In the thread about PbtA games in general, I mentioned that I think Masks: A New Generation, the teen superhero game, is substantially superior to other PbtA games, both in general and with regard to player agency specifically. Shinimasu asked what I liked about it and also posted a list of criticisms. I will start by making the affirmative case in favor of Masks, during which I will do my best to avoid using Oberoni arguments; I will be arguing that if you play Masks "as written," you will get improved player agency relative to other games. However, it's an unfortunate reality that the rules of Masks are badly presented. You have a "basic moves reference" pdf (here), which will be the first thing most players read, but it summarizes so aggressively that vital stuff is omitted. Chapter 4 of the book is called "The Moves." It reproduces each move in full, with a short section that appears to be clarification and then a long section that appears to be commentary, and then two examples of play. Unfortunately, it needed another editing pass. Sometimes, text that I believe to be an actual rule is buried in the commentary section. Sometimes the examples of play introduce ideas that I would have loved to see in the commentary. It's possible that some of what I believe to be "rules as written" is actually a disputable interpretation.
After I've made the affirmative case, I will respond to some of Shinimasu's complaints that weren't covered in my direct discussion of player agency. I will go full Oberoni at that point, arguing that there are workarounds for those problems but not that the problems don't exist.
Section 1: A general theory of agency in PbtA games
Let "Total Player Disempowerment" = A failure coefficient + a fake success coefficient + a snowball coefficient + a cockblocking coefficient.
Let the failure coefficient = (Adjusted fail chance x severity of worst possible consequences x difficulty of predicting or influencing actual failure consequences)
Let us define "failure" as "any result where the GM gets to decide what happens and some of the results are bad for you." All moves (except "take a powerful blow") fail on a 6-, because on a 6- the GM gets to use one of their moves. Some moves also fail on a 7-9. Results of the form "you do it, but with a cost or complication" will count as a failure is the GM gets to make up a plot twist but not if there is a pre-established cost the player can just pay. Your basic failure chance is just computed from the average bonus you get on the moves you use, and the target numbers for those moves. If you have a way to force success on the most crucial rolls, apply a modifier for that to find the adjusted failure chance.
Let us define "success" as "any result that is not failure, if the player is guaranteed to either achieve their fictional objective or get a pre-defined mechanical benefit, or where the player can choose to get a pre-defined mechanical benefit." We will call a result "success" even if the player has the option to pick stuff that might not do anything, as long as there are enough options that definitely do something for them to use up all their picks. We call a result "fake success" the player gets to pick stuff but is forced to pick one or more options that might not actually do anything.
Let the snowball coefficient = "how likely that a little bad luck will put me in such a disadvantaged position that I end up on the express train to fail town?"
Let the cockblocking coefficient = "How likely is it that the GM will refuse to even let me use the move I want to use? Do I have any chance of convincing the GM to let me do something cool automatically without rolling at all?
(post 1 of 4)
Player Agency in Masks: A New Generation
Moderator: Moderators
Comparative Failure Coefficients: Apocalypse World vs. Masks.
Summary: Masks characters roll with higher bonuses than Apocalypse World characters, and their moves give better and more consistent results in the 7-9 range. All of them can spend "Team" to retroactively improve a roll, many of them have class moves that either give an automatic 10+ on a basic move or gives them a partial effect when their moves miss. Players can also buy a single-use god mode, but most don't.
Key Questions:
Probably the most important difference between Masks and Apocalypse World is that the basic moves in Masks give much better results in the 7-9 range than the equivalent moves from Apocalypse World. "Act under fire" fails on a 7-9, but "Unleash your powers" succeeds. "Directly engage a threat" lets you avoid all damage on a 7+, which "seize by force" doesn't allow at all.
How hard is it to "min-max" my stats so I get a +2 or better to almost all of my rolls?
Apocalypse World: There are several stats that are only relevant to one type of challenge and several challenges that are only beatable with one stat. Outside a fight, Hard in useless, but inside a fight, Hard is mandatory. Hot is only useful in noncombat social encounters and not even all of those. Cool and Weird are basically saving throws that the MC will force you to roll periodically whether you want to or not. Even if you have 3 good stats, you will still either have a hole in your defenses or run into situations where you're unable to contribute. Also you might not be able to get the stat array that you want, and if you invested in a stat that turned out not be useful then you're screwed.
Masks: Every stat has a move that's useful in physical combat, and every stat has a move that's good for general utility or for social combat. With just 2 good stats you should be able to find something useful to do in any situation. The GM usually won't force you to roll a specific stat -- neither resisting influence nor taking a powerful blow checks your stats, and when a specific stat is needed to stop a bad event, you can usually let whomever has the best number roll for it.
How hard is it to scrounge up other bonuses?
Both games have a few class moves that give a conditional bonus to all your moves while you drive a car or team up with a pet or swear revenge or something. Apocalypse World lets you use a move to "read a sitch" and then get +1 to follow-up moves; the Masks version can potentially grant +$Texas but probably won't (And you'd hit the hard cap anyway; Masks doesn't let you get better than +4 or worse than -3). The big advantage you get in Masks is "influence." When you have influence over another character, you get a passive +1 to all moves that target them. Most of the PCs will have influence on each other most of the time, so you should consistently be getting +1 to "defend" or "comfort" them. Occasionally you might gain influence over a villain and get +1 to your attacks.
Is there a good way to ensure success on a clutch roll, or to negate an especially bad failure?
Apocalypse World: You can ask other PCs to help and potentially get +1 for each of them. But to give you the bonus at no cost to themselves they need to roll a 10+ on a "Hx" check; rolling less than that will cost them something, so this is rarely used.
