Protege’s mentor: how much space should he take in the game?
Hi guys,
I’m currently running a game with a protege in it. I’m struggling with his mentor. I don’t want him to be like “go here, do that”, nor do I want him to do the heavy lifting. I feel like it could give the players that “we are second grade heroes” feeling.
On the other hand he should be a pretty important character. So we should see him do awesome stuff sometimes.
Also he embodies superior and denies savior. I have trouble with the latter: it sounds to me like “don’t be so heroic kid, saving people is not that important”.
And of course there are other characters to whom he’s not that important. How could I make him present “just enough”?
Superior vs. Savior: Saving single people is not important. In the end you can’t be everywhere and saving person 1 means you can’t save 2. Only care about the really big stuff – that is what is important. Save the world, don’t bother to saving people.
Just one example. Also ask the player what that combo means.
Sub
Thank goodness for television and the internet. The Mentor can be awesome on the other side of the city.
A Superior mentor might want to keep their protege out of trouble. Basically as a weapon of last resort / chosen one thing for when BBEG finally comes. The protege going public could seriously hurt the Mentor’s plan.
I super picture a Superior mentor being a Mr. Fantastic type. They know better than anybody else the way to save Halcyon city from the real threats, the major threats. Yes, you may need to stick one of your friends in a rocket and blast them into space because they are too dangerous. That’s the cost of saving people.
I like having the mentor of The Protege be pretty busy. They are a potential resource, but one that comes with strings and hooks. What I try to remember is to separate The Protege from The Legacy. The Protege says ‘They think you’ve got what it takes’ and many of the moves tap into the mentor as a resource. Sure, there’s some obligation, but it’s a less heavy burden than The Legacy holds. The Protege is Robin, sure, but it’s Robin as leader of the Teen Titans.
Definitely wait to see what direction the team is going and then order him to do something else.
The mentor can totally show up after they’ve defeated a villain to chew them out for doing it “wrong.” He could get on their case, especially the protege’s, for allowing too much collateral damage, for ignoring or missing some piece of the villains’ plot that their actions accidentally helped along, Or, if they’ve got the guilty condition, he could fuel that more by praising them for the parts they feel worst about and making them question why they’re trying to be heroes in the first place.
The mentor should be adding drama and tension, never solving the team’s problems for them. If he’s going to swoop in and tell them where to go and what to do, it’s great if they’ve already figured out they need to go to place A to deal with X and he insists they need to go to place B (not waiting to hear their objections) to deal with Y. Both should be important, with consequences for ignoring the other.
Thanks for the comments. It looks more or less like I played him so far: very busy, expecting his protegé to solve problems, showing up in the end to comment on the actions, sending the protege where he could not go. Also introducing people (because it was convinient at the moment).
But he ends up lacking credibility as a hero: he is supposed to be a silver age hero and to embody something attractive for the protege.
I guess the best thing to do right now is to talk about it with the protoege player.
Can you find a good place for the mentor to really rock that Superior Hero thing? Maybe give something that he makes a hard choice without difficulty or explaining himself, then he can sit down with the protégé and explain why things have to be that way. Ideally somewhere that the protege will agree only when it is explained!
To me, the superior vs. savior is because you can be a hero without being a martyr. A superior hero is clever, smart, capable, and arrogant (whether that’s a perceived or actual trait). A savior is selfless, guarding, protecting, and moralizing (whether that’s a perceived or actual trait). So a superior hero knows how to solve a situation and does it, while a savior hero is more about defending the innocent. You can be both, or you can lean more towards one or the other. In the mentor’s case, he embraces one and shuns the other.
And perhaps the mentor is one that is a hero because he’s good at it. He’s superior because he solves crimes, but he’s not a savior because he doesn’t want to lecture you on morals. It might not matter to him if you solve a problem the “right” way so long as you solve the problem. So perhaps conflict with his protege will come about if the player doesn’t actually solve the problem, or maybe the player stops to save a puppy while the villain collapses a building. It could just be that he believes in the “bigger picture” quite adamantly and wants his protege to see the same picture.
One idea I found helpful was to use the labels that the mentor embodies and denies to set up a pair of hooks. The superior side of the superior/savior hook pair has the impulse “present opportunities for action” and the conflict is all about being proactive vs. reactive–so I might have the superior embodying savior denying mentor be a lot more involved in the hero’s actions. By contrast, the mentor in my own game embodies superior and denies danger. Since the superior part of that pair has “to point out failures of control and planning”, I’m playing that mentor as much more reactive.
Watchmen has good examples of Superior+ Savior- heroes: Ozymandias is a genius who subjugated everything to the pursuit of his goal, preventing nuclear war. Everything else is expendable, friends, employees, etc. This type of mentor might spend all his time preparing to battle his nemesis, or heading off alien invasion, to the point that helping individuals is a waste of time and a distraction from his main priority.
The other example is Doctor Manhattan, who basically wants to explore the universe in its finest detail, and needs to be goaded by others to do anything useful. This type could be a super-scientist or wizard in his tower.
I’m just starting to get into Masks, but it occurred to me that one of the best examples of Mentor/Protege I can think of is Bruce Wayne/Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond.
Wayne is there advising (and criticizing) Terry through his adventures, but it’s Terry who’s facing the perils and making the decisions.