![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Masks game: "Prom-ises, Prom-ises"
2019-Jun-25, Tuesday 11:13
Sunday morning, I went over to ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
thosesocks's apartment to play in a Masks game that her friend was running. Going in, I knew that that Masks was a game of junior superheroes, that it was a Powered by the Apocalypse game, and that the game took place on Prom night, but that was all. But like I told thosesocks, since her friend wanted to playtest this game to run it at GenCon, I thought that having someone who knew very little about the system or the genre would be a worthwhile data point, and she agreed.
After some introductions and the GM's gaming history, we got into character creation. The GM had printed out the playbooks on card stock and passed them around, and after some debate we ended up with five characters:
We spent some time picking Moves, determining relations between our characters, decided how we formed a team (all on the Yearbook Club, which turned out to be a cult), picking a superhero team name ("The Committee," based on all of the heroes being on the Prom planning committee together), and then started playing, though by the time we did almost half of the four-hour time slot had elapsed. There were some brief opening scenes with a few characters--Jenny's mother telling her that her wig and makeup costume was unnecessary because she shouldn't have to hide who she was; P. B.'s older brother laughing at his Fletch "costume"; and Chaim's father wanting him home by 9 p.m. and, after agreeing to 11 p.m., reminding him that he was special, chosen by G-d, and that he should remember that worldly acclaim and the esteem of the goyim were not things he should concern himself with.
After arriving early to set up the Prom--in the interests of keeping game going, I neglected to point out that this would probably be happening on Shabbat and Chaim's father would have a much larger problem with that than mixed dancing or the presence of treif--the Prom began and things were going well until photographs started fluttering down from the ceiling and the villain appeared! Mother Memory, who wanted to steal the students' life essence to make herself young, trapping them in photographs so they would experience the night of prom forever. Fletch shot an arrow to get her attention and she froze him, and Catwoman turned into a panther and then Mother Memory froze her. Then the statues used from the Prom decor came to life, and while Proceratosaurus and Normal Woman battled them, Aleph used his super speed to get close to Mother Memory and engaged her in scriptural disputation. The team gathered themselves while Aleph's debate gave them time, and then Fletch sprung his plan.
He asked Mother Memory to dance with him, saying that his night wouldn't really be perfect without it.
The villain's heart was thawed by his offer, and she accepted, unfreezing the other students and teachers and walking to the center of the dance floor as the band struck up a tune once again. As the dance ended, she mused that perhaps going on living and holding good memories close was a better path than trying to make a perfect moment last forever, no matter the cost, and the lights went out for a moment and, when they came back, she was gone. The heroes had won!
It was fun!
Though, the impression I got is that for this game especially, we played with too many of the dials. Every playbook had relationships with other characters that we were supposed to pick and those never once came up in play. The influence mechanic that let characters shift each others' stats (especially adults shifting the stats of our teenage characters) only came into play at the beginning, even though many members of the team had influence over each other. Even our powers barely came into play, though admittedly that's because we went for the 80s teen movie solution to the plot rather than trying to win through force of arms. I get the feeling that Masks would be the best for a short run game, like 6-8 sessions, and anything shorter means that a lot of the elements that make it interesting don't come into play. That said, it was still a lot of fun and I'm really glad at the direction we took the plot. The only thing that would have been better would be for it to have been a musical.
I still wouldn't want to run a PbtA game--the GM doesn't roll dice by definition, and I really like rolling dice--and I don't know if I'd want to play a longer one, but this does reignite the interest I've had in Monsterhearts ever since I listened to an Actual Play of it put on by the sadly-vanished Walking Eye podcast.
thosesocks's apartment to play in a Masks game that her friend was running. Going in, I knew that that Masks was a game of junior superheroes, that it was a Powered by the Apocalypse game, and that the game took place on Prom night, but that was all. But like I told thosesocks, since her friend wanted to playtest this game to run it at GenCon, I thought that having someone who knew very little about the system or the genre would be a worthwhile data point, and she agreed. After some introductions and the GM's gaming history, we got into character creation. The GM had printed out the playbooks on card stock and passed them around, and after some debate we ended up with five characters:
- Chaim Levi / Aleph, the Legacy: One of the 36 tzaddikim, the righteous whose lives justify the continued existence of the world to G-d. And by "lives," I mean, "use of superpowers to save the world"! Reluctantly obeying halakhah under the supervision of his observant parents, Aleph is the inheritor of an ancient tradition, and all his relatives make sure he knows it.
