The standoff at the bank continues; Piper and Orchid attempt to infiltrate through the sewers, while Ensi negotiates…
The standoff at the bank continues; Piper and Orchid attempt to infiltrate through the sewers, while Ensi negotiates with the robbers.
Last night, I took over as GM while our players picked out new playbooks to play campaign NPCs as PCs for a special…
Last night, I took over as GM while our players picked out new playbooks to play campaign NPCs as PCs for a special mission: breaking our usual team out of jail!
I’ll make another post about the session as a whole, but I wrote a special custom move for them, for when they squared off against the psychic Agent Njeri (affiliated with our A.E.G.I.S.-equivalent).
Njeri had been introduced in a love letter for my usual character (Bull-turned-Soldier) to help her build up a way to resist the mind control triggers of the people who made her a weapon.
She helped, but was pretty pushy and a little creepy, so I was looking forward to letting our team of subs face her when she was using her powers as weapons. Here’s what they had to deal with:
When Agent Njeri gets ahold of you roll + Conditions.
On a 10+, choose one:
* You’re trapped in a bad memory, explain what it is, and how Njeri seals the exit. You’re out of the fight until she is.
* Agent Njeri has her hooks in you and can immediately roll one of your moves (basic or playbook) to target a teammate through you.
* Two from the 7-9 list
On a 7-9, choose one:
* You give up a damaging secret of yours or a teammate’s to Njeri through your memories. What is it? Mark a condition.
* Agent Njeri blurs your grasp of reality. You’re having trouble avoiding seeing her as [person you care about]. Take -1 ongoing to rolls targeting her.
* Any option from the usual powerful blow 7-9 list.
On a 6-, explain how you reframe a bad memory, and take +1 forward against Agent Njeri. Mark potential.
Here is our forth and final bio:
Here is our forth and final bio:
Before a freak accident involving a lightning strike and the gardening club’s hydroponics tank, Chloe was a socially awkward kid who spent more time with plants than humans. After said accident Chloe is still a bit awkward, but thanks to her new plant-based powers she can reach into the chest of an alien robot and tear out its still-beating heart, I mean power core. (This actually happened, look it up.) Chloe has very specific interests and means of self-expression which might make her seem strange at first, such as raising a miniature plant version of herself (also known as Chloe), but over time she has become a valued part of the team. What’s next for Chloe’s growth as a character? (She’s a plant person get it) Find out on Listen to These Nerds here: https://soundcloud.com/lttn-podcast/sets/ragtag-teens-season-1
Art by our resident Artist Joe. Head over to his twitter account https://twitter.com/Spiral_Joe if you’d like to commission him.
Yesterday’s Masks RPG was a doozy.
Yesterday’s Masks RPG was a doozy. Not one, but two Moments of Truth, plus the team faced the menace of the Calamity Crew, a black ops team of collared supervillains dispatched to bring them in…with several members nursing personal grudges against them.
Panic (The Doomed) discovered that her missing classmate Nadia was actually the speedster supervillain Spatterdash, locked up in a F.A.T.E. prison. Panic used her Moment of Truth to spring Spatterdash, and other kids she thought were being held in unjust conditions.
Halfpenny (The Transformed) learned to shift between his monstrous and human forms, but also faced consequences of signing over control of his body to the sinister Mr. Hunt for 14min, 40sec a day. He learned that, controlled by Hunt, he’d authorized an attack on a teammate’s mom!
General Bowmaster (The Beacon) raced to City Hall to save his mom, the deputy mayor. He bonded with his dad along the way, but when they arrived his mom seemed hypnotized, and Bowmaster leapt into the sinister painting that was responsible—only to be captured by evil forces!
In the Calamity Crew ambush, Sonia (The Soldier) traded blows with Chopbuster, only to realize to her chagrin he was Jim Keaton (a man she’d paralyzed) in an experimental power suit. Fleeing the fight, unleashing her powers, she turned utterly into flame—and was snuffed out!
Torq’s (The Nova) reality-warping Moment of Truth sent the Calamity Crew packing, though not before he learned that Uproar was an alien whose homeworld had been wiped out by Torq’s own former homeworld. It seemed like the Salvatores, minus 2 members, had a hard-won victory…
…But you can’t fight F.A.T.E. forever, and the law caught up to our heroes, with every single PC captured at the end of the session. Who will save them? The team of ne’er-do-well side character we’re playing in the next session, GM’d by Leah Libresco! Wish us luck!