Masks: Masks has 3 RNG-mitigating mechanics: teamwork, "moments of truth," and class moves. Teamwork is the best-designed and most important. The group shares a floating pool of "Team" They get 1 point at the start of each session, and several points when they enter battle as a team, and they can generate more team as a side effect of various moves. They lose all accumulate Team when "time passes." After you make a roll but before you resolve it, each of your can tell a story about how they helped and then spend 1 "Team" to add 1 to your result. If you have 3 friends and some Team in the bank, you can almost always buy a "7" when you need one.
"Moment of Truth" is a weird and controversial mechanic. You have to spend a level-up to "unlock" it, and most groups constructively repeal the rule by just not bothering to do that. The moment of truth is a one-use encounter-length god mode that makes you automatically win at everything as long as you follow the "script" for your character class. You would think that the reason people don't use it is that people hate to trade "permanent" character progression for a "temporary" boost, but that actually isn't the problem. When the moment of truth ends you get a permanent benefit that is easily worth the XP cost by itself. People don't use moments of truth because they feel like cheating, it's not really explained what the limits are, and some of the scripts are pretty weird.
Summary: Masks characters roll with higher bonuses than Apocalypse World characters, and their moves give better and more consistent results in the 7-9 range. All of them can spend "Team" to retroactively improve a roll, many of them have class moves that either give an automatic 10+ on a basic move or gives them a partial effect when their moves miss. Players can also buy a single-use god mode, but most don't.
Key Questions:
- What are the target numbers
- How hard is it to "min-max" my stats so I get a +2 or better to almost all of my rolls?
- How hard is it to scrounge up other bonuses?
- Is there a good way to ensure success on a clutch roll, or to negate an especially bad failure?
- What's the worst that could happen?
- Can I tell how bad it will actually be?
- How likely is failure to snowball?
Probably the most important difference between Masks and Apocalypse World is that the basic moves in Masks give much better results in the 7-9 range than the equivalent moves from Apocalypse World. "Act under fire" fails on a 7-9, but "Unleash your powers" succeeds. "Directly engage a threat" lets you avoid all damage on a 7+, which "seize by force" doesn't allow at all.
How hard is it to "min-max" my stats so I get a +2 or better to almost all of my rolls?
Apocalypse World: There are several stats that are only relevant to one type of challenge and several challenges that are only beatable with one stat. Outside a fight, Hard in useless, but inside a fight, Hard is mandatory. Hot is only useful in noncombat social encounters and not even all of those. Cool and Weird are basically saving throws that the MC will force you to roll periodically whether you want to or not. Even if you have 3 good stats, you will still either have a hole in your defenses or run into situations where you're unable to contribute. Also you might not be able to get the stat array that you want, and if you invested in a stat that turned out not be useful then you're screwed.
Masks: Every stat has a move that's useful in physical combat, and every stat has a move that's good for general utility or for social combat. With just 2 good stats you should be able to find something useful to do in any situation. The GM usually won't force you to roll a specific stat -- neither resisting influence nor taking a powerful blow checks your stats, and when a specific stat is needed to stop a bad event, you can usually let whomever has the best number roll for it.
How hard is it to scrounge up other bonuses?
Both games have a few class moves that give a conditional bonus to all your moves while you drive a car or team up with a pet or swear revenge or something. Apocalypse World lets you use a move to "read a sitch" and then get +1 to follow-up moves; the Masks version can potentially grant +$Texas but probably won't (And you'd hit the hard cap anyway; Masks doesn't let you get better than +4 or worse than -3). The big advantage you get in Masks is "influence." When you have influence over another character, you get a passive +1 to all moves that target them. Most of the PCs will have influence on each other most of the time, so you should consistently be getting +1 to "defend" or "comfort" them. Occasionally you might gain influence over a villain and get +1 to your attacks.
Is there a good way to ensure success on a clutch roll, or to negate an especially bad failure?
Apocalypse World: You can ask other PCs to help and potentially get +1 for each of them. But to give you the bonus at no cost to themselves they need to roll a 10+ on a "Hx" check; rolling less than that will cost them something, so this is rarely used.
Masks: Masks has 3 RNG-mitigating mechanics: teamwork, "moments of truth," and class moves. Teamwork is the best-designed and most important. The group shares a floating pool of "Team" They get 1 point at the start of each session, and several points when they enter battle as a team, and they can generate more team as a side effect of various moves. They lose all accumulate Team when "time passes." After you make a roll but before you resolve it, each of your can tell a story about how they helped and then spend 1 "Team" to add 1 to your result. If you have 3 friends and some Team in the bank, you can almost always buy a "7" when you need one.
"Moment of Truth" is a weird and controversial mechanic. You have to spend a level-up to "unlock" it, and most groups constructively repeal the rule by just not bothering to do that. The moment of truth is a one-use encounter-length god mode that makes you automatically win at everything as long as you follow the "script" for your character class. You would think that the reason people don't use it is that people hate to trade "permanent" character progression for a "temporary" boost, but that actually isn't the problem. When the moment of truth ends you get a permanent benefit that is easily worth the XP cost by itself. People don't use moments of truth because they feel like cheating, it's not really explained what the limits are, and some of the scripts are pretty weird.
Last edited by Orion on Wed Apr 17, 2019 11:29 pm, edited 7 times in total.
Both Apocalypse World and Masks have a default move for "doing stuff" that kicks in when no other move is more applicable. Let's see how they stack up.
Another nice thing Masks does is explicitly state that this is "definitely not the 'use your
powers' move", but rather the move for things you aren't sure you can pull off, or for using powers in especially difficult or dangerous situations. They even give an example of play where the Beacon (whose abilities are acrobatics and trick arrows) is on top of a building when a fight breaks out in the street below. He wants to fire an arrow with a rope attached to it into the ground and zip-line into the fray. The player asks if he should roll to unleash his powers, but the GM says it's not that difficult and he doesn't need to roll. So that's nice.
