Character Creation: Masks

I rather suspect I'll wind up playing or running this game sooner rather than later, and PbtA characters are hella fast to make, anyway.

The Game: Masks: A New Generation
The Publisher: Magpie Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game specifically; I've read it. A decent amount with the underlying system.
Books Required: Just the one, though the playbooks aren't in the book, so you gotta download or print them from the site. I mention this because they took some flak for that, and I admit it is kinda annoying to not have them to hand when you're reading the book.

 
Anyway! Masks is about being a superhero, but also about being a teenager. Characters in the game are taking over for the last generation of heroes, but those older heroes are still very much part of this. Honestly, Masks takes supers RPGs in a new direction, and it's a pretty darned perfect expression of the genre through PbtA.

So, first off, we choose a playbook. Hmm. I like most of them, actually. I'm not crazy about the Legacy or the Beacon, so not those. I really like the Doomed, the Delinquent, and the Janus. Hrm. I do Doomed things all the time and I don't have a specific concept. I'm gonna go with the Janus. 'Scuse me while I print this out.

OK, so. The Janus' whole thing is the secret identity; it's the Spider-Man kind of character where the split in focus between hero and "real life" is what comes back on you. Interestingly, that's something I don't see a lot of in supers RPGs, unless you really try to make time for it (shows up in With Great Power... pretty well, f'rex).

So, my character is a young man in Halcyon City who's taking a year off between high school and college (so he's about 19). His real name is Roger Royce (because I'm a firm believer in superheroes having alliterative names). On the streets, he's called...hmm. Well, looking over the abilities I can choose from, I have an idea.

I'm gonna take substance mimicry and energy absorption (in addition to my freebies of echanced physical prowess). Roger can absorb energy thrown at him, and he can take on the physical properties of whatever substances he touches. In his "Roger Royce" form, he's a boringly dressed young man just trying to make his way in the city. He keeps his costume in his duffel bag, though - black cargo pants, black boots, black hoodie that covers his face. He can become whatever he needs to just by touching it, and the last time someone asked his superhero handle, that's what he responded: "Whatever."

Now, Labels. I can put +1 wherever I want, and it would behoove me to think ahead (one of my playbook moves involves a Label). I think I'll put my +1 into Freak. I'm getting a vibe of some...not self-loathing, exactly, off of Whatever, but the sense that he's not entirely comfortable with these abilities and what they might mean.

I don't have any conditions, so I zip directly into backstory questions.

• When did you first put on the mask? Why? Roger isn't sure how he gained his powers. After he graduated from high school, he noticed that his hands would take on the colors of whatever he touched...then the texture...then the properties. He put on the mask (the hood, really) during a Fourth of July block party. Some idiot fired a Roman candle right into the back of a van loaded with fireworks, and the thing exploded. Roger pulled on the hoodie to protect himself, took on the properties of the burning van (fire doesn't burn, after all) and helped guide people to safety. He did it because he knew these people - they were the folks from his block. He wasn't going to let them get hurt.
• Why do you keep a secret identity? Roger was all set to reveal his powers and his identity, but then the news showed up and people were talking about the "freak" that was there walking through fire. Probably he started it, he was burning. Roger kinda decided fuck it after that.
• Who, outside of the team, knows about your dual identity? Tina Durst, little sister of John Durst, Roger's best friend. John went into the Navy after graduation and Tina feels a little lost without him. She was following Roger around one day and saw him change. 
• Who thinks the worst of your masked identity? Officer Pete Marple. He lives on the block, but he lost his husband to a superhero dustup last year and he's not a fan of people wearing costumes. Plus, Whatever looks like a hoodlum. Marple is sure Whatever set the fire (maybe by accident) and then tried to get out of it by "helping" people. Marple is getting fast-tracked to promotion, too. 
• Why do you care about the team? Roger knows he's in over his head. His powers are impressive but they aren't going to save him from someone who really wants him dead, and his life is precarious. He needs the support, and he needs to be able to trust someone other than Tina. 

So, next thing would be to introduce Whatever to the team and answer a couple of team-based questions, but I ain't got a team, so.  Moves!

