Masks On: Strange Tales of the Irregulars

I’m very fond of the games that have grown out of the Apocalypse World System (referred to in the table-top Role-Playing Game community as Powered by the Apocalypse, or PbtA for short). This is how a one-shot of Masks developed in to a short – but possibly best – ongoing game I’ve run.

I first played Dungeon Planet, a hack of Dungeon World; an older brother ran as through it. While the other players did struggle a little with the shift from traditional TTRPG structures, I really loved it. I played as a[1] Battlemind and enjoyed teleporting about the place.

In the time since then, it wouldn’t be until I finished the Offenders/Euxine League campaign that I would get to try another PbtA apocalypse game, Michael Sands’s Monster of the Week (published by Generic Games/Evil Hat). I had listened to the Adventure Zone’s ongoing series and, peculiarities of their style aside, quite enjoyed it. When I wrapped the Offenders, I ran three sessions with three different sessions and settings, and Monster of the Week was one of those.

However, I ended up cancelling the series[2] due to a bit of fatigue brought on by outside events. I had wanted to provide a wrap but after a bit of soul searching, I realised running for the Offenders had become more of a drain than it was something I looked forward to.

Nothing against the PbtA system, though. Monster of the Week had the easiest prep by far of any game I had ever run. The game itself also ran very well, with a very sharp focus on what to do in the game and the “do it to do it” method of PbtA really lends itself to action and fiction first play, which I loved. The game was very clear on what it was, what it was for, and what was expected of both the GM and the players. A tick in the box for me!

A few months later, I offered to run a one-shot for a few friends and family of a PbtA game. I’d long known about Brendan Conway’s MASKS (published by Magpie games), it being a bit of a favourite of the online spaces I haunt. I’d bought the pdf as part of a Bundle of Holding. As with Monster of the Week, Masks had a laser-like focus on what it wanted to be, what it expected you to do: teenage super-heroics in the vein of Saturday cartoons like Young Justice or X-Men Evolution.

As this was intended to be a one-shot, I just used the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as my set up. Super-people have been around since WW2, there’s recently passed laws controlling them, London has been flattened twice now by super-brawls. Half serious, half tongue-in-cheek, the game was also set in London.

I had five players. The Irregulars were:

Mike Adonis, the Transformed: Who had received experimental gene therapy that transformed him in to a human blobfish hybrid. Mike was well adjusted, with an easy-going attitude – it was everyone else in the world who had a problem with his changed status.

Rho, the Nova: In the comics, Rho would probably be a mutant, but as they don’t exist in the films[3], he’s just a generic superhero. Rho was a moody loner, tormented by his incredible and ever-growing powers. He has a pet dog called Pow, and regularly couch-surfs and plays video games with his closest buddy, Mike.

Codex, the Delinquent: Codex was a technopath radicalised by police brutality and wanted no truck with the system. The money and the co-ordinator of the Irregulars, she would regularly co-ordinate and gather intel – and be targeted by enemies who recognised her as a threat.

Daisy, the Bull: Raised in a boarding school and fed a concoction of chemicals, hormones, and serums, Daisy was the powerhouse of the group. A straight and simple hulk-like brawler, Daisy was the target of people and groups who wanted to use her as the British super-soldier. Daisy just wanted to work in construction.

The Minder, the Beacon: An emigré from the Monster of the Week game, the Minder was a first-year university student with limited mind reading and an insatiable desire to be a super-hero. Even if she didn’t have the powers of the others, she kept up through diligent lacrosse skills. Also, always ready with a jelly baby.

As part of character creation, each member added a line to how they had come together. This led to some incredibly funny contributions.

The Irregulars came together to defeat the Merman, who wanted to flood Kent to increase his undersea realm.

In the battle, Gravesend town centre shopping was destroyed.

To defeat Merman, the Irregulars had to break Data Protection law to blackmail him with his real identity.

However, this has caused complications and Emmanual Macron now hates and fears the team.

The original plan had been for a single session. The UK government had privatised its Enhanced human policies, handing them over to an organisation by the name of Project Andraste and, in that one-shot, their own super being, what looked like an Iron Man imitation, ran amok. The big reveal was when the face plate came off, the person underneath was revealed to be identical to Daisy.

