Category: Masks: A New Generation RPG: Discussion

This weekend saw me split out my group of 7 in to two groups, due to scheduling conflicts that meant not everyone could be together on one date.

It was a good opportunity to see how the game runs on a smaller scale, and to test some things out in terms of what players liked.

Session 1 of 2 ran with the group of 4, and they were given two explicit options of potential threats they could deal with, along with two of the characters each being given personal messages/information that they could reveal or not. One of them chose to reveal it because her character was comforted at the beginning of the session.

My group is clearly very cautious about getting in to a fight, which is good to know, and means I’ll probably have to force a fight on them if I want them to actually get in to conflict, but it was good to see that they were happy to play in character, and to shun the easy “beat up a bad guy” scenario in favour of keeping an eye out for protecting innocents and helping a fellow team member on their quest.

The session 2 of 2 didn’t go so well, which is entirely my fault! I made a treasure hunt of sorts, where the three of them would have to go through the city to try and find information to get them to the location of a cultist ritual.

Problem 1: I didn’t make any explicit clues, I used custom moves which enhanced the players as they went along, which would have been great if they got to the final location quicker…but didn’t actually help them find the location!

Problem 2: I relied on these moves as a way of giving the players information about their success or not, and the move I had was a roll + mundane. I should have paid more attention to the fact these three characters had the lowest mundane ratings of anyone else on the team. As such, one player managed to rack up an impressive 7 potential in one game through failed dice rolls!

Problem 3: I should have accounted for the possibility of terrible dice rolls. It’s one thing to play the averages, but I see now that if there is no planned route out of the situation for the players and they don’t roll successes then they can’t go anywhere. If your game was one where the players could just say “This isn’t working, we need to change mission” this might be fine, but where it’s important that they actually follow the story through… I clearly needed to have more backups planned, and had to ad hoc these hard pushes in the right direction on the night.

So… lessons learned, not sure if we’ll be split again next month or back as a 7, but either way there are a few strands to play on for the story going forward, and the players seem to be enjoying themselves.

After two sessions with my 7, because of work commitments we’re having to split in to two groups this month, a 3 and a 4. Interestingly there is a good story driven reason for this happening which is nice.

However essentially the first two sessions were the introduction, an extended one-shot. I want to give the players some autonomy in what they do next, to drive where they want to find the next steps of their adventure.

Does anyone here run any games where the story has a structure that is more like a computer game’s “side quest” system, where the heroes need to seek out the next adventure to conquer? Any tips from those that have?