I get The Mask, which means I choose a Label that I can switch with Mundane (which starts high) once per session. I think it's in keeping to make it Freak, but I'm gonna say Savior. Whatever wouldn't admit it, but he wants to protect people.

And then I get two more moves out of the five available. I'll take Game Face (I can totally see Whatever flipping up his hood and charging into the fray) and I'll Save You! (I can reveal my identity to automatically defend someone). 

And finally, I have to take three obligations for my secret identity. I'll take dishwasher (Roger got a job in a high-end restaurant as a dishwasher; it pays OK and it's easy work); household chores (he still lives with his parents and they don't mind as long as he does "some work around the house," which is basically all of the work around the house; best friend (that'd be Tina - she knows his ID but she gets into trouble, and Roger would never forgive himself if something happened to her). 

And that's it!

Board Game: Timeline

Yay! Games!

The Game: Timeline
The Publisher: Asmodee
Time: 10 minutes per game, if that
People: Me, +Michelle, +Danielle, +Jerry, Renee, +Shoshana

Had the pleasure of playing this game at New Mexicon, on Sunday afternoon, as we stared blearily into time and waited to go to the airport.

OK, we were really all blearier than this.

Game Play: This game is simple and fun. You get a hand of four cards, each of which has an event and, and on the back, a year. A card is played face up, for your starting point. On your turn, you play a card into the timeline, trying to get the year right.

As Danielle explains.

The events range from "creation of bronze" to "Titanic." (I did note, however, that certain events that have movies named after them you have to look carefully to see what's on the card; I drew Titanic and immediately thought "1912" before I realized it said "James Cameron" on the bottom.)

Once you play a card, you flip it, revealing the year. If you're right, great, move along. If you're wrong, you put that card where it goes and draw another one. The object is to lose all your cards.

Opinions: We apparently played this with a bunch of expansions (it's Danielle's set, though we own one, too, which is why I counted this toward the list), but the game play is the same either way. It's nice and simple to understand and it teaches you a little history. It's also mindless enough to play on Sunday of a con and portal enough to fit in a pocket of a bag or purse. Win-win.

So perky!

Keep? Yep.

Movie #399: The Matrix

The Matrix is an action/sci-fi movie, probably one of the most influential of all time, directed by the Wachowskis (pre-transition) and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Ann Moss, Joe Pantoliano (which I spelled right on the first try!), and Hugo Weaving.

Neo (Reeves) is a computer programmer and hacker who gets recruited into a shadow war by a mysterious figure called Morpheus (Fishburne) and a kick-ass woman in black named Trinity (Moss). He learns that what he thinks of as the "real world" is in fact a computer simulation called the Matrix, whereas the real world is a blasted wasteland in which human beings are used as fuel sources to keep the machines running. The few liberated people can pop in and out of the Matrix and, while there, can program themselves with whatever skills they need. As such, all of them are badasses, masters of martial arts, and capable of being the laws of physics. Of course, the machines have their own soldiers called agents, who are even more badass, and one in particular called Smith (Weaving) is trying desperately to destroy the humans so he can go home.

The movie ends with Neo embracing his destiny as "the One," a kind of quasi-messianic figure who's meant to lead humanity to freedom. Now, the sequels go completely off the rails, here (I don't own the third one because I kinda hated it), but this movie is pretty well wrapped up - Neo tells the machines that what happens next is up to them, and then literally flies off, breaking the system of control that is the Matrix.

So, the first thing about this movie is that there are some very uncomfortable truths about Morpheus and what he's doing. He's literally recruiting people when they're young (not Neo, but he's told that they don't free minds after a certain age) and bringing them around to his cause. Also, his people slaughter cops and soldiers with abandon, because any of them could immediately become an agent, but those people still die.

There's also the issue that using people as batteries is ludicrous, but Futurama made that point, so I don't feel I need to dwell. :)

At the time it came out (1999), I remember folks referring to it as a Mountain Dew commercial (but like, many, many more people absolutely loved it). It's held up pretty well, even the special effects, though I'm not expecting that to be the case for the next one. And, looked at through the lens of two trans directors who hadn't transitioned yet, there's a lot of depth there that cis folks like me completely missed at the time, but that I'm sure folks who were more apt to notice did.

