Author: Matt M.

Magpie Games (or anyone else who knows, I guess!) Has anything changed in the rules that makes the V3 reference sheets inaccurate? And are there plans to release a shiny new set of them updated with things like dedicated GM workspace for keeping track of hooks and their associated labels & NPCs during a session?

The sheets are absolutely invaluable resources during play, and I haven’t noticed anything out of place so far, but I’m teaching a guy how to GM Masks (his first run at PbtA GMing!) and I don’t want to confuse him if we stumble across points where the book text and reference sheet don’t line up.

Team Moves. As in, the “sharing a triumphant celebration with someone” and “sharing a weakness or vulnerability with someone” moves on each playbook.

Most of them don’t interact with the Team mechanic at all, you’re free to use them with team members and non-team members alike, and they don’t fill a particular niche for team-wide interaction because they only support your interaction with a single person anyway. Both narratively and mechanically they don’t do much that’s particularly team-oriented, any more than other moves like Comfort and Support do.

…so isn’t these moves being listed as “Team Moves” a bit of a weird choice? They’re more like… relationship moves, or expression moves, or sharing, or bonding, or “real talk”, or “triumphs and tribulations”, or… something. But “Team Moves” just seems like a misnomer, and reminding my players that they can safely ignore the “Team” part of that heading (when they want to share a vulnerability with their NPC sibling and the like) is getting a bit dry. 😛

This started out as a reply to the discussion between Danielle Hohensee and co, but got crazy long and went on a bit of a tangent.  But since the topic is one I’ve seen come up a few times amongst my own groups as well as here on G+ (including a bit in that discussion by Doyce Testerman that’s exploded into a jillion comments while I was sleepin’!) I figured I’d make it its own thing so as to not derail that thread.

The topic at hand: Unleash Your Powers as a blasting-bad-guys combat move, and its use compared & contrasted to Directly Engage.  The when and how of inflicting Conditions is an adjacent topic, but also distinct from this one in its own ways, so I’m not touching on it (yet).

Open discussion!  Agree, disagree, caveat, food for thought, personal experiences, all of the above; I spiel like I know what I’m talking about but mostly I’m just brainstorming out-loud about how the game works in the absence of a full rulebook, ’cause having to write it out helps me nail down what I actually think about stuff.

Unleash Your Powers, as I see it, is a creative problem-solver, and only used for fighting-type stuff as a last resort.  It’s a toolbox, not a weapon.  Primarily, it enacts change in the situation; the examples in the original thread of shutting down shields or knocking things around are spot-on.  It creates barriers, melts stuff, moves things (including yourself), and lets you do lots of other creative stuff with your powers other than blasting dudes.  The key to it (and most moves in Masks, I’ve found) is looking at what it straight-up says you’re doing coupled with the 7-9 results.  Particularly in the case of Unleash, “you do it” and “miss” at either end of the spectrum don’t give much context to anything, so 7-9 is where you wanna focus.  Then if you’re not doing one of the actions described, or you can’t think of how the result would be stressful (marking a Condition), unstable or temporary, it’s probably not a situation you should be Unleashing in to begin with.  This move’s applications are quite vague — by design I’m pretty sure — and if you get creative with it you can make the rules apply to a lot of different situations, meaning it’ll often overlap with another move (when Daredevil does his thing, is he “extending his senses” or “assessing a situation”?).  A lot of the time I tend to process-of-elimination it by looking at the other moves that might apply and seeing if they do, falling back to Unleash as a backup plan if other things don’t seem to fit.

On that note, with this combat-ruling discussion, the key points of Directly Engage are that it’s versus a threat and that you trade blows.  So the only real criteria for it to come into play is that you’re trying to hit someone where it hurts — could be physically, or emotionally, or psychologically, or… spiritually? — and they’re willing and able to hit you back, too.  Other considerations like range or the powers involved don’t really matter, as long as those two things are true.  For example, having a fist fight can obviously be Directly Engaging, but so can having a bitter argument with someone over the phone; you’re just trading emotional or psychological blows instead of physical ones.  

In a more superpowered Nova-type example, flying 500 feet above a group of evil henchmen and raining fireballs on them is still Directly Engaging (and potentially Reality Storming) as long as they’re aware of you and are shooting their evil laser rifles back up at you, or can otherwise threaten you.  If they’re aware of you but can’t really do much about it, they’re not a threat to you, and so the situation doesn’t fit the Directly Engage criteria.

