PbtA plus Agency?

[shinimasu]

I'm confused about why you're replying to some of my points in terms of how AW does it. I'm not super fond of AW either but I also didn't mention it at all in relation to Masks. Orion was the one making the point that Masks it Better than AW specifically, my point is merely that masks is bad at player agency and also contains a lot of design choices I am personally not a fan of. If those design choices are also in AW then I imagine I wouldn't be a fan of them there either.

Re: Combat it was addressed that thanks to a zealously over trimmed reference sheet, and a poorly laid out core book both I and my former MC missed the bit about 7-9 always marking a condition and that create an advantage should always grant a forward. Those were not made clear within the text, which is its own problem but not the problem I thought it was. I'm leaving my incorrect post up for posterity.

Now on to the points you raised that I can address:

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?

Right and my complaint is what does it mean mechanically to take away a villain's magnetic powers that isn't already covered by another option present on that move? Does it mean the villain is just out of the fight? If we're fighting a scrawny psychic nerd and I take away his psychic powers does the MC just go "Well... he's not really any kind of threat without those so you win. Yay?" Do they invent a new way he's dangerous to keep the encounter going? Are all our villains now tech based so I can't just yoink their abilities (or at least not all of them at once)?

Removing cover or removing a hostage are tangible things that a villain has and my gripe isn't with that. My gripe is specifically with how a lot of the moves don't interact with a lot of the superhero powers even though they are ostensibly designed to do just that. And when you force them to interact you venture into the realm of the unknown where suddenly it's bears all the way down again.

Fictional positioning doesn't really work as a game mechanic unless the fictional positions you can take are clearly defined by the rules of the game. But outside of power and equipment tags Masks doesn't really have that. There is no "powerless" tag defined by the game that tells you what happens if you steal someone's powers. There is no sense of duration. There is no sense of what that means the villain can or can't do. This is a problem with most PbtA hacks, not exclusive to masks. Any time the game shrugs and goes "I dunno, MC makes a ruling here" that is when bears happen. No narrative game is completely free of this, but good games will at least try and reduce bear frequency.

I want to be clear because it feels like I'm harping on this one example, that this is not the only time masks does this. This is just one of the most obvious and visible times masks does this. And therefore the easiest to dissect.

A thing about the label's system that occurs to me in hindsight is that while I dislike it as a mechanic for measuring your character's emotional landscape, I do like it as a model for all the weird shit that can and does happen to a superhero.

Hit by a shrink ray? Shift danger down and something else up.

Turned into a sentient slime monster? Freak up, mundane down.

Hit by an evil wizard curse so you can only speak in riddles? Superior up, mundane down.

There's potential there I just really hate it trying to fill in as an emotion meter alongside conditions.

[Guts]

I'm confused about why you're replying to some of my points in terms of how AW does it. I'm not super fond of AW either but I also didn't mention it at all in relation to Masks. Orion was the one making the point that Masks it Better than AW specifically, my point is merely that masks is bad at player agency and also contains a lot of design choices I am personally not a fan of. If those design choices are also in AW then I imagine I wouldn't be a fan of them there either.

Sorry, I thought you were experienced in PbtA games by our previous conversations, as all situations you brought up are more or less the default for most of them and easily solvable after you grok their MC principles & moves (as that part about taking 30min to resolve in your example).

Right and my complaint is what does it mean mechanically to take away a villain's magnetic powers that isn't already covered by another option present on that move? Does it mean the villain is just out of the fight? If we're fighting a scrawny psychic nerd and I take away his psychic powers does the MC just go "Well... he's not really any kind of threat without those so you win. Yay?" Do they invent a new way he's dangerous to keep the encounter going? Are all our villains now tech based so I can't just yoink their abilities (or at least not all of them at once)?

Removing cover or removing a hostage are tangible things that a villain has and my gripe isn't with that. My gripe is specifically with how a lot of the moves don't interact with a lot of the superhero powers even though they are ostensibly designed to do just that. And when you force them to interact you venture into the realm of the unknown where suddenly it's bears all the way down again.

Yeah, I can see the problem with the "take something from them" option. It's already kinda vague on default Apocalypse World, and here it seems to have been copy-pasted directly. Perhaps the best would be to cut this option off, and have a more contrete "negate the target's powers until the end of the scene" power for the delinquent?

Is that what you mean?

