PbtA plus Agency?

[Guts]

It would probably help to consistently codify what happens on a miss with each specific move and remove the "hard move on a golden opportunity." The generic "Act Under Fire" move would work a lot better if it were Hit: You do the thing. Partial: You do the thing, but the MC can make a relevant soft move. Miss: You don't do the thing, or you do the thing, but the MC gets to make a relevant hard move against you. The relevant hard and soft moves would be put in the move itself.

Already suggested by 00dani above. You would end up with a bazillion moves each covering a different situation, and lose the engine appeal of frontloaded simplicity.

You could also have something like Marvel Heroic's Doom Pool, where bad failures bank hold for the MC which they can spend, 1 for 1, to make a hard move when given a golden opportunity. So you modulate the violent bears, but also create a bit of tension for when the bears will come to fuck your shit.

This sounds fun. But if the MC can use the hold whenever he wishes - even when it doesn't follow logically from the fiction - you would end up in the same place, no?

[00dani]

You would end up with a bazillion moves each covering a different situation, and lose the engine appeal of frontloaded simplicity.

If simplicity's the main goal, there are a range of systems that are even simpler and have far fewer of these problems. Fate, Risus, and especially Munchausen are all light on rules and don't suffer from lack of player agency. (Fate has a few problems of its own, of course, but very different ones!)

What you're getting out of powering your game with the apocalypse is less the simplicity and more the codified move structure. The MC, in theory, is restricted to reaction and leaves game-changing action to the players. In practice, of course, that doesn't quite hold up for a variety of reasons.

Codifying additional player moves with well-defined MC countermoves would be an improvement, despite increasing the system's overall complexity by adding more rules. Allowing players to dictate the nature of an MC countermove when it isn't well-defined already, as I suggested in the OP, would also be an improvement. In both cases, players can more readily predict the results of their actions ahead of time and therefore make informed decisions in the game - either because the game's rules explicitly describe what happens or because the players can actually choose the result themselves.

You could also have something like Marvel Heroic's Doom Pool, where bad failures bank hold for the MC which they can spend, 1 for 1, to make a hard move when given a golden opportunity. So you modulate the violent bears, but also create a bit of tension for when the bears will come to fuck your shit.

This sounds fun. But if the MC can use the hold whenever he wishes - even when it doesn't follow logically from the fiction - you would end up in the same place, no?

Actually there's one very important benefit of the Doom Pool concept: with a well-defined "currency" for hard moves, of which every player is aware, the MC can't actually make hard moves Whenever They Feel Like It, which is something that they can absolutely do under standard Assworld rules. If you have no Doom Points left, you can't make a hard move at all - and if you do, the players instantly know you're cheating.

By contrast, any situation in which you want to make a hard move basically constitutes a golden opportunity to make a hard move. You can just do them whenever, regardless of how often you do it and regardless of whether the players have actually failed any rolls or not.

[Guts]

If simplicity's the main goal, there are a range of systems that are even simpler and have far fewer of these problems. Fate, Risus, and especially Munchausen are all light on rules and don't suffer from lack of player agency. (Fate has a few problems of its own, of course, but very different ones!)

Different strokes. I find each of those (PbtA included) do it's own thing and offer a distinct experience at the table, so they can all co-exist. And I don't think most players see the "lack of agency" as valid, or that much of a problem, either. Most people I play with or converse to online actually find it's the other way around, that the engine gives players more agency than your traditional game. (perhaps because most traditional games are defined by "let's play through the GM plot of the week" while in PbtA players always have a huge say at defining the plot, MC Bears and all? Don't know)

What you're getting out of powering your game with the apocalypse is less the simplicity and more the codified move structure. The MC, in theory, is restricted to reaction and leaves game-changing action to the players. In practice, of course, that doesn't quite hold up for a variety of reasons.

Codifying additional player moves with well-defined MC countermoves would be an improvement, despite increasing the system's overall complexity by adding more rules. Allowing players to dictate the nature of an MC countermove when it isn't well-defined already, as I suggested in the OP, would also be an improvement. In both cases, players can more readily predict the results of their actions ahead of time and therefore make informed decisions in the game - either because the game's rules explicitly describe what happens or because the players can actually choose the result themselves.