There's only one problem with this move, but it's potentially a big one: it only applies when your characters "abilities" are relevant. If your character attempts something difficult or dangerous without having a relevant "ability," then "The GM just says what happens based on the fiction. If you want to try to take control over what happens, use your powers to solve problems!" If your group plays this as written, I would definitely think carefully before rolling up a characters whose powers were purely physical. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to make a character whose super powers are always relevant (telepathy, sorcery, and Holmesian decuction are on the table), and there are a number of ways a sensible GM can Oberoni this.
High-level Masks characters are capable of unlocking access to one or two "adult moves." One of them is this:
pull off, whereas wielding your powers is doing something with mastery and
control, so you get exactly the effect you want," but when you "wield your powers" you still roll dice and possibly miss, which by definition means you're not sure whether you can pull it off, and so arguably you were actually "unleashing them."
Apocalypse World wrote:When you do something under fire, or dig in to endure fire,
roll+cool. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7–9, you flinch, hesitate, or
stall: the MC can offer you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or
an ugly choice.
So, right off the bat, the first thing we see is that Masks gives the player control of the outcome when they roll a 7-9. If it's a high-stakes situation or if you simply don't trust your GM's instincts, you always have the choice to mark a condition rather than surrender control of the story, which is a big deal. Second, we see that unlike Apocalypse World, this move gives an "out" for a GM who doesn't feel like messing with you today -- he can simply make the effect temporary. In most cases, another teammate will take the opportunity to attempt a permanent fix, so a "temporary" result is a lot like a free re-try, but the story of several temporary fixes leading to a permanent fix is more interesting than "taking 20" would be. An "unstable" result leads to "collateral damage, unintended consequences, or worse," and definitely allows for some real GM sadism, but the only concrete example given is making the PC take a powerful blow, which really isn't that bad. Overall, you would definitely rather be rolling this move than acting under fire.Masks wrote:When you unleash your powers to overcome an
obstacle, reshape your environment, or extend your
senses, roll + Freak. On a hit, you do it. On a 7-9,
mark a condition or the GM will tell you how the
effect is unstable or temporary.
Another nice thing Masks does is explicitly state that this is "definitely not the 'use your
powers' move", but rather the move for things you aren't sure you can pull off, or for using powers in especially difficult or dangerous situations. They even give an example of play where the Beacon (whose abilities are acrobatics and trick arrows) is on top of a building when a fight breaks out in the street below. He wants to fire an arrow with a rope attached to it into the ground and zip-line into the fray. The player asks if he should roll to unleash his powers, but the GM says it's not that difficult and he doesn't need to roll. So that's nice.
There's only one problem with this move, but it's potentially a big one: it only applies when your characters "abilities" are relevant. If your character attempts something difficult or dangerous without having a relevant "ability," then "The GM just says what happens based on the fiction. If you want to try to take control over what happens, use your powers to solve problems!" If your group plays this as written, I would definitely think carefully before rolling up a characters whose powers were purely physical. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to make a character whose super powers are always relevant (telepathy, sorcery, and Holmesian decuction are on the table), and there are a number of ways a sensible GM can Oberoni this.
High-level Masks characters are capable of unlocking access to one or two "adult moves." One of them is this:
I don't really know what to make of this. On paper this looks like an extremely valuable upgrade. A 7-9 becomes a clean success with no downside! Unfortunately, it's really hard as a player to predict whether this will be worth taking because the explanation of when this move triggers is a divide by zero error. See, learning adult moves does not mean you lose the basic moves, and the book tells us that "Unleashing your powers is trying something you’re not sure you can reallyWhen you wield your powers with precision or grace,
roll + Freak. On a hit, choose one. On a 10+, choose
two.
• take hold of something vulnerable to you
• create something useful from
your environment
• neutralize an opponent or
threat, at least for now
pull off, whereas wielding your powers is doing something with mastery and
control, so you get exactly the effect you want," but when you "wield your powers" you still roll dice and possibly miss, which by definition means you're not sure whether you can pull it off, and so arguably you were actually "unleashing them."
Last edited by Orion on Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
reserve for oberoni (4 of 4)
Last edited by Orion on Tue Apr 16, 2019 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Since you're making an affirmative case for this, can you explain how this game is better than Cops & Robbers or Munchhausen?
Allow me to raise a general point:
And if it is true, why not go for an even more streamlined "pass the story stick" exercise instead?
-Username17
Allow me to raise a general point:
- If the opposition doesn't have fixed in-game numbers attached to them, it doesn't matter which enemies you face.
- If it doesn't matter what your antagonists are, your accomplishments don't matter either.
And if it is true, why not go for an even more streamlined "pass the story stick" exercise instead?
-Username17
@Frank,
Masks basically tells you to use extended tests to work around the fact that all tests are equally difficult. You compare a PC's abilities to the difficulty of the task and then tell the player it will take 0 rolls, 1 roll, >1 roll to get it done. They tried really hard to avoid using actual numbers, so what they actually wrote is senselessly baroque, but it's functionally analogous. Let's do a quick combat example:
PC combatants
A Beacon, with "martial arts" and "acrobatics"
A Bull, "superhumanly tough," "incredibly strong," "uniquely skilled at fighting"
NPC combatants
A gang of thugs
Robocop
Achilles
IF
Beacon attacks thugs
OR
Bull attacks Robocop
THEN
"You're directly engaging a threat, roll +danger to trade blows."
IF
Bull attacks thugs
THEN
"They're not even a threat. You drive them before you and hear the lamentations of their women."
IF
Bull attacks Achilles
THEN
"He's invulnerable everywhere except his heel, and he's not letting you get a good shot at it. Before you can trade blows with him, someone needs to do something to distract him or slow him down."
