3 thoughts on “I’ll be running Masks as a one shot soonish, any tips on GMing?”

  1. I think the main thing is to ask questions about the characters a lot and use the answers, this is for all PbtA games but I have found it work wonders to frame the setting for the Masks feel.

    I would nail the life is important part early enough – asking about family and friends gives touchtones to use. If people were endangered – asking how the hero felt about that helps to bring the uncertainties forward.

    Remember that people can give out influence at any time. When people that have influence over you tell how they see you – your labels shift if you don’t reject them. This dynamic works really well – you don’t need to fear it. 🙂

  2. tomi sarkkinen has good tips! Here are a couple other techniques and tips that we’ve found help out:

    (1) Have three (or so) villains ready before play begins, and ask each player to tie their character in to at least two of those villains during character creation. You get a tighter web of fiction this way, ensuring everybody is invested in the same nest of characters and villains, and it means you can easily pick one of the three for your villain in the opening fight. (And you are going to open up with a fight, just like it says in the “First Session” section, right? 😉 )

    If you have access to the Deck of Villainy, you can even print them out, 6-8 villains per page, and let the players choose some of their favorites to use. Hand each player a page, let them pick one villain they think looks cool, and then assemble that group at the center of the table. Still ask each player to make their character tie into at least two of the villains in the center. Depending on how many players you have, this may create a wider net, but it will give you more variety.

    (2) Always remember that villains make a villain move after they mark a condition. It can be easy to get swept up in the moment, to go with the awesome, but villains getting to act right after they mark a condition keeps giving the heroes something to react to. And it’s kind of awesome to have that moment where Magneto starts telling you about his inner emotions and reasons, right after you threw a tree into him.

    (3) Remind the players about the “non-combat” moves throughout the opening fight. All of the moves are in play at all times, and while you probably aren’t going to wind up “directly engaging a threat” in the middle of a discussion with your mom (or at least, we hope not), you can certainly “comfort or support” someone in the middle of a pitched battle, for example.

    (4) On the NPC side, use Influence to try to shift the PCs’ Labels. Remember that any NPC can do it (with maybe the exception of NPC peers of the PCs). Try to get in at least one Influence-usage per PC, if not more. If the PCs reject it, great! It doesn’t matter if you actually wind up changing their Labels, just so long as they are forced to either accept or reject the Influence. Again, remember villains can do it in the middle of the fight—it’s the classic, “We’ve just exchanged energy bolts, now we talk and I call you a foolish child!” moment.

    (5) If you can, try to get in both that one big fight, and then a scene or set of scenes allowing for a cool down, the consequences of the fight, and conversation, especially with the PCs talking to each other. Remind them that this is a great time to play to and clear conditions, either through moves like comfort or support, or through the specific condition actions. This will give your players both main sides of Masks, for sure.

  3. My biggest advice for one shots is not to rush through introductions, bonds and the story of “When we first teamed up.” Some people might not think of this as “playing,” but it sets up everything for the players about why they should care. I’ve run several 4-5 hour one shots of Masks and other PbtA games and it usually takes about 2 hours for everyone to glance through everything, make characters and tell that first story. Then we jump right into a big fight and then a few scenes about the aftermath.

    Everyone always has the same feedback: they loved the creation process, and therefore the fight and remaining scenes are more fun because they felt like they knew each character so intimately.

    PS: Don’t stress about setting up the context of beginning of the fight. Just tell them they’re in the middle of fighting X, a big move just happened, what do you do?

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