Author: Alexi Sargeant

Our most recent session was a musical episode, and I wrote the following custom move for when the villainous Conductor caused PCs to burst into song. (Of course, you could always voluntarily burst into song if you so desired).

When you burst into song, roll 2d6. (You get +1 for Influence over The Conductor or +1 forwards on him) Tell us what genre and style you sing in.

On a hit you use the song to your advantage. Take Influence over an onlooker, clear a Condition, or add 1 Team.

On a 10+, you control what you sing—and get to freely Provoke another character to sing a duet with you. On a 7-9, you bare your soul and sing about feelings or facts you’d rather keep secret. Tell us what they are (the GM will add more for you if needed).

On a 6-, you spill your guts in song, and it’s ugly. Tell us what you reveal and mark a Condition. Other characters present can cancel your influence if they judge it appropriate.

Extra credit: sing a stanza of the song for us to mark Potential (or an additional Potential on a miss)

Illustrated a steampunk sky pirate Protégé who made a guest appearance in a recent episode of Masks. World, meet Compass Rose!

Yesterday’s Masks was very exciting. Halfpenny (The Transformed) took so many conditions in this one session that he almost beat another player’s record of conditions for the whole campaign! And he finally came clean to the team about having eaten the Bad Penny.

The team helped Torq (The Nova) move into the home of his new guardian, a well-traveled eccentric. Torq’s guardian wanted to explore the new Sanctuary of Panic (The Doomed), an underground chapel watched over by a spooky, benevolent skeleton.

The Sanctuary spelunking team ended up being Panic, Torq’s guardian, and Sonia (The Soldier). En route to a library of useful tomes, the girls ran afoul of territorial skeleton beasts. Sonia turned into fire and couldn’t turn back, nearly losing her human form! Panic saved her.

Meanwhile in the outside world, Halfpennny and Torq dealt with a Beachhead, a sand monster on a rampage (actually a kid who took the superpower drug Invictus). They saved the day with minimal collateral damage! But…

At the session’s end, Halfpenny was distraught to learn that the new mayor has recruited his parents as spokespeople for his Operation: Zero Impunity campaign against Invictus—and Halfpenny’s monstrous transformation has made him a cautionary-tale/poster-child of the movement!

Buckle up, fans. The weekend’s Masks RPG session was off-the-chain. Torq (The Nova) was unconscious, lost in his own psyche. His teammates would have to go into his mind to save him. Fortunately, Ed Zeppelin has a ship to lend them.

Panic (The Doomed) was elected to take point on the rescue. Guess my new art for her came just in time! She would find Torq inside Torq’s mind and convince him to come back. First, though, the team would have to sail through three layers of Torq’s mental landscape.

Captaining the ship was Ed Zeppelin’s apprentice, special guest star Compass Rose (The Protégé). Rose warned the Salvatores to stay tethered to the ship, no matter what, as they sail it through Torq’s perceptions, into his hopes, and finally into his darkest fears.

And that’s where General Bowmaster (The Beacon) was swept off the ship and came untethered. He encountered a grown-up, traumatized version of his friend Kevin, living as a survivalist in a dystopian Capstone City…ruled by Salvatores who went bad!

The team ends up fighting their nightmare selves, of course. Sonia (The Soldier) tackles evil!Panic, then gets snagged and mind-controlled by evil!Sonia. Bowmaster faces down his dark self, a smooth, tuxedo-clad sniper.

Halfpenny (The Transformed) empathizes with, then fights, his dark self, a blind brawler named Cent-urion with two penny eyepatches. Panic reaches Torq and risks her own doom to shake him from hopelessness.

The darkness dissipates, the team regroups, and they all sail out of Torq into the real world. It was an epic, mind-bending start to Season Two of the Salvatores’ adventures!

Yesterday was the epic season finale of our Masks RPG. The shards of the fairy mirror created seven portals in different parts of Capstone City, through which Rime Court Hunters began pouring. Uh-oh! The Salvatores leapt into action.

Torq (The Nova) focused first on the robot revolutionaries who’d hijacked the Hand of Ultimatus and stolen the fairy mirror. His gravity powers served him well there, though when he shut down the portal in Captain Invincible Plaza, he lost control and blew up the whole place.

Sonia (The Soldier) was the first to shut down a portal. She also had to fight her friend Furnace to free him from the Rime Court’s influence, and, as she confronted her Forge supervisor at the end of the adventure, accidentally was utterly changed into fire.

Panic (The Delinquent, completing her transition to the Doomed) followed her visions to a hidden sanctuary, where a skeleton gave her a cloak that will help push back against her Rime Court curse. It also changed her powers—which came in handy when she had to fight her own brother, who was also under the Rime Court’s thumb.

Halfpenny (The Transformed) raided Quartermaster’s cache, then was yanked by Rime Court chains to a rooftop, where he managed to get free and then depower the Invictus-affected kids being used to trap the adult heroes, the Crimebusters, in their base.

Captain Bowmaster (The Beacon) had a huge day: commanding F.A.T.E. soldiers, taking over a Rime Court ballista to shut down the last portal, convincing Doc Quantum to make him a deputy Crimebuster, and even upgrading his codename (he’s still deciding between Colonel and General Bowmaster).

In the end, the city was saved—though there were hints the Rime Court has something sneakier brewing. Halfpenny destroyed the last hunters but, losing control of his powers, also knocked out Torq. The team’s next mission will be a fantastic voyage inside their friend to save him!

Illustrating the team that starred in Leah’s throwback Masks session, the Suffra-Jets:

Ms. Quantum (The Brian) is a precocious but socially-inept gadgeteer. The Hurricane (The Nova) has earth-shaking elemental powers and a great deal of anxiety about using them. Wolfhound (The Outsider) was raised by wolves and is slowly integrating into human society. Norma Conquest (The Bull) hails from medieval Normandy and is zealously devoted to proper royal succession being respected.

Illustrated my character from a Masks Gen Con one shot: Sam Seraph, the Star, a supercilious streaming sensation with six unearthly wings. Jacket inspiration from Volante Designs: https://www.volantedesign.us/

Running (and playing) Masks at Gen Con was a blast! Some highlights:

*Brendan Conway is delightful in person, and listened appreciatively to us telling him about our home campaign (particularly the Time Sloth).

*In a session I GM’d, the Delinquent pretended he was too cool to use the silly name the others had come up for the their team, the Galactic Acrobatic Ranch-hands (GAR). At the very end of the session, in a gesture of good will, he pulled back his sleeve and showed the Legacy the GAR tattoo he’d gotten.

*In a session I played, I got to try out the Star playbook with Sam Seraph, a streaming sensation with six unearthly purple wings. Sam was (briefly) arrested by AEGIS at the conclusion of the mission, and was gagged for mouthing off. This radicalized him against AEGIS, so in my end-of-session scene I narrated Sam addressing his audience about the need to overthrow AEGIS’s fascist regime, and hawking half-face masks styled after his gag and branded with his purple wing insignia.

*In another session I GM’d, the Transformed rolled a miss on Pierce the Mask while trying to literally break a villain’s mask. I said, “Yes, you break open the mask, but what you see is someone gaunt and pale like you, clearly someone who underwent the same transformation. He fixes you with a look of deep betrayal. Take a powerful blow.” It was awesome.