- Jeong "Jenny" Park / Proceratosaurus, the Transformed: Abnormally tall, scaled, and green, Proceratosaurus always stands out no matter how much she doesn't want to. Unknowingly tranformed by experimental chemicals in the water supply, she's doing her best to come to terms with her powers and her appearance, but sometimes she just wishes all of this never happened.
- Omna / Normal Woman, the Outsider: A shapeshifting extra-dimensional being from a place where identity and individuality are fluid, Normal Woman does her best to fit into the world she's found herself in. She's very proud of her uncanny-valley-triggering disguise and brushes off any suggestion of her odd behavior or gaps in her knowledge by explaining that she's from New Jersey, where they do things differently.
- Pratik "P.B." Bhuta / Fletch, the Beacon: Fletch has no powers, but his skill with a bow means he doesn't need them. He's plucky and scrappy, determined to prove to the world that he's just as good as someone who can bend steel beams or shoot lasers from his eyes. A YouTube video of his exploits went viral and he's always talking up how great Fletch is. Did you see that shot? Wow!
- Ani / Catwoman, the Bull: Granted the ability to turn into predatory animals due to unethical experiments, Catwoman smashed her way out of a lab and tried to resume a normal life, but life is never quite normal in Halycon City. Her superhero name comes from a highly-publicized incident where she turned into a panther and has stuck despite how much it annoys her.
We spent some time picking Moves, determining relations between our characters, decided how we formed a team (all on the Yearbook Club, which turned out to be a cult), picking a superhero team name ("The Committee," based on all of the heroes being on the Prom planning committee together), and then started playing, though by the time we did almost half of the four-hour time slot had elapsed. There were some brief opening scenes with a few characters--Jenny's mother telling her that her wig and makeup costume was unnecessary because she shouldn't have to hide who she was; P. B.'s older brother laughing at his Fletch "costume"; and Chaim's father wanting him home by 9 p.m. and, after agreeing to 11 p.m., reminding him that he was special, chosen by G-d, and that he should remember that worldly acclaim and the esteem of the goyim were not things he should concern himself with.
After arriving early to set up the Prom--in the interests of keeping game going, I neglected to point out that this would probably be happening on Shabbat and Chaim's father would have a much larger problem with that than mixed dancing or the presence of treif--the Prom began and things were going well until photographs started fluttering down from the ceiling and the villain appeared! Mother Memory, who wanted to steal the students' life essence to make herself young, trapping them in photographs so they would experience the night of prom forever. Fletch shot an arrow to get her attention and she froze him, and Catwoman turned into a panther and then Mother Memory froze her. Then the statues used from the Prom decor came to life, and while Proceratosaurus and Normal Woman battled them, Aleph used his super speed to get close to Mother Memory and engaged her in scriptural disputation. The team gathered themselves while Aleph's debate gave them time, and then Fletch sprung his plan.
He asked Mother Memory to dance with him, saying that his night wouldn't really be perfect without it.
The villain's heart was thawed by his offer, and she accepted, unfreezing the other students and teachers and walking to the center of the dance floor as the band struck up a tune once again. As the dance ended, she mused that perhaps going on living and holding good memories close was a better path than trying to make a perfect moment last forever, no matter the cost, and the lights went out for a moment and, when they came back, she was gone. The heroes had won!
It was fun!
Though, the impression I got is that for this game especially, we played with too many of the dials. Every playbook had relationships with other characters that we were supposed to pick and those never once came up in play. The influence mechanic that let characters shift each others' stats (especially adults shifting the stats of our teenage characters) only came into play at the beginning, even though many members of the team had influence over each other. Even our powers barely came into play, though admittedly that's because we went for the 80s teen movie solution to the plot rather than trying to win through force of arms. I get the feeling that Masks would be the best for a short run game, like 6-8 sessions, and anything shorter means that a lot of the elements that make it interesting don't come into play. That said, it was still a lot of fun and I'm really glad at the direction we took the plot. The only thing that would have been better would be for it to have been a musical.I still wouldn't want to run a PbtA game--the GM doesn't roll dice by definition, and I really like rolling dice--and I don't know if I'd want to play a longer one, but this does reignite the interest I've had in Monsterhearts ever since I listened to an Actual Play of it put on by the sadly-vanished Walking Eye podcast.
