I’m currently attempting my first time DMing a Masks game (and my first time DMing ever) and had a couple of things come up that I’m not quite sure how to handle.
1. I have a team that includes a few ranged characters, engaging a villain who is a “punch them with his fists” kind of guy. If a ranged character is attacking someone who can’t reach them, is that still a Directly Engage, since they can’t really trade blows?
2. Another character directly engaged a different villain, and chose the “create an opportunity” option. He used the villain’s cape to temporarily blind her and give an ally an opening to strike. But it looks like a villain should make their Condition Move before anybody else makes a move. So am I supposed to have her make a Condition Move first, or wait until this teammate takes advantage of the opportunity and sucker punches her? And if she gets sucker punched, is that another Directly Engage move?
I’d appreciate any advice. Thanks!
Hi,
1. That depends. What kind of attack is the ranged attack and what kind of powers does the melee villain have? If it’s for example bullets vs martial arts then it should be over quickly for the villain. However, if the attack could be re-directed, of if the villain is strong enough to throw something at the hero then Directly Engage is how I’d call it.
That’s all I’ve got at the moment, hope that helps
1. Trading blows could also be villains calling out the heroes for not facing them head on. Otherwise if the villain isn’t able to strike back they aren’t really a threat and the move wouldn’t trigger, instead resolve the attack in the narrative with out rolls.
2. If the villain marked a condition she does a condition move, but you should flavor it based on that opening. If she can’t see maybe she starts indiscriminately using her powers on everything near by. Its still dangerous to attack her but since she can’t see a hero can more easily avoid her attacks then if she saw them coming.
Follow the fiction. If someone can’t fight back, it’s not a directly engage! Keep in mind what your bruiser villain’s powers are, though, because they may have other creative ways of duking it out at range… Throwing things, grappling with some telephone wire, smashing the ground beneath someone’s feet, etc.
As for your second question, that will very much depend on what’s going on. Creating an opportunity might imply a gap between the damage and the Condition Move — it might not! That is very much a judgment call. You have to interpret what “creating an opportunity” looks like and what the villain could or couldn’t do.
I feel that if a character is making a purposeful point to engage a threat… that is that they are aiming or moving to be able to attack them then that is “direct”. Indirect fire from a ranged point of view would be like a hail mary shot, or mortar shots, or something like that. It doesn’t necessarily seem logical but technically an aimed ranged shot is a direct attack. However… the question is if the enemy is, at that point a “threat”.
If the melee based enemy has nothing within your world that means that they can be a threat to a ranged character, then while your heroes are directly engaging this villain, the villain isn’t a threat to them.
IMO it would make more sense that a ranged character decides to do something to the melee villain and you decide on the implications of that. It seems to me that it is likely that it would make sense that the villain could take a condition. They don’t even need to take the condition, fiction wise it would be entirely right to take an Angry condition move immediately anyway, right?
So they just get hit by the ranged attack and as a result escalate the situation dangerously, or break the environment, put innocents in danger.. no need to trade blows but also an opportunity to move the scenario in such a way that constant ranged attacks aren’t going to be fruitful for long.
As for 2… several choices make sense. First of all… does the villain need to take a condition then? If they’ve not been hit hard (psychologically as well as physically) then there’s a question as to whether they even take a condition. If you still think they should have a condition then for me it comes down to what type of character the villain is set against the situation the heroes are in…
Are the heroes ready to take the opportunity immediately? If not then the condition move should come first.
Is the villain impulsive, fast or otherwise instinctually responsive? If so then the condition move should probably come first.
I can see in my mind both ends of the scale, where a “dumb” villain gets blinded by their own cape and initially gets confused by it while the hero’s team mate is already primed to take the opportunity, and so what the heroes want to do should come first… but then I also see the other end where the person being hoodwinked is a ninja and so aside from the question of whether they’d get a condition in that situation, they’d probably have reflexes that mean they take their condition move straight away, lightning fast.
Lee Griffin beat me to it, but the key for #1 is that the threat to the PC doesn’t have to be direct or physical. Perhaps, in the cause of a missed roll, the villain grabbed an innocent bystander as a shield, or avoided the attack and slung a successful taunt at the hero, inflicting a condition.
1. If the villain doesn’t represent a threat to the character, then it isn’t a directly engage. The player should instead use unleash your powers, or you, the GM, should rule it as an ‘automatic hit’ and have the villain mark a condition.
2. According to the GM sheet, “when a villain marks a condition, they make a move from the condition moves list immediately, before the PCs act again”.
Actually, Unleash Your Power is only triggered when the character is trying to affect the environment or extend his senses, essentially when the character is trying to do something extra or unusual with their abilities.
It’s another one of those Moves that tends to get overused because of confusion.
Unleash Your Power is also used for overcoming an obstacle, and sometimes mooks are obstacles.
But the Move is specifically triggered by doing “something complicated, dangerous, and difficult”. I would submit that if dealing with the mooks is not Engaging a Threat, then unless you’re using your powers in an unusual way, it’s not Unleashing Your Powers either.
The book states it quite explicitly: “It is definitely not the ‘use your powers’ move…”
And we’re not talking about lighting a cigarette with your pyrokinesis, which is obviously what is meant by a “use your powers move.” We’re talking about, say, a dozen Doombots between you and the Cosmic Coil Array. Doombots are mooks, not worth giving Conditions to, and they’re an obstacle between you and the Macguffin. The threat isn’t the Doombots, it’s being kept from the Macguffin, and if your power is Smashing, then Unleashing will look alot like Engage when it obviously isn’t.
Shrug. It’s a personal taste, I suppose. I would definitely classify such an action as Engaging a Threat, since the consequences of failing the roll fit more those of that Move (the character is dogpiled, for instance, or a stray shot hits the McGuffin, causing it to fall to the edge of the bottomless shaft behind the pedestal it sat on). Same with succeeding (e.g. you grab the McGuffin, avoid any injiries, or cause the Doombots to fall back in confusion).
If the doombots aren’t a threat, then I’d wonder why a super hero needs to over extend their power to get past them? It depends on your fiction, naturally, but in a comic book I’d expect super heroes to be making short work of minions, without much effort. I’d much rather as a gm consider that their choice to try to get through the bots gives me an opportunity to make a move that moves the story forward
That’s a perfectly valid approach and exactly the point of my original post. A critical skill for GM-ing (or playing) Masks is gaining an understanding of how and when Moves are triggered. Not every action is automatically resolved as a Move (i.e. roll dice to resolve).