Yeah, I can see the appeal. On one hand the big number of PbtA hacks that keeps things simple indicates it's part of the appeal for a lot of players (I know I love the practicality of having all rules in one playbook and a 2-page Moves sheet). On the other hand, some PbtA hacks and inspired games seem to be doing more or less what you say - I didn't take a good look at the new Kult: Divinity Lost but it appears to complexify the engine in the direction you say; and as already cited Undying don't give space for Bears at all - it doesn't even have the concept of "Hard move". So maybe that's a fruitful direction for the engine to go?

Something I find important, and I didn't see brought up yet in the discussion, is: in actual play with an experienced group, the MC sometimes improvises the moves or don't follow their structures exactly, but he follows the principle of fail forward/"on a partial success give them a cost or hard choice". In other words, the "Acting under Fire" encompasses the spirit of the game in a way, and even if you complexify the ruleset, in the end, and in the heat of the moment, you'll fall back to it just a GM in a traditional game will eyeball some test out of it's ass instead of halting the game to search the book for some obscure rule about treading water or something. What I'm trying to say is: even with a tighter ruleset, perhaps having a "Act under Fire" is desirable in a way.

[Guts]

Looking again at the whole thread I think we already have a good set of answers for tighening up the engine and mitigate Bears:

1) Better structured moves, which automatically equals having more moves for specific situations, and less open-ended/catch-all moves like "Act Under Fire" *.

2) More structured GM principles. Less open-ended "GM pulls hard moves whenever he wishes" cases. Optional: quantify it through mechanics (like Marvel's Doom Pool for eg).

Makes sense?


*(but see my previous comment about the "spirit of the engine")

[shinimasu]

I do like the idea of a miss just giving the MC a point of Menace or whatever you want to call it, which can be banked or spent immediately. Maybe caps out at 3 to keep them from hoarding a whole bunch of it and dumping bearthulu on the players when it hits 10. Or design the system specifically around bearthulu being a thing that can happen though then it's less of a doom pool and more of a doom track.

[Username17]

I do like the idea of a miss just giving the MC a point of Menace or whatever you want to call it, which can be banked or spent immediately. Maybe caps out at 3 to keep them from hoarding a whole bunch of it and dumping bearthulu on the players when it hits 10. Or design the system specifically around bearthulu being a thing that can happen though then it's less of a doom pool and more of a doom track.

That just incentivizes inaction. If doing anything contributes fractionally to the doom track, then the correct course of action is to do nothing. And that's the fucking bane and end of a cooperative storytelling game.

What you should do if you're going to have a doom track is that rather than advancing if the player acts and fails, that it advances unless a player acts and succeeds.

-Username17

[Guts]

What you should do if you're going to have a doom track is that rather than advancing if the player acts and fails, that it advances unless a player acts and succeeds.

But this already exists in the engine, right? It's what "Countdown Clocks" are basically..

COUNTDOWN CLOCKS

A countdown clock is a reminder to you as MC that your threats have impulse, direction, plans, intentions, the will to sustain action and to respond coherently to others’. When you create a threat, if you have a vision of its future, give it a countdown clock. You can also add countdown clocks to threats you’ve already created. Around the clock, note some things that’ll happen:

• Before 9:00, that thing’s coming, but preventable. What are the clues?
What are the triggers? What are the steps?
• Between 9:00 and 12:00, that thing is inevitable, but there’s still time to
brace for impact. What signi􀃫es it?
• At 12:00, the threat gets its full, active expression. What is it?
As you play, advance the clocks, each at their own pace, by marking their
segments.

Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. Furthermore, countdown clocks can be derailed: when something happens that changes circumstances so that the countdown no longer makes sense, just scribble it out.

For the most part, list things that are beyond the players’ characters’ control: NPCs’ decisions and actions, conditions in a population or a landscape, off-screen relations between rival compounds, the instability of a window into the world’s psychic maelstrom. When you list something within the players’ characters’ control, always list it with an “if,” implied or explicit: “if Bish goes out into the ruins,” not “Bish goes out into the ruins.” Prep circumstances, pressures, developing NPC actions, not (and again, I’m not fucking around here) NOT future scenes you intend to lead the PCs to.

I.e (from Monster of the Week)..

[shinimasu]

Well most PbtA games balance the failure aspect with some kind of carrot. In most games this is exp but since that on its own is iffy design depending on the power curve of the game, some have been moving towards something more akin to a fate point where you get to cancel one of the DM's declarations or modify it in some way. In my experiences with the more robust PbtA hacks out there the carrots are usually enough to outweigh the penalty. Obviously not always.

