Masks: A New Generation RPG: Actual Play – Page 16 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Started a new game of this last night, my first time running a PBTA game.

Started a new game of this last night, my first time running a PBTA game. I’ve read a bunch on it, but am eager to try something new from my current game.

We have a Nova with cosmic powers who is the result of a particle accelerator accident, a Doomed who has psychic powers but has yet to fully come into her own, a Delinquent android created by an AI system who can prowl the networks to find information, and the heir to Santa Claus, off on his own to do good with his powers of super speed, air manipulation, and the ability to write “letters to Santa” for advice in difficult situations.

Their “backstory battle” was against a mind-controlling real-estate developer whose penthouse suite was entirely covered in gold, which completely dampened the Nova’s powers. Unfortunately, the tower was destroyed, along with the homes of the android and the Doomed’s best friend.

Now they are on the hunt for The Disassembler, a destructive criminal who was sprung from the AEGIS transport vehicle by GridVolt, a powerful villain with powers to shut down systems and reflect attacks. The trail went cold last night when they found the computer that was blocking the Delinquent’s searches, which had reflected her electronic-psychic blast back onto herself.

Any thoughts on how to get them back on the trail?

So, how should we choose the next Magus:

It’s been revealed over the course of the game that Magus Everard, the defender of Earth against magical threats from beyond, is a fake. The magic staff he’s wielding isn’t the true Agate Staff, and the process by which he was chosen was influenced by dark powers beyond our ken.

In a recent session, Night-eye the Doomed returned from the Dark-night Dimensions with the true Agate Staff, while Hollow the Transformed use his moment of truth to defeat Everard and drain him of his powers.

So now, they’ve got the Agate Staff, and the various magical PCs are wondering if they might be the ones to wield its power and become the next Magus.

It’s been established in the fiction that the Magus is chosen when prospective candidates enter the top of the Agate Tower (located on the Equator in Northern Brazil), and then whoever leaves from the bottom of the tower holding the Agate Staff is the next Magus.

It’s pretty clear that the PCs are heading to the Agate Tower to find Answers and/or infinite magical power, but I have no idea what tests they should face within.

Something that I have noticed crop up a few times as a player and since I am thinking of GMing soon I’d like some…

Something that I have noticed crop up a few times as a player and since I am thinking of GMing soon I’d like some advice on handling it.

How do you handle a “grappler” player? A player who consistently chooses to grab or subdue enemies with their rolls and if they haven’t rolled well enough they choose “avoid blows” to keep themself ready to attempt it again. They never really try to do anything with the environment/using words until they’ve “grappled” the enemy into submission. They also generally have super strength/speed as a power so explaining how an enemy escapes their grip either feels cheap or causes arguments.

Once in a while it’s alright, but when it’s the ONLY action they take it brings the game to a screeching halt and other players start to feel useless. How would you suggest this be handled? Talking to the player privately? I’d rather not go the route of making all the enemies be teleporting mist-monsters…

“Does destroying the Arc de Triomphe count as breaking something important?” –Stonewall the Reformed

So finally got around to putting a proper game together on a forum I frequent, and it’s starting to take off.

So finally got around to putting a proper game together on a forum I frequent, and it’s starting to take off. Still in the introduction, you know how PbP games go, but everyone is super into their characters and I can’t wait to see where things go!

The team I’ve got to work with is pretty neat:

-Kaiju, the Transformed: the 13 year old (former) heir to Kujira Industries who suffered a freak mutation, and intriguingly enough managed to become the de facto leader of this band of misfits. Basically looking to make a good name for himself to counteract the bad press he’s received since his transformation. Looks something like a humanoid orca.

-Ssirana-115, the Outsider: an alien clone from Mars in a parallel universe… who also happens to be about six inches tall. Uses a human sized biomechanical suit to do superheroing in the most creative application of the Kirbycraft move I’ve seen.

-Anti-Venom, the Janus: a girl who learned she really shouldn’t mess around with her sisters collection of possibly magical ancient Egyptian artifacts. Has magically endowed physical abilities, as well as a venomous bite and thermal vision. Plays as something of an adorable cross between Spiderman, Batman, and a cobra.

-Max Leather, CHALLENGER OF THE UNKNOWN, the Legacy: the latest in a line of heroes who insist the genre of their universe is pulp science fiction, and damn anyone else who says otherwise. Peak human physically, and genius intellect, what’s not to love? Apart from the lack of social skills due to growing up on a space station that is.

-Luminous Wing, the Star: A kid with wings and a flare for the dramatic. Basically a kid who started a vlog that took off, but who genuinely wants to be a hero and be a part of this team. Nobody knows how he got the wings, and he’s smart about teasing his audience with that.

We actually don’t have an official name for the team yet. Any ideas? It can be serious or embarrassing, I’m kinda trying to make a running joke that the media can’t come up with good superhero names and titles to save their lives 😛

I’ve heard “don’t include the doomed” as advice for running one-shots.

I’ve heard “don’t include the doomed” as advice for running one-shots. This last weekend, I ignored that advice and I’m glad I did because the Doomed really drove the climax.

The Wildcards consisted of:

Sol the Outsider

Shadow the Doomed

Exo the Transformed

ATLAS the Newborn

Glimmer the Delinquent

Since ATLAS was a robot and Glimmer and Exo were both the victims of unethical experiments, I decided that they would be facing Iron Flag and Rampage, respectively the nazi robot and the unwilling experiment from the villain deck. I also decided that both villains would have been coerced into this attack by Shadow’s nemesis, a dark wizard.

