So a Doomed, a Delinquent and a Transformed walk into a bar – Actual Play Report
So yesterday we played Masks.
Meet the Heroes:
Ladybug: Touched an Egyptian bug artifact her archeologist father discovered and was transformed into a bug monster. Chitin place, multiple arms, mandibles and bug eyes. Super strong though and armored to the hilt. She ran away from home but decided to become a hero when she saw a burning factory (or chem. plant? can’t remember…) and went in to safe innocents.
Played by Anne W
Echo: Was on her way to prom when she was zapped with cosmic powers and became the guardian of a portal to other (evil) dimensions. She and Ladybug were actually neighboors before one of their families moved away. They met during that fire. The connection to the portal allows Echo to summon echoes of monsters from these worlds.
Played by Sascha Müller
Kid Kool: Is a mix between Mr. Terrific, Static and a Punk. He has technopathy and transform into lightning to teleport. He really wants to be a hero but do it in his own way. The most important thing: everything needs to AWESOME!
Played by David Reichgeld
The team really came together when they fought Dr. Darkness against the direct wishes of the Fantastic 8 for no one to engage him. They came out triumphant but it destroyed the cities power grid for about a week and smashed a statue of the major. Therefore Major Jim Chun and media mogul Amret Al’Habir really are not their fans.
Other history elements are that Kid Kool really wants to make Ladybug feel better. „Chitin is so awesome!“ and all that. Echo however wants to kiss KK before her doom comes but of course she couldn’t just tell him.
We start at the Halcyon City Zoo with a picture of super cute atlantean creatures. Think Koala meets Pinguin in pink and purple. They are however about to be stolen/liberated by Cygnus (just too cute and awesome not to use in a one-shot). She was a teammate of the others for about a week before disappearing. Turns out she is a villain now, screaming about animals needing to be free and all that. Mostly for the cameras.
We roll for the enter a fight as a team move and there is some confusion because they are not really a „team leader“ kinda team. The roll gets failed and I put Echo and Ladybug directly into the lions den.
Ladybug throws Echo out of cage and gets pummeled by lions who are not really dangerous to her armor but man, it is not nice. Echo tries to engage the flying Cygnus, fails and C. tricks her. Flying past her and pulling her robe over her head making Echo tumble down.
KK gets back on his feet and teleports behind Cygnus to grapple her down. C knows that trick from their fight against G-List villain The Sparrow and so she blasts him with sonic and Kid Kool falls down, directly towards a hot-dog stand.
Ladybug however monsters out, throws the lions off her but scares onlookers and bad tweets about her go out, reaching from „Superhero attacks innocent animals #peta“ to „Monster loose in Halycron Zoo“. Ladybug isn’t happy of course.
KK slows his fall by using his (totally not T-Spheres) Spheres he has orbiting around himself to slow his fall and is successful. Meanwhile Cygnus has nearly escaped with two of the atlantean creatures. KK however hacks her phone and sends her a text that she is right and he wants to team up with her (or something like that) and in the process access some of her texts and learns that her agent convinced her to become a villain because that would be way better for publicity.
Cygnus turns around, unsure what to do and Echo sends out a giant creature to catch her and bring her to the teams hideout (where the portal is).
Page turns to the team in the hideout. The atleantean creatures are running around and the team is eating hot dogs while Cygnus is cuffed. That is my chance to ask the transformed if she actually still can eat normally. Making her feel like a monster and all. Turns out she was vegetarian before but now can only eat flesh. The rawer the better, often with bones or bits of fur still on it. Making her feel like a monster accomplished. This was however the player herself providing that so huge props to her!
The interrogate Cygnus who tells them of her plan to be a villain. When you screw up as a hero you are a public menace and a problem. When you screw up as a villain it is kinda what you do anyway. She also mentions wanting to do stuff that is still fair and not really hurting anyone (like robbing bangs) because the other stuff is just wrong. To demonstrate the team puts on the TV and it paints them in a very bad light. Showing Kid Kool and Echo screwing up in a very comical way, showing Ladybug as a monster that scares people and attacks poor lions. Cygnus however is shown cool and competent.
This is the moment we see if their accept this massage or reject the influence. At this moment I feel like giving them +1 forward against that news anchor would be lame and tell them to take +1 forward against “The Media” as an adult. I feel like this is the way to go for things like that. Treat the media as one character and give it maybe 2 extra faces they can interact with as extra characters. That is not supported by the book sheets but I feel like that is a good thing to do. Opinions on that?
The team then makes a plan of auditioning for her Agent to meet some real super villains and put them away for good.
End of issue 1 and we do the end of session move and take a short break.
Issue 2 later today.
For my players, feel free to add further things!