I've tried to get a game for other systems, but this is another one that I'd be interested in playing, so I'm hoping that someone will run a game for us all.

I've heard of this system. I keep hearing very good things about it, but when I actually read the system I was very unimpressed. It appears to be a supers system without any mechanics for superpowers, where are you required to play high school cliches, and you have to roll to avoid having your personality changed from normal conversations. I've been looking for an advocate of the system to bring me around.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:01, Fri 15 Mar.

It might not be possible to bring you around on it. It might just not be your kind of game. But, just so you're proceeding with the correct information:

Masks is a "Powered by the Apocalypse" game (often rendered as "PtbA"). This is a family of games that share a common mechanic framework and a common perspective on what the rules in an RPG are actually for (broadly: emulating a certain experience rather than simulating reality). PtbA games are very different from 'traditional' dice-based games. And so there's a real paradigm-shift involved in moving from one to the other.


Correct. Most PtbA games don't have specific rules for discrete abilities or skills or powers. In a PtbA game, you'll almost never roll to pick a lock or climb a wall or kick in a door. Instead, dice are generally used to resolve broader, more narrative based situations.

So Masks doesn't have rules for attacking martial arts or fireballs or adamantium claws. Instead, you have a 'Move' called "Directly Engage a Threat." Any time you're facing a threat, and you engage it directly, you trigger the Move. Results include things like "take something from them" or "impress, surprise, or frighten the opposition." How you engage the threat (martial arts, fireblast or claws) only matters 'in the fiction.' It might guide what it looks like when you surprise or frighten them, but the Move is the same either way.

This creates a mode of play focused very heavily on the story and the drama and it allows the system to accommodate wide, varied and flexible use powers and effects without needing rules for every possible thing. You get to just describe how you use your powers, and then the 'Moves' guide how the story progresses as a result. Some people love this. Some people hate it.


Correct. This is by design. Most PtbA games are build to emulate a specific setting, genre, scenario, or set of tropes. The system isn't 'setting neutral' in the way a D20 system might be. There's no SRD for PtbA games, because each game has mechanics tightly bound to the specifics of that game.

"Masks: A New Generation" is explicitly a game about teenage superheroes trying to figure out who they are and what they're capable of as they navigate the pressures of entering a large, complicated world that has a lot of conflicting expectations about who they should be. It's a (deliberately un-subtle) metaphor for leaving childhood and entering the adult world. And each "Playbook" highlights a specific set of emotional conflicts within this framework.

So you're only 'forced' to play high school cliches in the same way that a game of chess 'forces' you to play 'defend your king.'


Incorrect. But only by a little. Masks doesn't have stats or attributes. Instead, each character has five "Labels" (Danger, Freak,  Mundane, Savior, Superior) that describe how they see themselves. Do they think of themselves as dangerous? Normal? A weirdo? Better than everyone else?

It's true that, under some circumstances, some NPC's can try to "Shift your Labels" by telling you who you are. But this doesn't happen in "normal" conversation. This effect is supposed to trigger under a certain level of emotional intensity. And it's meant to mirror the way that teenagers are still forming their own self-image and people who's words matter to them can have a big impact on them.

For example, if a supervillain yelled at you "I know you think you're some kind of big hero, but you're just a dumb kid like everyone else!", that might 'Shift' your Savior Label down and your Mundane Label up. And if that happened, you would then show 'in the fiction' what that looks like for your character.

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So, it's a bit of an IF/THEN statement. Masks is (in my opinion) one of the best of the PtbA family of games. But that's like telling someone who hates olives that you've got the best Greek salad. In the end, if this kind of thing isn't your kind of thing, then for sure you won't like it.

I know people in RL who wouldn't play a PtbA game (especially this one) if you paid them. And I know people who can't get enough.

I think of it (like I do most games and systems and mechanics and modes of play) as one tool in a toolbox. It does an excellent job doing what it was designed to do, but if you try to make it do something it wasn't designed for (and/or don't know how to use it), it looks worse and worse. But, the more tools you have, the more situations you're prepared for.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:20, Fri 15 Mar.

Right, if you're looking for supers without the teenage angst in PBtA then you want Worlds in Peril.

My GMing invariably results in a waste of everybody's time, but as a player I'd be game.

It sounds like you have two players for certain, and Masks games tend to fill fast, so if anyone's willing to run that would be great.