Got a nifty little custom move for when your players get into big trouble.
Got a nifty little custom move for when your players get into big trouble.
Here’s the backstory. My husband (Alexi Sargeant) GMs our (now year-long) Masks campaign. We agreed I’d run a one-shot for the final session of the year where all our players could try on new playbooks and characters by being NPCs and putting together a b-team.
I told them I’d just come up with a problem that the usual team wouldn’t be a good fit to solve, but what Alexi and I agreed is that the preceding session would end with the main team captured by our A.E.G.I.S. equivalent. He got a shot to take us down in the session, for everyone who escaped, I had this move as mop-up.
My goal in writing the custom move was to give players a real reward for escaping the first time, it’s just that their reward is getting the shape the circumstances of their capture. They get to pick how they want to go down and what complications that might set up for the future.
When you get captured, roll +Conditions to tell us how it all goes down:
On a 10+ it gets ugly, choose one:
• They took you down in a public place, and blackened your name. What did they claim about you? What person or persons did you lose influence over?
• You lost control of your powers trying to escape. Who did you hurt and why do you feel so guilty?
• Choose two from 7-9
On a 7-9, somewhere or someone you thought was safe wasn’t, what happened? Choose one:
• You are ambushed somewhere you thought was secret or safe. What happened?
• Your captors threatened someone you cared about if you didn’t turn yourself in. Who did they threaten? Why did you have to give in?
• Your captors had something prepped specifically to neutralize your powers. What happened? Mark an appropriate condition.
On a 6-, you’re still captured, but you conducted yourself with honor and you managed to learn an important piece of information that you relayed to Kevin before they got you.
• Choose a question from pierce the mask/assess the situation for Leah to answer. And tell us something badass you did as they took you down.
In this session of our on going campaign there is a point where one of the characters attempts to hold back with…
In this session of our on going campaign there is a point where one of the characters attempts to hold back with their super strength and I decided to use it as a unleash roll. However looking back I’m thinking that it might be better to create a custom move for holding back, with 7-9 meaning you hold back too much, and a miss being you don’t hold back enough. What do you folks think?
Pax Unplugged 2018 Play Report
Pax Unplugged 2018 Play Report
Pax Unplugged was my onramp to Masks. After hearing about the game through the BAMF and Whelmed podcasts, I decided to give the game a go at the Games on Demand room at Pax Unplugged 2017. Which was a good enough advertisement that I marched up to the Magpie booth and made my purchase.
Since then, I introduced Masks at my FLGS Indie Gameday, which segued into a monthly game, and I also ran it at Camp NC Gameday, where it was the best received game I ran.
But it occurred to me that I would be running masks at NCGD and other venues again this year and I would likely have some repeat players. Though the collaborative character building introduces fresh elements in one-shots, I still needed to step up my stable of skeleton scenarios to allow for variety in play experience. Further, several supplements have been published since then, and experienced players might want to try new playbooks and playsets.
Thus I resolved to create what I call a “one-shot kit”, which I had previously done for other games.
The One-shot Kit
What I call a “one-shot kit” is a step between a pre-written scenario and on-the-fly creation. It’s a short bundle of resources that I use when GMing a game where I don’t know what the scenario will be when I sit down at the table.
My reasons for needing a one-shot kit for Masks is slightly different for Masks than for Traveller. For Traveller, I created the one-shot kit to facilitate sandbox play.
For Masks, I needed something that would:
1) Give repeat players different experiences, and
2) Facilitate flexible scenarios that I can “plug in” to ideas created during the playbook character creation.
3) Allow exploring supplemental playbooks and playsets. This is less a “need” than a “want”; I was interested in exploring some of the material introduced in supplements that I may never get to try out at my own table in the current ongoing game.
So I wrote up a page for each playset, including the “default” Halcyon City situation as well as three of the Masks Unbound playsets: Iron Red Soldiers, the Spiderweb, and Apocalypse Sonata. I could have written up one for Phoenix Academy, but as I have been running my players in my local game in Rook Academy, I wasn’t interested in exploring it. I started a page for Secrets of AEGIS, but didn’t finish that page as I was less interested in it.
