Tag: Leah Libresco

Last night, I took over as GM while our players picked out new playbooks to play campaign NPCs as PCs for a special mission: breaking our usual team out of jail!

I’ll make another post about the session as a whole, but I wrote a special custom move for them, for when they squared off against the psychic Agent Njeri (affiliated with our A.E.G.I.S.-equivalent).

Njeri had been introduced in a love letter for my usual character (Bull-turned-Soldier) to help her build up a way to resist the mind control triggers of the people who made her a weapon.

She helped, but was pretty pushy and a little creepy, so I was looking forward to letting our team of subs face her when she was using her powers as weapons. Here’s what they had to deal with:

When Agent Njeri gets ahold of you roll + Conditions.

On a 10+, choose one:

* You’re trapped in a bad memory, explain what it is, and how Njeri seals the exit. You’re out of the fight until she is.

* Agent Njeri has her hooks in you and can immediately roll one of your moves (basic or playbook) to target a teammate through you.

* Two from the 7-9 list

On a 7-9, choose one:

* You give up a damaging secret of yours or a teammate’s to Njeri through your memories. What is it? Mark a condition.

* Agent Njeri blurs your grasp of reality. You’re having trouble avoiding seeing her as [person you care about]. Take -1 ongoing to rolls targeting her.

* Any option from the usual powerful blow 7-9 list.

On a 6-, explain how you reframe a bad memory, and take +1 forward against Agent Njeri. Mark potential.

Got a nifty little custom move for when your players get into big trouble.

Here’s the backstory. My husband (Alexi Sargeant) GMs our (now year-long) Masks campaign. We agreed I’d run a one-shot for the final session of the year where all our players could try on new playbooks and characters by being NPCs and putting together a b-team.

I told them I’d just come up with a problem that the usual team wouldn’t be a good fit to solve, but what Alexi and I agreed is that the preceding session would end with the main team captured by our A.E.G.I.S. equivalent. He got a shot to take us down in the session, for everyone who escaped, I had this move as mop-up.

My goal in writing the custom move was to give players a real reward for escaping the first time, it’s just that their reward is getting the shape the circumstances of their capture. They get to pick how they want to go down and what complications that might set up for the future.

When you get captured, roll +Conditions to tell us how it all goes down:

On a 10+ it gets ugly, choose one:

• They took you down in a public place, and blackened your name. What did they claim about you? What person or persons did you lose influence over?

• You lost control of your powers trying to escape. Who did you hurt and why do you feel so guilty?

• Choose two from 7-9

On a 7-9, somewhere or someone you thought was safe wasn’t, what happened? Choose one:

• You are ambushed somewhere you thought was secret or safe. What happened?

• Your captors threatened someone you cared about if you didn’t turn yourself in. Who did they threaten? Why did you have to give in?

• Your captors had something prepped specifically to neutralize your powers. What happened? Mark an appropriate condition.

On a 6-, you’re still captured, but you conducted yourself with honor and you managed to learn an important piece of information that you relayed to Kevin before they got you.

• Choose a question from pierce the mask/assess the situation for Leah to answer. And tell us something badass you did as they took you down.

I got to run Masks for Magpie at PAX, and I’m really pleased with how it went. I think my setup makes for a good, tweakable one-shot or intro to Masks. I’ll describe my basic setup, and where I think you can MadLibs it a little.

The Setup:

The team is asked to assist in a prison transfer. Cold Snap (from the Deck of Villainy) is being moved from prison to a courthouse cell for trial.

Act I:

Conflict with A.E.G.I.S. who, at least in our scenario, weren’t the ones who called in the team, and felt they might cause more trouble. (Esp. as Cold Snap’s backstory is being a former teen hero who went bad after losing her teammates in what the world considers and unfortunate “accident.”

Cold Snap breaks out of the armored car.

Act II:

At some point during the fight, it becomes clear that Cold Snap isn’t working alone. Her power-suppressing handcuffs were tampered with, someone is firing tranqs at the A.E.G.I.S. agents. As the fight goes on and the team Assesses, Pierces the Mask, etc. it will become clear that the person who helped Cold Snap break out isn’t trying to help her escape.

The A.E.G.I.S. agents are being targeted with tranqs, but the sniper is aiming bullets at Cold Snap (and, eventually, the team). It’s Carbine, the rogue A.E.G.I.S. agent who lethally targets dangerous heroes. She helped Cold Snap break out, because it was too hard to take her out in the prison.

Act III:

Play to find out. The players may decide to help Cold Snap escape to save her life. They may want to help A.E.G.I.S. recapture her (and try to bargain with Carbine to avoid lethal force). It’s up to them and to you.

In my game

The players initially were trying to recapture Cold Snap, though several of them felt sympathetic when she said (marking Guilty) that her team was assassinated and she was going after the perps when she was arrested. Once Carbine turned up, the team worked with the one A.E.G.I.S. agent left standing, took down Carbine, but then, their trust in A.E.G.I.S. damaged, helped Cold Snap escape to the Legacy’s home.

Customizing the scenario

Who tells the team to step in?

In our case, the message came from the city councilman they saved in “When the Team First Came Together” who asked for help on the DL, leaving them in conflict with A.E.G.I.S. when they turned up.

What really happened to Cold Snap’s team?

A nice place to tie in the Doomed’s nemesis, the Legacy’s family enemy, the “start of something bigger” from the Beacon’s answer, etc. I went with the last, and gave them a stinger of the wealthy industrialist being informed Cold Snap was loose and might be able to put the pieces together at last.