If that’s the case (or they’re not aware of you and you’re just raining hellfire on them out of the blue like a superpowered stealth bomber) it’s up to the GM to call it based on the situation.  I think a lot of GMs would want a roll of some kind and rule it as an Unleash, though the broadness of that move makes the 7-9 results a bit awkward to play out without some creativity (feel Guilty for setting a bunch of people on fire? temporarily set them on fire/scatter/suppress them? interpret “unstable” as “uncontrolled” and have some collateral happen?).  Personally, if you were completely blindsiding some guys like that, I probably wouldn’t even call a roll; I’d just let it happen and move on.  Good job leveraging your strengths, hero, let’s play to find out what changes. 😉

On the flip side, let’s say your friend the Bull is on the ground with the mass of laser-rifle-toting goons, and he likes to get up close and personal.  The faceless henchmen are aware of him, and they have numbers and laser rifles, but it doesn’t matter because this guy’s invulnerable skin eats lasers for breakfast and his immense super strength means they’d struggle to even restrain him — meaning, in the scenario I’ve presented, he’s not going to bat an eye at anything they can throw at him and so despite him punching them in their stupid evil faces, Directly Engage wouldn’t apply, because there’s no threat.  If he does just want to start punching these jerks out, he probably either just can without a roll (again, GM call) or he could be reshaping his environment to have way less conscious laser henchmen in it, thus rolling an Unleash with similarly-awkward 7-9 results, as above.  

(Note that if the goons could slow him down with their numbers and other objectives were at stake, he could be under threat of wasting time and Directly Engage would be back on the menu, but I’mma keep it simple).

The real question, however, both fictionally and mechanically isn’t what he’s doing but why he’s doing it.  Punching dudes is fine, and if that’s all that matters in the situation, see above.  But if his purpose for it is to cause a ruckus and distract them so that your flying Nova self doesn’t get shot out of the sky, he’s Defending you (with his fists!) despite you being 500 feet skyward.  Or he could be making a big show of how laughably-easy thumping the goon squad is in order to Provoke their villainous leader into a rash course of action.  Or if he’s just trying to punch a path through the henchmen in order to reach said villain, that’s a pretty clear Unleash with the Bull trying to overcome an obstacle.  And when he gets there, maybe the big bad villain can physically harm him, or has enough presence to hit him where it hurts in his sentimental Bull heart, in which case when those two square off he’s finally, clearly Directly Engaging in the traditional facepunch sense.

So, basically, like everything else in Masks, I feel like it’s down to context.  When my player says “I want to blast that dude with fireballs”, I ask to what end — to open the door for it being a variety of situationally-appropriate moves — and if it’s just in the vein of “because I want him to go down” then Directly Engage gets the first look.  But if the criteria for it don’t fit, because there’s no threat one way or the other… unless I feel a pressing need to introduce the possibility of failure, maybe we don’t touch the dice at all, ’cause Unleash isn’t really built for straight-up fighting, at any range.  And if the heroes do find themselves in a situation where they can engage bad guys without being threatened, getting what amounts to an auto-success shouldn’t be able to derail a scene anyway, because those 10+ results were on the cards already.  And if that foils my villainous plans, well, there’s always next time (Gadget!).

Hey all!  Love what I’ve seen from Masks so far, and since I’ve been teaching my longtime RPG group a few different PbtA games in the last coupla months there’s a pretty healthy buzz in my gaming circle about it.  Love the shifting labels as stats, love the codified conditions, love some of the distinct mechanics between playbooks that completely set them apart.  As an Aussie, really love the free international shipping. 😛  Just have a few questions about things I picked up on when reading through the PDFs that I’d like some clarification/feedback/whatever on.  Numbered for clarity, since this turned out longer than I first thought!

