Ran my first session of Masks this past Saturday with six (!) players.
Ran my first session of Masks this past Saturday with six (!) players. Notes on gameplay below, with a summary of events at the bottom:
– Despite the players being evenly split male/female, there were 5 female PCs and 1 male PC. Diverse playbook art works!
– I felt unsteady on my feet at first, but the big fight that kicked off the session went well. Splitting focus between 6 PCs is a challenge, but I kept in mind that every player move requires an interesting response and everyone got something to do.
– Some interesting Directly Engage outcomes: the Nova used her biokinesis to make an enemy bruiser punch himself into unconsciousness. She elected to open up an opportunity with her 7-9, meaning taking a blow from him in return was still an option. Since she was zapping him at range, I narrated that he was staggering towards her while battering himself bloody and fell on top of her as he blacked out. She decided “Afraid” was an appropriate condition. 🙂
– More than once, there was some interesting back-and-forth between NPCs and PCs, or between PCs, that I had to pause to remind myself of the influence rules. For instance: the goody two-shoes got caught sneaking back into her dorm after curfew by the headmaster. Roleplaying the power struggle between the two was so entertaining that I had to remind myself, “Oh, right – are you rejecting his influence or letting him influence you?”
I imagine I’ll get more graceful at this with time. If nothing else, it served as a good signpost for the scene’s climax: okay, enough banter; now it’s the moment of truth. Will Nessa accede to the headmaster’s wishes or stand up for herself?
– One thing I definitely need to do is make sure the supervillains use their influence more. If every adult has influence over the PCs, they should take advantage!
– I’m sure this has come up before, but a place on the playbook to record influence would be nice! It was unclear whether it’s a player’s responsibility to record who has influence over them or who they have influence over (or both). Does anyone have any best practices on this that they’d like to share?
– This session ended with several heroes going off to investigate things on their own. I have no objection to that – one of them did it to clear a condition through reckless behavior – but wonder how the game works when the party is split up. I imagine the team pool no longer comes into play. Do challenges need to be staged down?
– I played fast and loose with the powers, as the recap might hint at. The mechanics of how the powers work (as opposed to the playbook moves) are fairly loose, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.
As for the session itself:
The setting was Boston, 4 years after a Mutants & Masterminds campaign I’d run before (which borrowed a bunch of villains and organizations from the Champions setting, to complicate things further). After a dimensional invasion wrecked a chunk of the city, a high school for superpowered teens was built on the remains of Boston Latin School. Students are taught how to live with their powers, not how to become superheroes. In fact, costumed crimefighting is expressly forbidden by the administration.
With that: our heroes were watching a Red Sox playoff game in the Protege‘s luxury box when the sound of a melee caught their attention. Power Crusher and Pulsar, along with some armed thugs, were kidnapping a woman from the adjacent box. The Nova used her biokinesis to (temporarily) jellify Pulsar’s legs. The Transformed flowed through a vent in his liquid metal form and overpowered two of the armed thugs, while the Outsider caught the third by transforming a patch of carpet into flypaper. The Janus found a woman who seemed to be directing the kidnapping via a radio, and nabbed her before she could flee. The Protege and the Legacy dodged blows from Power Crusher until the Nova could double back and puppet him into unconsciousness.
The kids snuck back onto campus, but the Legacy was caught by the headmaster. He reminded her of the school policy against costumed heroics, but she refused to promise not to intervene in future threats. The Nova handed in an incomplete math assignment, then shrugged off her teacher’s insistence that she come to office hours to review it. The Janus and the Protege passed their “drop a VW Bug off a roof” Physics challenge when the Janus “borrowed” another student’s hover powers. The Transformed spent lunch period in the library after being mocked by the popular girls. And the Outsider realized the “substitute” English teacher was a visitor from her home dimension, there to prank her!
