Masks: A New Generation RPG: Discussion – Page 71 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Problems with the Protégé’s Powers

Alliteration aside, I’ll be the first to admit that v2’s Protégé’s abilities were far too broad and unfocused. In a game designed around guiding archetypes and letting people enjoy narrative niches, “Common Power” and “General Power” didn’t do much to inspire. However, I feel that v3 went too far in the opposite direction and closed off a lot of the Protégé’s narrative potential.

First, several of the available abilities are either too narrow or uninspiring. Hacking is a power more suited for the Beacon and can easily be covered by weapons and gadgets (ie, a hacking minitool). Detective skills is a nice subset, but not very versatile as a main power. Powerful armor is just dull sounding, even if it was meant to invoke the idea of Power Armor. A counter example is power mimicry, which is very cool and versatile and adds to the narrative potential (especially in the case of the Protégé mimicking their mentor’s power as part of training exercises). The current list mostly nudges Protégé’s towards one specific role and in the words of my own Protégé player, “Not every Protégé is Robin.”

Second, and this is admittedly a problem from v2 as well as v3, it’s unclear how to select the Protégé’s abilities. Everyone else is given a list with available checkboxes and told to check off a certain number. Even the Legacy is told to pick two to cross out. But there is no guideline for the protégé. Even now, I’m confused as to how you are supposed to pick them. My natural assumption is to pick one from each list, with the first two being yours, but I’m not entirely sure. I feel this should be made more explicit, at least on par with the other playbooks.

Thirdly, assuming my interpretation of how to pick character powers from above is correct, this new version cuts off one of the best narrative angles for the Protégé: the story of a mentor with an unusual ability finding a young person with the same and tutoring them on how to control it. The current shared abilities are all things you are trained in, not inherit gifts. With this ability set, you can’t play Jean Grey learning telepathy from Xavier or Sticks showing Daredevil how to use his super senses. You are only left with learned skills, like Robin or Speedy. Cutting off that narrative angle is rather disappointing.

My thought would be to have a list of narratively open powers, like Power Mimicry or Weapons and Gadgets, and have the player choose one of them to be Shared, one for Themselves, and one for the Mentor. That would make it easy to pick, remove the ambiguity, and allow the player to decide if they are being taught a skill or learning to master a shared gift. More clarity and more narrative freedom can only make the Protégé a more interesting playbook.

My players and I both like the changes so far. However, we kind of question the choice of comic sans.

Just looking for clarification briefly here: The Moment of Truth.

Just looking for clarification briefly here: The Moment of Truth. Once you unlock it, it says you can activate it at any time. I’m assuming that since it’s on advancement twice, once it’s been activated, it’s spent and can’t be used again until you buy it again, but it doesn’t actually seem to say anywhere?

Some moves and moves-language I’ve used in my games that might be up for some discussion:

“When you save the city and get credit for it, roll +Savior. On a 7-9, the city likes you; take a +1 forward towards the next normal person you roll a move on. On a 10+, the city loves you; take influence over the city and its mundane crowds of nameless inhabitants. On a miss, the city doesn’t trust you; tell me why, and gain a condition.”

I used the Team-generating “When you lead the team into battle against a dangerous foe” move for when the group went to a big party thrown by a rival team. Does everyone trust the leader and the team? Yeah, we do… Do we all have the same purpose here? … NO!

My reasoning for this one: Even at a party (with this game, ESPECIALLY at a party) people are going to be rolling moves like Defend (for when the Transformed tries to make small talk with a girl and gets told he’s gross and the Beacon comes in to tell her she is too) and Directly Engage (when the Outsider and the Doomed are having an argument because they’re both crushing on the same girl) and Provoke (when the Legacy is trying to get a girl to make out with him in the broom closet) and Change Self-Image (for when the Beacon rallies the Transformed, pep-talks him and sends him after the girl that the Legacy, Doomed and Outsider are all squabbling over…). There’s a lot of moves that might go out! The theme of this game is twofold: “Hurting people’s feelings and then apologizing” and “We are a team”, and the team has each-other’s backs. The best way to really show that is to have Team in the pool so people can spend it to have eachother’s backs.

“When you go to the big Sky City party, decide: Do you mingle with people who have similar interests, or people with similar powers, and roll +Mundane for People and +Freak for Powers. On a 7-9, choose one. On a 10+, choose 2. — Someone wants to meet you; — You gain influence over someone at the party; — Someone at the party loses influence over you; — You learn something about a person, place or thing you didn’t know before.”

