Okay, old dog trying to learn new tricks.
Been roleplaying for umpty decades, which I can tell is an impediment here. Never read a PbtA game before. Probably thinking in an old-style way, and the couple of actual plays I’ve read have been heavy on the fiction rather than the mechanics, so I’m confused. If someone has a resource that has this written down, I’ll happily go there.
Basic resolution mechanic is 2d6. 7-, fail; 8 or 9, fail forward or fail in a “Yes, but” kind of way, and 10+ is a success. Only players roll (so if villain attacks NPCs, it’s a GM handwave what happens: the fiction determines it).
The fiction shapes everything: rather than the roll and creating the fiction based on it (that is, roleplaying is often a kind of pareidolia), we create the fiction and see if we need to roll.
Damage. Damage is inflicted by imposing conditions. Okay. How do you as a player inflict a condition on a villain? Is it a move, and which move is determined by the fiction? Is there a point where a character is out of the scene, or is that determined by the fiction? If a villain gets all their conditions marked, then they’ve lost…is there an end of scene version for the player characters?
More questions to come, I’m sure.
Is that not what Directly Engage is for?
Also 6- is the “fail”, but Not really called a fail, because you can still succeed, just something else will happen that is generally not good for your character. Its a hard move created by the GM.
Benjamin Davis Actually, the Basic Moves PDF doesn’t say that Directly Engage imposes a condition…or if it does, it does so in a way that I didn’t take that way. I figured that maybe it wasn’t listed because multiple moves could impose a condition–I can see where Unleashing Your Powers might do so, for instance.
Joe Zantek My bad on the numbers.I was doing those from memory. What’s the difference between a soft move and a hard move? What I can gather from the Worlds In Peril text is that a soft move is essentially an offer by the GM or character, but a hard move requires a roll. Someone can refuse a soft move but not a hard move.
Derrick Kapchinsky Fair enough on the semantic difference. I’ll keep that in mind.
For damage, though there are ways to defeat the villain depending on the story, you do have to keep in mind “When a villain needs to mark a condition but can’t, they are definitively defeated.” So there is a mechanical way besides the fiction–just as in improv you probably knew when the scene was over, but if certain things happened, it definitely was over.
I don’t even see that PCs have condition tracks: they can have conditions marked, but I don’t see where that indicates anything about their performance in the scene–that looks like it’s entirely based on the fiction. Your PC might be angry, afraid, insecure, hopeless, and guilty, but can still fight on. Or have I read this wrong? (Years of writing technical documentation have conditioned me to wanting a procedure, dammit.)
6- is fail and 7-9 is partial success.
There’s no handwaving. The GM has a rough list of moves in the same way as characters. You get a response based on your roll.
Example (not all of this might be Masks proper, but it’s PbtA style) The Blade Tornado charges at you with knives flashing. You try to dodge out of the way, but roll a 5 – take some damage. If you rolled a 7-9 you might also choose to take damage or maybe have him cut through the rope you were climbing, or some other cost.
Aaron Griffin Okay, from reading the GM PDF I had the impression that only conditions mattered in terms of damage. Damage also exists as it’s own thing, presumably in the fiction?
See, I seem to be missing this connective tissue that joins together the things in the PDFs. I feel very stupid, but maybe Magpie can steal these answers for an appendix: “What to unlearn in playing this game”
If you have about five dollars to spare id suggest going to drive thrurpg and grabbing Dungeon World, their fantasy game, which gives you a much better idea of how the system runs (since we only have basic beta info not a rulebook for Masks). AND you’ll get a great game out of it
Sorry, I’m talking generally. “Damage” in Masks is just a condition IIRC. You’re superheros, so getting stabbed might mean nothing to you physically but it could rip your favorite shirt and make you angry.
Ah wait – have you read any other PbtA games?