Alternatively I want to push back against the idea of an inevitable doom track being inherently unfun or something players are unwilling to engage with. There are a non-zero number of games pitched around the idea of your ultimate demise being more or less predetermined and a non-zero number of players who enjoy statting up characters to send them hurtling towards oblivion. A game designed around a doom track is fine as long as it's up front about being more Call of Cthulu than Funtime Mad Max Adventures.

[Guts]

Alternatively I want to push back against the idea of an inevitable doom track being inherently unfun or something players are unwilling to engage with. There are a non-zero number of games pitched around the idea of your ultimate demise being more or less predetermined and a non-zero number of players who enjoy statting up characters to send them hurtling towards oblivion. A game designed around a doom track is fine as long as it's up front about being more Call of Cthulu than Funtime Mad Max Adventures.

Yep. Even in Marvel Heroic - a game where protagonists are expected to win in the end - the concept fits because it helps to depict the "last villain is always the most dangerous and badass" from supers movies and such.

[00dani]

That just incentivizes inaction. If doing anything contributes fractionally to the doom track, then the correct course of action is to do nothing. And that's the fucking bane and end of a cooperative storytelling game.

Good point. We're essentially getting 4e skill challenges if any and all failed rolls make things actively worse for the players, and that's just as much a disaster as World.

Perhaps a model akin to Fate would be better? The MC can only make hard moves if they have doom points on hand, and they get doom points when the players spend those same points to give themselves an advantage. Then you can take pointless actions with no fear of reprisal, and the risk involved in spending points is loosely symmetrical since the players and MC can perform similar actions with them.

Of course, that does produce some weird fiction, since the optimal way to accrue Fate points is to compel all your aspects in downtime and then be awesome when it matters. Nonetheless, it does work and doesn't encourage inaction.

[Orion]

So there's a teen superheros game called Masks: A New Generation. It's officially part of the PBTA brand, but seems to have had substantially more and better design work put into it than any other apocalypse hack I've looked at. Playing Masks has actually really helped me get a better understanding of where Apocalypse World went wrong and why AW doesn't work very well. Sometimes Masks does something similar to AW that works much better this time around; sometimes it does something similar to AW that still works quite poorly, and Masks would be better off moving away from its roots. Both cases are instructive.

I have actually been thinking for a few weeks now about writing up an Anatomy of Failed Design or an OSSR for the original Apocalypse World, a review of Masks, and maybe a design principles article about lessons learned from Masks. I would love to pull in a collaborator to add a second perspective for any of those posts. Any takers?

[shinimasu]

I am legitimately curious to know why you think Masks is one of the better designed ones because that game is my fucking white whale and I have played it and been frustrated with the mechanics at every turn.

Masks was my quintessential "Good GMs make bad games tolerable" experience because that was the only reason I kept playing.

And I know this is probably rich coming from someone who said not two posts ago said they were ok with games where the GM actively messing with you was part of the appeal, but that is how it be.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Something I have tinkered with but haven't finished with is the idea that your fate points/doom pool whatevers are an in-universe resource. I like a couple of the implications of this- making your average limp-dick "consult the ancestors" type action more useful. Instead of "here is how much hint the MC is willing to give me" it would be more "guys, the MC is capable of fucking us over two more times before we reach Mt. Doom."

But with this approach to fate points/doom pool, I feel that a lot of the implications answer YES when they get to the IS THIS IDEA DUMB? junction on the great flowchart.

[Blade]

Something I have tinkered with but haven't finished with is the idea that your fate points/doom pool whatevers are an in-universe resource. I like a couple of the implications of this- making your average limp-dick "consult the ancestors" type action more useful. Instead of "here is how much hint the MC is willing to give me" it would be more "guys, the MC is capable of fucking us over two more times before we reach Mt. Doom."

But with this approach to fate points/doom pool, I feel that a lot of the implications answer YES when they get to the IS THIS IDEA DUMB? junction on the great flowchart.

I've got this idea for a mechs vs kaiju game where kaiju's existence is due to an overlapping parallel mythical universe (idea stolen from the MM9 novel) where our universe's physical laws don't apply.

