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[pikachu17]

Hey, is anyone interested of playing a game of Masks: the Next Generation on this forum? I would like to know if there is any interest before making a thread.
It is not strictly necessary to buy the books to play, as the playbooks and additional rules are free on their site. Just remember that "Roll + Label" means roll 2d6 + Label. The rest of the basic rules can then be inferred from the "basic moves".
 

[GiglameshDespair]

Yeah, sure. I've played a couple games of masks, though none of them seem to have survived very long.

[pikachu17]

I'd prefer not to GM myself, but if no one wants to instead, I will.

[heydude6]

Consider me interested. Do you have any convenient links I could look at?

[pikachu17]

Masks home.
Where you can get the playbooks and moves for free.
My currently favorite actual play podcast of Masks. Scroll down to the bottom to Final Hazard Sacrifice 01: Not DeSnott for Masks gameplay, almost all of the non-season one stuff is not Masks.

In case you don't know, playbooks are like two-page classes.

And I honestly don't know how well it translates to Play by Post.

[Kadzar]

I have for a while suspected that Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games might translate better than most systems to Play by Post, since they don't use initiative and are instead more a matter of action-reaction, though that conjecture is entirely unsupported by any actual data and may in fact be entirely false.

Speaking of PbtA games, I recently ran my first session of Dungeon World, in which the players accepted payment from goblins (in the form of magical seeds) to stop dwarves from chopping down trees to make siege engines to kill them, one player got kidnapped by a dryad who pulled him into her tree and tried steal his literal heart, and the other got his bow stolen by a satyr and received a lucky horseshoe when he found it again. Then they went to raid the dwarf fortress to try to earn some actual money, fought a swarm of fire beetles on the way, rescued an arrogant elf warrior they met before, and had a few fights with dwarves here and there.

[Telgin]

I have for a while suspected that Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games might translate better than most systems to Play by Post, since they don't use initiative and are instead more a matter of action-reaction, though that conjecture is entirely unsupported by any actual data and may in fact be entirely false.

It does work well in a play by post format in my experience.  It was just a single game, but ran for a long time and managed to maintain momentum for a large part of it.

That said, the only game system I've played that doesn't seem to work particularly well with play by post is Fate.  My game group has tried it 3 or 4 times now and it just never seems to work right.  People never remember to use invokes or compels at appropriate times because a lot of the spontaneity is lost in this format.

[Cruxador]

In the circles within which I revolve, I've most typically heard of Dungeon World as a sort of "worst of both worlds" combination of D&D tropes and PbtA mechanics, but it sounds like it can capture fairy shenanigans quite nicely.

Regarding Masks, I know a lot of people are into generational politics these days, but I'm not so sure I dig that. But the Delinquent playbook does strike me as something I'd have a lot of fun with. And now I'm listening to that actual play thing and just digging the characters that the game does well.

EDIT: And despite not gelling with the focus of the elevator pitch on the website, the more I read of this the more I'm into it. I guess this is an indication of interest. I haven't always found PbP games to run well or long, but it suits the schedule I've got these days, and I already have a character I'm psyched for in my head.

[Telgin]

I don't think Dungeon World is really any better for copying DnDisms and probably would be better if it was its own thing entirely, but I guess it's a way to capture interest from people who only know DnD.

I haven't played any other PbtA games really (I tried Blades in the Dark once but it turned out badly for reasons unrelated to the game itself), but I found Dungeon World pretty enjoyable in general.  I'd have to go look at the logs but I think our play by post game ran for close to two years.  I might change my opinions of it if I played other PbtA games and saw the mechanics used in other and better ways.

[pikachu17]

Okay, have made a thread for Masks

[Trekkin]

And best of luck with it. I don't like PbtA myself, but Masks is one of the better ones I've seen.

Incidentally, I had a thought while at work: has anyone ever tried to use Microscope or similar generators to run a nonlinear RPG campaign? I mean something like Call of Cthulhu Through The Ages but as a coherent campaign spanning the entirety of human history, presumably democratically deciding which leads from the previous scenario get expanded.

To continue on from the previous example, if your investigators foil the present incursion by the Mi-Go with the help of a mad professor's analysis of Middle Paleolithic cave paintings, perhaps the next couple sessions are spent playing the professor, or the Neanderthals who originally painted them -- and perhaps the Elder Things that helped them figure it out also tried something in ancient Rome, and the Nyarlathotep cultists who found the mad ramblings of the investigators who stopped _that_ bided their time until the 1920s, at which point they were defeated until the stars were right again in 3056 and so forth. Or maybe it was the investigators who were sealed away until then.

Gradually you'd build up this whole mythos of humanity's millennia-long struggle against the eldritch horrors, and it'd keep a feeling of continuity despite a high body count -- and it'd actually let the investigators fail, because when they do, well clearly they weren't actually the ones to stop Hastur from taking over the world. Clearly it was these other folks who carefully edited the cultists' books a hundred years ago to replace the summoning ritual with show tunes translated into Welsh or something.

[Cthulhu]

beeeeeeh 5e.  I dunno how I feel about 5e.  It's nice to have a more rules-light game and some elements I like, such as magic item independence, but I don't like the class paths system or the cantrips which still feel video-gamey.  Bounded accuracy is nice cause weak monsters are still a threat, but I dunno how it'll turn out at very high levels when everything's got a billion HP.  A .5 CR thug has like 35 average HP.

I guess I'll see.  My players are having fun at any rate.  But I'm always thinking in the back of my head about playing 3.5 or even Swords and Wizardry instead.

Also I hate forgotten realms, and all the published 5e adventures I've read have been terrible.  A few things I can steal for off-the-cuff adventures, but wew boy.  Dragon Heist especially is an absolute mess.

[Liber celi]

Most official adventures for WotC D&D I've seen have been a list of (mostly combat) encounters to be played through in numerical order with a little fluff around it so you can canon-compliantly describe what color the autumn-leaves in the elf-forest are. The rest is dungeons, allowing for the same experience with a few more dead ends; and, usually attached to one of the former variants, small towns where somebody is a dick) Some may have additional baggage but I barely noticed in my existential dread.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm being too harsh for comedic purposes;  I'm sure lots of groups enjoy that experience. And apparently many or most people buy those products for inspiration and to borrow the stats?

As for me, I like to run exploration-based dungeon crawl games where 1sp=1xp and people have died from not bringing enough rope but also with self-indulgent magic realism where orc is a racist term for outgroup humans and certain forbidden architectural angles work as teleportation portals. Probably not something that could be mainstream even within a middling hobby, or really should be.

The Forgotten Reals are just drab and devoid of... anything.  Lowest rung of mindless genre settings.

[Cruxador]

The Forgotten Reals are just drab and devoid of... anything.  Lowest rung of mindless genre settings.

I see you've forgotten Dragonlance was a thing. Probably for the better.

[Persus13]

Also the nice thing about the Forgotten Realms being a fairly generic fantasy world is that it means you don't have to change a lot of things if you want to poach adventures from there and run them somewhere else.