Influence in Masks is the lever every conversation in the game pulls.

When another character has Influence over you, they can:

• Shift your labels by telling you who you are. You take it (and your labels move) or Reject Influence (and they move the other way, with conditions on the line).
• Inflict conditions by talking past your defenses, in a way somebody without Influence cannot.
• Comfort or Support you with a bonus.

Adults in Masks all start with Influence over the teen heroes by default — and the game's whole tonal engine is teens slowly clawing that Influence back.

Other PCs start with Influence over each other when they answer playbook relationship questions during character creation. Influence between teammates is the social tissue of the team — the people who know you, who can hurt you, who can heal you.

Granting Influence is a deliberate move: telling somebody, in fiction, that what they think of you matters.

Locking somebody out of Influence is also a move. The Bull who tells the city's veteran that their opinion does not count anymore has just freed themselves from a label-shift on their next argument — and lit a fuse on the next time the team needs that veteran's help.