Players can tap into that mythical universe to perform superhuman feats (and to allow mechs to work), but this has the risk of increasing the influence of the mythical universe on the physical universe. When this happens, the randomness of the system and the risks in case of failure increase.

In that case, the "fate/doom" point don't mean that the GM is more likely to fuck the players over, they just that the stakes get higher. It's a bit like the escalation system in Dogs in the Vineyard.

[Guts]

So there's a teen superheros game called Masks: A New Generation. It's officially part of the PBTA brand, but seems to have had substantially more and better design work put into it than any other apocalypse hack I've looked at. Playing Masks has actually really helped me get a better understanding of where Apocalypse World went wrong and why AW doesn't work very well. Sometimes Masks does something similar to AW that works much better this time around; sometimes it does something similar to AW that still works quite poorly, and Masks would be better off moving away from its roots. Both cases are instructive.

I am legitimately curious to know why you think Masks is one of the better designed ones because that game is my fucking white whale and I have played it and been frustrated with the mechanics at every turn.

Please elaborate you both. Why is Masks good? And why is it shit?

Funny that Masks is divisive even inside PbtA community, and you two are following the trend.

[shinimasu]

My problem with masks boils down to two things:

The game is both weirdly permissive and weirdly restrictive about what players can and can't do.

The most immediately obvious is the way powers are handled. In PbtA games How you do something and What you are doing are governed by two different things. The What is governed by the games moves. So if I am trying to thwart a villain that will trigger a move depending on my desired outcome. If I want to goad them into doing something stupid then I Provoke, if I want to physically stop them that's Directly Engage.

The How in this is the powers. How a hero can provoke is dictated by what powers they have. So maybe one hero directly engages with fire bolts and one directly engages with a soul knife. And this doesn't usually matter except in some edge cases.

For example Directly engage sees players pick from 1-2 of these options:
• resist or avoid their blows
• take something from them
• create an opportunity for your allies
• impress, surprise, or frighten the opposition

So if I'm playing a Delinquent and I've picked "Power Negation" then reasonably one of the things I can "take" from the villain on a hit is their powers.

But what that actually means is entirely dependent on the MC. Does the villain mark a condition? Are they unable to retaliate even though I didn't select "avoid their blows?" Likewise have I created an opportunity for my allies? What does that even mean? Do they get +1 to their next action? Have I prevented the villain from being able to escalate the scene?

There's literally no way of knowing what that actually does. And anything the MC comes up with is really just cribbing from the other options on the sheet. I could have said "I avoid his blows by negating his powers" or "I give my allies an advantage by negating his powers" so what does just saying "I take away his powers" do that isn't A) Utterly redundant and B) Broken as fuck? For a delinquent who's chosen power negation the "Take something from them" option will never really be able to just take away the villain's powers. Unless the villain has a hostage, a doomsday switch, or the high ground, the "take something" option basically doesn't exist for the superpower whose entire shtick is "I take away people's powers." The same as every other playbook who doesn't get power nullification as an option.

So what's even the point of the powers? Why are they locked by playbook? Why can the bull only be good at punching when a hot head and overwhelming destructive force comes in so many other flavors? Why can the Legacy only be members of the justice league? Why not just have a master list of keywords and everyone gets to pick one to three off the list? Probably because the Beacon exists and they're supposed to be exclusively robin and Nothing Else. Despite encouraging using your moves as broadly as possible and to interpret your powers as creatively as possible, the game is constantly trying to shove you into playing offbrand licensed characters. Want to have superman's powers? You have to play him as a legacy. You can't play Bull Superman or Delinquent Superman because Bulls and Delinquents explicitly can't fly or have heat vision. You can play the thing, or the hulk, or kingpin, because that's who the author had in mind when they made the playbook. Nothing Else.

So weirdly permissive and weirdly restrictive. You're allowed to say "My power is gadgetry so I have a grappling hook I use to clear the chasm" instead of "I fly over." But you can't play a delinquent and have "Vitality Absorption" because that belongs to the Doomed for some reason. Powers only matter when the MC says they matter essentially and how exactly they matter is always up to them.

