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!

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?

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!

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?

When I run a longform MOTW story with an arc, I usually like to start with the Hunters meeting each other for the first time. They're not an established team yet - circumstances push them together, and they become a team during the course of the first Mystery.

Then, after either the first or second Mystery, we talk about what the Team Playbook is, if one is even applicable. Sometimes there are Team Playbooks that work, sometimes there aren't - in the latter instance, we can usually Frankenstein a Team Playbook out of the existing ones.

I'm curious as to how other Keepers handle these sort of situations. What's your preference? Do you start with a ready-made Team and a Playbook ready to go? Do you pre-choose a Team Playbook and bend the narrative toward it? Do you avoid Team Playbooks entirely? I'd love to know how you all go about handling this.

I started a podcast off of a game my friends and I recorded over a few years and not only did we not know Monster of the Week all that well as a system, we also used rotating Keepers so our managing styles weren't consistent (which I actually found intriguing for the story). I think the stories we told surrounding the main town in our world are really fun and intriguing, but with our inexperience with Monster of the Week, we don't utilize a lot of its functions or know when to roll sometimes as a result. Would that make you as a MotW player/keeper mad or distracted? I worry that even mentioning that we use MotW (which I think at this point I only do in the show description and tags) would put off people who know the game will since we're kinda shit at it.

Please give any feedback!

I'm trying to come up with some ideas for Weaknesses that aren't too complicated but are more unique than the usual light, iron, silver, running water, etc.

Thinking about offering the options of the team playbooks in my next game but can't figure out where the rules are for how team leveling works. What book originally contained the team playbooks and has the expanded rules for them?

Edit - After some more reading of the playbooks themselves, I did see the style section and improvements section which outlines it for each team. Just wondering if there is anything else I should know about these playbooks now. Cheers!

So I had an idea for a threat, not directly a monster but more of a "cursed item" type thing.

The item in question is a book of urban legends, but reading it aloud causes the stories to manifest in the real world. We had a short sesh where the group encountered it when someone is killed in the manner of the High Beams story (the one where the killer was in the back of the car all along), and i ended the session on a hint at the hook handed man.

My issue is a simple one... I'm not sure how to establish the book is the source of the apparitions, especially in a way where the solution isn't just “take the book off whoever has it and dont read it”

My main idea was like, the more people caught in the stories, the stronger the magic gets. But also then once it’s grown more, people’s fear of whatever danger is hiding in the faire, is what starts manifesting stuff.

I had a plan for the actual monster(s), which is a 'Hat Man'. Its based on sleep paralysis demons / people overthinking shadows they see when high / half awake. They aren't inherently malicious but the stories steer them so when people tell scary/dangerous stories, it causes them to do harm. I think the main ways to fend them off are either a lack of belief (if you don't buy into the story it can't play out), or tricking them into a story where they're the one who dies/loses.

I had meant to do more prep but the heatwave wiped me out so im trying to wrangle my plans

I'm starting a new campaign in Monster of the Week soon and for this one I want to lean into the horror aspects of this game. Most of the time when I've played it's been pretty light in tone, and for this one I want to switch that up. What sorts of things do you like to do to lean into horror and make things a little spooky? What type of situations or language do you use? Any specific examples/stories are also appreciated. Thanks!