I have played a decent amount of PbTA games, so I get the general XP system. But I have some concerns about the play length the current potential system seems to set up.
You gain potential every time you fail a roll, you gain potential every time you cant shift your labels, you gain potential from a number of team related rolls.
It seems like characters will level out and complete their advancement arcs in 5-8 sessions, which makes for a fairly short campaign
Was their a reason for setting the potential arc at such a small number? Is it just meant for even shorter games than other PbTA games, or am I missing something?
In my experience so far, it doesn’t move that fast. In our games, “can’t shift your labels” has never come up. In the game I run, we’ve been at it for 6 sessions and no one is ready to advance out of the game.
8 sessions seems about right for a “season” to us, but we’re used to Monsterhearts, where 5-8 sessions per season was the norm.
Also interested to see what other replies you get.
IME, masks is one of the slowest-advancing AW games–Between the team pool and the ability to shift labels and play to their strengths, characters didn’t roll misses very often. I think advancement with Core AW, Urban Shadows, and especially Monsterhearts was all quicker.
Okay cool. It was a perspective of looking at the numbers and not having actually played yet. Glad to know from playing that it was just a misunderstanding.
Riley Crowder, a couple things we want to call out for experience in Masks:
– You actually don’t mark Potential when you would advance our Labels past +3 or below -2—you mark a condition, instead. Conditions will give you a -2 on certain moves, though, so that’ll actually help you miss more often!
– On that note, we’ve seen advancement rates vary in Masks, depending upon how the player chooses to play. In general, potential in Masks incentivizes (a) taking conditions, and (b) trying things you’re not clearly good at. If you play a character who sticks to all your highest Labels, or who steers clear of conditions, you’ll advance more slowly. If you rack up a bunch of conditions and keep rolling on lower Labels, you’ll get in all kinds of trouble—but you’ll advance like crazy! So in some ways, this all comes down to how fast a player actually wants to advance.
– 5-8 sessions would make for a solid Masks campaign, but it’s by no means a limiter. You only have to end a character’s story when they take that “retire” advancement, and you’d only have to take that after you’ve taken all the others—so that’s a good 14 advancements before you have to retire (and even more if you count those from changing playbooks)! If you feel like your character arc ends after 5-8 sessions, though, you’re welcome to shoot for that retirement advancement and move on. But if you’d like to keep playing, then you can try to deal with conditions quickly, or stay away from low Labels as best you can, and try to prolong your character’s story.
Let us know if that helps answer some of your concerns!
5-8 sessions, if the math is right, sounds like a fantastically solid campaign to me.
I don’t know of any PbtA games that are really intended to run open ended, and I’ve never run an open ended game that came to a satisfying conclusion.
Aaron Griffin Just as an alternate data point, I played in an Apocalypse World game for a year and a half, retired my first character (Brainer/Skinner) around the 50xp mark and then played another (Boy and his Dog/Driver) for about 50xp, too. The campaign wrapped in a satisfying way, even though there were still clearly more adventures to come in the characters’ lives. Overall it was amazing, though I tend to prefer shorter, more succinct campaigns.
Bryanna Hitchcock Jeeze louise, what do you do with 50xp in AW?
🙂 All the things, Aaron Griffin , all the things. My Brainer managed to survive the really harrowing first part of the campaign and turn two would-be abusers into her personal bodyguards, eventually hooked up with the Operator and took over the hardhold we’d ended up at. They retired to run the place and not die. By the end she’d leveled up almost entirely in Brainer and was quite a way through Skinner as the Operator/Hardhold’s fortune teller.
Then the campaign took a turn as we got on board a super train travelling across the wasteland from Hardhold to Hardhold, usually bringing chaos and liberty from a succession of post-apoc, asshole overlords. I switched playbooks to a Boy and His Dog (loved it so much). He was looking for his parents, scientists who’d been kidnapped and forced to go to a high tech city of elites far far away. He grew up to be a Driver and pilot the zeppelin craft that were the only approach to the elite city.
The campaign certainly had some peaks and valleys and was really 4-5 different story arcs, but overall an epic experience.