Category: Masks: A New Generation RPG: Discussion

Anyone else here a fan of ‘Worm’ by wildbow?

Dark-ish supers story, starring a girl named Taylor who is bullied at school. The world building is better than most stories, and I frequently borrow power descriptions, which are very detailed, and characters for my Masks.

Read: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Listen: http://audioworm.rein-online.org/

Wiki: http://worm.wikia.com (SPOILERS!!)

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Looking at Young Justice, it’s easy to see where the Masks come from.

Miss Martian ~ Outsider

Robin ~ Protege

Super Boy ~ Bull

Kid Flash ~ Legacy

So, Aqualad? – He does have Mentor of course, but his relationship to Orrin is not the one implied by the Protege playbook. He never struggles with growing into an image of Orrin or not. Their different powers and the fact that Aqualad will never become King of Atlantis notwithstanding, their values and outlook pretty much align already.

Other than that, Aqualad does come Somewhere Else, but if he ever had problems adjusting to the Surface World, that was before the series started. Legacy doesn’t work either. There is no dynasty of Aqua-People yet. (Tula might react in that way.)

But let’s look at the issue in terms of what actually applies. I think, the most pertinant question to Mask playbooks is their defining relationships. The Doomed relates to their Doom, the Bull to Love & Rival, the Protege to their Mentor, the Transformed to their new body.

So what is the difficult relationship that Aqualad struggles with? – His career choice. That’s what the Heroing thing is to him. A job. A worthwile one, sure, but not the only worthwile one in the world.

Unlike the others, he wasn’t pushed into this life, like Megan. He didn’t stumble into it, like Wally. It was not his way to salvation, as for Dick. Sure, being a prime student at the Academia, he was offered the position of Aqualad, but he could have said no.

The playbook, I have not considered here, is Beacon. Is Aqualad a Beacon? Not quite. Beacons also choose the life, but they do so for novelty and adventure. But that is not why Aqualad is here.

And having found that pattern, there are some other characters in other franchises who act similarly: Yang in RWBY, Sakura in Naruto. They all do the hero / hunter / ninja thing, because, where they come from, it is a valid way of life.