Quick pre-google+ shutdown request for advice.
I appear to be running an ongoing open table game of Masks at a local games cafe (offering a one shot at their RPG night has mutated out of control!) So from week to week I might have any combination of new or returning characters and be picking up existing story threads or launching new ones (or both). Has anyone done anything similar?
If so I’m particularly interested in a) any mechanics advice – how you may have handled influence for example from week to week, b) any good ideas for fictionally justifying a rotating cast and c) how did it go – particularly did you manage to get into some heavier emotional teen angst amid ott young adult supers action?
Regarding b) thus far I’ve gone with a soft reboot of reality as the time stream resets – as happens when time displaced harbingers battle time eating super beings – and then the next week most of the team got sucked into a quantum disturbance ending up who knows where. This week the only hero common with the previous two sessions may have set up a new team in the hope of effecting a rescue although as the last thing they said tonight was “are we the baddies?!” who knows.
You could run it like the Avengers, a loosely-affiliated group of loners who band together periodically to handle threats.
Honestly, though, it seems like you’ve already mostly got it figured out. I wouldn’t worry over much about Influence. That’ll work itself out during play.
I haven’t done such a thing, but it sounds thrilling.
I found this to be a helpful overview of an “open table” setup: gauntlet-rpg.com – Age of Ravens: Open Table—What the What?
Often-times, you can do a few start-of-session things like “if you want to pick someone and answer one of your relationship questions for them, go for it”.
Instead of a small tight-knit team, there could be a school “heroes club” that values teaching kids their strengths and weaknesses by teaming them up in ways they wouldn’t necessarily do on their own. The club could assign them missions.
Make sure when a new person joins that you ask questions to tie her to the existing PCs, and ask the existing PCs questions to make connections, too. Everyone at school has connections, by virtue of being forced to be together for so many hours a day.
Agree with everyone’s comments so far…and want to add that Justice League Unlimited is a pretty great model to look at for a sprawling superhero team with a rotating cast of protagonists for each episode/arc.