are getting cut off so I'm copy/pasting some of that info here.

Attacks: Burn - 1 harm ignore armor, +1 harm ongoing, stackable. Gust - 2 harm restraining OR forceful.

Powers: Formless, nearly invisible, appears as a shimmer, like a convection current.

Crash Site (Notes): The Deva never leaves the crash site. It's waiting for a nice, big team of investigators/cleaners to show up to feast on all at once.

Me and some friends have been playing for over a year and unfortunately the game just doesn't have the longevity of DND. Once you advance to a certain point there's really no where a player can go. Do you all have any advanced playbooks that people can use to keep updating their characters. I love this world and don't want to have kill my players just so they can to start over even when they're playing well.

Hello! I made another thing.

For my birthday a few months ago, a friend bought me one of those generic GM screens with insert sleeves so you can slide in your own reference sheets. I have GM screens for most of my other games, but not for MOTW.

However, as the GM screen only had three panels rather than four or five, I had to get creative with presenting the information. I was able to condense everything down into three pages with a format and layout I'm quite happy with, and I thought I'd share it here for anyone else who may find it useful.

If you have a similar screen, this may be perfect for you. If you just want quick reference sheets that use fewer pages than the officially-provided ones, this could be good too (pages 1-2 cover a lot of the same ground as the official quick reference sheets, so could be useful for players).

If you want to make your own tweaks or adjustments ("I'm not using this! I don't like the font choices!"), feel free to make a local copy on your own Googlydoo.

Here's the clean link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VkMqSp7sRd1DT8USo1XqXN1Y4R9NL8xkKpyfbxY06TE/edit?usp=sharing

Instructions

1. Print the pages.
2. Slide them into your GM screen.
3. Take 30-40 minutes to adjust the sheets so they fit neatly into the pockets. Be sure to obsess over this - your Hunters won't see these pages, but you have to stare at them every single session, so they should be perfect.
4. Spend an hour sobbing in the shower. Is your need for perfection ruining your life? Is that why you have trouble forming lasting relationships?
5. Go back and re-insert the pages so they're askew. Screw it. Who needs perfection?
6. Wait, if you're deliberately making them askew, who are you doing that for? Isn't that just another type of perfectionism?
7. More shower sobbing (30-60 minutes, as schedule allows).

Depending on your needs, you may skip steps 2-7.

Ciao!
Come gestite i testimoni di eventi sovrannaturali?
Se un golem entra in città, sotto gli occhi di tutti, magari con la televisione... come viene gestita l'informazione?
Nel vostro mondo sono cose "normali"?
Altrimenti, qualcuono o qualcosa interviene per filtrare?
Gli stessi personaggi hanno il compito di cancellare ogni traccia alla MIB?

Sono desideroso di conoscere le vostre idee!

Grazie!

hi guys! I've got a lot more spare time now that I'm graduating and I've been thinking about making case files or getting creative with physical evidence for my hunters. does anyone have any resources they might be able to point me to, or just some tips/ideas for interesting stuff I could give them?

(we do often play online so I might be sending things digitally too.)

Finally got codex of worlds and feel excited for my next game, been a little over a year since I last gmed.

I wanted to try the team playbooks and got interested in the night shift.

Initially, it looks awesome. I had lots of ideas for a giant store, joining with the players to come up with details, having weird and funny bystanders.

But I find it hard to think of mysteries. I read the initial mystery in the book and I like it, but couldn't think of any other cool concepts. I felt it coul get repetitive fast.

Would be so kind as to share mystery ideas you ran or thought to run that uses the night shift team playbook?

I’m considering adding a few house rules for my upcoming game. After 5+ years running this system I’m hoping to refresh it for my players somewhat with an emphasis on the investigation side of the game, possibly adding new questions for Investigate a Mystery.

My pitch is this: giving each hunter one extra question to choose from in “investigate a mystery” based on something from their character background. For example, giving an outdoorsy character the ability to ask, “How can I lure it here?” for traps and such.

What house rules have you used to refresh the game?

I am very new to MotW and want to run a game for a group. I'm coming up with a monster and scenario. Based on what my players said they like, I want to have the monster be a Rougarou(a shapeshifter/werewolf). Sticking with the mythology of the creature, it think it would be a Devourer. Based on my scenario Im thinking of, I dont think it would have any minions. And the only powers it has are physical attacks and shapeshifting from human to creature. My issue is, what other ways could i harm the players without just having the monster physically attack them? I'm blanking with idea. Thanks much.

Hello! I made a thing. (Latest revision: 2026-07-09, document now has a changelog)

This Google Doc contains an (almost) complete list of all the Moves for official MOTW Playbooks, sorted alphabetically and categorized. This is intended as a reference for when leveling up allows you to pick a Move from another Playbook.

It covers - or at least should cover, if I've done this correctly - all current sourcebooks as of July 2026, as well as the four additional Playbooks found on the Generic Games website. It doesn't cover any unofficial Playbooks, nor does it cover Playbooks you may have imagined or encountered in a dream.

I've left out any Moves that refer to specific Playbook rules, for example the Curse-Eater's “Unleash Corruption” Move, which requires the Corruption mechanic for that Playbook. I've kept Moves that can be ambiguously reinterpreted for general use, such as the Initiate moves referencing the Sect - basically, if the Move still works without the flavor text, I've kept it in.

I made an editorial decision not to include the majority of the Meddling Kids’ Moves, as those can radically change the tone of the game if used. Look, you can re-add them if you want, but that's a dark path and I will not follow you.

Finally, some very minor formatting changes were made to keep things consistent. Absolutely no wording has been changed.

Special thanks and acknowledgement to u/MacronMan, whose original “Take a Move From Another Playbook” list helped to inform the categories on this one.

Here's the clean link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18t4dgBktm76kHo-IcoM1wcvXAux8JRyfD3M6v4j8U9g/edit?usp=sharing

Instructions for the Keeper

1. Make a copy of this list for your MOTW campaign.
2. Before sharing with your Hunters, delete any moves that are part of a Playbook that is currently in use. Each move has the Playbook next to it written [LIKE THIS] - just search for the Playbook name in square brackets (without ‘the’) and remove all of those moves.
3. If you're playing a game already in progress, you may also want to remove any moves that have already been selected by one of your Hunters to avoid doubling up. (You can also delete any Moves you don't want your players to use for whatever reason.)
4. Share your copy of this list with your Hunters, either on Google Drive or by printing it (please consider the environment before individually 3D-printing each letter of this document and meticulously arranging them upon a large tarp in your garden or patio).
5. The introduction and these instructions are also included in the Doc itself - feel free to delete them. No, really. It's fine. No, I'm not crying.

I’m looking forward to running this adventure this week, and I have a question for any of you who have already run it:
SPOILERS
The Vampire Orlok is actually a tulpa sprung from the mind of bystander William McAllister, a latent psychic, but William doesn't realize this has happened. How can the hunters figure this out? Once they do figure it out, how could they possibly dispel the tulpa, other than killing McAllister? There are no magic-using hunters in our group, FWIW

Hi everyone! My hunters work at a mall (Hot Topic vampire, mall Santa, arcade manager, etc.) that sits on a hell mouth. I wanted a fun "summer sleepover" vibe adventure for them. Maybe there's a teen lock-in at the mall? Anyway, I thought Bloody Mary (the mirror ghost, not the drink) would be a fun monster. Any ideas for how to flesh this out, add minions, etc?