Which ties into a larger problem I have which is that despite having the player pick their outcome, the game is only really providing the illusion of choice. What does it mean to take something from a villain in a mechanical sense? No clue up to the MC. What does it mean to create an advantage for a teammate? No clue up to the MC. What does it mean to impress or frighten my opponent? No clue that's up to the MC. The only option on the directly engage list that has any obvious correlation between input and outcome is "avoid their blows" which you can reasonably assume means "avoid taking a condition." Unless the MC decides it doesn't. When can the player inflict a condition on the enemy? Whenever the MC decides it's appropriate.

Do you know what happens when I roll a 10 in almost every other PbtA hack's version of Directly Engage? I get to deal assured damage! What happens when I roll a 10 on Directly Engage in Masks? It's a fucking mystery to me. Every single time I picked "create an advantage" on that move something different happened. One time someone got a +1 forward, one time we got a team point, one time he marked a condition. The DM was never a dick about it so we never got nothing but I wanted to pull my hair out at the inconsistency of it all. How hard would it have been for the game maker to write an actual rule that says "When X happens do Y?"

So obviously combat felt like a floaty surreal nightmare most of the time which leads me into my second bugbear which is the Conditions and Labels system.

So basically Masks seems to have confused teenagers with goldfish. Whenever someone who has Influence over you tells you how the world works you either have to accept what they say or roll to reject it. If you fail the reject roll you have to shift your labels how the GM tells you and mark a condition. So if your danger is +2 and the villain tells you you're bad at punching then you have to shift your danger down by +1 and something else up +1.

However labels are shifting all the goddamn time. It's encouraged for villains and other adults to regularly pull rank, and the PCs are encouraged to use their influence to undo undesirable changes to your stats. Unfortunately this is goddamn confusing at the best of times.

This is a scenario that actually happened during play (paraphrased for both length and levity):

Villain: Bull! Your punches are terrible, your form is amateur at best and you don't have half the fighting experience you need to beat me! You'd be better off retiring now before you get hurt and leave the heroing to the pros!

MC: The Villain is telling you how the world works, do you accept or reject his influence?

Me: Well I reject it obviously. -rolls a 6- crapbaskets.

MC: Alright shift Danger down and Mundane up one. And mark a condition.

Me: Well I've already marked Angry earlier... so I guess Insecure makes the most sense here.

Teammate with influence: Don't listen to him bull, your punches are great and just because we're young doesn't mean we aren't real heroes. Experience matters less when he's the one who's outnumbered.

Me: Er, is than encouragement or are you also telling me how the world works?

Them: Um.. the latter I thought?

MC: I don't know that sounded more like encouragement than a declaration of fact.

Them: It was definitely a declaration of fact, I was declaring that he's full of shit.

-30 minute argument ensues about what it actually means to tell someone how the world works vs just trying to cheer them up-

Also given how debilitating conditions can be on top of a recent stat adjustment, if they had tried to cheer me up instead of shifting my labels back I probably would have just cleared insecure. So my character's basic sense of identity remains altered because a villain was talking shit about my fighting. And through a series of unlucky rolls it is entirely possible to go from a +2 to a -2 in your primary stat. And if you didn't take one of the stat fixing moves from your playbook clawing your way back up to functionality is a bitch and a half.

This doesn't make me feel like I'm playing someone with an impressionable and developing sense of identity. It makes me feel like I'm playing someone with borderline personality disorder. Did my favorite person say I'm good at fighting again? Well then I must be good at fighting again! What is my sense of self? Fucked if I know, it's whatever other people tell me it is.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Players can tap into that mythical universe to perform superhuman feats (and to allow mechs to work), but this has the risk of increasing the influence of the mythical universe on the physical universe. When this happens, the randomness of the system and the risks in case of failure increase.

The idea that I've been working with is that there is a physical/spiritual substance that is fate point, XP, doom pool, etc. but also some glowing mercury-lookin' shit I was calling Azoth. The idea is that how Azoth is used would tie into other game systems. A couple examples:

-PCs spend most of their Azoth on enchanting items. At the next celestial calendar change, encounter tables get seeded with witch-hunters, sorcerers, magic item-eating critters etc. If the "final boss" of this campaign phase is the Ancient Lich, he appears in the next campaign phase as an ally.

-PCs spend most of their Azoth using it as fate points to escape death, critical wounds, etc. If the final boss of this phase is the Unspeakable Phantom, then it awakens immediately, or if already awake is given buffs. Or if the Friendly Devil is the final boss, he feels sorry for the PCs and gives them a buff before the final confrontation.

