Haven’t read the book properly yet, but wondering if anyone’s done an adaptation for playing as teen villains?
I used to play City of Heroes/Villains where we had a RP group, The Wasted Youth; we’ve just started a tabletop game in the same world, but the system we’re using isn’t great, so hoping to sell the group on an alternate.
That could be cool (although I’d probably be inclined to do it with Smallville, myself).
Out of curiosity, what system are you currently using?
As long as you flipped everything around, it should work. As long as the teen villains have mentors to look up to and who can influence the PCs, I think it’ll work.
You would propably need different labels – and with these labels would come different basic moves. right? Defending the innocent is not a very villain thing to do. Maybe one of them does it but that would need its own Playbook most likely.
I don’t think it is as easy as it looks.
Oooh. Good point Tim Franzke.
If you wanted a PbtA experience where you played supervillain teens, I’d mine MonsterHearts for material, too. Start by adopting the “spendable influence” rules in the custom moves section, which is taken straight from MH strings. Then figure out what each villain’s “darkest self” is. Other sources of inspiration might be the future self moves from the innocent playbook.
It’s tough because the supervillain stands apart from society. It’s hard to make labels hit hard for them. They can just shrug it off.
The Innocent reverses all the Basic Moves. Start there.
.
Honestly, I think you could mostly redefine how you interpret the “Savior” label and play it out of the box. Maybe a few specific playbooks would need some Moves adjusted, but mostly only for tone, not mechanic.
Here’s the thing… villains don’t generally think of themselves as villains. Magneto has a +3 Savior label, you know. Freak, Danger, Superior, Mundane… all of these are pretty standard motivations for villains too. It’s just how they react to them.
Think a super-villain teen just shrugs off Freak? No, they go take their freak out on other people! “Call me a freak? Let me show you what a freak I can be!” Look at Zero from Generation Hope.
If you play Masks as villain teens, you basically just need to adjust the tone. Certain things become more problematic like figuring out why you stay together, and everyone should be on the same page that you can’t just betray the whole group over and over without consequences, but if you’re playing with people you trust for a good story, I think it’s a pretty simple adjustment.
What kind of villain characters are you looking to portray?
Truly evil unredeemable bad people probably wouldn’t be a good fit for Masks. The game is about self discovery, so flat characters who just want to steal and kill for the fun of it would be uninteresting.
However, characters who believe strongly in a mission and are willing to make tough choices and sacrifice anything to meet their goals who struggle with how this makes them appear as villains to a populace that doesn’t understand would work in a Masks framework.