Masks: A New Generation RPG: Actual Play – Page 32 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Last weekend had again fabulous fun with Masks.

Last weekend had again fabulous fun with Masks. 🙂 Two players with Legacy and Janus, would love to use this for larger group, but works surprisingly well still.

We had drama, friendship troubles, mysteries and superhero encounters. Its really surprising how much fun can be had with so few stats and moves. We played from 14.30 to 23.30 with short break and the game didn’t stall. I’m a bit hesitant on the potential though, as I don’t want want the Labels to increase and there are only so much Moves on the playbooks. I think I need to create alternate ways to expand characters as potential.

Our one shot went well, the beta rules were pretty clear, the players had never played a PbtA game before so it was…

Our one shot went well, the beta rules were pretty clear, the players had never played a PbtA game before so it was a little slow but by the end of the game they wanted a Campaign and all of them jumped on the kick starter. I told them we might be able to do a few more one shots but unfortunately I don’t have enough time for a campaign.

My players were all fans of Young Justice, and said it felt very much like it in game play. Hopefully after they share it with some other on face book we can get a few more games going.

I love how the default assumption for Masks is love triangles and awkward affection.

I love how the default assumption for Masks is love triangles and awkward affection. The Outsider and the Doomed were at the top of the Ferris Wheel on Halloween night, and had the following exchange:

OUTSIDER: It’s so beautiful up here!

DOOMED: There’s something wrong with the corn maze.

anyone have any games where they need a daring new hero?

We’ll have a full actual play episode (or two!) of Masks up before the end of the year, but I wanted to share our…

We’ll have a full actual play episode (or two!) of Masks up before the end of the year, but I wanted to share our opening action sequence before the end of the Kickstarter!

Enjoy listening to the adventures of The Young Heralds: Remembrance (The Doomed), The Wicked (The Delinquent), Bounder (The Nova), and Brick House (The Bull)!

Originally shared by Fandible

You’ve seen the Hero Selfies. The sidebar recommendation on the website. The awesome Kickstarter page. Now listen to a sample of our Masks actual play!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/3604561?utm_content=buffer31f2b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer

If you haven’t seen it yet, I’ve been GMing Masks live for 3 sessions now.

Here’s the YouTube playlist with our sessions, wonderful moments and warts and all.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLccARXndpwfi7VHR8PzXA2HaYW7D415Gw

I will be hosting a live play of Masks on Saturday night. If you miss it I will post the youtube link after its done.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c9g0ge3pp87og98ms398erbf31o

Our group played our first session last night, and it was fantastic.

Our group played our first session last night, and it was fantastic. I had done my homework, studied the play test materials, watched the videos on the Kickstarter page, and picked a villain from my old City of Villians days for the team to go up against.

Our group consists of four people, including me, and we decided we will rotate who is GM over time so we each rolled characters. An Outsider that the player ended up writing a 10+ page document (and is still working on) just for the details on the race, and drives a giant flying space squid. A Delinquent with the powers of illusion and emotion control, who instead of getting credit for his heroic actions prefers to remain invisible and use the illusion of a large pulsating crystal to represent him. A Doomed, named Doom, who lives in the basement apartment of an old library desperately trying to find a way to prevent her very life force being burned up to create a gateway to hell, letting loose enough demons to flood the Earth. And me, a Legacy, the third (well, fourth, we don’t talk about #2) Shadow Sentinel, with mastery over darkness and the very shadows themselves.

Our group went around going through their characters and backstory in more detail than I ever expected. We normally play D&D, and our group likes the story but often times ends up focusing more on combat and loot. Here people got fully into character, and painted a picture together of how they had met, how they became friends and the different relationships everyone has. For almost 2 hours that we barely noticed passing.

Finally we start to actually play. Our Delinquent is roaming the streets when, in the middle of broad daylight, stumbles across a bank robbery in process. He sends out a text message to the others, all but Shadow Sentinel quickly arrive (since I am GMing I didnt want to risk stealing the spotlight), and rush in to find…a mime. Completely unarmed, and making the tellers fill up a classic sack with a dollar bill sign on the side. They quickly find out this mime, known as the devious Mime Time, has reality warping powers, able to use “finger guns” as if they were real, create boxes and doors where there were not any, and even mimes throwing a tomato at one of their faces leading to an actual tomato appearing and splattering all over them.

Needless to say, the group is ready for a lot but not mime. They manage to halt the robbery (partly by the alien shapeshifting into something large and using the mime’s fake box as a weapon against him), but he manages to get outside and takes off in an invisible plane before they can apprehend him. I, of course, wanted this guy to come back from time to time.

After this another person in our group backed the kickstarter, and I raised my pledge. I have a feeling we will be playing a lot of this.

So I played my first session of Masks tonight.

