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Death’s Head Moth
Session One Session Summary (9 page pdf)
The first session of Masks is interactive character creation. Paul handed out the playbooks, and I picked the Delinquent; Chris, the Protege; Patrick, The Transformed; and Tim, the Doomed. He told us we were in Hub City, which is the Detroit-like home of The Question from DC Comics. We came up with…
La Catrina, ex-gang Hispanic girl who got Santa Muerte type powers of illusion and teleportation following a gang shootout. She is a graffiti artist; the graphic above is a representative sample of her work, usually left somewhere inaccessible for someone without her powers.
The Infamous Wasp, a young black man who is the protege of The Question, the retired Rorshach-like former hero of Hub City. He detects and fights and bosses us around.
Kid Kafka, who was transformed into a roach-man on some archaeological dig gone wrong. We’re pretty sure he was a honky before becoming a bug. He has big bug powers (being strong, being indestructible).
Teenage Vengeance Shadowblade, whose name is obviously inspired by the Deadpool movie, is a gender-ambiguous Asian emo. She’s a necromancer and telekinetic and has some magic witchblade thing.
We came up with a backstory driven by the system’s questions about how we came together and had battled The Banshee And The Wailers and generally crashed at TVS’ haunted mansion. (Haunted by the ghost of Meriweather Lewis, I’ll note.)
The first session was mostly a softball; we went to a traveling Egyptian exhibit and were interrupted by “Seismic Prime” and “Centipede” busting up the road and causing trouble. It helped get us used to the mechanics – there’s no ‘roll to bust heads’ maneuver – here, look at the moves for yourself. There’s adult moves to act more directly but even “Directly Engage a Threat” doesn’t do, like, damage to them. A lot of the action – between PCs and NPCs, but also between PCs, are the softer moves. I finally “defeated” Centipede with Pierce The Mask after rattling her some; she gave me info and scuttled off with me now having Influence over her. Fights generally aren’t to the death or even to the unconsciousness.
An interesting attribute of the rules is that in Dungeon World, our previous Powered by the Apocalypse campaign, the moves are pretty standalone. In Masks there seem to often be logical followup moves and a lot of the collateral effects are e.g. gaining Influence or even causing someone’s stats to shift.
After the fight, both Kid Kafka and TVS had gotten flak from the locals (roach and vampire are attacking, run!), and Wasp and I went back to the mansion and used various moves like “Comfort or Support” on them. In the end it all went well! Paul declared he’d have to put a stop to that.
Our session summaries are less in depth than some campaigns because we’re moving fast and Chris wants to participate in the fun and not just write it down! I’m also taking notes and adding bits and pieces in post. Enjoy!
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