I'm not sure I have been able to ever explain this concept so it makes sense, but the goal was to tie in doom tracks, rotating villains, PC input, MC input, random tables, legacy characters etc. in an organic way. But honestly I think as I currently envision it it's too unwieldy to ever be workable.

[Guts]

This doesn't make me feel like I'm playing someone with an impressionable and developing sense of identity. It makes me feel like I'm playing someone with borderline personality disorder. Did my favorite person say I'm good at fighting again? Well then I must be good at fighting again! What is my sense of self? Fucked if I know, it's whatever other people tell me it is.

Still processing your whole description but this part here makes me think they actually nailed the "being a teenager hero" part, no? Isn't being insecure and volatile the point?

Does it have "growing up moves" like in Monsterhearts or something like that?

[Orion]

Shinimasu is basically correct about what the problems with Masks are. Masks was made by taking a generic PbtA engine and adding on 4 shiny new features -- "Abilities", "Label Shifts", "Team points" and "having something that kinda looks like a tactical combat minigame if you squint." They got on 10+ on their game design roll with the Team points, but their other 3 checks were all 7-9. You can run the game as written but it will probably be unstable or temporary and the GM will probably end up Insecure and Guilty. The combat system, ability lists, and label shifting mechanics would all work better if they were more like a normal game and less like apocalypse. I am having a lot of fun running this game and I'd be happy to talk about how I personally handle the issues Shinimasu brought up, but we'd be going deep into Oberoni territory. The marketing I've seen for Masks heavily emphasized the new mechanics it would introduce, especially the shifting Labels, and I don't blame anyone for being disappointed with what they got.


The real value in Masks is not the new mechanics, but the old ones. Apart from the above, everything in Masks is directly analogous to something from another PbtA game, but every part of Masks works better than the analogous part of its source material. This is partly because they made a lot of incremental improvements to the engine, but mostly because "teen superheroes" was an inspired choice of genre for what PbtA already did. Compared to other PbtA games, I have found that Masks characters fail less often and that the consequences are more predictable, but in absolute terms it still churns out a lot of failure and unforeseen consequences. Apocalypse World promised to let you be a sexy badass or a hardened survivalist and it did not deliver. Masks says you can use the same mechanic to be a reckless-but-invincible kid, and comes a lot closer to delivering.

EDIT: Highlights of the basic system include several ways to guarantee success at crucial moments or even cancel failures retroactively; ways to basically "tag in" other players to share the spotlight or prevent one person from being ground down by attrition; and some awkward but serviceable ways to represent a task that is harder or easier than a standard task. Also a much better system for handing out XP, and a "condition system" that sometimes incentivizes the wounded to press on instead of going home to refresh.

EDIT 2: Actually, I will directly disagree with Shinimasu about one thing: the "directly engage a threat" move. His paraphrased version of it outright omits the most important part, and several of his questions actually do have simple answers that happen to be easily overlooked.

[shinimasu]

This doesn't make me feel like I'm playing someone with an impressionable and developing sense of identity. It makes me feel like I'm playing someone with borderline personality disorder. Did my favorite person say I'm good at fighting again? Well then I must be good at fighting again! What is my sense of self? Fucked if I know, it's whatever other people tell me it is.

Still processing your whole description but this part here makes me think they actually nailed the "being a teenager hero" part, no? Isn't being insecure and volatile the point?

Does it have "growing up moves" like in Monsterhearts or something like that?

So here's the thing. Monster Hearts, another game about being a teenager does this better.

I am still young enough to remember my teen year vividly. Being a teenager does not mean being constantly insecure and subject to changing your mind on a whim because your best friend or your teacher said a thing. Teenagers are growing and developing but this is a slow and gradual and many layered process that happens incrementally over Actual Years.

I didn't stop being an insufferable weeb at sixteen when other people (rightly) said it was embarrassing because I was still having fun with it and anime was still a useful tool in my development at that point. I stopped on my own when it was no longer fun or useful to do, and while I'm sure societal pressure played a part in that mostly it was just having viewed enough alternate media to develop better taste and also to realize sprinkling Japanese honorifics into my every day speech was incredibly dumb. There was no moment where one friend said "You know you'd be better off if you read less manga" and I went "Golly gee you're right" and then two hours later another friend went "Nah man Manga is totally valid literature and you're learning about culture and stuff" and I went "Golly gee you're right too!"