Have you tried asking at the official forums or something (assuming there is one) ? PbtA games are notoriously bad at communicating their rules, and sometimes actual play or advice from experienced players may help.

[shinimasu]

Have you tried asking at the official forums or something (assuming there is one) ? PbtA games are notoriously bad at communicating their rules, and sometimes actual play or advice from experienced players may help.

I'm sure it would be helpful but that doesn't really erase the initial problem that is the game itself being rather sloppily designed and actively obfuscating what it means when it says things.

The two statements "I think Masks is poorly Designed" and "Player communities can patch obvious flaws in poorly designed games" are not mutually exclusive. One does not negate the other. I can still bitch about Masks online and be mostly right while also acknowledging that obviously for other people my gripes are not dealbreakers.

[Pedantic]

Have you tried asking at the official forums or something (assuming there is one) ? PbtA games are notoriously bad at communicating their rules, and sometimes actual play or advice from experienced players may help.

Forum norms. Unless someone is specifically asking for play advice or houserules, the goal here is not to squeeze a playable game out of a game as written, it's to explicate the problems with a given design.

[Guts]

Yep, but sometimes the design is solid enough, and the problem lies in the text communicating it. In such cases, talking with experienced people can help. Don't know if it's the case of Masks though. Just sayin.

By the way, @shinimasu, has you look at Undying in the meantime? I still think it's the PbtA that best addresses the matter of the thread.

[Guts]

What about this:

In the "Acting under Fire" move and derivatives, the player comes up with the cost or complication ? And the MC says if it's reasonable or else asks for another one.

So, say, the player wants to open that lock while enemies are closing in, and rolls a 7-9. Then he suggests "I do it and get safely behind the door, but in a haphazard way leaving behind my backpack (with tools inside)". The MC says "Ok" and things moves on.

This way players would have better control over bears, no?

[00dani]

What about this:

In the "Acting under Fire" move and derivatives, the player comes up with the cost or complication ? And the MC says if it's reasonable or else asks for another one.

So, say, the player wants to open that lock while enemies are closing in, and rolls a 7-9. Then he suggests "I do it and get safely behind the door, but in a haphazard way leaving behind my backpack (with tools inside)". The MC says "Ok" and things moves on.

This way players would have better control over bears, no?

Um, yes. Yes, they would. In fact that's why I opened this thread by making exactly the same suggestion.

The problem with that fix, however, is determining whether the player's chosen result is too "good" or too "big". Your proposal is to allow the MC to veto any proposed result unilaterally, which unfortunately means your game runs on what TGDMB calls "Mother may I?". Players have to make the choice the MC wants, since anything else can be vetoed. It's disempowering and frustrating for players to beg for the MC's permission to take certain actions.

The most viable alternative in my eyes is, essentially, to play Munchausen. You say what result you want, anyone else at the table is allowed to interject and suggest their own, and if you prefer your original idea you can play a quick round of rock-paper-scissors to decide whose idea goes. Of course then you're just playing Munchausen, which is free and incredibly simple, and you're not gaining much from the PbtA structure.

[Orion]

Rather than forcing every move to be negotiated to consensus, I recommend introducing a narrative currency to resolve impasses. Whichever side you put in charge of making the first proposal, allow the other side to veto it by spending a resource.

[erik]

What happens when you run out of resources? Or rather, what happens when each side makes egregious enough suggestions that resources are tapped out quickly? Seems like using a resource isn’t an adequate bandaid to the problems inherent to a shared fluid narrative.

[deaddmwalking]

You could have both sides suggest a reasonable outcome and then roll between them. Assuming no consensus.

So if I suggest 'great things happen', the GM suggests 'terrible things happen' - but if I suggest 'good things happen', they may say 'sure' or 'slightly less good things happen'.

Over time, both sides would want to cleave to what is 'reasonable' to avoid one extreme or the other. They could alternate making suggestions.

Potentially, accepting the person's suggestion could grant you currency. Maybe both... Ie, if you make a suggestion and the GM agrees with it (a 'balanced option') without making a counter-suggestion, both sides earn currency for future use.