The kit includes an intro primer “script” page, one page for each playset, as well as a few pages of stock villains (which I use in addition to the deck of villainy) and one page summarizing the GM moves for the supplemental playbooks (the GM sheets have these for the core playbooks).
Each playset page has:
1) A listing of recommended, “advanced”, and “banned” playbooks. I ban the Joined in all playsets (too convoluted for one-shot play), otherwise it’s written to address the feel of the playset.
2) A short list of inspirational media I can rattle off to the players
3) A list of scenario “skeletons”
4) A list of complications that can be used to add nuance and gameplay possibilities to the session, as well as “plug-in points” for material the players create during character generation.
5) A list of stock villains (either from Deck of Villainy, or new villains I am re-using from my home game.)
Pax Unplugged Sessions
My intent was to survey the table to see how many players were already experienced with Masks. If the majority of players were new, I would use the default playset, otherwise offer one of the supplemental playsets.
The reality: one of my sessions was all newbies, and one was 3/5 newbies, so I ran the default Halcyon City setup for both sessions.
In the default scenario, my intent was to offer all core playbooks but the Doomed to new players. (The Magpie crew apparently thinks of the Nova as an advanced playbook as well and exclude it from their pre-printed packets, so I added that to my “advanced” list on the fly.) Experienced players could request any playbook they could name (minus the Joined). It takes enough to explain just the core playsets to new players that I think explaining all the supplemental playbooks would eat up too much time.
Saturday: Chaos (Khaos?) at the Christmas Party
This session was all new players, a group of friends. Their characters:
• Flow (The Protégé) – Student of the established hero Hustle.
• Kid Khaos (The Legacy) – Arrogant entitled scion of a hero family
• Query (The Delinquent) – Got psychic weapons and teleportation powers from an encounter with an alien spacecraft for “reasons unknown”. (The player for this one left early)
• K-17 (The Outsider) (?) – Shape shifting alien described as looking like a “green mattress”. Not a stretch to think of Gumby
• The Element (The Janus) – Son of politicians who are trying to pass supers-control regulations.
One of my major stock skeleton plots is “the players are at a public place that gets attacked”. I decided to re-used the premise and villain I originally used in the first game I GMed: Nano (from the Deck of Villainy) attacks a Christmas party being throw at his father’s company, Astro Robotics.
Tapping into the elements the players created, Kid Khoas put on a contest in which the heroes in attendance would be there on dates that were auctioned off for charity. But of course, The Element had a date there in his secret identity and Kid Khaos blindsided him with the heroic-ID charity date thing, because he’s a Janus and of course has these sorts of complications. Additional flavor came in the form of the dates the heroes would have to deal with. Some are vapid children of wealthy families; others are geeky superfans who ask the wrong questions. If this wasn’t a one-shot with limited time, I could have gone so much deeper with this.
Masks tends to naturally complicate things, so I kept the action going a long time just on that premise. But the building was saved and Nano sent packing with about 45 minutes left, so I pulled out one of my stock twists: “The heroes stop the thief, established heroes and/or the news give accolades , but they discover the easily-stopped thief was a ruse or distraction, and they have to go after the sneakier thief that got away.”
When they went back to the building after saving the bigwigs kidnapped by Nano, AEGIS was on the scene, and all guests at the party were accounted for… except for The Element’s date, who went missing early. Of course, she’s secretly a manipulative assassin-thief villain (in my head, an expy of The Operative from Sentinels of the Multiverse), who had snuck into secret vault that has been there since the days of Nano’s father’s old super-team. There she was stealing the biotech of Grendel, an old hero secretly turned villain. There were lots of neat props for the players to use in their moves (by this time they get the whole fiction-and-move thing), which made for a nice final fun bash in which the true villain monologues about how easily Nano was manipulated while beating them down with her biomorphically altered form.
Sunday: Treachery at the Tech Expo
This session had three newbies (a father and his two sons), and two experienced players (one of them being my daughter). I let the experienced players pick playbooks from supplements. They chose the Scion and the Reformed. It seemed like having that much criminal background in the same session might be too much, but it actually gave them lots of ways to logically link their characters, so it worked out.
