What are you thoughts about connecting or even overlapping the NPCs from the PCs’ backstory questions?

What are you thoughts about connecting or even overlapping the NPCs from the PCs’ backstory questions?

What are you thoughts about connecting or even overlapping the NPCs from the PCs’ backstory questions?

It could be interesting to have a Legacy or Protégé who want to uphold an NPC’s tradition while also having a descendant of that NPC who does their own thing but still has the NPC involved in their backstory.

Do you think that might overshadow the other PCs a bit?

I just posted this to Reddit to show that you can justify enhanced mobility for all playbooks (at least from the…

I just posted this to Reddit to show that you can justify enhanced mobility for all playbooks (at least from the…

I just posted this to Reddit to show that you can justify enhanced mobility for all playbooks (at least from the core book), and I thought I’d share it here too:

The Beacon has trick arrows (grappling hooks! Swinglines!) and phasing (air-walking, like Kitty Pride) and acrobatics (parkour) and stealth (just appearing out of the shadows at an impossible location, like Batman).

The Bull is a Hulk-like wrecking ball. Part of their deal is that their powers are a bit limited in focus – they wreck stuff and take hits. You can expand that a bit by allowing Hulk-like leaping, or you get creative. Gotta get up on that rooftop? Climb the wall with your super-strength, possibly while carrying another hero. Or after throwing them up there ahead of you.

The Delinquent has teleportation and gadgets (which can include mobility-enhancers like wall-crawling boots or hover boards).

The Doomed has telekinesis and psychic constructs and can lift themselves and others, either through levitation or summoning force bubbles or platforms like Sue Richards. They also have superhuman speed, so they can just come running into a scene like the Flash or a vampire (what with the recent trend of super-speed for them on screen).

The Janus has impossible mobility, so you can do Spider-Man style super-leaping and web-swinging, jump across whole city blocks like the Hulk, or ride the winds or travel along power lines or through substances they mimic or through the psychic mindscape of the animals they control.

The Legacy has outright flight, but also super-speed, Batman-esque gadgetry, magic weapons (toss that magic hammer without letting go) and shadow portals. Mobility isn’t an issue for them.

All of the Nova’s ability options provide access to flight or other mobility options. Levitation, gravity warping, spells of flight and mystic portals, letting the winds carry you or rocketing along like the Human Torch, growing wings with your biokinesis, riding your sweet cosmic surfboard or just folding space so that you can take a single step to the other side of the world.

The Outsider can fly even before choosing their ability package. The details are up to you – do you psychically levitate? Do you have anti-grav boots? An alien jetpack? Do you shapeshift into a winged leviathan and have your friends ride on your back? Or do you all zip along in your strange alien vessel?

The Protégé has access to gadgets (grappling hooks, personal teleporters, web shooters), stealth (“I am right behind you!”), body elasticity (Reed Richards can form his limbs into swinglines and or float by flattening out his body), telekinesis (levitation), and elemental control (ride the winds, grab on to a bolt of lightning you summoned, blast off like a rocket, or summon a pillar of water to lift you up, etc).

The Transformed has inhuman might, so Hulk leap logic applies. They have plant affinity, so they can grow themselves a new plant-like body at their target location if there’s any plant life there, like Swamp Thing.

So, it seems to me there’s potential for a custom playbook about characters who bond with an alien or magical…

So, it seems to me there’s potential for a custom playbook about characters who bond with an alien or magical…

So, it seems to me there’s potential for a custom playbook about characters who bond with an alien or magical artifact. I’m thinking of examples like Ben Ten, the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle, a young Green Lantern. The central conflict for the playbook would be about the young hero dealing with the artifact’s arcane expectations or different ideas of heroism. Playbook name might be The Recruit.

What do people think? Do you have other examples of characters in this wheelhouse? What sort of moves and abilities would make sense in a custom playbook like this?

Who else regularly browses Artstation, CG Society and similar sites for character art on which to base heroes &…

Who else regularly browses Artstation, CG Society and similar sites for character art on which to base heroes &…

Who else regularly browses Artstation, CG Society and similar sites for character art on which to base heroes & villains?