IF
Beacon attacks Achilles
THEN
SURE WOULD BE NICE IF WE COULD USE ACTUAL NUMBERS, AMIRITE?
Masks basically tells you to use extended tests to work around the fact that all tests are equally difficult. You compare a PC's abilities to the difficulty of the task and then tell the player it will take 0 rolls, 1 roll, >1 roll to get it done. They tried really hard to avoid using actual numbers, so what they actually wrote is senselessly baroque, but it's functionally analogous. Let's do a quick combat example:
PC combatants
A Beacon, with "martial arts" and "acrobatics"
A Bull, "superhumanly tough," "incredibly strong," "uniquely skilled at fighting"
NPC combatants
A gang of thugs
Robocop
Achilles
IF
Beacon attacks thugs
OR
Bull attacks Robocop
THEN
"You're directly engaging a threat, roll +danger to trade blows."
IF
Bull attacks thugs
THEN
"They're not even a threat. You drive them before you and hear the lamentations of their women."
IF
Bull attacks Achilles
THEN
"He's invulnerable everywhere except his heel, and he's not letting you get a good shot at it. Before you can trade blows with him, someone needs to do something to distract him or slow him down."
IF
Beacon attacks Achilles
THEN
SURE WOULD BE NICE IF WE COULD USE ACTUAL NUMBERS, AMIRITE?
Last edited by Orion on Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Also different villains will have different condition levels before they go down. So the Joker probably has a full five point condition track same as the heroes because he's a Big Bad, but Penguine might only have a 2 or 3 condition track because he's a Side Bad.
Condition track isn't just a convoluted health bar, it also marks how many times the villain will escalate before going down.
So you can have something like "The Bull needs 2 rolls, one distraction and one directly engage in order to mark a condition for this villain, and the villain will escalate three times before going down."
Condition track isn't just a convoluted health bar, it also marks how many times the villain will escalate before going down.
So you can have something like "The Bull needs 2 rolls, one distraction and one directly engage in order to mark a condition for this villain, and the villain will escalate three times before going down."
Yeah, saying "there's no difference between fighting a hobo and a stromtroopers squad" is blatantly false, at least for the PbtA games I know. The original Apocalypse World already differentiates between threats - distinct health (foes could have from 1- to 6-harm clocks); different armor and weapon; distinct threat moves ("when you seize by force against Gizmo roll with Weird, his drunk monkey fighting style is hard to read), etc. It's still on the simplistic side, but it's there. And I believe most hacks do actually complexify this more.
*I'm exagerating to illustrate the point
So Masks is similar to Dungeon World in this regard. I actually prefer Apocalypse World method, as having specific uses for each stat confers more thematic weight to them and better "niche protection" to playbooks - the Battlebabe is the only who can dance between bullets on the battlefield because he is Cool as fuck, while the Gunlugger will be the only to wipe the floor with the opposition in direct confrontation because he is Hard as fuck, etc. The stats "Cool" and "Hard" here gets relevance that going with "use whatever stat you're good at for whatever task you want"* do not.Orion wrote:How hard is it to "min-max" my stats so I get a +2 or better to almost all of my rolls?
Apocalypse World: There are several stats that are only relevant to one type of challenge and several challenges that are only beatable with one stat. Outside a fight, Hard in useless, but inside a fight, Hard is mandatory. Hot is only useful in noncombat social encounters and not even all of those. Cool and Weird are basically saving throws that the MC will force you to roll periodically whether you want to or not. Even if you have 3 good stats, you will still either have a hole in your defenses or run into situations where you're unable to contribute. Also you might not be able to get the stat array that you want, and if you invested in a stat that turned out not be useful then you're screwed.
Masks: Every stat has a move that's useful in physical combat, and every stat has a move that's good for general utility or for social combat. With just 2 good stats you should be able to find something useful to do in any situation. The GM usually won't force you to roll a specific stat -- neither resisting influence nor taking a powerful blow checks your stats, and when a specific stat is needed to stop a bad event, you can usually let whomever has the best number roll for it.
*I'm exagerating to illustrate the point
Last edited by Guts on Wed Apr 17, 2019 5:36 pm, edited 4 times in total.
@Guts,
Masks actually runs on a Tank/Healer/DPS combat system. In combat, you use "Danger" to inflict damage on the opposition, "Saviour" to prevent damage to your allies, and "Mundane" to heal allies. The other 2 stats are "Freak," which is used to debuff enemies, score VP, and mitigate incoming damage, and "Superior" which does weird poorly-defined meta-game stuff that makes it either the best or the worst stat depending on how your GM handles things.
@Shinimasu
Masks actually runs on a Tank/Healer/DPS combat system. In combat, you use "Danger" to inflict damage on the opposition, "Saviour" to prevent damage to your allies, and "Mundane" to heal allies. The other 2 stats are "Freak," which is used to debuff enemies, score VP, and mitigate incoming damage, and "Superior" which does weird poorly-defined meta-game stuff that makes it either the best or the worst stat depending on how your GM handles things.
@Shinimasu
Nah, it totally is. Villains don't take wound penalties from their conditions the way PCs do, and "escalation" isn't actually a thing. If they were more interested in writing a game and less interested in obscurantism, they'd have written something like. "Give each villain a health bar with 1 to 5 HP, and some keyword tags to describe their special defenses. When a PC attacks, compare their offensive tags to the villains defensive tags and decide how many checks the PCs need to pass to complete the attack. Whenever the PCs complete an attack, the villain loses 1 HP and gets a free soft move."shinimasu wrote:Condition track isn't just a convoluted health bar"
Last edited by Orion on Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I don't disagree, I just remember that "villain gets a free move after marking a condition" was, if not explicitly spelled out, at least very strongly implied. So how many conditions you had to mark was, in theory, also supposed to indicate how many free shots you had to ward against.
