Author: Brian Poe

I ran my first game of Masks last night and I’d like to go about this with a few things that I learned about MC’ing this game. First of all some background.  I have a lot of experience with Apocalypse World and games powered by.  I mainly run Apocalypse World and Urban Shadows and this game posed some interesting challenges for me as an MC and I think that if someone had told me these things before I started I would have had a much better time running the game.  Not to say the game wasn’t fun, but I think I could have made things more exciting and fun with these extra tidbits.

Narrative MC moves

In AW most of the MC moves are narrative based.  If you make a hard move you can split up the group, you can foreshadow future badness etc.  These moves further the fiction and give a good idea to the MC about how to advance the plot and the kinds of threats that this game is really about, the kind of tone the world sets and what players should expect from this game.  I generally skim these to understand what the game is about and then after I’ve gotten an idea about what kind of things I can do with my players I generally don’t have to refer back to them all that often. 

The Narrative MC moves in masks are brilliant. 

Make SURE you read the playbook moves. The playbook moves are the most brilliant thing about this game. I hope that with every playbook that gets released come an accompanying set of MC moves for that playbook.  Those moves are the REAL narrative meat in this game.  Because each playbook is more about personality than powers the playbook moves are so much more personal and mean so much more to the players when you throw them at their characters.  

2. Mechanical MC moves.

In AW most moves are not mechanical with probably 3 exceptions. Exchange harm, Activate their stuffs downside, and turn the move back on the player, are the only moves that will have you looking at a sheet to understand what to do.  The item downside will send you to the player’s sheet or your notes to look at what you can do. (Oh … your gun has the unreliable tag I see… Interesting.)  Harm is straight up marking stuff on the sheet and turning the move back will have you looking at the move a little harder. Every other MC move is narrative and no one needs to look down to continue.  These moves are sprinkled lightly into my games and I use them when they make sense.

Masks is different.

Masks is a game of tug-o-war with the players and you.  The mechanical moves in Masks are:

● Inflict a condition.

● Take influence over someone.

● Turn their move back on them.

● Activate the downsides of their abilities and relationships.

These are SUPER important. Like WAY more important than mechanical moves in AW. The first two specifically.  Conditions are much easier to get rid of than Harm in AW.  The players have interesting actions they can do to get rid of conditions.  Inflicting Harm in AW is something I’ll do to my players when dramatically appropriate.  Harm in my AW games (past 6) is fucking serious. I made a player carry around a makeshift chest tube device some angel patched together because he had a punctured lung secondary to gunshot wound.  (2 two liter bottles a hose and some duct tape.)

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(I’m a nurse by night… MC by day.) It was awesome. 

I really wish that someone had told me before I ran Masks to use Inflict a condition like… ⅓ to ½ the time you make any move. It’s WAY more than I ever use inflicting harm on players in my AW games. Damage in other games isn’t easy to be fun. In this game, conditions are fun.  They force players into doing rash actions and act more volatile. (Kids…) 

I’m going to run again soon.  And this time… shit’s going to get serious.  Hope this helps any of you Masks MC’s!