Morgan Robertson agreed. Though I much prefer Monster of the Week 🙂
Conditions-as-damage took me a bit of figuring out even with PbtA experience, so don’t sweat it. 😛
Since other folks have already covered the “find a full rulebook of something else to understand most of how Masks works” thing:
tl;dr version: Directly Engage’s “trade blows” and expending Influence inflict Conditions commonly, and players & villains both get taken out if they fill their Condition boxes and then need to mark another.
the other version
Physical damage is a purely fictional realm in Masks. There’s no mechanic for how physically wrecked you are, so if a villain rips your leg off and starts hitting you with it, you’re not checking off any health boxes or the like. But — obviously — you’re now minus one leg, and that’s going to lend itself to a very different series of events in the rest of the story to come. So, fictional damage with fictional consequences.
Emotional & psychological effects are where Conditions take over, and being a teenager, everything is potentially emotionally-charged. 😛 For our example, getting your leg ripped off sucks, and (assuming it doesn’t just take you out due to trauma & bloodloss) might make you feel really Helpless about your situation, or Afraid, or maybe you can regenerate a new leg no probs but you just bought these new chinos and you’re super Angry about it, etc. So the mechanical thing you mark in Masks is not about the actual event that occured, it’s about how your hero reacts to it — also why a lot of the time a hero gets to choose which of their Conditions to mark. And villains react to their own circumstances in the same way, just with more evil laughter thrown in. Conditions are also golden fictional cues to play off for character/villain portrayal: be angry, act afraid, “game over man, game over!” at being Hopeless, etc.
Then, as you say, there’s a lot of different ways someone might mark a Condition, even bad guys, and a lot of the time it’s up to the GM to have folks mark them when it seems appropriate — Unleash might do it, amongst other things, and “Inflict a Condition” is one of the GM move options for use on players. That said, there are a few hard-and-fast situations that will hit someone with a Condition without it being GM fiat: a hero could Pierce The Mask on the big bad and ask the “How could I gain Influence over you?” option, then act upon the answer, and subsequently spend the newfound Influence to inflict a Condition as per the “take advantage of your Influence over someone” option. And since Conditions are mechanical damage in Masks, that means you could absolutely defeat a supervillain with nothing but clever manipulation and harsh truths. 😀
For the most common method, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Brendan Conway say somewhere that the “trade blows” part of Directly Engage is going to be a trade of Conditions in most circumstances, followed by a Take A Powerful Blow roll (unless they “resist or avoid”) to fish for additional effects. A 10+ on that Powerful Blow roll (weird case where high rolls are bad) will give a hero the option to get KO’d, flee the scene, etc, if they want to. If they don’t want to, the second paragraph under Conditions in the PDF has the rule: if you need to mark a Condition and have no more empty boxes to mark, you’re taken out, same as villains. And each Condition marked adds a -2 penalty to certain hero moves, so racking those up before that point has your hero getting progressively less great at everything.
It’s also worth noting here that Directly Engage doesn’t have to be a physical engagement (’cause the physical outcome is all fictional anyway), and doesn’t have to be vs a villain, so you could Directly Engage your Dad in an argument and trade emotional blows as part of the screaming match, then Take A Powerful Blow and wind up having to flee to your room in a huff. Because, y’know, teenagers.
Ooh, the likely-outcome of Directly Engage is to trade conditions? That’s interesting, and not at all what I was expecting. I was thinking it was a move meant to represent the fiction moving into some kind of conflict – and Take a Powerful Blow moves were just going to come as the conflict escalates.
This is just a personal touch, as I don’t have any rules to support it, but I’ve been running my games with the idea that human level damage marks a condition while super damage means rolling a powerful blow. The hero trades blows with a common thug. The thug can maybe swing a wrench or slug with his fists. Major problem in a more realistic game, but these are superheroes. If the hero doesn’t avoid the blow, they take a condition.
However, if the hero swings at a supervillain with super strength or electricity powers, and they don’t avoid the blow, they’re in for a Powerful Blow.
I’ve actually been doing the opposite for human-level damage – I assume it doesn’t mark a condition unless the character acts as if it should, then I just Inflict a Condition to remain consistent. The logic there is that, for many heroes, getting punched in a fight just isn’t going to do anything, or they’re otherwise used to it. If someone punches Robin, for example, he’s not going to be Angry, Afraid, Hopeless, Guilty, or Insecure. I mean, why would he? What he expected to happen is happening.
