shinimasu wrote: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?"
shinimasu wrote: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?
shinimasu wrote: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.
shinimasu wrote: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.
shinimasu wrote: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.
shinimasu wrote: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.
shinimasu wrote: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?
shinimasu wrote:
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.