Category: Masks: A New Generation RPG

Hey all!  Love what I’ve seen from Masks so far, and since I’ve been teaching my longtime RPG group a few different PbtA games in the last coupla months there’s a pretty healthy buzz in my gaming circle about it.  Love the shifting labels as stats, love the codified conditions, love some of the distinct mechanics between playbooks that completely set them apart.  As an Aussie, really love the free international shipping. 😛  Just have a few questions about things I picked up on when reading through the PDFs that I’d like some clarification/feedback/whatever on.  Numbered for clarity, since this turned out longer than I first thought!

1. The “When Our Team Came Together” questions.  In general, love ’em, as a framework for drawing a circle around the team instead of only drawing lines between individuals, which is something I put a lot of sweat into for most games for the sake of group cohesion.  The one issue I have is that The Bull & The Nova team origin questions being mandatory for any group (see the footnote on the GM moves PDF if you don’t know what I’m talking about) means that actually having The Bull & The Nova in the team has a net result of two less origin questions being answered (since those two would be “freebies” if nobody’d picked either of those playbooks).  I understand that “what big bad did we defeat?” nicely sets up a definitive bonding moment for the team and several other playbook questions tie pretty strongly into the idea of an event like that happening, but if a question like that is necessary to the process then I’d much rather see it be asked independent of playbook selections.  And then The Bull & The Nova can have the opportunity to bring their own unique angle on the story like everyone else, with headbutting and explosions and all that fun stuff. 🙂

2. The Bull and their In A China Shop move, compared to a use of Unleash Your Powers to “reshape your environment”.  This might be the kinda thing that clears up in the full rules when there’s room to discuss playbook moves in more detail ala the AW book, but I’m just going with what I’ve got. 😛  Basically, what effect does this move entail that Unleashing doesn’t, ‘cept for taking a Danger roll instead of Freak?  Can a raging Transformed or an exploding Nova not wreck shop without taking this move?  Or is it a matter of scale, like In A China Shop lets The Bull wreck the whole house with one move instead of a room (or whatever otherwise seems appropriate for Unleash)?  The Transformed’s Unstoppable move vs an Unleash to “overcome an obstacle” is similar, but provides a more definitive “the world breaks before you and you get what you want” that seems to have a stronger something-awesome-and-concrete-happens insinuation beyond the “overcoming an obstacle” alternative.  And I just don’t get that same sense of a distinct result from “smash the area around you” vs “reshape your environment”, when that reshaping is being done with smashy, destructive superstrength anyway.  

Without China Shop existing, as a GM I’d be pretty comfortable letting any potent superpowered hero trash the area around them by Unleashing their crazy powers, with the collateral damage consequence of China Shop being handled pretty neatly by the “dangerous” consequence result of the Unleash move.  But since it’s a playbook-specific move that takes an advance to get access to, it makes me question where I should be drawing the line as far as the capabilities of people without it, ’cause otherwise I’m giving everyone The Bull’s cool special move for free.  Its fictional position reminds me a bit of the “you can walk through walls” Ghost move from Monsterhearts, where it seems like something I’d otherwise take for granted (for ghosts, anyway) ‘cept that the presence of it as a playbook move pretty definitively says “without this, you can’t”.

3. A similar “what’s the intended effect?” type question: The Nova’s Move flare, letting you “move to any place you choose, breaking through or slipping past any barriers or restraints in your way” vs The Doomed’s Portal, to “mark your Doom Track to appear in a scene with anyone you want”.  Could you teleport into a secret villainous underground bunker on the opposite side of the world with either/both/one of those?  Obviously there’s fictional consequence to any move, like the fact that you’re then inside a villain’s lair by yourself and that’s probably a terrible idea, but I’m just musing on the mechanical intention.  I’d be immediately inclined to let The Doomed do whatever, because hey, it’s a Doomsign (which are balls-crazy powerful anyway) and it entails marking the Doom Track every time, but the wording on the Move flare seems pretty limitless too.  And if I’m The Doomed with the Burn advancement, and wind up with access to both, is the decision to use Move or Portal to get someplace just mostly down to whether I want to emotionally explode or face the end times to achieve the same effect?

4. Is rejecting someone’s Influence a move?  Obviously it looks like one, and the line for “When you have Influence over someone, take +1 to all moves targeting them, including rejecting their Influence” says yes, but since it’s the only one not explicitly under the Moves heading I figured I’d confirm.  Also because when you reject someone’s Influence, you mark potential on a hit, and on any move, you mark potential on a miss, so as it stands you get to mark potential either way when you reject Influence.  Which I think works pretty well as a cookie for being rebellious as a powerful youth, but I figured I’d check to make sure that’s actually the intention.

5. A smaller thing: condition ordering on the playbook sheets.  The five conditions clearly tie directly to the five labels, influencing the same basic moves.  Since they’d be easier to correlate together if the conditions were ordered the same way their corresponding labels are listed, have they been purposely mixed up to dissuade people thinking about them in that mechanical sense and encourage their use as primarily fictional tags, or is it just some unintentional formatting?  I can see the merits to both arrangements, but I’d favor corresponding sequence just ’cause I think I’d have an easier time getting new folks to grasp it if they lined up nicely. 😛