Random thought: using Masks to run a dramatic Mecha game. The more physical and superpowered side of your playbook represents your mecha’s abilities, while you as the pilot take on the social role. Mecha shows (at least the ones I’m familiar with) tend to feature young protagonists with suitably volatile emotions, so I think it would be a good fit.
My Sunday evening is free this weekend; anybody want to test this out with a one-shot?
You should also take a look at the Souls of Steel PbtA game, whose community is here: https://plus.google.com/communities/102943199048807904747
“Souls of Steel is an ace pilot military drama RPG loosely based on the Apocalypse World system and inspired by shows like Battlestar Galactica and Gundam Wing. In Souls of Steel you play a team of pilots fighting together in a much larger war. Will you triumph over the enemy or will your internal conflicts ultimately tear you apart?”
I kind of figured there would be a PbtA mecha game out there already. “There’s a PbtA hack for it” is rapidly becoming a law of the universe. 😛
I’ll mos def check it out, thanks for the link! Though the pitch sounds a bit darker than what I’d like out of the genre.
That’s the beauty of the underlying engine, you can see if there’s anything in one that scratches an itch you have in the other. It’s not either-or. 🙂
Sounds like a good fit.
Masks seems like a really nice engine for settings where all the characters have the same basic gimmick but find their own spin on it.
I’ve been making notes towards a Hogwarts-style game about teen wizards using Masks with the idea that they all start out young and dumb and develop from there. The neat thing about PbtA games is that the characters start out fairly standardized and get weirder and more differentiated as they pick up interesting histories and new moves from other playbooks, so that works well for a setting where the young mech pilot customizes his rig.