Influence Pedalling Playbook Addition
In the first few games of Masks it was really hard for the players to give, take, lose or use Influence over other characters because they had written down on their playbooks whether they had influence over character, or if they had given influence to a character. And because it was written on the sheet, and no one wanted to erase these notes, it got to the stage where players were collecting influence, but not using it (or losing it) because of a lack of an eraser.
I’m not sure if you’ve had this issue, but as the GM it was annoying.
I know we could use the Influence Cards but… yours truly does tend to forget to bring them to the game, they do tend to get lost on the table, and how do you keep a record between games of who has what influence?
So, what I came up with is an Influence Pedalling addition to the playbooks where we use Post-It notes (which I call Influence Tags) to keep track of whom a character has influence over, a section to keep a supply of Post-It notes of your characters Influence Tags that have not yet been handed to anyone in the game (every character should have 1 tag for every PC in the game) and a section to note down which adults no longer have influence over the character.
(See the attached photos in comment section)
After setting this addition to the playbooks up the players actually started trading influence, and using them against other characters because it was so easy to hand the influence tags between the players with no additional writing needed. It was easy and the players liked it.
Anyway, your mileage may vary, but if you want to try this out for yourselves here is the Influence Pedalling sheet I made.
Photos of using the influence pedalling sheet with Post-it notes:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/z3zIgHQGhwPbDBx5ONxyUNi-KINW2U4UwLW6rQG_N-C2JVOqYu6WcXRSfqPeopisDLoqmyHOQwjPg6dVXoewpzwzKtbga7fEttE=s0
Second photo:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/6dUYC5Eez14sdKFOdiKbV6eLz7BZDMlkxf772dfupDaqyrZFjjtl3jm1pEq1WbIKuTW-keIoHmlLCjG0nBj9goANmT0x9NoXSdA=s0
Wow, this is hot stuff!
For my first game, I mocked up my character sheet in Word and made sure to have a space to record both who my character had Influence on and vice versa. The Post-It idea is rather good.
Nice design! It looks sharp. We have index cards in a paperclip, one per person we have influence over with their names on them. (Usually written with colored pencil in a way evocative of the character design).
Our GM, Alexi Sargeant, keeps separate bundles for non-adult NPCs who have shifting influence over us.
Leah Libresco Oh, I never thought about something for non-adult NPCs. I’ll have to keep that in mind. And I like the idea of Index cards.
One challenge I have is keeping tabs of which adults have lost influence over which heroes
Jason Corley Honestly, at that point I might just keep a list, since it’s something that usually marks a significant shift in the relationship.
Leah Libresco Yes, I have characters sign Influence cards for others (including young NPCS). It makes the handing over of Influence a big moment. Plus, it’s dramatic when PCs gain Influence over NPCs, because I write the NPC’s name on an index card in an appropriate color and hand it over. Once or twice there’s been a dramatic moment where we learned a character’s name from this moment of handing over Influence.