Performances are good, and it's interesting to note the differences in vs. out of the Matrix. It always annoyed me that we don't see much of Mouse, Switch, Dozer, and Apoc before they die.

Worst thing to come out of this movie, of course, is the fact that a segment of real scumbags coopted the "red pill" imagery, though I do have to wonder how they feel about know that a trans woman gave them their "reality check." Probably it doesn't register.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch value: High

Next up: The Matrix Reloaded

Feng Shui: Ladies of Jade & Ivory

Monday was Feng Shui and now it's Thursday and arrrgh. Doin' the write-up.

The Dragons fought off a bunch of Lotus Eaters at Lord Smoke's village last time, but then Smoke got poisoned and they realized their paths had converged - they needed to find the White Serpent and their Eternal Chameleon master to prevent his resurrection and find an antidote for Smoke. They traveled hard on horseback for days, until they came up on the home of the Ladies of Jade & Ivory, two noblewomen who maintained an opulent household.

They got there and the archers pointed arrows at them, but Smoke explained who they were. A young archer leapt down to talk with them, and Bai Lin recognized him at as Tao Lin, a young man from his home village. Tao seemed concerned, but before he could explain, the Lady Ivory appeared, gliding out to meet the Dragons. She welcomed them in and offered them space to wash up, care for their horses, clean clothes, and dinner.

The Dragons came together for dinner, along with the members of the household and the Ladies themselves. Chrys, herself a student of the Chi Way, knew the Lady Jade from her studies and remembered that she was a fierce and noble warrior, happy to take the field alongside her soldiers. But tonight, Lady Jade was reserved and almost subdued. As she pondered this, Chrys noticed one of the soldiers in the corner raise a dart gun to his lip and fire!).

Chrys reached forward and caught the dart handily, but she wasn't sure who the dude had fired at, and no one else had seen what happened - all the guards saw was a stranger with a dart. Chaos broke out, with some of the guards attacking each other, some attacking the Dragons, and some just trying to guard the Ladies. The Dragons were unarmed, of course, meaning that they were at something of a disadvantage.

Smoke jumped over to one of the guards, disarmed him, and started firing arrows (but sliding the arrowheads off as he did, so he didn't kill anyone, which is a real thing that totally works). One of the guards stood back to back with him. Bai jumped over next to Tao Lin, who said he could explain what was happening, but then the Lady Ivory reached into her robes and flung daggers everywhere (and missed spectacularly, but it did mean there were daggers in the walls for folks to grab).

Celeste started punching out people shooting arrows, but a door opened and a big dude with a club lumbered in. He mixed it up with Smoke, but Smoke stepped back and put an arrow in his foot to keep him in place. The Lady Ivory stood up and entered the fight, but Melody cast a spell and wrapped her up in magic bonds. The big dude saw this, yanked the arrow out of his foot, jumped at Melody and stabbed her in the stomach. Celeste charged the dude, knocking him under a table.

Meanwhile, another lieutenant with a hooked sword arrived and fought with Bai Lin, but neither of them did much damage. Chrys moved from guard to guard, punching them out, and finally Lord Smoke managed to get to the front of the room grab the Ladies, and tell everyone to put a sock in it - no one was here to hurt them (at least, none of the Dragons).

Bai went to ask Tao Lin what was happening, but he'd caught a dagger to the throat, tragically. The dude who'd actually spit the dart plunged two darts into his neck and died rather than talk. Celeste crouched down and listened to Lady Jade, who told her "find the garden."

The characters spoke to the guards, who acknowledged that something was wrong with the Ladies of late, but they weren't sure what. Melody, whom Bai had worked healing magic on, was kept in the infirmary with some of the other wounded. The Dragons decided to search the place.

Celeste did her detective routine, looking for hallways that didn't align and so on. She found one near the Ladies' room, and opened it to find a garden with a huge spiral leading to a corpse-flower in the center...but this corpse-flower was green and white.