[Orion]

Imagine that you added a resource called Fate Points to Apocalypse World. Fate Points can be used in the following ways:

When you miss a roll and the MC is making their move, you can can spend a Fate Point to interrupt them. Choose any MC move that doesn't leave your character better off than they already were and declare one of the following:

--what the MC said happened; continue narrating from where they left off.
--what the MC said almost happened; explain why it didn't and what happened instead.
--your character didn't actually make that move because they foresaw what would have happened; explain what actually happened when your character hesitated.

When you roll a 7-9 while acting under fire and the MC offers you a worse outcome, a hard bargain, or an ugly choice, you may spend a Fate Point to cancel it. Resolve your roll as if it were 10+, and explain how you averted the worse outcome, drove a harder bargain, or chose (both/neither).

Because most people fear uncertainty and the loss of control, and most people are biased toward hoarding consumable resources, we can predict that players will be quite reluctant to actually spend Fate Points if they think there is any risk of running out. I expect that players will accept 90% of the MC rulings that they regard as "fair," even ones that hit their characters pretty hard, and will only spend Fate Points to cancel MC moves they see as unfairly harsh or as somehow offensive/inappropriate/out-of-genre/otherwise anti-fun. Based on those assumptions, this is the advice I would give the MC:

"The Fate Point system is a formal way for players to intervene when your rulings threaten to push the story in directions they don't want to go, or for them to dissent from your rulings without halting gameplay for a dispute. If everyone in your game is on the same page, Fate Points will be spent pretty rarely. In Apocalypse World you may find yourself trying to deplete a character's resources, but Fate Points don't belong to a character; they belong to the player and should not be deliberately targeted. 90% of the time, you should assume that you player will not veto you, and make whatever move you would make if Fate Points didn't exist. There are really only two cases where you should factor them into your decision-making.

Sometimes a situation seems to call for a mildly bad result, but you can't think of one. If the only options that come to mind are "basically a free pass" and "maybe a little too harsh," then ask yourself if the player has spent any Fate Points recently. If they haven't feel free to offer them the harsher move and see what happens. On the other hand, sometimes the opportunity arises for you to go for something super harsh but really interesting. Some of the most memorable storylines in single-author fiction involve heroic characters being blinded, maimed, losing loved ones, etc., and the existence of Fate Points allows you to invite a player in to such a story without forcing it on them.

You can measure the health of your game by the amount of Fate Points players have left at the end of each session. If every session is ending with multiple players down to 1 point, then you're being too harsh and need to change up your approach. If one specific player is consistently burning through their points, have a talk with them privately and try to figure out why your MCing style is clashing with their expectations. In some cases they might just not be a good fit for your group, but you'll often find out that some very specific thing you do has been bothering them, and that it's not hard to find other ways to keep the pressure on."

[Guts]

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.

After reading Masks it's clear to me the available power sets were made to fit each archetype themes. So the Delinquent has illusions and power negation because he is a disruptive prick, while the Beacon has gadgetry and acrobatics because he is a hero-wanabee/doesn't have actual superpowers, etc. The book says you can create your own powers, actually, as long as you take care to fit those themes (or at least don't break them - ie: giving the Beacon obvious superpowers, or the Nova weak/subtle ones).

About combat, I agree it's one of the most abstract I've seen, even among PbtA. I can only pass proper judgement after seeing it in action, but I'm not optimistic. This is the only aspect of the game I'm not enshusiastic about, as I loved everything else about Masks.

[shinimasu]

"Making sure it fits the theme" though is still frustratingly vague. Does laser vision fit the theme for a Soldier? For a delinquent? Lasers are pretty disruptive, you could definitely be a prick with lasers. But the MC could also very easily rule that the iconic superman heat vision doesn't fit with what's clearly meant to be the Loki of the group.

No RPG is going to be free of places where the guy running it and the guy playing it are going to disagree about something. And character creation squabbles can happen even in the crunchiest of systems. But Masks has more or less no rules about powers and then tries to pretend like it does. Powers don't functionally do anything but flavor your attacks or let you haggle with the MC for a freebie. But because the MC is also supposed to make arbitrary judgments about what foes you actually need to roll for based on your powers the game can't just go "Pick whatever."

[Guts]

I agree. Both combat and powers are too reliant on GM fiat.

I wonder if Orion have played or read Monsterhearts. I suspect if he did, his opinions on Masks would be different. I'm not bashing Masks though, as it seems to do well the "coming of age" theme, which is it's main goal anyway. But citing it as an example of PbtA with more agency than the rest is weird.