2019.03.13 MASKS Gauntlet Quarterly S11 (2/4)

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.600 --> 00:00:04.040 Hey everybody, and welcome to just played. This is the podcast where I 2 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:09.119 recap the tabletop RPG's I've recently participated in as a player or a game master. 3 00:00:09.160 --> 00:00:12.880 I'm Jim Crocker and today I'll be talking about masks. Now, March 4 00:00:12.919 --> 00:00:15.240 has been pretty crazy for me, so I'm kind of playing catch up here. 5 00:00:15.279 --> 00:00:18.160 I'm going to do several episodes in a row that recap some of the 6 00:00:18.199 --> 00:00:21.320 Games that I played earlier in the month that I was traveling and didn't get 7 00:00:21.320 --> 00:00:25.239 a chance to recap. So here we go. This is part two of 8 00:00:25.320 --> 00:00:29.719 a four part series of masks that I'm playing as part of the gallant hangouts 9 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:35.600 community. This is the Gauntlet quarterly run that is facilitated by low Francis covered 10 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:38.799 part wanted us a couple weeks ago, but this is part two that I 11 00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:43.240 played actually from a hotel room in Reno while I was off at a convention. 12 00:00:43.719 --> 00:00:48.399 So in this game I am playing Harvester, the soldier, Michael is 13 00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:53.520 shadow boy, who's our beacon, Simon is Zaan the nomad, Chris is 14 00:00:53.560 --> 00:00:58.320 torrent the harbinger and Michael, who plays Sarah Sparks, was off this particular 15 00:00:58.359 --> 00:01:00.960 week, but he's going to be in the last two sessions, so I'll 16 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.400 just mention him, even though he's not going to be in this particular recap 17 00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:07.359 that I'm doing this week. So at the start of this session or here, 18 00:01:07.400 --> 00:01:11.920 a team which is just called team team, and we're having a lot 19 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:15.239 of fun coming up with what acronyms that might mean. We had just gotten 20 00:01:15.239 --> 00:01:19.359 in the news for our fight with power play and nexus. Now power play 21 00:01:19.439 --> 00:01:23.040 where those evil hockey players that we beat up, and nexus were the team 22 00:01:23.079 --> 00:01:30.079 of rich kids whose parents bought them super powers and they tried to take our 23 00:01:30.159 --> 00:01:33.000 collar of power play away from us and we sort of got in a little 24 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:34.599 bit of a fight with them. So we were getting ready for a school 25 00:01:34.680 --> 00:01:38.319 day. That was just in the news and we decided that we definitely wanted 26 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:42.480 to see what it's like for us to have a day together at school. 27 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:46.599 As the game progressed, the first thing that I did was harvester got up 28 00:01:46.599 --> 00:01:52.400 early and went for her normal calisthenic. She went for a run and invited 29 00:01:52.480 --> 00:01:55.519 shadow boy to go along with her. She showed up at Shadow Boys House 30 00:01:55.840 --> 00:02:00.239 and they were jogging and chatting, but then aon called, which meant she 31 00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:05.319 had to blow them off pretty harshly and he got upset. Unfortunately School Day. 32 00:02:05.359 --> 00:02:09.039 So after some tension in shop class, where he was kind of standoffish 33 00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:13.479 and she didn't get why he was so upset, we found a couple of 34 00:02:13.479 --> 00:02:19.240 bullies beating up a kid named Edwardo who wears some kind of power regulator bracelet. 35 00:02:19.319 --> 00:02:22.639 So we broke that up without anyone really getting hurt, but he didn't 36 00:02:22.759 --> 00:02:27.240 seem too terribly grateful to us. He just kind of like covered up his 37 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:30.039 bracelet and ran away and didn't want to talk to any of us. So 38 00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:34.680 we kind of finished out the school day with some other classes and mentor personal 39 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:39.000 stuff. Zan and Harvester did some bonding over training. That got together and 40 00:02:39.039 --> 00:02:43.599 Harvester was sort of teaching Zan how to fight. Zan is completely new to 41 00:02:43.639 --> 00:02:46.639 the school thing, so harvester was, of course doing what she knew how 42 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:50.479 to do, which is work out and do some