If the combat was more robust this might have actually been interesting.
If the combat was more robust this might have actually been interesting.
Yep, I've just read the moves sheet you posted and I was mistaken. The stats are used for specific situations as in AW, only here they cover more specific situations, which is good in my book and very different from Dungeon World and it's "use your best stat to whatever task you want".Orion wrote:@Guts,
Masks actually runs on a Tank/Healer/DPS combat system. In combat, you use "Danger" to inflict damage on the opposition, "Saviour" to prevent damage to your allies, and "Mundane" to heal allies. The other 2 stats are "Freak," which is used to debuff enemies, score VP, and mitigate incoming damage, and "Superior" which does weird poorly-defined meta-game stuff that makes it either the best or the worst stat depending on how your GM handles things.
This game looks really interesting so far. Please, post more about it.
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Username17
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In an effort to get things away from discussing pointless things with someone who is obviously silva, what is the purpose of this game under all the obscurantism? That is, why would you "play" this thing instead of some variant of "I tell a story until someone wants to jump in and enlarge upon that story?"
I feel very weird about the declaration that it is more difficult to punch out The Joker than it is to punch out Killer Croc "because The Joker is more important." I mean, I grant that he is more important, and I would expect The Joker to dominate more of the table time. But I don't see how or why he should take more punches to drop in the final battle. That seems like a pretty serious failure of genre emulation.
If your game doesn't distinguish between villains whose plans take more effort to unravel and villains whose jaws take more punching I question why you're even bothering to have mechanics at all
-Username17.
I feel very weird about the declaration that it is more difficult to punch out The Joker than it is to punch out Killer Croc "because The Joker is more important." I mean, I grant that he is more important, and I would expect The Joker to dominate more of the table time. But I don't see how or why he should take more punches to drop in the final battle. That seems like a pretty serious failure of genre emulation.
If your game doesn't distinguish between villains whose plans take more effort to unravel and villains whose jaws take more punching I question why you're even bothering to have mechanics at all
-Username17.
The same appeal of any RPG in contrast to telling stories by the bonfire, that is, having the uncertainty that a game of dice provides?FrankTrollman wrote:In an effort to get things away from discussing pointless things with someone who is obviously silva, what is the purpose of this game under all the obscurantism? That is, why would you "play" this thing instead of some variant of "I tell a story until someone wants to jump in and enlarge upon that story?"
Or, in the case of PbtA, all the above plus engaging with these pellets of genre-apropriated decision points called "moves"?
Punching is one way you can mark a condition, but thwarting plans is a way to mark a condition too, as is provoking the villain into making a faux paw. Insert clip of terry taunting the joker in batman beyond here or something.FrankTrollman wrote:In an effort to get things away from discussing pointless things with someone who is obviously silva, what is the purpose of this game under all the obscurantism? That is, why would you "play" this thing instead of some variant of "I tell a story until someone wants to jump in and enlarge upon that story?"
I feel very weird about the declaration that it is more difficult to punch out The Joker than it is to punch out Killer Croc "because The Joker is more important." I mean, I grant that he is more important, and I would expect The Joker to dominate more of the table time. But I don't see how or why he should take more punches to drop in the final battle. That seems like a pretty serious failure of genre emulation.
If your game doesn't distinguish between villains whose plans take more effort to unravel and villains whose jaws take more punching I question why you're even bothering to have mechanics at all
-Username17.
There's no rule that says the MC can't declare that the first three condition tracks can be filled only via thwarting, with punching reserved for whatever the final showdown happens to be. But that would be entirely a fan patch not an outlined mechanic so obviously it doesn't "count" as a point in favor of the game's base design but I think the reason they shied away from using straight damage numbers for villain health was to try and make provoking or thwarting more obviously viable options. Unless you're black canary shouting the villain's health off wouldn't make much sense.
As for why specifically you'd play a PbtA game instead of just free-forming it there are a couple of failure points in free form that PbtA tries specifically to address with it's mechanics.
- Infinity +1 swords. PbtA games generally have a hard cap on how strong you can be by having the moves be fairly limited in scope.
- Encouraging players to let their characters suck sometimes. Even in the best most well intentioned group of free form players stories sometimes tend to veer into "and then everyone was awesome forever at everything and no one ever made a mistake or misinterpreted a situation again." Acknowledging your character is going to have to suck sometimes or fail at something in order to keep the story interesting is important, by passing off the "when" to dice instead of a human it helps spread it around. And providing carrots when failure happens means the situation never feels entirely like you the player have failed. A lot of games it seems like are using Meta Currency as a way to get players to lean into unlucky rolls these days.
- Having a dedicated MC run the world and NPCs helps keep the shared story more cohesive. Most free-form games have the players running their characters and the world in a shared responsibility which can get... messy fast.
- Getting people to play against type. Playbooks in PbtA are usually designed to funnel a player through a set of specific behaviors by offering incentives. Effectiveness varies depending on hack. But you run into less of the "John plays literally the same guy every game and he always puts him off in a corner" problem.
If you look at Story Games like PbtA or Fate like the rules for Boxing maybe they make more sense. After all you can always just go out and punch each other if you want to, fist fighting doesn't really need rules but having them helps make sure no one is seriously injured and that everyone who participated got what they wanted out of the activity.
Last edited by shinimasu on Sat Apr 20, 2019 4:52 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Username17
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That seems like such low hanging fruit that I don't understand why the rules don't have something like that. Like, what do the rules actually contain if they don't formalize thwarting and then fighting a villain?There's no rule that says the MC can't declare that the first three condition tracks can be filled only via thwarting, with punching reserved for whatever the final showdown happens to be. But that would be entirely a fan patch not an outlined mechanic
That kind of sounds like it would be the entire structure of the game, how do they manage to fill up the pages if they don't go there?