Meanwhile, Bai and Smoke did their own searching. Bai felt the presence of the magic in the garden, and they found it soon after Celeste and Chrys did. Bai used his healing petals, but they turned black as they fell from the sky. Something was evil and powerful here.

As they thought about this, the Gardener appeared, brandishing a tool, and scattered petals on the ground. The petals sprang up into warriors, and they attacked! The Dragons made pretty short work of the Gardener, though, between Smoke putting arrows into him and Chrys firing her big gun; he exploded and the warriors with him.

But now...Bai and Smoke looked, and saw a horrible monster with a tentacle coming from its hand, and a zombie-like creature brandishing a weapon of metal and fire! They attacked these monstrosities, which, of course, turned out to be Celeste and Chrys. Celeste managed to use her ritual disruption to free Bai, but then Smoke turned around and shot all three of them with arrows. Bai managed to leap over to him and realign his energies to free him, but now the Dragons were wounded and newly aware of the threat this garden posed.

Celeste used her knowledge of ritual magic and Bai called down healing petals, and between them, they cleansed the site of its poisoned Chi. The Ladies arrived both now invigorated, and thanked them for their help. They gave Smoke a pouched of special tea that would stave off the worst effects of the poison, but warned him that the Creeping Black poison would kill him eventually if he couldn't find the antidote. They sent a contingent of soldiers with the Dragons to find and stop the Eternal Chameleon, and the Dragons left the House of Jade and Ivory to move along in their journey.

Promethean: 22 Short Films

Not really, but it was one of those games where people split up and did stuff.

First, we had a rousing game of "do you know what your goddamn Merits do?", wherein everyone listed off their Merits and told me what they did, and I gave them a Beat for getting most of them right. This is useful, because sometimes you forget that, say, Vivid Dreams gets you two points of Willpower back for sleeping, which is important to know.

Then, into character! The throng woke up, newly refreshed, and went their separate ways for the day. Enoch went to the house where they had encountered the metal angel. Grimm went looking for Charon (what he really wanted was a dead body, but figured Charon could help). Avalon had a lunch date with Carroll, after which she was meeting Matt and Feather at Carroll's studio so that she could peek under the paint and see what the pentimento was all about. Skip stayed behind at the storefront with Sicky.

Enoch got to the building and headed downstairs, and found the carbon on the floor. Some of it was sparkling, and so he picked it up, but the floor crumbled beneath him and he fell into darkness. He landed in what looked to be a library, but all of the books were written in script he didn't understand or Pilgrim Marks that he couldn't decipher. He'd need help to understand these truths.

He stepped out of a door, and felt the ground squish under his feet as though he was in wetlands. The sun grew brighter and brighter, until he was again staring at the Bright Light, which asked him the question again - "what are the angels?" Reflecting on what he'd learned in the library-vision, he said "our predecessors," and then was back in the basement having achieved his fermentatio milestone: revise his answer to the angel.

Avalon, meanwhile, was lunching with Carroll. She told him a little about her art and that she'd started reproducing what she'd seen in nature, but that she was interested in pursuing something unique. She told him about Ysolde and how her creator had abandoned her due to Disquiet. She mentioned she was always interested in feeling things she hadn't felt before, and Carroll smiled...and suddenly Avalon felt guilt. Maybe it was her fault that Ysolde had crumbled to Disquiet. After all, there were ways to mitigate it. Feeling a bit more reserved than usual, Avalon went with Carroll back to the studio, where Matt and Feather were waiting.

Parris arrived with her painting, and Avalon used Stone to peek under the first layer of paint (we'll leave the specifics of how this worked murky). She saw Parris' Ramble, from when she was the Promethean known as Papillion. Remembering the obsidian butterfly that the characters found smashed in the garden, Avalon told Parris that it was a painting of a butterfly, and that seemed to make sense to her. Matt, meanwhile, asked her questions about her life and her art (playing his role as an art reporter), and learned that she couldn't really answer questions about her life before she arrived on the New Orleans art scene (recall, too, that Carroll described her as "broken" at that point in her life).

