Category: Masks: A New Generation RPG

How do you share the action between players?

One issue that I have had in Masks is with players (ok, and GMs) who have come out of D&D, Champions or other turn based combat system RPGs. PbtA is a free flowing narrative combat system with rolling for major actions (moves) – and the GM is meant to flip back and forth between players when it is right for the narrative not because of an initiative chart.

However, this freedom means that it can feel very lopsided to players more used to a strict order of combat, especially as the NPCs get a move after every move a PC makes; sometimes players feel that their character are not getting enough screen time; and then “hey, when is my character going to get a go” becomes a common complaint (even if the player only just a minute ago made a spectacular move and other character are having the spotlight on them now).

My group of 6 – 8 players brain-stormed this idea after one game where I, as GM, felt that the spotlight was shining fairly evenly on the characters, but some of the players felt that in the combats their characters were not getting enough attention.

Our solution? Poker chips and an icecream bucket. Every player gets a poker chip at the start of the session and then, once we get into a combat type situation, when a player “makes a move” they throw their chip in the bucket. Once everyone has thrown their chips in the bucket, or the combat ends, we hand the chips back out to everyone and start again. We still get the narrative style free flowing combat feel of the game, but now when a player asks “Hey, when is my character going to get a go?” everyone looks at them and someone will respond “Where is your chip?”; if it is in their hand then the answer is can be “Now” or “soon”, if it is in the bucket is is after the other characters have had some spotlight.

And what do we mean by “makes a move”? Well, it has to be something the player does – so “take a powerful blow” doesn’t count but “directly engage a threat” would; however reacting to something, or defending/assisting another PC’s move… well, that we leave up the GM and players to decide. Our rule of thumb is that it has to be something big to use up your chip – and what is big? Well, that is normally up to the GM to determine, and I normally go by if you have to role the dice then it is probably something big.

It is not a perfect solution by a long shot, and I hope that after a while of playing we get more into the habit of sharing the spotlight but for now, it has removed the complaint of players feeling they didn’t get enough action in a game session and everyone feels like they accumplished something in the game.

What are some ideas other gaming groups have used to ensure that the spotlight is shared for players and GMs new PbtA type games?

Influence Pedalling Playbook Addition

In the first few games of Masks it was really hard for the players to give, take, lose or use Influence over other characters because they had written down on their playbooks whether they had influence over character, or if they had given influence to a character. And because it was written on the sheet, and no one wanted to erase these notes, it got to the stage where players were collecting influence, but not using it (or losing it) because of a lack of an eraser.

I’m not sure if you’ve had this issue, but as the GM it was annoying.

I know we could use the Influence Cards but… yours truly does tend to forget to bring them to the game, they do tend to get lost on the table, and how do you keep a record between games of who has what influence?

So, what I came up with is an Influence Pedalling addition to the playbooks where we use Post-It notes (which I call Influence Tags) to keep track of whom a character has influence over, a section to keep a supply of Post-It notes of your characters Influence Tags that have not yet been handed to anyone in the game (every character should have 1 tag for every PC in the game) and a section to note down which adults no longer have influence over the character.

(See the attached photos in comment section)

After setting this addition to the playbooks up the players actually started trading influence, and using them against other characters because it was so easy to hand the influence tags between the players with no additional writing needed. It was easy and the players liked it.

Anyway, your mileage may vary, but if you want to try this out for yourselves here is the Influence Pedalling sheet I made.

https://drive.google.com/a/bentengineering.com/file/d/197J8nKKvCAQwCgq28marh7yxHPk6_baF/view?usp=drive_web

Masks – GM Playbook (aka – GM Screens, aka – GM Cheat Sheets)

During as a GM of Masks games I’ve come across the issue of trying to keep everything I need at hand, when it was spread across 3 or 4 reference sheets and rules books. I did investigate making a GM Screen, but I’ve never been much good with those as the table we use is perpetually crowded (and/or small). So, instead of a GM Screen I investigated a handheld Playbook format of the important things I needed to remember as GM.

This then lead to some work cutting and pasting of the “GM Reference Sheet” and the “Basic Moves” sheet to create an 8 page GM Playbook that includes a list of all the items that I could possibly want (and a paragraph liberally borrowed from the Podcast: “Nerds on a Roll” – you should listen to it, it’s great – that I read at the start of each session to remind the players what style of game we are playing as we only get one game in every couple of months). Now I just have these 2 Letter size pages, folded in half, with me all the time and I can reference just about anything I need without having to hide behind a screen. I think this works better than a screen because the whole idea of Masks (and PbtA in general) is creative storytelling, and not an adversarial GM vs Players system… and I can still use this even lounging on the couch with the players in other comfy chairs. Hopefully it is helpful to other GMs.

https://drive.google.com/a/bentengineering.com/file/d/1Ag1rZ43B7LOP2VC7RlmC3L6h3dHXrDPH/view?usp=drive_web