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I have literally no idea what shinimasu is talking about. "Thwarting" isn't a game term at all. "Provoke someone" is a basic move and while I wish its effect were better defined, there is no evidence that it can inflict a condition on a villain and substantial evidence that it cannot. There's also nothing in the book about the GM making villains arbitrarily immune to damage until they've been "thwarted" a bunch.
Conditions are the health bar, "directly engage a threat" is the attack move, and it is the only reliable way PCs can inflict conditions on the villains. There's a little bit of narrative flexibility there because you can engage someone by punching them or by saying mean things that hurt their feelings, but either way that's the move you're supposed to use.
Also, I edited in some discussion of basic moves above.
Conditions are the health bar, "directly engage a threat" is the attack move, and it is the only reliable way PCs can inflict conditions on the villains. There's a little bit of narrative flexibility there because you can engage someone by punching them or by saying mean things that hurt their feelings, but either way that's the move you're supposed to use.
Also, I edited in some discussion of basic moves above.
That might just be something our MC introduced then, where stopping a plan (by rescuing a hostage or breaking the doomsday button or whatever) would mark a condition. So the whole thing was a fan patch I guess. I sort of just assumed he knew what he was talking about since it was fun and made sense in the context of the game.
Last edited by shinimasu on Mon Apr 22, 2019 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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Huh. I'm going to run through what I consider to be the bare minimum for a "rules lite" Superhero game. Let's imagine that we have two adventures: one of them is against a mastermind villain like The Riddler or Lex Luthor or whatever; and the other is against a brute villain like Killer Croc or The Juggernaut or whatever.
In the Mastermind scenario, our intended story framework is in five scenes:
In the Brute scenario, our intended story framework is:
So far the things people have said about this just haven't inspired confidence. How does Masks make these scenes happen in the proper order better than everyone being genre savvy and just telling stories that fit these formulas by taking turns narrating scenes?
As it has been described so far, it seems like actually The Riddler's Final Showdown is at least as long and maybe longer than that of Killer Croc. Which sounds like genre emulation fail so severe that the value added over just passing the story stick back and forth is probably negative.
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In the Mastermind scenario, our intended story framework is in five scenes:
- Investigate a Crime Scene.
- Investigate a second Crime Scene.
- Create a setback for the Villain by figuring out what their next move was.
- Get taunted by the Villain with the launching of their backup plan.
- Final Showdown with the Villain.
In the Brute scenario, our intended story framework is:
- Investigate a Crime Scene.
- Fight the Villain.
- Research the Villain's Weaknesses.
- Final Showdown with the Villain.
So far the things people have said about this just haven't inspired confidence. How does Masks make these scenes happen in the proper order better than everyone being genre savvy and just telling stories that fit these formulas by taking turns narrating scenes?
As it has been described so far, it seems like actually The Riddler's Final Showdown is at least as long and maybe longer than that of Killer Croc. Which sounds like genre emulation fail so severe that the value added over just passing the story stick back and forth is probably negative.
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That is terrible. Seriously that rule is so bad that by itself it basically ruins the game. If you make no distinction between the objectives and the opposition then you are essentially playing a 4E-style skill challenge -- there are no decisions to make because actions aren't different. All you're doing is picking your best number and trying to roll more successes than failures. Both sides of a conflict in Masks are supposed to be making trade-offs between pursuing objectives, eliminating opponents, and protecting their own team. Let's look at the instructions for running villains; I've bolded the parts that I think your GM may have overlooked or misapplied.shinimasu wrote:That might just be something our MC introduced then, where stopping a plan (by rescuing a hostage or breaking the doomsday button or whatever) would mark a condition. So the whole thing was a fan patch I guess. I sort of just assumed he knew what he was talking about since it was fun and made sense in the context of the game.
As far as I know, Masks doesn't actually define "defeat" at any point, and I think your GM's interpretation of that word might be the source of his problem. Let's consider a very basic scenario: a suicidal bomber plants a bomb and then attacks the PCs when they show up to defuse it. He is willing to sacrifice himself if it delays the PCs enough that the bomb ends up going off. It sounds like your GM would apply something like the following logic:When a villain gets hit hard, by trading blows or in other situations, they
mark a condition as appropriate.
• When a villain marks a condition, they make a move from the condition
moves list immediately, before the PCs act again.
• When you need to say what the villain does next, look to your GM
moves, their villain moves, and the condition moves.
• When a villain needs to mark a condition but can’t, they are defeated.
• Villains can flee or give up long before all their conditions are filled—
don’t think they have to fight to the bitter end.
In isolation, I can see why your GM would interpret "defeated" in terms of the villains goals and values, but in the context of the rest of the system I think it's clear that "defeated" actually means "no longer able to participate in the action." If villains can "give up long before all their conditions are filled," they must have a reason to give up, which means that it must be possible to thwart their plans without inflicting conditions on them. Villains take conditions when they're "hit hard", and while it says trading blows isn't the only way that can happen, I think it's clear that neither "provoking" the villain nor "defending" some bystanders should count as "hitting them hard."Shinimasu's GM, maybe? wrote:The bombers entire goal is to set off the bomb; if it goes off, most people would say that he won. The rules say that if the bomber runs out of conditions to mark, he's defeated. If the bomber ran out of conditions and then the bomb went off, he would both win and also be defeated, which makes no sense. I don't want him to run out of conditions until the bomb has been disarmed, so I will make him arbitrarily immune to being punched until then.
For players to have meaningful agency, then "we saved the building, but the bomber got away" and "we captured the bomber, but couldn't save the building" both have to be possible outcomes, and the player's choices need to determine which result you're more likely to get. "Scoring VP" and "depleting enemy HP" have to be different things and players have to be able to choose which one to focus on. This is why a lot of the basic fighting moves let you choose between options that provide a direct mechanical benefit (like avoiding counter-attack or banking a Team) and options that provide undefined "opportunities" or fictional effects with no mechanical backing. You use the non-mechanical ones to score VP, or use the mechanical ones to conserve HP.