Monster Hearts will occasionally tell you what your character is feeling, but what you DO with those feelings is always up to the player. The MC never says "Ok you're feeling really insulted right now so hot goes down and cold goes up until someone tells you to stop being insulted." Instead they have you mark a condition. The condition doesn't affect your rolls but it makes it easier for other people to take advantage of you. You want to clear the condition not because it imposes a penalty to your own actions but because you want other people to stop pushing your shiny new button. That is an authentic teen experience. Having BIG FEELINGS where everything feels so much more important than it actually is is an authentic teen experience. Making dumb decisions based on impulse and not enough information is an authentic teen experience. Changing your personality on a whim based on passing comments made by other people is not an authentic teen experience, or at least not a typical teen experience. I suppose for teens with personality or anxiety disorders it might be but it certainly wasn't mine.

Edit: Or to put it another way personal development is an intensely internal process. Outside stimulus is taken into account but it is always up to the individual to process and interpret the data the world provides them with, including the thoughts and actions of their peers. Masks feels like it wants personal development to be an entirely external process, the character's development is in the hands of those surrounding them and not really in the hands of the actual character themselves and this is what made it feel clunky and wrong to me. Obviously mileage will vary as to how big a deal breaker this is or isn't but I personally was nettled.

Actually, I will directly disagree with Shinimasu about one thing: the "directly engage a threat" move. His paraphrased version of it outright omits the most important part, and several of his questions actually do have simple answers that happen to be easily overlooked.

I mean I copy pasted those outcomes directly from my PDF, if there have been updates since I acquired it, or there was something in the GM section that clarifies things I admit I might have missed it. As a player I wasn't carefully combing through their principles. The only part I omitted was "When you directly engage a threat, roll + Danger. On a hit, trade blows. On a 10+, pick two. On a 7-9, pick one." Which didn't seem vitally important to my point.

Also the Team system was the one bright point, I will shamelessly steal it when I run other games. It's very good.

[Orion]

The only part I omitted was "When you directly engage a threat, roll + Danger. On a hit, trade blows. On a 10+, pick two. On a 7-9, pick one." Which didn't seem vitally important to my point.

Do you know what happens when I roll a 10 in almost every other PbtA hack's version of Directly Engage? I get to deal assured damage! What happens when I roll a 10 on Directly Engage in Masks? It's a fucking mystery to me.

When you trade blows with an NPC threat, the GM marks one of the NPC’s
conditions

You omitted the part that says you do guaranteed damage on a 7+.

[shinimasu]

Alright mea culpa I missed that bit. I was going from memory and my copy of the basic moves playsheet which weirdly omits that detail. However while doing damage on a 7+ is good, that doesn't entirely address my complaint that things like "create an advantage" and "Impress surprise or frighten" are mechanically vague. And that "take something" works when the villain actually has something physical and concrete to steal, but is redundant if you're trying to get more inventive or esoteric with your powers. Ala the power negation example.

Obviously though I can't entirely trust my memory on this so I'll have to re-read some of the things I probably glossed over in my initial take. Unfortunately this also means our MC was perhaps a little less good at this than I thought, if you got a 7-9 and picked "avoid blows" I think he interpreted that to mean "at the cost of doing damage to the villain."

[Orion]

Some of the basic moves have "trap options" you can pick that might not actually do anything or might not be applicable in a lot of situations. But all of them have enough options with guaranteed effects that you can skip the trap options if you're not getting extra picks from a playbook move. If you roll a 10 on directly engage, you deal damage and take damage and choose 2. Page 56 says that you can always use "create an opportunity for your allies" to get +1 Team, so you can default to just saying "I choose to take no damage and get +1 Team" unless and until inspiration strikes you. Whomever made the basic move reference sheet should go to game design jail for neglecting to mention these things.

[Guts]

Teammate with influence: Don't listen to him bull, your punches are great and just because we're young doesn't mean we aren't real heroes. Experience matters less when he's the one who's outnumbered.

Me: Er, is than encouragement or are you also telling me how the world works?

Them: Um.. the latter I thought?

MC: I don't know that sounded more like encouragement than a declaration of fact.

Them: It was definitely a declaration of fact, I was declaring that he's full of shit.

