Category: Masks: A New Generation RPG: Actual Play

For our throwback adventure (a one-shot set a generation before our main campaign, featuring adult heroes from our campaign as teens), the action took place on a movie set, where the villain had reality-warping gels on the lights that made movie magic real.

So, in addition to turning the people in rubber alien costumes into real aliens, the lights triggered this custom move;

When you are caught in the spotlight roll + conditions.

On a 10+ choose one:

Time for a punch ‘em up! Directly engage one of your teammates without warning

Two from the 7-9 list

On a 7-9 choose one:

You try to be heroic, but wind up in a slapstick pratfall: mark Insecure

You get caught monologuing and share a secret you shouldn’t. Give Influence to the person you betray.

It’s all connected! You spot something that reveals you in particular are in more trouble than you thought.

You give in to some of your worst instincts and respond villainously: mark Guilty

One a 6+, mark potential. You look like the version of yourself as a hero you’ve always wanted to be. Do something cinematic and choose one:

Clear a condition

Choose one of the options from Directly Engage without rolling

Ran a Masks session for our group for the first time last night. My adventure was a one-shot set a generation before our main campaign.

Ms. Quantum (Brain, and in the present, Doc Quantum—the most respected hero) was recruited to do robotics work on a movie set, and some suits from the studio asked her to bring in the Hurricane (Nova, presently Lady Hurricane, retired from heroing and the therapist for our Protege-turned-Transformed) to add some lightning and explosions, without telling the director.

The film, “The Peril of the Planets,” featured invading Phobosians, who are ultimately defeated because they have never encountered the Earth phenomenon of ennui.

Wolfhound (raised by wolves, the Outsider) and Norma Conquest (timetraveller, the Bull) tagged along with their teammates and turned out to be needed when the shoot began and real aliens entered through the spaceship sets.

The team pieced together that special gels on the lights were making everything more like the movies: the men in the rubber suits became real aliens, the safety officer turned into the dangerous Ruligan, and the team got caught in the beams, too.

Wolfhound pulled off an incredible, cinematic feat of climbing and leaping to defeat Ruligan, but Ms. Quantum wound up monologuing (and sounding more like a villain than she intended). Norma Conquest swore fealty to the director (missing her old lord, William the Conqueror) and was commended for her swashbuckling by film star Errol Loxley (grandfather to our usual campaign’s Beacon).

Behind the whole scheme… Jeanne (Jenny) Blague, an intern who was trying to defend the director’s existentialist vision. The Hurricane took her down with lightning, defusing the immediate threat.

But when the director admitted he wasn’t even French, and he didn’t care too much about his vision, just about seeming deep, Jeanne stormed off the set, saying it looked like all anyone cared about was cheap laughs…. the origin story of Commediennemy (who we’ve fought in our usual campaign).