GM Principles & Agenda

The GM agenda in Masks is unusual: the GM is not running the world against the heroes. The GM is running the adults against the heroes.

Agenda:

• Make Solace City feel real.
• Make the PCs' lives not what they expected.
• Play to find out who they become.

Principles:

• Address the characters, not the players.
• Treat the world like a comic book — bright, exaggerated, full of inconvenient consequences.
• Make every NPC adult try to define one of the teens, all the time, in every conversation.
• Look for the question the playbook is asking, and put it on screen.
• Be a fan of the team's powers, then make them costly.
• Ask leading questions and use the answers.
• Hand the reins to the team during a Moment of Truth.

Masks is a game where the GM's job is to push, not to oppose. The opposition comes from the labels, the adults, and the city — not from a clever villain plan. The villain is a vehicle for an identity question.