What do you do when a hero Directly Engages with a random thug and doesn’t take “resist or avoid their blows.” Nothing? That would seem to encourage just ignoring it whenever engaging henchmen or thugs.
I think the narrative can support that. Robin gets punched. He feels Angry because he really should have avoided that blow or Insecure because his team just say a noname thug punch their leader. Maybe he doesn’t show it, because Robin can suck it up and keep going, but he’s definitely feeling it deep down.
They wind up in really close proximity to the random thug, or grappled, or otherwise in a compromised position. A punch or two isn’t a big deal. A knife held to the throat, or gloating because they didn’t escape, or something else… now those are Big Deals.
So I use Directly Engage to set the stage for future Take a Powerful Blows, essentially. If the character roleplays themselves taking a condition from Directly Engage, that’s just an extra.
So yes, I agree with your second paragraph. The narrative can support it, but the narrative doesn’t need to support it.
I’d say “Directly Engage” is triggered when you face enough foes to create a threat. It follows the “To do it, do it” ethos of PbtA.
For Robin, I’d say a group of thugs is a challenge, and if he fails, he’d be taking a condition that’d either represent him wasting a lot of time (hopeless, angry) while the main villain continued their plan. If he fails to avoid their blows, he’d have to fictionally ESCAPE the scrum, which is bad if there’s a bomb set to go off or the Penguin starts to flee.
Just want to jump in and say – “Don’t feel too bad; You’re trying to learn how to play a game that you basically don’t have yet.” Or to put it another way, the three PDFs that are available right now do not in any way represent the entirety of game. You’ve basically got the equivalent of a few quick reference sheets that you’re trying to learn the game from. The actual game text, when it comes out, should be much easier to learn from. 🙂
This conversation is great! And definitely, I want to emphasize what Mike Pureka said—a lot more will be explained in the book than you’re seeing just with these three sheets. 🙂
Some things I wanted to comment on:
– “Directly Engage” is the name of the move for ease of reference, but the trigger is “When you directly engage a threat,” as Adam Goldberg is pointing to. If you don’t think the other side is a threat, then the move doesn’t trigger. So that means sometimes, a situation that’s a directly engage for some PCs won’t be for others. Robin might be directly engaging a gang of toughs with crowbars and wrenches. But Superboy might not be (after all, how are they really going to hurt him?). This is important to note because chances are that if you don’t think the other side could realistically inflict a powerful blow, then they’re probably not a threat.
– When you roll a hit on directly engage, you trade blows. In the Villain section of the GM sheets, there’s an area all about “Villains in a Fight,” and it says there that “When a villain gets hit hard, make them mark a condition as appropriate.” Pretty much without fail, “trading blows” from a directly engage roll means that the villain is “getting hit hard.”
– What Matt Morton says is great, and I want to emphasize a piece or two. Conditions on PCs mean that the PC is taking a -2 ongoing to particular moves. What’s more, when you take a powerful blow, you roll + conditions marked, and rolling high is bad on that move. So conditions will stack up and make your life generally harder, right up until you’re taken out by a powerful blow or by needing to mark a condition and being unable to. For villains, you choose what conditions they have when you write them up (as per the villain section on the GM sheet). And then whenever they mark a condition, you should follow it up by having the villain immediately make one of the condition moves. When Magneto gets Angry after Cyclops blasts him in the face, he immediately starts yelling at Cyclops, screaming that the X-Man is nothing more than a puppet of Xavier, not his own person even slightly (lashing out at any vulnerability). For both PCs and villains, when they need to mark a condition and can’t, they’re completely out, and you the GM get to say how.
– Finally, Derrick Kapchinsky’s explanation of soft versus hard moves is great. I just want to add on that it helps me to think about soft moves as providing the chance for reaction, while hard moves go straight to results. Soft move: “The Iron Bear picks up the car and throws it at you! What do you do?” Hard move: “The Iron Bear picks up the car and throws it at you! It hits you and sends you smashing into the building. Mark Afraid—you had no idea he was that strong!—and you should probably roll to take a powerful blow, too! So you’re picking yourself up from the wreckage of the building you just slammed through, and you can hear Iron Bear roaring through the hole. What do you do?”
