Tag: Artifice Maryam

Alright, had a first session (and admittedly it was without the big book, so didn’t have a lot of the lovely information about hooks and arcs yet).

And for our first session I mostly just generated a team of teenage villains-narcissists who were defacing public property as an expression of ‘art’, and once they were defeated the heroes got greeted-not by a villain mentor or other heroes, but rather a corporation!

Mr. Smith, leader of Heroic Ventures is a marketing firm type thing. I was imagining ‘what if Lex Luthor wanted to start a hero team’. Motivation is all about profit and money, which you can do just fine with a team of your own. The Players so far have acted pretty disinterested (expected, you don’t have rich people offering you money/resources out of nowhere without suspecting strings) and it left shortly after they parted ways.

Now, looking over arcs, this appears to be the start of a corruption or restriction arc-I had imagined if they had accepted it’d divert focus as their team is used to make money (attacking corporate villains, publicity stunts, charity work and the like) though frankly I doubt the heroes will accept.

So, at this point, what are some potential moves with this arc? I have a few ideas of how I can start getting hooks into characters, but the template for invasion has about three players each with different agendas for each of those acts-what are some ideas for other players or ultimate goals/threats of Heroic Ventures and this campaign?

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? 

Okay, so last question actually revealed that I may have been trading harm incorrectly, so I want to ask about that here. 

The heroes are all going against Scare Chord, the musical terror! With music that literally terrifies, he assaulted the heroes while they were partying at the Sidekicks Lounge, a local nightclub. 

Modern Villain

Drive: To perform and share his art with the world. 

Conditions: Angry, Afraid, and Insecure. Scare Chord doesn’t get Guilty or Hopeless. 

Moves: Cause mass panic with a strum of his guitar. 

Send a sonic wave of terrify and batter enemies. 

Push a bystander into a ‘fight or flight’ reaction. 

Here he is! Pretty straightforward, m y thought was he’d hand out afraid conditions like they were candy to help keep the heroes from engaging him directly. (5 on 1 is just not fair!)

So, first his big entrance, in which he inspired mass panic-making the crowd freak out and try to run. (Give the heroes a crowd to calm and save!) Mahina and Amalgam were on this-Mahina Unleashing her Powers to Temporarily calm the crowd and ease their stress, while Amalgam used Defend to protect them from harm and direct them outside. Amalgam had to expose himself to danger, so I just asked-does he let himself get put into a bad position while arranging this, separated and unsupported, or do they mark a condition to push themselves to try and get people out? They chose to put themselves in a  bad position (and I mentally noted to make sure they couldn’t help with Team that little phase) and moved on. 

Next we had Peekaboo and Triplepoint both charging in to take out our villain head on. Peekaboo opted to create an opportunity and to take something away with there 11 total (making Scare Chord lose their guitar). 

Now, trading harm, I decided that since Peekaboo hadn’t resisted harm, that meant Scare Chord got to hit them full on-so they strummed thier guitar as it was pulled away, and hit them with a powerful wave of fear-making them mark Afraid and then rolling to take a powerful blow. Which is second sort of question-do they do both? or are they supposed to ch oose one or the other?)

And w hile the team did struggle to take down Scare Chord, should he be doing more things actively instead of just when directly engaged? I don’t think he ever attacked anyone or inflicted any conditions except when heroes got a  miss-could I just have him decide he didn’t like TriplePoint knocking him through walls anymore and hit him with a sonic wave to make her quiver in her boots? 

Okay, so played more Masks (you know, because yet again, I’m here posting silly questions). 

First thing came up with one of our teen heroes Swarm standing on a building, looking down at a bunch of superpowered boxers robbing a bank-and of course she uses her powers of bug control to summon a swarm to attack them from afar-and gets a 10+! Great for her, except when she picks ‘create an opportunity’ by distracting them for an ambush, and ‘Impress or Frighten the opposition’.  Just passed up on ‘resist or avoid their blows’ and so I felt the need to trade harm-but the villains are all melee style brawlers. They can’t retaliate in the first place!

So, I hedged. I told her that the bugs were killed long before they got to the boxers-thier short range powers actually killing and slaughtering them. Sure it was a distraction, but its obvious they’re not being ‘really’ hurt, and asked them to mark a condition against the seeming frustration of not doing much direct harm, even if it did distract them from the coming ambush. 

Thing is, I’m not sure how much I like that, and the player argued (perhaps rightfully) that they had no means of retaliation from their position. I figured that no matter what without a lined up shot they couldn’t make a powerful blow, but conditions were happening on trade harm if you didn’t resist or avoid damage. 

But, what say you gentlemen and ladies of cape and cowl? Whats the est solution? 

Alright. So I have ran a couple of sessions of Masks so far. Its been a blast and I’ve loved it to death, though tripping over the ‘share a moment of celebration with someone’. 

So, w hen I saw this, I thought it was kinda a personal moment. Like ‘you two both did something cool or you got a personal triumph’. But in game the players have been using it basically as an end of session move-they dealt with the giant robot gorilla and got the poor girl who summoned it to safety, and they trade high fives and everyone goes through their moves. 

Moreover, second session they dealt with a villain called the Watchmaker who was making villains more and more angry. They dealt with two villains who were relatively quick fights (and wanted to trigger that after each of them) and when they got to the watchmaker they flubbed a few key rolls-and while they beat t hem, he managed to trigger his aggression bomb through the city, instigating mass riots and anger-and proceeded to trigger their moment of victory again because ‘at least they beat him up and he couldn’t do something worse than that’. 

Am I reading this wrong? Are they right and you can use it after each fight? Are they using it gratuitously? 

So, this is going to be more how to deal with teen heroes in general, but the question came up. 

How do we make sure the story and action stays on the teens? I mean, obviously, the story has to-they’re our heroes and protagonists, they need to be the center of their stories and being awesome-but Halcyon City is explicitly filled to the brim with heroes. One or two silver age teams, bronze age teams, a bunch of solo agents. The Legacy existing means you have a small suite of older heroes with a collective interest in our young persons activities. 

How do you explain it when no one else shows up to deal with a zombie invasion? Or making the giant robotic gorilla a thing only they deal with? The bigger the threat the more impossible it seems that it’d fall into the heroes lap, but stuff like the Outsider summoning in an army shows that we’re clearly not trying to be small potatoes here. 

Any thoughts or suggestions? I’d love just ideas so that way they don’t deal with the ‘conspicuous absence’