Last edited by Orion on Tue Apr 23, 2019 4:02 am, edited 2 times in total.
Just a small clarification: "Help of Interfere" in Apocalypse World is actually pretty frenquently used and is not risky at all. In 1st edition the 7-9 result meant you (the helper) just got exposed to the same danger aimed at the recipient. On 2nd edition, they changed it so the 7-9 result confer +1 to the recipient's roll, while a 10+ confer +2. In all hacks we played it was almost guaranteed that players would use Help/Interfere whenever possible. And that's on purpose: the players characters are supposed to be badasses and wipe the floor with whatever the MC throws at them if they join forces (specially when one of them is a GunluggerOrion wrote:Is there a good way to ensure success on a clutch roll, or to negate an especially bad failure?
Apocalypse World: You can ask other PCs to help and potentially get +1 for each of them. But to give you the bonus at no cost to themselves they need to roll a 10+ on a "Hx" check; rolling less than that will cost them something, so this is rarely used.
Masks: Masks has 3 RNG-mitigating mechanics: teamwork, "moments of truth," and class moves. Teamwork is the best-designed and most important. The group shares a floating pool of "Team" They get 1 point at the start of each session, and several points when they enter battle as a team, and they can generate more team as a side effect of various moves. They lose all accumulate Team when "time passes." After you make a roll but before you resolve it, each of your can tell a story about how they helped and then spend 1 "Team" to add 1 to your result. If you have 3 friends and some Team in the bank, you can almost always buy a "7" when you need one.
), and ultimately the only thing that can stop a PC is another PC. Thus Help/Interfere being a double-edged sword.With that aside, I agree Masks gives a more robust structure for players to pick from.
You're not wrong here and this isn't a disagreement but I do want to point out that Masks is in a lot of ways attempting to emphasize the Teen part of teen superheroes so order of operations was designed to take a back seat to whatever Drama unfolds in the opening act.FrankTrollman wrote: So far the things people have said about this just haven't inspired confidence. How does Masks make these scenes happen in the proper order better than everyone being genre savvy and just telling stories that fit these formulas by taking turns narrating scenes?
As it has been described so far, it seems like actually The Riddler's Final Showdown is at least as long and maybe longer than that of Killer Croc. Which sounds like genre emulation fail so severe that the value added over just passing the story stick back and forth is probably negative.
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I don't know if you've ever seen Young Justice but the episode "Schooled" is probably the closest thing to the Platonic Ideal of how masks expects to play. There's an episode synopsis online if you don't have a spare 15 minutes to watch the episode.
The whole thing can be very easily broken down into game terms. Superboy fails an unleash roll trying to help with a bridge disaster and Superman lectures him for being reckless. He fails the reject roll and marks Angry.
Later black canary is doing combat training. Since superboy is testy he makes a rude remark about how he don't need no combat training he can just punch things into submission. Black Canary kicks his ass, he fails another roll, marks Insecure.
Something about an android, escort mission happens. Robin tries to offer comfort and doesn't succeed, superboy remains pissed and insecure.
Fight happens, mooks manage to steal the transported android parts. Superboy Takes a Foolhardy Action without talking to his team, ditches the communicator and runs off after them. Clears a condition.
Superboy finds the now reassembled android with its inventor. Gets his ass kicked again trying to solo the thing. The rest of the Team arrives and they win now that they can spend Team points to make up for superboy's terrible dice. Everyone learns an important lesson about humility and we all go home.
The specific thing masks is interested in providing mechanics for is who gets to be superboy each session. Instead of a team of writers determining who gets to eat shit for the majority of the "episode" you roll dice. And the conditions the character suffers from are supposed to dictate how they act while attempting to clear them.
1/3rd of Schooled is devoted to the actual punchy stuff, 2/3rds are devoted to drama. That's the structure Masks is going for, and where a lot of my problems with how labels and conditions work come from
Last edited by shinimasu on Wed Apr 24, 2019 6:52 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Username17
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OK. I can accept that the goal is to the emphasize the teen drama portion, and I genuinely did enjoy Young Justice. In that case, isn't the structure of Fate simply better?
If players can gain Fate points by doing stupid shit and having socially awkward things happen to them, they can jolly well just do that. Superboy's player doesn't have to get embarrassed by Black Canary, the player wants to get embarrassed by Black Canary. Having relationship problems and doing dumb teenage shit that gets the character in trouble is a power gaming move. The ire of the MC isn't some Eye of Sauron that the players are avoiding, it's something the players line up for their own damn selves.
If you want to incentivize the players to engage in dumb teenage melodrama, shouldn't you reward the players for participating by giving them Fate points rather than punish the players for participating by marking conditions?
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If players can gain Fate points by doing stupid shit and having socially awkward things happen to them, they can jolly well just do that. Superboy's player doesn't have to get embarrassed by Black Canary, the player wants to get embarrassed by Black Canary. Having relationship problems and doing dumb teenage shit that gets the character in trouble is a power gaming move. The ire of the MC isn't some Eye of Sauron that the players are avoiding, it's something the players line up for their own damn selves.
If you want to incentivize the players to engage in dumb teenage melodrama, shouldn't you reward the players for participating by giving them Fate points rather than punish the players for participating by marking conditions?
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It's a matter of taste. The chief complaint people have with Fate over PbtA is how generic everything feels. Fate is like the D&D 4e of story games, it's over all mechanically sound but not particularly exciting to play.
Remember where I said PbtA is about funneling players through a series of specific behaviors? This is a good example. Let's break it down.