To my (genuine) surprise, everyone had such a good time that we agreed to carry on for a bit. I planned a five-session arc, with the Irregulars struggling to prove themselves heroes in the face of pressure from the press, from Project Andraste, from the French Government, and from their own sometimes out of control powers.

After the first session, I planned for the middle three to focus on different heroes, coming together at the end, with each structured around the idea of a focus issue of a fictional, limited-run comic series.

The sessions were:

Project ANDRASTE: The team battle an out-of-control cyborg, only to learn that they themselves are under scrutiny by her creators.

What Do They Know?: Daisy tries to find out about her clone/sister, while Codex is targeted by Maverick, Agent of Macron.

March of the Merman: Merman returns to battle the Irregulars, hoping to recruit Mike to his watery vision.

The Transhuman Show: Rho must deal with his increasing powers, while the Minder an agent of Andraste’s offer of superpowers, but the Irregulars fail to battle an Asgardian threat.

The Irregulars: The Irregulars must come back together to protect innocents as Project Andraste and REPA go into action.

The potted summaries there don’t really do justice to the game play. After the first session, and at the end of every session, we all ended up in a new position from where we began, that lead to the next. In What Do They Know?, Codex was isolated from the rest of the team and had to outwit a special forces trooper, blowing up the team base, only for Rho to gain Influence when he saved Maverick from Daisy’s rage. The Transhuman Show’s villain, Eric the Red/Bloodaxe, defeated the Irregulars and made off to bother new Asgard, splintering the Irregulars. Even the end of the series emerged from the mechanics when Mike finally – finally! – managed to get his single advance[4] to unlock his Moment of Truth to defeat an empowered Andraste, who had been trying to mulch the invulnerable Transformed face at that point.

I mostly want to praise Masks. It’s a great implementation of PbtA rules. The playbooks really offer a chance to live in the fiction of that type of protagonist. The moves, which cover off what can and can’t be done, are very good at providing the kind of messy action that you see in the source material – the protagonists of Masks are super but they are also young and not yet in full control of their powers, so they either can’t do everything or can but end up doing too much.

In terms of criticisms, I think there are a lot of moving parts that are specific to each specific playbook. The Bull’s heart didn’t really see much use. The Nova requires real discipline from a player to make sure they don’t hog the spotlight. It can be tricky for the Beacon to see that their gameplay is driven (oho) by their Drives. Comparatively, the Delinquent and the Transformed didn’t have a lot of elements being driven by their playbook, instead leaning more into the core moves.

There’s also an element where expectations of the game are very different from traditional RPGs. The group were very reluctant to use any of the interaction moves, even when offered the opportunity. There were a great use of Team moves in MotM, where the Beacon asked the Nova if she should be there, using it in a wonderful meta moment to fuel a power-up.

My experience was overwhelmingly positive. On the GM side, I only had minimal work to do – the game mechanics are an engine and over-prepping can get in the way of that. This freed me up to relax and play around with some creative prep (making issue covers, writing newspaper reports, searching up “actors” for the NPCs). However, the mechanics also mean you as GM are reacting and improvising a lot during play. I can think of occasions where I fumbled on that: in the last session specifically, I felt that I didn’t give the Delinquent enough to do (it occurred to me afterwards that PA should have swarmed the area with high-tech Mysterio drones), and I didn’t give the Nova a hard choice when I could have to fuel drama – Wisdom, the British super-soldier, pulled out a bomb and I should have had Rho either have to decide to stop Wisdom or stop the bomb, not both (someone else could have tackled the other). But we play and we learn.

The game ended on a high, with the Irregulars doing their best – and succeeding – to protect a Gurdwara targeted by Project Andraste, and with Mike winning the day not through super-powers, but through restraint and empathy, which is pretty much what Masks is driving at. I don’t have plans to run a follow-up any time soon – I’m very happy with my limited series – but I like to imagine in the alternate reality where this was a real comic, it will get picked up in five years by a fresh creative team who will no doubt bring their own artistic vision.

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[1] The? I think Dungeon World operates from a fictional position that the playbook/class members are

[2] Campaign doesn’t feel quite the right word for TTRPGs nowadays. Even D&D isn’t that much of a war game anymore!

[3] Yet

[4] He was absurdly hot on the dice the whole game, getting XP only from team moves and triggers