-30 minute argument ensues about what it actually means to tell someone how the world works vs just trying to cheer them up-

The MC shouldn't try to interpret what the player intention was - he should've asked the player what his intention was. Then the player clarifies ("It's a engouragement" or "it's not an encouragement") and you move on. Honestly don't understand the necessity for 30min discussion here. This is a principle in AW, by the way. "Ask questions" (to clarify intentions). "Say possible consequences" (following from the fiction). "Then ask: what do you do?"

The How in this is the powers. How a hero can provoke is dictated by what powers they have. So maybe one hero directly engages with fire bolts and one directly engages with a soul knife. And this doesn't usually matter except in some edge cases.

For example Directly engage sees players pick from 1-2 of these options:
• resist or avoid their blows
• take something from them
• create an opportunity for your allies
• impress, surprise, or frighten the opposition

Most of those options are also present in Apocalypse World, and should work simlarly, no?

So if I'm playing a Delinquent and I've picked "Power Negation" then reasonably one of the things I can "take" from the villain on a hit is their powers.

But what that actually means is entirely dependent on the MC. Does the villain mark a condition? Are they unable to retaliate even though I didn't select "avoid their blows?"

Read the sitch or Person. Ask what powers or abilities the foe has. The MC will have to truthly respond, per the rules. Then yes, Take their Power from them.

Likewise have I created an opportunity for my allies? What does that even mean? Do they get +1 to their next action? Have I prevented the villain from being able to escalate the scene?

I don't know if Masks rules says something specifically about that, but usually yes, creating an opportunity is worth +1 forward to take advantage of it.

What does it mean to impress or frighten my opponent?

Better fictional positioning. If the enemy were intent on harming you, now he is no more for the duration of the scene; If you were trying to impress someone distracted in the crowd, you did it; if you were trying to get the attention of that fair lady over there, you did it too (perhaps snowballing into a Seduce or Manipulate, huh? ). This is already present in Apocalypse World btw, examples and all.

So what's even the point of the powers? Why are they locked by playbook? Why can the bull only be good at punching when a hot head and overwhelming destructive force comes in so many other flavors? Why can the Legacy only be members of the justice league? Why not just have a master list of keywords and everyone gets to pick one to three off the list? Probably because the Beacon exists and they're supposed to be exclusively robin and Nothing Else. Despite encouraging using your moves as broadly as possible and to interpret your powers as creatively as possible, the game is constantly trying to shove you into playing offbrand licensed characters. Want to have superman's powers? You have to play him as a legacy. You can't play Bull Superman or Delinquent Superman because Bulls and Delinquents explicitly can't fly or have heat vision. You can play the thing, or the hulk, or kingpin, because that's who the author had in mind when they made the playbook. Nothing Else.

I agree here. Powers and playbooks do look restrictive in arbitrary ways, from your description.

Which ties into a larger problem I have which is that despite having the player pick their outcome, the game is only really providing the illusion of choice. What does it mean to take something from a villain in a mechanical sense?

Whatever was established in the fiction (by the MC, a player, read a sitch move, etc). If the villain was presented as someone with magnetic powers, you can take it from them. If he is in a safe position behind cover, you can take that from them. If they held a hostage, you can take that from them. All of those gives you better fictional positioning, allowing you to do moves not allowed otherwise or gain advantage forward. So, default Apocalypse World fare?

So here's the thing. Monster Hearts, another game about being a teenager does this better. ... I am still young enough to remember my teen year vividly. Being a teenager does not mean... snip

I don't think neither Monsterhearts nor Masks are about depicting real life people's youth, but teenager TV melodrama, where exagerated/ over-the-top characters and reactions are the norm. Though I agree, by your description, that Monsterhearts apparently does it better, as it relies more on carrots than sticks to promote it's themes, while Masks seems to do otherwise.

TL;DR: the part about heroes archetypes and their powers seem really weird and restrictive, I agree. But I don't see the problem with the basic moves, they look standard Apocalypse World fare to me.

[Guts]

Apocalypse World promised to let you be a sexy badass or a hardened survivalist and it did not deliver. Masks says you can use the same mechanic to be a reckless-but-invincible kid, and comes a lot closer to delivering.

Have you had a Battlebabe or a Gunlugger or - god have mercy on the MC soul - both on the same group? Chances are they will do whatever they want with whatever the MC throws at them.