Let's say Superboy is the Bull playbook since that lines up with his punchy attitude this episode. A Bull's "Primary" stat is Danger, most of their moves are about how to punch good. There are moves that let you use Danger instead of Freak, instead of superior, instead of savior, to automatically shift Danger up, and to give you a +1 when you're angry about something.
Here are the penalties the conditions impose on different moves.
• If you’re Angry, take -2 to comfort or support someone or pierce the mask.
• If you’re Afraid, take -2 to directly engage.
• If you’re Guilty, take -2 to provoke someone or assess the situation.
• If you’re Hopeless, take -2 to unleash your powers.
• If you’re Insecure, take -2 to stand in defense or reject what others say.
So a bull's primary "Role" is combat. They probably already kind of suck at Mundane moves like pierce the mask, and they don't tend to do a lot of provoking or assessing. So while a Bull can theoretically mark conditions in any order they feel appropriate there are "optimal" paths they will take depending on the moves they have selected.
The Usual order goes Angry>Insecure>Guilty>Hopeless>Afraid (swap guilty and hopeless depending on chosen moves). Afraid is almost always selected last because Directly Engage is the thing the bull is best at doing and therefore the penalty they least want to incur. Anger is selected first because the penalty is to the bull's weakest (and least used) moves, Insecure selected second because the move Punch Everyone lets them fix their own stats fairly easily.
Each playbook's order of condition selection will look a little different though since there's only five of them not too different. Also it's a little situational, if you're not in combat and don't anticipate being in combat for a while, then a bull might mark afraid third or 4th to keep Unleash or Assess open and useful. It's a fairly shallow level of mechanical choice when it comes to "how much is this going to hurt" but it's a little more than what fate has and it keeps the bull very consistent in how much of an asshole they are and in what ways. A bull will be more violent and reckless than their team members because those are the conditions they mark first and those are the behaviors that self clear those conditions. The bull explicitly cannot clear angry by doing Yoga or reading a self help book, either someone gives them a shoulder rub or they break something expensive (or I think there's an end of session move that lets them clear one).
This rigidity is both what Masks has going for it over Fate and also what I dislike most about the system.
Remember where I said PbtA is about funneling players through a series of specific behaviors? This is a good example. Let's break it down.
Let's say Superboy is the Bull playbook since that lines up with his punchy attitude this episode. A Bull's "Primary" stat is Danger, most of their moves are about how to punch good. There are moves that let you use Danger instead of Freak, instead of superior, instead of savior, to automatically shift Danger up, and to give you a +1 when you're angry about something.
Here are the penalties the conditions impose on different moves.
• If you’re Angry, take -2 to comfort or support someone or pierce the mask.
• If you’re Afraid, take -2 to directly engage.
• If you’re Guilty, take -2 to provoke someone or assess the situation.
• If you’re Hopeless, take -2 to unleash your powers.
• If you’re Insecure, take -2 to stand in defense or reject what others say.
So a bull's primary "Role" is combat. They probably already kind of suck at Mundane moves like pierce the mask, and they don't tend to do a lot of provoking or assessing. So while a Bull can theoretically mark conditions in any order they feel appropriate there are "optimal" paths they will take depending on the moves they have selected.
The Usual order goes Angry>Insecure>Guilty>Hopeless>Afraid (swap guilty and hopeless depending on chosen moves). Afraid is almost always selected last because Directly Engage is the thing the bull is best at doing and therefore the penalty they least want to incur. Anger is selected first because the penalty is to the bull's weakest (and least used) moves, Insecure selected second because the move Punch Everyone lets them fix their own stats fairly easily.
Each playbook's order of condition selection will look a little different though since there's only five of them not too different. Also it's a little situational, if you're not in combat and don't anticipate being in combat for a while, then a bull might mark afraid third or 4th to keep Unleash or Assess open and useful. It's a fairly shallow level of mechanical choice when it comes to "how much is this going to hurt" but it's a little more than what fate has and it keeps the bull very consistent in how much of an asshole they are and in what ways. A bull will be more violent and reckless than their team members because those are the conditions they mark first and those are the behaviors that self clear those conditions. The bull explicitly cannot clear angry by doing Yoga or reading a self help book, either someone gives them a shoulder rub or they break something expensive (or I think there's an end of session move that lets them clear one).
This rigidity is both what Masks has going for it over Fate and also what I dislike most about the system.
Last edited by shinimasu on Wed Apr 24, 2019 8:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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I'm not actually a fan or proponent of Fate. I think it has a lot of problems, most especially that combat is a slog. However, I think it's fairly obvious that if you want people to engage with your relationship drama minigame that you should incentivize players to do so. And Fate does meet that extremely minimal and unambitious bar.
If you give people metagame currency as a reward for having relationship problems with your aunt, players are incentivized to roleplay out relationship problems with their aunt. If you give negative conditions which provide mechanical penalties to future actions for having relationship problems with your aunt, the players will actively avoid relationship drama. Because fucking obviously.
Negative condition marking for taking actions in the relationship minigame makes players incentivized to avoid acting at all. Metagame payment incentivizes participation. If you want players to seek out situations for their characters to melodramatically act out, why the actual fuck would you choose the structure which bluntly and obviously incentivizes players to not do so?
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If you give people metagame currency as a reward for having relationship problems with your aunt, players are incentivized to roleplay out relationship problems with their aunt. If you give negative conditions which provide mechanical penalties to future actions for having relationship problems with your aunt, the players will actively avoid relationship drama. Because fucking obviously.
Negative condition marking for taking actions in the relationship minigame makes players incentivized to avoid acting at all. Metagame payment incentivizes participation. If you want players to seek out situations for their characters to melodramatically act out, why the actual fuck would you choose the structure which bluntly and obviously incentivizes players to not do so?
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