Brendan included an important detail in that you only roll for something that matters. Super boy can just toss thugs around…his fiction is stonger in that way.
Robin can probably shut down the hospital alarm system easily by hacking the system…he can just do it….but may need to roll to take control of braniacs drones.
And yes…fiction can be it’s own punishment without conditions.
Hmmm. Okay. (Dropping money on Dungeonworld is not possible: I’m coming off over a year of unemployment and my one gift was supporting the kickstarter for Masks. And that gift has to last me for quite a while.)
So two new questions that came up while I was exchanging email with two friends to try a playtest. (Which is why I’ve been asking all the qs.)
A Nova can roll to see how much Burn there is. The 7-9 statement looks off to me. It’s 6-: get 2 Burn and 3 conditions; 7-9: get a condition; 10+: get 3 Burn. It looks like 7-9 ought to be 2 Burn and a condition, or 3 Burn and a condition. I suspect the latter.
Is there any reason a Nova can’t “stack” Burn by rolling twice to prepare? Yes, there’s a risk of self-damage (conditions are very likely) but it could be done, I think.
And when someone rolls + Conditions for taking a powerful blow, that’s the number of conditions, not the total modifier of all conditions? That is, if a character has three conditions, the roll becomes 2d6+3, not 2d6+6 (the modifier).
This is getting long, so new questions will be new posts.
I agree about the Nova’s move. I’ll wait for someone official to speak to that though.
I don’t think there’s any reason you couldn’t charge up repeatedly, but it would be a rare situation in which circumstances would let you just sit around and power up repeatedly.
And lastly, yeah, it’s +NumberofConditions, not modifier or anything.
The key to the Nova results is that the “hold 3 Burn” isn’t “on a 10+”, it’s “on a hit“, and a hit is anything 7+, making the 7-9 result intended to be read as “additionally, do X thing” (in this case, mark a Condition on top of the 3 Burn for rolling 7+).
I had this same question come up at my table, since this style of result shows in a couple of places in the rules, and the phrasing isn’t the simplest thing to parse out — particularly for folks not well-familiar with PbtA language — when a lot of the other moves have explicit “10+, 7+, miss” result lineups. So yeah, it translates to:
10+: hold 3 Burn
7-9: hold 3 Burn and mark a Condition
6-: hold 2 Burn and mark three Conditions
And I don’t think there’s any hard ruling on repeated uses of Burn, but I can say that if someone at my table wanted to do a Dragon Ball Z style screaming-chargeup scene for a while with a risk of passing out or exploding from piling Conditions, that sounds awesome, and I feel like the trade off is basically built into the rules already. Going into battle with all the Burn in the world but being a hot mess of emotions before anyone’s even done anything sounds ripe for fun, dramatic times. 🙂
Ooops, good catch. Yeah. It might be clearer if every move used one syntax or the other, but you’re absolutely right about ‘on a hit’.
Hmm.. So I think my takeaway here is that I’ve been too hesitant to toss conditions around. I’ve been viewing it as every character having 5 HP – so I’m hesitant to hit against that unless I have a good reason – and I’m otherwise hesitant to use them because it feels like I’m unreasonably imposing on the characters by defining their emotions.
Greg Trent In both of the fights I ran, I dealt out consequences as often as the rules allowed, basically on every hard move. Of my four players, only one person ended the fight with more than one consequence: The Nova. And his extra consequence was from powering up. Remember that Comfort and Support can be in combat moves and that defending can help clear a condition.
As for defining their emotions, only in a very small handful of cases does the MC decide the condition. Let your players decide if getting smacked around makes them Angry, or Insecure, or Hopeless. If they don’t feel anything at all, then either their foe wasn’t a threat and they shouldn’t have rolled or they aren’t playing teenagers. Cause teenagers feel those kind of emotions all the time.
There’s an implication of your very last sentence that I think makes it click for me. Performing an action puts yourself in a position to take a condition/be emotionally influenced.