It was a spur of the moment decision to play. We were supposed to be playing something else but the GM (me as a matter of fact) bailed. I managed to convince one of the group to run Masks so we devote the session instead to character/game creation.

There’s only three people in our group, that’s two players and one GM. The GM pitched a super-school setting, a school set up to keep super-powered kids away from norms “for safety reasons”. So we went with that. It also meant that some of the playbooks weren’t exactly suitable. The other player chose to play A Delinquent teleporter with psychic weapons. The cocky son of a “reformed” supervillainess and superhero. I chose to play a Nova who wields Cosmic Power that first manifested during a playground brawl with a bully. Not really played this sort of powerful character before so its a refreshing change.

Influence and Relationships kind of got left to the wayside as there is only two of us in the team.

We didn’t have very long for actual play, and I did kind of put the GM on the spot with this. Instead of thrilling superheroic action, the game started off a little more low key. A run in with a bully on the school bus on the way to the first day of term. A “simple” case of a bully picking on a loner got escalated by the Delinquent into a full blown superpowered brawl with a mutant (who kinda looked like Darth Maul) who could spit electrified bio matter. Hence forth known as Darth Loogie.

We did have some confusion trying to work out which move was best for the action as described but it seemed to flow quite easily.

#MasksRPG #Halcyoncityjailbreak

Okay, my PBP Masks game just ended their prologue.

Okay, my PBP Masks game just ended their prologue. I really like this system but have had waaaaaay too many bad con experiences to really like one-shot games so I have planned out a larger experience for my players. Here is a run down of what happened:

I started everyone out with something simple – they were investigating a bank robbery for some reason or another: My Legacy was there to represent his namesake, my Transformed was sent by her adoptive villain parents to test her powers, my Beacon was there under his mentor’s advice to get the NPC villain on their side, my Janus was trying to impress his father and other villains, and my Protege was testing out her powers. Sadly our Bull dropped but we are now replacing her with a Delinquent who seems exemplary.

The dice HATED everyone at first, no one made a successful roll until about the tenth total roll. Yet everyone did well.

First the Janus: He was blindsided by his girlfriend and knocked her out, robbing her as well to make sure he was just perfectly villainous. He then attracted the attention of a few other of the supers by botching a few rolls but was the first to work with the Team mechanics. He was fun and has great potential to see what will happen. I think he will be the glue that holds the team together.

The Legacy used his namesake to distract the cops and make them focus on the villains outside the bank instead of those inside. His name carried great weight and the eldest of the police force knew the super name and basically gave up without a fight even with the police chief demanding they try and take him out. He was then able to work with the Protege and smash into the bank to distract the villain inside.

The Protege was a monster, teleporting into the Bank and, in two moves, almost obliterating the NPC villain. She then was able to give her the slip and rob the entire bank as the rest of the group distracted everyone else and was able to teleport to her base while letting her mentor gather up the rest of the team to go to a meeting place.

The Transformed was awesome. She controlled the crowd by making her skin enlarge and flash horrific lights like some kind of debased cuttlefish. When the cops launched tear gas at the group she was able to create natural body-morphing filters for the Beacon and Janus so they could all get to the bank and when the villain exploded into bees and flew past them she protected the team from stings by becoming a living piece of armor around them.

The Beacon was the one who the dice loved. He rarely failed anything and was able to pep talk the Janus from running away or feeling like a schmuck, got the NPC villain to leave the bank peacefully so everyone could escape with the loot as well as cementing the team as more a team by having the backs of everyone he came into contact with.

The Delinquent showed up at the end when a trained “Super Negation Squad” came in, using a jet pack to make a huge explosion in the group and her cyberkinetic powers to overload and destroy the hi-tech weapons of the SNS.

Now, since this isn’t a one shot, the players are now able to set up a few goals. My Legacy wants to dimension hop and kill off everyone who shares his powers to have unlimited power. My Janus is now torn between his girlfriend and the rejuvenated mentor of the Protege who is hitting on him (poor guy just gets older women loving all over him) and is desperate to prove he is just as good as the rest. The Beacon is trying to set up a good team while seeing if he can turn the villain they faced the first time into an ally for the team. My Transformed wants to reacquaint herself with the villains she knew before her warping and is eager to try to make a name for herself as a Transformed who embraces her condition instead of hates it. The Protege is being a bit haughty and is wanting to find a reason to be on the team without being the weak link. And finally the Delinquent is trying to make a name for herself while also making sure her aunt (the only person whose opinion about her matters) never finds out what is happening.

All in all I had a great time with this and am plotting ways to get these people into more trouble with much more excitement. I love seeing their motivations and how they will pull together once the more savage modern age heroes who care little about property destruction and the lives of villains go after them.

I’ll have another update after the next chapter.