Of course, it could just be Carbine.

In our most recent session, our Transformed went to face his parents for the first time since he changed playbooks to the Transformed. (His parents had appeared on TV asking for him to come home and announcing themselves as members of a committee of parents opposing superpower-granting drugs).

His plan was to sneak in before they woke up and get breakfast ready to win them over. This resulted in:

An Unleash roll to sneak into the house (missed, they were up and waiting for him)

A Provoke roll to get his dad to let him make breakfast for his team + family. (Hit)

So, two rolls to pour out some cereal! 😀

Some shifts in our game have required fun custom move creation. I play a Bull turned Soldier. In our 5th session, we learned that the Forge (the group that made Sonia the Bull) had implanted mind control triggers.

In between session 6 and 7, the GM gave me a love letter where Sonia got help learning to the resist the mind control. So I wrote (consulting with the GM) this custom move for future interactions:

When you resist mind control using your mantra, roll + Conditions. If you have influence over the person trying to control you, take -1.

On a 10+, choose one:

* You do exactly what the command entails, and there’s a momentum to the mind control, you do the next thing they ask, too. No roll allowed.

* The only way to avoid letting them use your powers is to use them first! Lose control of your powers in a terrible way and mark an appropriate condition.

* Choose two options from the 7-9 list.

On a 7-9, choose one:

* You successfully resist the command, but it takes constant effort. Take -1 ongoing to all rolls, until the end of the scene or until the command is released

* You meditate, hard, and hold on until the command dissipates. But your enemy isn’t waiting for you to clear your head. You give ground, your opposition gets an opportunity.

* You resist the command, but you’re emotionally staggered. Mark a condition, and your opponent gets to ask you a question you must answer honestly.

On a miss, you hold strong and the command doesn’t seem to affect you, for now. Mark potential and the GM will tell you what the command appeared to be trying to do. Maybe take influence over the person who tried to control you, GM’s call.

But by session 8, the Forge had taken a hostage and forced Sonia to come back into their fold. She was gradually won over to their mission (if not their methods) and made a playbook shift to Soldier at the end of session 12.

That meant I wanted a way for her to work with mind control, instead of always resisting it. So, for session 15, I worked with the GM and debuted this:

When you cooperate with a Forge trigger, roll +Soldier.

On a hit it’s just like in training.

* You understand the command and blend with it, take +1 ongoing while in the grip of the mind control.

O

n a 7–9, add a complication:

* Once the command has you, you can see there was a catch. Mark a condition to resist, or else put an ally in danger.

* You carry out the command, but the transition into or out of mind control leaves you disoriented. Someone (GM’s choice) can ask a pierce the mask question that you must answer honestly.

* Shift Soldier up and Savior down.

On a 6-

* You get more than you bargained for, and you can’t hold it back. The GM will tell you if this also means you mark a condition.

For our throwback adventure (a one-shot set a generation before our main campaign, featuring adult heroes from our campaign as teens), the action took place on a movie set, where the villain had reality-warping gels on the lights that made movie magic real.

So, in addition to turning the people in rubber alien costumes into real aliens, the lights triggered this custom move;

When you are caught in the spotlight roll + conditions.

On a 10+ choose one:

Time for a punch ‘em up! Directly engage one of your teammates without warning

Two from the 7-9 list

On a 7-9 choose one:

You try to be heroic, but wind up in a slapstick pratfall: mark Insecure

You get caught monologuing and share a secret you shouldn’t. Give Influence to the person you betray.

It’s all connected! You spot something that reveals you in particular are in more trouble than you thought.

You give in to some of your worst instincts and respond villainously: mark Guilty

One a 6+, mark potential. You look like the version of yourself as a hero you’ve always wanted to be. Do something cinematic and choose one:

Clear a condition

Choose one of the options from Directly Engage without rolling

Ran a Masks session for our group for the first time last night. My adventure was a one-shot set a generation before our main campaign.

Ms. Quantum (Brain, and in the present, Doc Quantum—the most respected hero) was recruited to do robotics work on a movie set, and some suits from the studio asked her to bring in the Hurricane (Nova, presently Lady Hurricane, retired from heroing and the therapist for our Protege-turned-Transformed) to add some lightning and explosions, without telling the director.

The film, “The Peril of the Planets,” featured invading Phobosians, who are ultimately defeated because they have never encountered the Earth phenomenon of ennui.

Wolfhound (raised by wolves, the Outsider) and Norma Conquest (timetraveller, the Bull) tagged along with their teammates and turned out to be needed when the shoot began and real aliens entered through the spaceship sets.

The team pieced together that special gels on the lights were making everything more like the movies: the men in the rubber suits became real aliens, the safety officer turned into the dangerous Ruligan, and the team got caught in the beams, too.

Wolfhound pulled off an incredible, cinematic feat of climbing and leaping to defeat Ruligan, but Ms. Quantum wound up monologuing (and sounding more like a villain than she intended). Norma Conquest swore fealty to the director (missing her old lord, William the Conqueror) and was commended for her swashbuckling by film star Errol Loxley (grandfather to our usual campaign’s Beacon).

Behind the whole scheme… Jeanne (Jenny) Blague, an intern who was trying to defend the director’s existentialist vision. The Hurricane took her down with lightning, defusing the immediate threat.

But when the director admitted he wasn’t even French, and he didn’t care too much about his vision, just about seeming deep, Jeanne stormed off the set, saying it looked like all anyone cared about was cheap laughs…. the origin story of Commediennemy (who we’ve fought in our usual campaign).