“When you take a powerful blow from the Laughmaster, you’re breathing in his laughing gas. On a hit, you see your worst fear; on a 10+, you have to struggle against it to continue the fight. After the fight, if you’re Afraid, you can clear Afraid by sharing what your worst fear is with someone else (likely by sharing a vulnerability or weakness at the same time).”

“When you seek the wisdom of Athena, you can roll to Assess the Situation with +Savior. If you do, the team can choose one character to ask a Pierce the Mask question of you, and you must answer honestly. That character knows the answer to that question intrinsically and without explanation; mirrors reflect the truth, but they also reflect part of yourself as well.”

How does your group feel about custom moves and which ones have you used? Have you used any regular moves in weird context? Let’s talk about it.

Secret Identities.

These are sometimes a thing! When I envisioned this game, I thought of two of the best two teenager hero shows I’d seen-Teen Titans and Young Justice. Which… do not feature much of the secret identity life. Its not something that comes up, not nearly as much as just being a hero and working together.

Not so in Masks. While the Transformed, Outsider, and Legacy are unlikely to need to care about hiding who or what they are, its at the very core of the Janus character.

What are some ways you use to make secret identities relevant? How do you keep them involved and interesting?

Someone mentioned the thought that you might want to lock a label low to solidify that as part of your personality.

The example was perhaps Spider man was a negative two Danger as he goes out of his way to not been seen as the menace Jameson makes him out to be.

My question is … Without directly the engaging an opponent Move, how would you actually deal them a powerful blow to give them conditions?

(Edit to clarify – How do the heroes deal the Villian a condition without directly engaging..ie without using danger )

What are your thoughts on how this plays out or looks like?

“Create a second character”

What’s the intent behind this advance? Should the player create a second character and be able to play both at the same time, or have a different character that they can swap to depending on the session?

Either way, to be honest those sound like play style decisions that should be made by the table, rather than by mechanics. I’m curious why it’s there, and what it’s expected to add.

So, my group has a mechanics conundrum.

So, my group has a mechanics conundrum. We’ve got a few NPCs joining the main PCs team while they help rescue their allies from a psychopath villain.

What kind of mechanics would you suggest to continue to put the “Team” theme farther out there while not narratively letting the NPCs fall by the wayside?

I was considering adding more Team to the pool (“Red team” since we use blue stones) that when you use it puts the NPC in danger ala Dungeon World, or specifically making a move per NPC (When you directly engage a group and Dynamite is present, roll +Danger) or for the NPCs as a whole (When you engage the enemy with allies who aren’t part of the team, decide what label they stand for and roll+that), or something else…

What do you guys think?

So how are other GMs going about enforcing limits on their players for how powerful they are?

So how are other GMs going about enforcing limits on their players for how powerful they are? Some of these powers are very open ended, by design of course, but that is giving me some trouble in the game I am running.

Let me start by saying our group has a meta gamer. Every game we play he looks for a very optimal build because that is how he has fun. When we started I pushed heavily that this will be themed around teen super heroes ala Teen Titans, so they would not be wanting to murder people, they would be trying to apprehend people to bring to justice. I also encouraged people to set their own limits on power because it is more fun when those limits get pushed and broken, so our Legacy that can open shadow portals can only do it in shadows he sees (story related, another member of his legacy got trapped going through a portal to a shadow that he knew should have been there but wasn’t), our telekinetic cannot lift anything heavier than 100 pounds at a time, ect. I told them I would not force limits on them since the rules didn’t, but encouraged stuff like this.

So what happens every fight is our Trickster, with Illusion and Emotion control abilities, is invisible, has 500 illusions of himself, evil clowns, or other players active and interacting with the environment because he says his powers do not require him to sustain the illusions after creating them, and he is making all enemies suicidaly depressed. (He also has stupid good luck when rolling dice, so his plans pretty much always work)

What this leads to, especially in our recent session where I had them playing super powered keep away with a ball, is everyone feels so left behind. He has an answer for everything and needed no effort to get there. If I force a nerf on him he will stop having fun, but right now he is the only one that really is.

How are other people avoiding this or dealing with it? Surely there must be people with gravity control that are just turning their enemies into puddles or something else just as OP, how do we avoid that in this system?

What started as an absolute blast of a game to play has become something that I don’t know how to proceed on, or convince most of the group besides this one person to play again.

Category: Masks: A New Generation RPG: Discussion