Any other good sites for that? Any search terms or particular artists that give good results?

I was amused to realize you could run a Masks game set in the Marvel universe, where all the PCs are teenage girls…

I was amused to realize you could run a Masks game set in the Marvel universe, where all the PCs are teenage girls…

I was amused to realize you could run a Masks game set in the Marvel universe, where all the PCs are teenage girls Wolverine has mentored.

Kitty Pryde: The Beacon

Jubilee: The Delinquent

X-23: The Bull

Plus you can throw in whomever he is mentoring most actively at present (Armor?) as the Protégé.

What do you guys think?

(Art credit: Albert Nguyen. https://www.instagram.com/p/BEzAFb_Dj6Z/)

For anyone thinking of having a Star in their campaign, I thought this NYker profile was fascinating.

For anyone thinking of having a Star in their campaign, I thought this NYker profile was fascinating.

For anyone thinking of having a Star in their campaign, I thought this NYker profile was fascinating. It’s profiling a livestreamer, whose life is built around the things his fans may demand of him. This is one of several unsettling examples.

“The disruptive power of the community was on everyone’s mind. For the past six months, Denino had been struggling with fans over his girlfriend, a platinum-blond streamer named Caroline. Viewers thought that she was taking him away from the stream and using him to boost her own career; they called her “the leech.” They bombarded the subreddit with hateful posts about Caroline and Denino, approached the couple in real life to harass them, and staged a boycott that cut Denino’s viewership and revenue by a third, demanding that he break up with her. Denino resisted for months—Caroline made him happy—but eventually he relented. “It just got too much, dude,” he told me. “It was just easier to break up with her than to deal with it.” He showed me a chart of his earnings, which had doubled the week after he and Caroline broke up.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/ice-poseidons-lucrative-stressful-life-as-a-live-streamer

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/ice-poseidons-lucrative-stressful-life-as-a-live-streamer

We just finished getting all caught up on Cloak and Dagger on Hulu, and I was thinking about how I would write them…

We just finished getting all caught up on Cloak and Dagger on Hulu, and I was thinking about how I would write them…

We just finished getting all caught up on Cloak and Dagger on Hulu, and I was thinking about how I would write them up in Masks. The story has been rewritten a little to fit in with contemporary society and more mature expectations, and that has moved Tyrone and Tandy away from the playbooks we might typically associate them with.

In the show, Tandy feels like “the Reformed”. She has a past life she can call on (more than one actually), and specializes in calling people out on their shit. She could also swing a Delinquent pretty clearly.

While you could call him a Janus, to me Tyrone is acting a lot more like a Legacy. This is interesting to me, because it brings the family questions down to a much more human level.

This was something I was thinking about for a hot minute, especially since this sparked a semi-heated discussion in…

This was something I was thinking about for a hot minute, especially since this sparked a semi-heated discussion in…

This was something I was thinking about for a hot minute, especially since this sparked a semi-heated discussion in a chatroom I lurk in, and I wanted to know what everyone here thought about it.

From a narrative and mechanical perspective, what do you guys think about using the advancement “Someone permanently loses Influence over you;

add +1 to a Label” when it’s used against other PCs?

Example;

Alchemy, the Transformed, levels up and takes the advancement, permanently removing influence from their team mate Valkyrie, the Star.

[Edit: should’ve probably clarified that this isn’t something I’m planning to do myself, so this isn’t a “should I? shouldn’t I?” Question. This is just a “What are your guys’ personal opinions about it?” Sort of deal. Still cool to already see 2 different responses already!]

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone!

I’m hoping to run Masks as an open table soon, trying to follow some of the principles set in the Alexandrian’s guide to open table gaming.

However, I’m anticipating some hiccups, and I’d love advice on how to address them. For example, Influence is an issue, since the cast will be changing a bit each session, probably. I’ve ran Masks before, but not enough to properly anticipate some problems I might see in play.

Has anyone else ran an open table Masks campaign? Any advice or suggestions, or other problems you might anticipate?

Thank you all!

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38659/roleplaying-games/open-table-manifesto-part-2-what-an-open-table-needs