The characters were:
Kid Legacy (The Legacy): Son of established hero Legacy, with shadow powers. Played by the younger son.
Aliotech (The Outsider): Somewhat Starfire-like hero exiled from an alien society that he did not fit in. Played by the father.
Blur (The Janus): Phasing and weapons, works as an intern at a tech company. Played by the older son.
Alloyed (The Reformed): Ex-villain with metal-shaping powers. Did not publicly repent or serve time, just came out with new hero identity after she had a change of heart. Played by my daughter.
Prestige (The Scion): Son of a magic villain and tech-thief Showtime, who avoided the takedown of some villain group because he was more like a supplier than a frontline combatant. Prestige has his own magical talents that he has turned to fighting crime.
Again, I went with “heroes are at a public place under attack” premise. This time, Blur’s background as a tech company intern and Prestige’s father’s role as a technology thief made the Tech Expo premise the obvious one. The expo is one marketing anti-super tech to places in the world that have a supervillain presence but lack the superhero presence of Halcyon. As the demonstration of a giant mecha-like suit is about to begin, the suit animates and grabs the pilot before he can climb in!
The initial action here is less complicated than the Christmas Party scenario, and the group more experienced. Having experienced players showcase powers and moves helped get the new players up to speed. So we cut to the twist a lot earlier in this scenario. Before the fight with the rogue mecha was done, Kid Legacy’s shadow-senses lets him detect the Tech-Ninjas sneaking into a nearby building. At first the action is split into two areas, with Kid Legacy and Blur taking on the Tech-Ninjas while the rest are still struggling with the mecha.
The vault heist is where the meat of the hijinks occurs, including Prestige feigning a heel-turn to get the trust of the Tech-Ninjas getaway team, and a move to save the magic apocalypse sword that ends up delivering the sword to the hands of Raum, the Black Knight-esque evil client.
From here, there is a brief investigation and roleplaying scene as the young heroes profess their innocence (they were the last people seen entering the building) and track down Raum and his lackeys at a site that lets them unleash the sword. There they have the final confrontation.
Impressions
I wasn’t sure how the audience was going to look for Pax Unplugged, but was a little disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to toy with one of the alternate playsets. I think the gameday circuit is more likely to have more experienced players.
Nonetheless, running Masks is always a joy. In particular, though, I love how young new players quickly embrace the system and get excited about the cool stuff their heroes can do. This made the Sunday game my favorite of the two.
Overall, the One-shot kit seems to meet its intent, though I only really used the material for the default playset. Having a fairly simple scenario makes it fairly easy to attach bits from the backstories that the players created, and the “twist list” seems to be enough grist to keep the session interesting. Masks’ move mechanism tends to naturally introduce enough wrinkles into the game that not much more is needed.
As for Pax Unplugged itself: the RPG experience is improved from last year, but still needs a lot of work:
1) The system requires you to get up early and queue up if you want to get in an RPG.
2) The scheduling and seating for some events was chaotic. My oldest daughter signed up for a game (not in the Magpie room) only to find that the spot they thought they had to play had been claimed, and the game she was promised didn’t fire.
3) As smoothly as the Magpie stuff went, we still rely on the administrative wherewithal of wonderful people like Kate to make it happen. If you want a game from a company who hasn’t staked a claim to their own room… good luck.
While I am on the topic, super special thanks to Kate Bullock for making the Magpie events happen, and making a positive environment to play in!
Our heroes infiltrate the aliens ship and ignore the language barrier to rescue Chloe but find someone or more…
Our heroes infiltrate the aliens ship and ignore the language barrier to rescue Chloe but find someone or more accurately some “thing” they may not be able to handle.
I got to run Masks for Magpie at PAX, and I’m really pleased with how it went.
I got to run Masks for Magpie at PAX, and I’m really pleased with how it went. I think my setup makes for a good, tweakable one-shot or intro to Masks. I’ll describe my basic setup, and where I think you can MadLibs it a little.
The Setup:
The team is asked to assist in a prison transfer. Cold Snap (from the Deck of Villainy) is being moved from prison to a courthouse cell for trial.
