8 thoughts on “hi there”

  2. I’d set up a love letter scenario. And remove any playbooks from your selection that benefit more from multiple sessions of play. Off the top of my head the Doomed and the Beacon.

  3. I’ve had pretty good luck doing one-shots with Masks right out of the box, and letting everyone pick whatever they want. The most fun part is going through the When We First Came Together part and telling each other the story. Expect that, plus learning the game, plus character generation to go about 1-2 hours (closer to 2 if it’s players who haven’t played an Apocalypse engine game before).

    Then don’t spend a lot of time with build up. Launch right into a fight and let the drama happen naturally. It’s easier to teach moves in combat than in talking, I find.

    There’s merit to the suggestion to leave out the playbooks that are more focused on long term ideas, but even so, they have plenty to offer in the short term. So I’d say leave them in, but it certainly will help keep things focused without them.

    Just keep it simple and keep it moving.

  6. Beacon is perfectly fine. I find it’s the most popular playbook.

    If players haven’t advanced in the first half of the session, give it a free advance.

  7. I’ve played in a couple of one-off Masks games, and in the past few weeks I’ve run a few one-shots of it, so I’ve got some experience in this department. Off the top of my head, as a general plan for running gameplay:

    – Between comics, cartoons and the recent glut of superhero movies everyone has some point of reference for superheroic action these days. Make comparisons for ease-of-explanation.

    – Set up an iconic scenario to capitalize on that familiarity and start with the exciting stuff already happening: a bank robbery, a break-in at the museum, a chase through rush-hour traffic — something classic and action-oriented. Players are better at interacting with familiar scenery.

    – When they’re all ready to start kicking butt, have your heroes make the Team move and get a Team Pool going. Go into detail about what Team does later, when it matters, for dramatic effect.

    – Have a 1-2 Condition group of a-dozen-or-more henchmen/minions/evil robots. This makes sure there’s plenty of different threats for players to interact with and plenty of ways for you to make GM moves. Taking down lots of goons also lets your heroes feel like powerful crime-fighting badasses.

    – Have a 2-3 Condition main boss villain. Make them interesting. Give them a different objective than their henchmen, to divide the heroes’ attentions.

    – Have the main villain mock or talk down to the heroes, then use Influence to try and shift their labels. It’s an important mechanic, and it’ll make your players hate them.

    – Follow the action sequence with police, media and/or concerned citizens arriving on the scene for an easy way to touch on Influence and the social moves that might not have come up during the action.

    – Don’t force the “triumphant celebration” and “share a vulnerability” moves. They’re a bit awkward to explain, and in a one-shot there’s a good chance they won’t come up anyway. And that’s okay.

    – The end-of-session move sneakily tricks players into explaining what they thought were the highlights of the session. Revel in the recap, and take notes for next time.

  8. Lenny Pacelli​ I had a similar history when I first brought Masks to the table. The biggest problem I had was keeping the moves in the forefront of my mind. They are so different from the moves in other PbtA games.

    It may benefit you to run a short session for yourself where you play the MC and two characters.

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