Parris left with her painting, and Avalon starting writing out copies of her Ramble. The Prometheans realized that Parris had attempted the New Dawn too soon - though she had succeeded, she had an incomplete understanding of it when she did, and that might account for how thin her human "life" was. They also noted her descriptions of the Promethean refugee camp, and how she claimed that though it had led to good things for the Created who stopped there, it had also led to death when the Firestorm came, so maybe she was wrong for ever trying it. Matt wondered if the guilt of this might be something that she carried even now, as Parris, and whether there might be a way to take that burden from her.

Meanwhile, Grimm was looking for Charon and not doing very well. He asked around, but the crowds and the contrast between day-New Orleans and night-New Orleans just got him confused, so he headed back to the storefront, figuring he'd find Charon at night.

Skip had been working on repairing the damage from the blackout and chatting with Sicky. Sicky talked about the camp a bit, and specifically the gator-thing in the swamp. Not the little one that Skip had fought - there was a bigger one, a man-sized one with a gator's mouth, that had also been an accidental creation of Barbara. The gator, Sicky said, ate people (though it preferred Prometheans) and it was dangerous. Skip felt a stirring of Vitriol, and a word came to his mind unbidden from the Azothic Memory: sublimatus.

The others got back, and Skip excitedly told them about what Sicky had said. The others figured that they should track this thing down. For one thing, both Enoch and Feather wanted to investigate the camp wreckage further. For another, Skip and Grimm figured that killing the gator-monster would be a public service (and an interesting challenge to boot). Avalon worried that she wasn't a skilled combatant, but the others pointed out that with her mastery of Stone, she could play an important support role, strengthening their clothes and effectively giving them armor, or making their weapons inflict extra damage.

All of this in mind, they headed back toward the camp, back toward where Skip emerged from the Hedge. They stopped off at a power line that Sicky knew of to regenerate Pyros and heal a bit, and then into the swamps, in the dark, looking for a gator-sublimatus.

Next time, they'll find out what those eyes shimmering in the dark belong to.

Promethean Notes

Ok, gotta make this quickish.

Stop reading, players.

Movie #398: The Mask of Zorro

The Mask of Zorro is a swashbuckler/action film starring Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stuart Wilson, and Matt Letscher.

Zorro, a swashbuckling, mask-wearing, champion of the people, is really Don Diego de la Vega (Hopkins). Having helped to drive the evil governor Don Rafael (Wilson) out of California and back to Spain, he looks forward to retiring with his wife (Julieta Rosen), but Rafeal shows up, Wife dies, and Diego is put in prison while Rafael leaves the country with Diego's infant daughter.

Fast forward 20 years. A young man, Alejandro Murietta who helped Zorro out on his last ride has grown up into a thief and scoundrel (Banderas). Rafael returns to California in triumph, with "his" adult daughter Elena (Zeta-Jones), and Diego promptly escapes. He finds Murietta about to pick a fight with a soldier named Love (Letscher) who killed his brother Joaquin (Victor Rivers), stops him, and trains him as the new Zorro. Along the way, of course, Murietta falls for Elena, Elena learns of her true father, Diego dies, Rafael dies, Love dies, and Murietta marries Elena and becomes a noble and the new Zorro. Yay!

So, this movie is fun. I love Banderas for any number of impure reasons, and seeing him swashbuckle is good. Hopkins, likewise, applies his mastery of being measured and slightly intimidating to Don Diego. The villains are OK, though I much prefer Love's "dedicated psycho" to Wilson's "suddenly turn gun on adopted daughter" schtick. The filmmakers went out of their way to give Elena something to do in the last battle (rescue the trapped workers, which...like, how did they get all those people into the cages? there's hundreds of them), but since it'd been established that she's a baller swordfighter, how about having the duels between Rafael/Diego and Zorro/Love involve her for a few passes? On the other hand, she doesn't spend the last few action scenes tied to something, so I suppose that's a win.

We could talk about the fact that they cast Hopkins (British, white) and Wilson (British, white) as Spaniards, though I guess maybe that's better than casting them as Mexicans? I don't know. As a side note, I thought I'd seen the sequel to this movie, but I haven't, so I might give that a look.

My grade: B+
Rewatch value: Medium

Next up: The Matrix