Act I:
Conflict with A.E.G.I.S. who, at least in our scenario, weren’t the ones who called in the team, and felt they might cause more trouble. (Esp. as Cold Snap’s backstory is being a former teen hero who went bad after losing her teammates in what the world considers and unfortunate “accident.”
Cold Snap breaks out of the armored car.
Act II:
At some point during the fight, it becomes clear that Cold Snap isn’t working alone. Her power-suppressing handcuffs were tampered with, someone is firing tranqs at the A.E.G.I.S. agents. As the fight goes on and the team Assesses, Pierces the Mask, etc. it will become clear that the person who helped Cold Snap break out isn’t trying to help her escape.
The A.E.G.I.S. agents are being targeted with tranqs, but the sniper is aiming bullets at Cold Snap (and, eventually, the team). It’s Carbine, the rogue A.E.G.I.S. agent who lethally targets dangerous heroes. She helped Cold Snap break out, because it was too hard to take her out in the prison.
Act III:
Play to find out. The players may decide to help Cold Snap escape to save her life. They may want to help A.E.G.I.S. recapture her (and try to bargain with Carbine to avoid lethal force). It’s up to them and to you.
In my game
The players initially were trying to recapture Cold Snap, though several of them felt sympathetic when she said (marking Guilty) that her team was assassinated and she was going after the perps when she was arrested. Once Carbine turned up, the team worked with the one A.E.G.I.S. agent left standing, took down Carbine, but then, their trust in A.E.G.I.S. damaged, helped Cold Snap escape to the Legacy’s home.
Customizing the scenario
Who tells the team to step in?
In our case, the message came from the city councilman they saved in “When the Team First Came Together” who asked for help on the DL, leaving them in conflict with A.E.G.I.S. when they turned up.
What really happened to Cold Snap’s team?
A nice place to tie in the Doomed’s nemesis, the Legacy’s family enemy, the “start of something bigger” from the Beacon’s answer, etc. I went with the last, and gave them a stinger of the wealthy industrialist being informed Cold Snap was loose and might be able to put the pieces together at last.
Of course, it could just be Carbine.
For our third bio we have a bit of a long one:
For our third bio we have a bit of a long one:
Farah was quite literally born to be hero. Her ancestry, through her father, can be traced back to the legendary hero Gilgamesh. Throughout the centuries, these descendants have taken up the mantle of Gilgamesh to fight injustice and protect the weak. They are aided by an Ensi, originally an attendant but now a full fledged sidekick, who would inherit the Gilgamesh mantle when the time came. But this was not to be Farah’s fate; as tradition dictated the role of Ensi be given to the first son, which was Farah’s older brother Darius. When Darius was asked to take on the title at age 13, he eagerly accepted. This left Farah growing up not really having to worry much about superhero matters, though that didn’t stop her from using the legendary speed she inherited to become a track star at school. However, as Darius got older, he began to ignore his new duties, instead going to parties and hanging around with friends his parents disapproved of. This created tension between Darius and his father, which often culminated in loud angry arguments, which led to more arguments between his mother and father. His mother believing Darius simply needed to “get it out of his system” and leave him be so he can take responsibility later, and his father insisting he should take responsibility now. In the middle of all of this was Farah, fearing that every argument would be the one that causes her family to fall apart. It was this fear that motivated her to propose that she take up the role of Ensi in her brother’s stead and, in her mind, end the problem that was fracturing her family. While her father initially denied this proposition out of tradition; as Darius continued to neglect his role, he eventually relented. A suit of armour was made for her in the Forge, and she was given access to the family’s legendary armoury. Farah proved to be a capable Ensi, working well in tandem with her father. But when an extraterrestrial scientist, a reformed super criminal, and two superpowered teens show up, Gilgamesh assigns Ensi to lead this rag-tag group as a superhero team, mostly so that they can be kept under close watch. Her first real assignment on her own, Farah hopes that she can not only prove that she can handle herself on her own, but that she is also worthy of upholding her family’s legacy.
If you’d like to listen to her and the rest of the ragtag teens you can listen to their adventures here: https://soundcloud.com/lttn-podcast/sets/ragtag-teens-season-1
Art by our resident Artist Joe. Head over to his twitter account https://twitter.com/Spiral_Joe if you’d like to commission him.