1. The “When Our Team Came Together” questions.  In general, love ’em, as a framework for drawing a circle around the team instead of only drawing lines between individuals, which is something I put a lot of sweat into for most games for the sake of group cohesion.  The one issue I have is that The Bull & The Nova team origin questions being mandatory for any group (see the footnote on the GM moves PDF if you don’t know what I’m talking about) means that actually having The Bull & The Nova in the team has a net result of two less origin questions being answered (since those two would be “freebies” if nobody’d picked either of those playbooks).  I understand that “what big bad did we defeat?” nicely sets up a definitive bonding moment for the team and several other playbook questions tie pretty strongly into the idea of an event like that happening, but if a question like that is necessary to the process then I’d much rather see it be asked independent of playbook selections.  And then The Bull & The Nova can have the opportunity to bring their own unique angle on the story like everyone else, with headbutting and explosions and all that fun stuff. 🙂

2. The Bull and their In A China Shop move, compared to a use of Unleash Your Powers to “reshape your environment”.  This might be the kinda thing that clears up in the full rules when there’s room to discuss playbook moves in more detail ala the AW book, but I’m just going with what I’ve got. 😛  Basically, what effect does this move entail that Unleashing doesn’t, ‘cept for taking a Danger roll instead of Freak?  Can a raging Transformed or an exploding Nova not wreck shop without taking this move?  Or is it a matter of scale, like In A China Shop lets The Bull wreck the whole house with one move instead of a room (or whatever otherwise seems appropriate for Unleash)?  The Transformed’s Unstoppable move vs an Unleash to “overcome an obstacle” is similar, but provides a more definitive “the world breaks before you and you get what you want” that seems to have a stronger something-awesome-and-concrete-happens insinuation beyond the “overcoming an obstacle” alternative.  And I just don’t get that same sense of a distinct result from “smash the area around you” vs “reshape your environment”, when that reshaping is being done with smashy, destructive superstrength anyway.  

Without China Shop existing, as a GM I’d be pretty comfortable letting any potent superpowered hero trash the area around them by Unleashing their crazy powers, with the collateral damage consequence of China Shop being handled pretty neatly by the “dangerous” consequence result of the Unleash move.  But since it’s a playbook-specific move that takes an advance to get access to, it makes me question where I should be drawing the line as far as the capabilities of people without it, ’cause otherwise I’m giving everyone The Bull’s cool special move for free.  Its fictional position reminds me a bit of the “you can walk through walls” Ghost move from Monsterhearts, where it seems like something I’d otherwise take for granted (for ghosts, anyway) ‘cept that the presence of it as a playbook move pretty definitively says “without this, you can’t”.

3. A similar “what’s the intended effect?” type question: The Nova’s Move flare, letting you “move to any place you choose, breaking through or slipping past any barriers or restraints in your way” vs The Doomed’s Portal, to “mark your Doom Track to appear in a scene with anyone you want”.  Could you teleport into a secret villainous underground bunker on the opposite side of the world with either/both/one of those?  Obviously there’s fictional consequence to any move, like the fact that you’re then inside a villain’s lair by yourself and that’s probably a terrible idea, but I’m just musing on the mechanical intention.  I’d be immediately inclined to let The Doomed do whatever, because hey, it’s a Doomsign (which are balls-crazy powerful anyway) and it entails marking the Doom Track every time, but the wording on the Move flare seems pretty limitless too.  And if I’m The Doomed with the Burn advancement, and wind up with access to both, is the decision to use Move or Portal to get someplace just mostly down to whether I want to emotionally explode or face the end times to achieve the same effect?

4. Is rejecting someone’s Influence a move?  Obviously it looks like one, and the line for “When you have Influence over someone, take +1 to all moves targeting them, including rejecting their Influence” says yes, but since it’s the only one not explicitly under the Moves heading I figured I’d confirm.  Also because when you reject someone’s Influence, you mark potential on a hit, and on any move, you mark potential on a miss, so as it stands you get to mark potential either way when you reject Influence.  Which I think works pretty well as a cookie for being rebellious as a powerful youth, but I figured I’d check to make sure that’s actually the intention.

5. A smaller thing: condition ordering on the playbook sheets.  The five conditions clearly tie directly to the five labels, influencing the same basic moves.  Since they’d be easier to correlate together if the conditions were ordered the same way their corresponding labels are listed, have they been purposely mixed up to dissuade people thinking about them in that mechanical sense and encourage their use as primarily fictional tags, or is it just some unintentional formatting?  I can see the merits to both arrangements, but I’d favor corresponding sequence just ’cause I think I’d have an easier time getting new folks to grasp it if they lined up nicely. 😛