The fight started in the park, with the villains trying to get inside the adjacent “History of Science” museum for an unrevealed reason. It was rough for the wildcards at first, but Exo and Glimmer managed to trap Rampage in a sculpture while ATLAS, Sol, and Shadow put a lot of dents in Iron Flag. When a villain’s monologue revealed that Shadow’s nemesis was behind this, Shadow used his dark vision doom sign to learn exactly what the bad-guys were after.

Since I hadn’t included any of Sol’s backstory yet, I decided that the villains’ goal was something from her people’s homeworld. Sol’s player decided it was a probe sent to Earth, the first contact between Humans and her species.

And when he learned this, Shadow decided that the probe must be destroyed so that his nemesis couldn’t acquire it. Not only did he destroy the probe, he also used his doom sign powers to crush what was left of Iron Flag like a soda can.

So Sol the Alien got to see her teammate destroy an important artifact of her people, while ATLAS the robot got to see his teammate destroy a robotic being without any hint of remorse. Normally after that intro fight, my Masks one-shots go to NPCs showing up and cheering the team for their heroics and/or berating them for their failures–but this time, the fallout was all internal to the team. Somber reflections on the price paid in desperate situations, New grim lessons on what humanity was capable of for the non-human members of the team.

I got to play the Reformed in a game, run by Brian Poe.

I got to play the Reformed in a game, run by Brian Poe. Iwant to talk about a great thing that the other players have served up to me. They have been really hitting on a cool dynamic: they are innocent at heart, and they don’t think my Reformed is. So they serve innocent statements up for me to shoot down, or they put me down for my dark/cruel attitude and I always let it wound me. Really great, exactly what the playbook needs from my fellow players.

Here’s two examples from our first session of play:

I. I contact Lovelace, a Friend in Low Places, specialty: insider info, for something or other. We roleplay it out, I mark Obligation, etc. As we are (flirting and) wrapping it up, the Doomed jumps in and asks Lovelace about his obsession. “Suuuure,” she says. “I can help you with that, if in return…”

I interrupt, “No! No, just, don’t, just deal with me! I’ll handle it. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.” I end up marking Obligation again. The other characters who are looking on the conversation conclude, “oh, the Reformed is trying to keep secrets from us and keep this useful resource away from us”. To my character, though, all he can think is “the Doomed has enough problems, the last thing he needs is to sink into the quagmire of owing all these dangerous, crazy people favors.” Which is SUCH a comic book misunderstanding, and it will certainly drive a lot of events around and around as we go forward!

II. I lashed out at the Transformed during the battle. She gets me back after. So when things calm down, we are trying to support each other. I say “Hey, do you want to blow off steam?” She goes “YEAH! Let’s go get FRAPPUCINOS!!” and I say “NO!! Let’s go throw bricks through a human traffickers car window!! I know where he PARKS!” She got this great, hesitant, fearful look on her face and went “…..yesss???” And it ended up meaning something that she was willing to go along with my petty vandalism, even though it was petty. Maybe even more significant for its pettiness.

So I guess I would say the Reformed is working great for me, Brendan Conway. It’s so dangerous to wake a deep sleeper. 🙂

https://youtu.be/EY22JySZ91Q

So, a few weeks ago I decided that I should devote a session of my masks game to the character’s school lives.

So, a few weeks ago I decided that I should devote a session of my masks game to the character’s school lives. It’s something we hadn’t seen much of despite the Janus focusing on school and peers as a major part of her secret identity.

We’d established during character creation that Locust the Janus and Phantom the Bull both go North Halcyon, a nice suburban public school, that Night-Eye the doomed and Stonewall the Reformed both go to Forrest Academy, an academically intensive private school, while Boris Boomer the Nova is a high school dropout.

It had also been a few weeks off since the previous session, and so in order to remind characters of their current fictional situation and to introduce the school theme, I wrote love letters for everyone. The original letters in the document below alongside the roll results and the my after-the-fact impressions.

The Joined and the Newborn go weirdly together.

I accidentally gave my robotic twin sister an existential crisis with a Pierce the Mask. I accidentally interrupted her trip to the zoo with “Are you Afraid of me?” and “How could I get your character to admit we’ll never be human?”

I just ran Masks reskinned for fantasy over the weekend.

I just ran Masks reskinned for fantasy over the weekend. Mostly I just changed the names of the “back stories” and some of the moves. (“Dragon”, “Fated”, “Hero”, “Trickster”, “Weapon”, “Protege”, “Other”, “Outsider”, “Hidden” and “Paragon”. The main difference was that I didn’t want to emphasis “teen”, so I was loose with Influence and treated it more like Respect.

The PCs were members of a Kibbutz-inspired group of settlers. In the time of their great-grandfathers, the Landsmen had beaten back the dragons and started the settlement. In the past few years, Orc raiders had moved in and tensions mounted. The situation was that the Landsmen had recently achieved a Pyrrhic victory over the Orcs, and were now working for peace. In play, the Orc leaders were divided, the Orcs themselves were insulting and arrogant, and there were Landsmen prisoners of war being abused as servants. Lots of reasons not to make peace, but they ultimately did to save their community.

It was planned as a one-shot (so that no-one had to commit to more before knowing anything about it), but I was glad to hear talk that they might want more. People were definitely frustrated about having their labels shifted (You moved my stats!), but I think they started to get more used to it in the end. In particular, they are a mostly D&D group, so they weren’t really used to thinking about small scenes of interaction about comforting each other or opening up about fears.