The Five Labels
Five labels — Danger, Freak, Savior, Superior, Mundane. Identity numbers, not skills. They shift during play.
Every young hero in Masks carries the same five labels. They start at numbers between -2 and +3; the playbook seeds them, and the rest of the team's questions push them around.
- Danger — How dangerous you are. Used to Directly Engage a Threat.
- Freak — How weird, alien, or non-human you read. Used to Unleash Your Powers.
- Savior — How much you act for others. Used to Defend.
- Superior — How much you stand above everyone in the room. Used to Assess the Situation.
- Mundane — How much you belong to the ordinary human world. Used to Comfort or Support.
Label shifts are the heartbeat of the game. When somebody — an adult, an ally, a villain — convinces you that you are more Danger and less Savior, your numbers move. When you reject what they're trying to make you, you can Reject Influence and shift the other way. The whole game is the team's labels sliding around through every conversation.
Maxing out a label (hitting +3) and minning out (hitting -2) both flag identity crises. When all five labels stop moving, the character has stopped being a teen hero — and that is when the playbook signals a Moment of Truth or retirement.