combat training. So that 43 00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:54.000 was what they bonded over and of course shadow boy, all upset at Harvester 44 00:02:54.159 --> 00:03:00.520 blowing him off, decided that he is now shadow boxer and when we left 45 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:04.639 he was running off to do something foolish. So at the end of the 46 00:03:04.639 --> 00:03:09.560 game we had discovered. The last thing that Harvester and Zan did together was 47 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:15.719 hacked the schools computer to discover that Eduardo was actually a very powerful, superpowered 48 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:21.080 threat named Asphyxia. So he's the young version of his PHYXIA OR HE GROWS 49 00:03:21.159 --> 00:03:23.800 UP TO BE ASPHYXIA? That's not quite clear. That a whole lot of 50 00:03:23.800 --> 00:03:25.719 time travel stuff going on in this game that were kind of just starting to 51 00:03:25.759 --> 00:03:30.719 hint at with this particular session. And Yeah, as Fhixia does exactly what 52 00:03:30.759 --> 00:03:35.080 it sounds like someone named as phixia would do. He can pull the oxygen 53 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:37.520 out of the air, which is kind of a dangerous dude to have walking 54 00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:38.960 around a high school, or at least that was what we thought. And 55 00:03:39.039 --> 00:03:45.319 of course shadow boxer headed off on his own to try and apprehend the bolt, 56 00:03:45.319 --> 00:03:49.039 who was this super villain who had freed a bunch of other supervillains, 57 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:53.400 adult super villain, and torrent was on her own reeling from more scary visions 58 00:03:53.479 --> 00:03:58.680 from the future concerning the team. She's the harbinger, so she has some 59 00:03:58.759 --> 00:04:00.840 kind of inkling over what's going on in the future, but they sort of 60 00:04:00.840 --> 00:04:04.000 come to her and hazy visions and it might or might not be true so 61 00:04:04.039 --> 00:04:06.520 that's kind of a fun thing that we're sort of unlocking as we go. 62 00:04:08.199 --> 00:04:12.120 My favorite moment from another player was Simon a Zan just totally not getting to 63 00:04:12.199 --> 00:04:15.439 point of school. Through this dimensional travel, it sort of gets to do 64 00:04:15.479 --> 00:04:18.800 what they want. Why would you do something so boring as go to school? 65 00:04:18.879 --> 00:04:25.199 All of this being in class gave Simon the opportunity to really lean into 66 00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:29.720 the wandering hippie thing that his character has going on and it was so much 67 00:04:29.720 --> 00:04:32.439 fun to play the straight edge, basically to play the straight man to his 68 00:04:32.680 --> 00:04:34.879 comic relief in the game, and we had a really good time with it. 69 00:04:34.879 --> 00:04:38.959 So I really enjoyed that. Favorite gimming moment. Loll is just a 70 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:42.920 fantastic GM and I would play with him every day if there weren't, you 71 00:04:42.920 --> 00:04:45.120 know, a hundred other people that wanted to play with him all the time 72 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:50.120 as well. But his obvious, infectious, total glee when Chris missed his 73 00:04:50.639 --> 00:04:57.279 say something about the future role and how he immediately use that to subvert all 74 00:04:57.319 --> 00:05:01.560 of our expectations of who served which role in this slowly forming picture of the 75 00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:05.399 future that torrent is creating as we go. Because if torrent hits the role, 76 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:11.199 they get to fill in one of the blanks of what roles the other 77 00:05:11.279 --> 00:05:15.480 characters have themselves. But they missed it and lowe's like, okay, yeah, 78 00:05:15.519 --> 00:05:18.160 here we go. And then so he got the response to really throw 79 00:05:18.199 --> 00:05:21.160 a curveball at us in a way that of course, just you know, 80 00:05:21.199 --> 00:05:26.399 makes us much more fascinated by what's going on and whether that's going to be 81 00:05:26.399 --> 00:05:29.279 true or not. And given US Ques, do we want to play into 82 00:05:29.319 --> 00:05:31.720 that? Do we lean into that skid or do we try to fight it? 83 00:05:31.759 --> 00:05:34.319 And and I'm really looking forward to seeing how all that rattles out. 84 00:05:34.399 --> 00:05:39.360 Missed opportunity for this game was that I didn't really get any scenes at all 85 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:43.600 with torrent. It was just sort of the way the conversation rattled out in 86 00:05:43.639 --> 00:05:46.240 the shop class scene that we didn't really talk to each other about anything, 87 00:05:46.279 --> 00:05:49.879 and then when we split up to do different stuff, torrent went on their 88 00:05:49.879 --> 00:05:55.959 way and I ended up with Zan and we just never ended up talking to 89 00:05:56.040 --> 00:05:59.319 each other and really didn't in the first game either. So I'm really hoping 90 00:05:59.319 --> 00:06:02.319 for a chance to the what their relationship looks like in our next session and 91 00:06:02.360 --> 00:06:05.279 maybe get a chance to, you know, see what's going on with them. 92 00:06:05.319 --> 00:06:09.839 So a thing I noticed in this particular session was that the dynamic changed 93 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:14.199 immensely without Michael in the mix. So it's really obvious from the way the 94 00:06:14.199 --> 00:06:16.120 basic moves are written and from what we've seen in a lot of the playbooks 95 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:20.160 that the team leader is a really important concept in masks, just like inn 96 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:25.519 the team hero fiction that it's based on. So without the obvious choice of 97 00:06:25.560 --> 00:06:29.319 the legacy character who is kind of built to be a team leader, it 98 00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:32.279 wasn't entirely clear who the team leader was. Now I'm not exactly sure what 99 00:06:32.319 --> 00:06:34.720 that points to for my own games, but I think it's going to be 100 00:06:34.759 --> 00:06:40.040 interesting to press hard on that lever when I'm the MC and see if we 101 00:06:40.040 --> 00:06:44.399 can get some disagreements about who the leader is, because one of those things 102 00:06:44.399 --> 00:06:46.759 when you said of the team pool is does everyone agree who the leader is? 103 00:06:46.839 --> 00:06:50.920 And pretty frequently, unless there's actually like a delinquent on the team, 104 00:06:50.959 --> 00:06:55.079 there's usually a consensus to who that is, and it tends to be either. 105 00:06:55.120 --> 00:06:58.399 If there's a legacy, it tends to be the legacy. There's a 106 00:06:58.399 --> 00:07:02.720 protege, but not a legacy attends to be the protege just because they're characters 107 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:06.279 that are part of a larger power structure who we kind of tend to think 108 00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:11.720 of as having the authority of that power structure invested in them, and they 109 00:07:11.800 --> 00:07:14.839 tend to end up being the leader of whatever team is going on. So 110 00:07:14.879 --> 00:07:18.680 those pre fight questions to establish leadership and team pool can kind of grind the 111 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:25.079 gears a bit if you're not adept at handling them. Low is very much 112 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:29.279 so and it's got me thinking consciously about a trick or two that might streamline 113 00:07:29.319 --> 00:07:33.480 that process. I've got a World War Two Home Front Heroes Masks game on 114 00:07:33.519 --> 00:07:36.959 tap that I'm going to be m seeing in April, so I'm going to 115 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:41.560 take some of the stuff that I observed here about the team leader and when 116 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:45.000 there's uncertainty about that and how to make sure that you can kind of get 117 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:47.439 through that step quickly and get right onto the fighting, which is what everybody 118 00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:50.360 wants and you know at least a little of and every superhero game that they 119 00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:54.800 run. So we'll see how that goes. Really looking forward to it. 120 00:07:54.839 --> 00:07:57.560 So that's all for this episode. Thanks very much for listening. If you're 121 00:07:57.639 --> 00:08:00.680 enjoying the show, please rate and review it wherever you found it. Check 122 00:08:00.680 --> 00:08:03.360 out the show notes for a video of this session. If one's available, 123 00:08:03.399 --> 00:08:05.319 I'll link to it, as well as where to find the game that we 124 00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:09.279 played just published by Magpie Games and written by Brandon Conway. As always, 125 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:13.879 you can follow me on twitter at Jim Likes Games, and the best way 126 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:16.040 to support the show is to buy games from me at my website, Jim 127 00:08:16.079 --> 00:08:20.759 Likes Gamescom. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play another game.