Playbooks! [System]

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All my concepts are the same guy: Jason Quill, son of the world-famous science adventurer Dr. Byron Quill. Protected / served by the nanobot swarm that Byron Quill crafted to take care of him when Byron sent him off to high school in Halcyon City, Jason has to figure out if he’s smart enough, or dedicated enough, to be the sort of hero his dad wanted him to be …

Doomed (preference): Byron (and his arch-nemesis Dr Chin) both vanished into a dimensional vortex two years ago. Dr Chin’s teen daughter is out for vengeance. And it turns out that mentally controlling that increasingly powerful nanobot swarm is slowly loosening Jason’s psyche from his body, and, without his dad around, he can’t control it for long …

Legacy: Byron’s still around, still pushing Jason to become a polymath scientist and adventurer into the unknown. But, y’know, Jason actually really enjoyed those English lit class last year … and he’d kind of like a chance to date someone who’s not an enemy agent or disguised lizard woman …

Nova: That nanobot swarm is getting more and more powerful …

Star: Maybe Jason wants to cash in on his fame, as inspired by the residuals and fan letters he still gets from that Hanna-Barbera cartoon that was made of his childhood …

Beacon: Yeah, Jason’s just as enthusiastic about all this heroic adventure stuff as when he was 10.

My preference is in the order above.

(To flesh things out slightly, Margie has a [time traveler from the past / spiritual projection from the past / ghost]? character idea which led to the Outsider, but also Doomed, or maybe Transformed or Nova, but it might need some GM collaboration to pin down.)

author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5387561

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Doyce T. said:

The Thing as Transformed is so obvious I kind of forgot it.

So, apparently, has Marvel (cough).

author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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*** Dave H. said:

Doomed (preference)

(To flesh things out slightly, Margie has a [time traveler from the past / spiritual projection from the past / ghost]? character idea which led to the Outsider, but also Doomed, or maybe Transformed or Nova, but it might need some GM collaboration to pin down.)

I’m down with Doomed.

Maybe Margie’s concept would work with the Innocent? (It’s from the bonus backer material, so if you don’t have it, let me know and I’ll send it over.) They are literally a ‘time traveler from the past.’

I’ll also note that the “Your Future Self” section has some strong parallels to Doomed.

author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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I wasn’t thinking of doing anything based off of Grrl Power, I just was reading the playbook and thought it was amusing how well Dabbler fit into The Outsider.

author: James H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5387577

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Katherine H. said:

I wasn’t thinking of doing anything based off of Grrl Power, I just was reading the playbook and thought it was amusing how well Dabbler fit into The Outsider.

I figured. :slight_smile: I just went off on a Halo/Sydney riff because she makes me laugh. :slight_smile:

author: Doyce T.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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Doyce T. said:

Maybe Margie’s concept would work with the Innocent? (It’s from the bonus backer material, so if you don’t have it, let me know and I’ll send it over.) They are literally a ‘time traveler from the past.’

I’ll also note that the “Your Future Self” section has some strong parallels to Doomed.

She was thinking of something further back, without necessarily a future self, but I’ll let you chat with her to make something work. :slight_smile:

author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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A handful of additional moves to choose from, for the core playbooks: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xiuMo8PN6F0wH7vL53mDoZ7P8PDIVBU0_Thpw-OErZE/edit?usp=sharing

author: Doyce T.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5389830

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So to give me something to do when I’m not sorting closets to help my mom move in a month, I’ve started looking at older posts in the Forum. It’s hard to believe we’ve only been doing this Masks campaign for under 5 months!

Reviewing this one, I’m amused by (a) Bill having come up with such a panoply of characters, different ones for each playbook (while I worked to come up with multiple playbooks for a single character), (b) early looks at character ideas and how they developed from there.

author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5918108

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*** Dave H. said:

Reviewing this one, I’m amused by (a) Bill having come up with such a panoply of characters, different ones for each playbook (while I worked to come up with multiple playbooks for a single character), (b) early looks at character ideas and how they developed from there.

A bunch of those characters already existed, to be fair. Link, Nightblade, Exodus, and GIG have all made appearances as PCs or NPCs in other games. Horus is a character from some fiction I’m working on. The only Masks-original ones are Armiger, Zero, Titanium, Rebuild, and Retrorocket, and each of those started from twisting the playbook away from its obvious trajectory and seeing where that took me.

I feel like Mike is the one who took his PC furthest away from its starting point, and it’s been awesome to watch that evolution and see what he’s done with it. There’s some Blue Beetle/Green Lantern still in the DNA, but Adam is really his own thing now. I’m also glad that Jason has a bunch of alternate playbooks - I’m really rooting for him to reach that “change playbooks” advance before his time runs out, then see where you take him.

author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5918138

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Bill G. said:

. I’m also glad that Jason has a bunch of alternate playbooks - I’m really rooting for him to reach that “change playbooks” advance before his time runs out, then see where you take him.

I actually have some ideas about that… :wink:

author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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Bill G. said:

I feel like Mike is the one who took his PC furthest away from its starting point, and it’s been awesome to watch that evolution and see what he’s done with it. There’s some Blue Beetle/Green Lantern still in the DNA, but Adam is really his own thing now.

I attribute this more to me just having like a dozen different points of inspiration (there’s some Blue Beetle and some Green Lantern sure, but there’s also some Stargate, some Exalted, and many others) and not cleaving too closely to any one of them. All characters are an alchemy of inspirational elements. If you’ve only got one or two ingredients, they’ll stand out well. If you’ve got a dozen different ones seasoned to taste, it’s a lot harder to pick out the individual elements.

author: Mike
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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*** Dave H. said:

I actually have some ideas about that… 

Early on, it looked like a collaboration between Leo and Jason would be called for. Do you have something in mind that you can do independently, or is that still on?

author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop

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There may be something where I call on Leo for assistance. It’s more notional than anything else at the moment, and low priority to deal with until the current flock of flaming chainsaws is quenched in a liquid we quickly learn is napalm. :slight_smile:

author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5920275

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author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5920312

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^^+1

author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5920476

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The talk of the Brain got me thinking about a new, custom playbook. I’ve started working on it, plus one more.

The Visionary. “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.” You’ve felt the fire, you’ve seen the light. There is something old or something new - magic, AI tech, a hollow Earth - that waits to be unveiled. You can do it, if you can hold fast to the dream, if the world doesn’t grind you down - and if you’re right after all. Will you grow into your destiny, or grow out of it?

The Tagalong. “I can be a hero too, if you would just listen to me!” You’ve got the potential to be a hero, you can feel it. There’s just one problem, and that’s you. Something about how you look, or your powers, or your friends, or your past, is a hangup for you and others. People don’t take you entirely seriously, and keep trying to tell you to change. Will you prove yourself to them? Do they have a point after all?

I’m not planning on playing a Tagalong in this game, but I have a fiction project where it fits very well, and it seems like a useful exercise to build.

author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5963156

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Bill G. said:

The Tagalong. “I can be a hero too, if you would just listen to me!” You’ve got the potential to be a hero, you can feel it. There’s just one problem, and that’s you. Something about how you look, or your powers, or your friends, or your past, is a hangup for you and others. People don’t take you entirely seriously, and keep trying to tell you to change. Will you prove yourself to them? Do they have a point after all?

author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Playbooks! [System] | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop