Is it valid for a Protege to target their Mentor with the “Someone permanently loses Influence over you” Advance? Or at that point, if they’re never going to care what their Mentor thinks of them again, should the character just be changing playbooks?
Share your thoughts below!
I’ve seen it in-game. As for whether that means they should change playbooks, that’s sort of on the player. I’ve seen many comics/shows over the years where a protege has a falling out with their mentor but they come back around. In this case, I do believe the GM should be asking questions about their relationship, and if things evolve, don’t forget the GM can take influence (back) as a move if the fiction suggests it.
So removing influence doesn’t mean you don’t care what they think. It means you can hold true to yourself no matter what they say. Influence is very specifically an immature way of having relationships. If the Protege permanently cannot be influenced by the Mentor it simply means the Mentor cannot shake their knowledge of who they are. It could reflect a deeper level of understanding between them even!
AD Kohler I hesitate to give any NPC Influence over a PC who has spent their hard-earned Advancement on permanently taking Influence away. While, of course, the fiction must be respected, that seems iffy to me.
Jason Corley I have trouble imagining a Mentor/Protege relationship where Protege cannot be shaped by their mentor’s guidance. I mean, I can absolutely picture them having a deeper understanding of one another, but at that point it doesn’t seem like a teacher/student relationship anymore.
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock it’s simply a more mature teacher/student relationship. You can take on board what they say, it’s just that you know who you are.
I think they could remain the protege, at least for a while, because the severed relationship may be doing as much to shape the character’s self-image as the mentorship was. Over the longer term, I’d guess a playbook change would happen.
Depends entirely on how the advance gets reflected in the fiction. I would have a deep conversation with my player about the reason for the change and the character’s reaction (probably after or in-between sessions so it wouldn’t use up table time). If it became obvious that the playbook didn’t fit the new characterization of the character, I would likely recommend resolving the core themes their portrayal of the playbook had brought up in the fiction and then considering one of the playbook retirement/change advances.
Alfred Rudzki Hitchcock I missed that it was the advancement. At a glance I thought you were talking about the consequence of a move. Yes, that does seem different.
No, they shouldn’t change playbooks.. They should get a new/different Mentor.
What’s the story-reasoning behind cutting off the mentor? In our game, the Protege’s mentor was rather dark and secretive. His method of being a hero involved killing dangerous villains outright. He used his relationship with our team leader, the Protege, to manipulate our team. He only barely trusted the Protege, and kept secrets from the rest of us, to the point where our secret base’s computer locked the rest of us out when searching for information about stuff he didn’t think we should know.
My Bull promptly cut off his influence. The Protege still listening to him was a cause of team friction as he tried to balance our team’s idealistic world-views with his mentor’s cynical dark perspective.
If the Protege had even gotten to the point of cutting him off, we’d have had to decide what that meant. Did he find a new mentor with a philosophy he agreed with more? Or did he just grow up enough to move past the old man? Whatever the case, picking that advancement is a significant event that should have deep story roots and consequences.
Losing influence over someone does not mean you cut them off. It means they can’t emotionally bounce you around like a pinball
This happened in our game! It was hella dramatic and kicked off this whole character arc that culminated in getting their ass beat by their mentor, sieging the not!batcave, defecting to become the protege of a one of their mentor’s villains (the love child of Deathstroke and Hank Scorpio), and their former mentor forming a new team of teen supers to replace the player characters as the preeminent teen super team in Halcyon City (which they didn’t take well).
This obviously kicked off a whole other arc of incredibly entertaining drama, which kicked off another one and so on. Because Masks is designed well.
Jason Corley I get what you’re saying, but I at least think permanently removing influence specifically in the case of the Protege is more significant than you’re suggesting. For any other playbook for any other NPC, sure, removing influence is just not being emotionally vulnerable anymore — but I have a hard time getting behind it in the context of the Playbook whose entire deal is “relationship with a teacher” has cancelled that teacher’s influence permanently. I get what you’re saying and appreciate your input 👍 but I don’t think this is business as usual.
Andrew Taylor with the excellent answer
Grey Kitten similar situation. Shady broody mentor with future vision who bats around the Protege like a cat toy, fulfilling esoteric temporal necessities to get her way and make him do what she wants him to do, and he’s deeply fed up with it. Blah blah blah too much content to share, cutting to last session, she called him out for screwing up in a super fight, and blamed on him neglecting his training, how he can’t be the weak link on a team. She pointed out it doesn’t help that he keeps pushing all of his teammates away with his shitty attitude. He didn’t like when she called his behavior “tantrums,” so he stormed out, said he doesn’t need this, and told her she could go to hell.
I agree with Andrew Taylor – now is the perfect time for that Protege to be approached by one of the mentor’s old rivals with an offer of training and mentoring that comes with the respect he deserves as the hero he has already shown himself to be.
You thought I was a villain? That’s because you’ve been listening to that old mentor, and you already know she doesn’t know anything! She’s the real villain, just look at the way she manipulated you? Do heroes treat people like that? Are we a team?
I’m deeply disappointed in myself for not thinking “time to team up with the Joker” was the solution all on my own. There’s options here. There’s the mentor’s ex-girlfriend who knows more about the protege’s life than he does and also dislikes said mentor, and there’s a police detective who has been trying to get the Protege away from the mentor for months, and then there’s AEGIS who tried to arrest the mentor last season which put the Protege on their radar when he beat up their agents. They’ve actually got a lot of good ugly choices here.
The Protege in our game (mentored by Penny Dreadnought) just agreed to train with Penny’s nemesis (Quartermaster), but he’s trying to have it both ways and keep them from finding out about each other. (I’m looking forward to the hijinks that will ensue).
I agree, adopting a different mentor is a strong response to rejecting influence, but I still think being shaped by the absence of the relationship (still having your mentor’s Label affect moves) is true to life.