I’m about to start running a game at my local club, and two options have equal interest from the potential players: Apocalypse World and Masks.
I’m having trouble deciding, so please help me out by enthusing about your favourite things about either or both of these games. Hopefully this will in turn enthuse me, which is good in itself and might also help me decide.
In Masks you play good people – or at least people trying to do good.
In Apocalypse World the morality of characters is all over the place.
In the end Masks is a much more optimistic game in general. When you want to be optimistic in Apocalypse World the game will fight you much harder.
I like both games a ton but the tone is very very different.
AW will make you earn your happy ending, or be used for someone else’s. Personally I prefer it (disclaimer: have not read Masks) but it probably works best with a small, tight group. I feel Masks might be easier, having the basic setup of being good guys.
First, I echo what T. Franzke said. Second, I personally think Masks is a lot easier to roleplay. Ethics aside, everybody is or was a teenager at some point, and pretty much everyone knows superheroes, plus emotional action is baked into the mechanics on pretty much every level.
By contrast, AW characters are starving wolves, creatures of violence, sex and deprivation. I like it in theory, but when I’ve tried to play I’ve personally found it a lot harder to relate to and portray, because I just don’t have the fictional touchstones or life experience to work from.
Masks is easy to misinterpret as an action game, but once you move past that it sings in a way I’ve never gotten Apocalypse World to sing.
The moves in aw do a great way of new narrative elements to the game. I don’t feel masks is to the same level in this regard.
For the sort of semi-random folk who are likely to show up at a club game, I’d go with Masks. It’s lighter and easier to roll with than AW.
Masks is really interesting because it’s a super hero game, that is not about superhero-ing.
That’s also it’s downfall if people haven’t played a lot of story games.
For newbs, AW is more accessible.
It may depend on what Genre the players (or you) are more comfortable with.
I have never seen a Mad Max movie (except the latest on) and have very little experience with the Post-Apoc Genre in general.
But comics? That is my jam!
I think aw does a great job of enforcing the theme with the rules while it’s easier to get confused as to what to do with masks
For what it is worth, I think AW is much weaker at One-Shots than Masks.
Re: one shots, Masks takes absolute ages to get through character creation in my experience (everybody has their five playbook questions to answer, plus their relationships, plus the “when the team came together” questions, and everyone is bouncing off of each other). It creates really cool stuff, but AW is a lot quicker to get running.
I think the opt in answering for hx in AW 2e improves the creation of the relationship map a lot.