#GM Notes

[heybiji]

hi!!! i just wanted to say i really love all of your MASKS stuff. i'm something of a newbie when it comes to the TTRPG community, but MASKS seems to be not very well-known and i think that's a real shame. i'm a huge fan of old-school superhero-adjacent stuff, especially the silver- and bronze-age ones!

by the way, i was wondering if you'd be willing to share some tips for a first-time GM? you don't have to if you'd rather not! i just figured i'd try asking since i was planning on GMing a MASKS campaign for some of my friends later, but despite my decade's worth of roleplaying experience i've never been in a TTRPG campaign nor a GM (or similar) role before

Thank you so much!! I was just lamenting about how I felt bad for the MASKS tag because it is now flooded with all my npc nonsense hahah so this is really nice to hear.

It's awesome you're planning on running a MASKS game for your friends!! There is an indispensable post on twitter I saw that has a LOT of great tips for running MASKS that I recommend checking out. But for my own personal tips that are just me things, here's what I got. Sorry it's gonna be extremely long-winded, it may take a few months to read through it.

(Note: I am also hugely into RP and probably put more into it than what is necessary, especially with MASKS which is meant to be able to be played out of the box. It was definitely not played out of the box in our case because I require a lot out of myself and everyone else to feel good about running something. if anyone else wants to continue seeing me as a normal human being please don't click the Keep Reading)

Since you're running it, make the world interesting to you. If the world runs around themes you're personally interested in then you'll have a much easier time coming up with answers on the fly. For me, themes I'm interested in that lend themselves well to a superhero world: money, power, family, celebrity, media, the 24 hour news cycle and the desensitization of violence. Because I'm interested in this stuff anyway, wrapping a world around them makes it much simpler for me to figure out how the world ticks and thus how the characters fit into it and how the world reacts to them, and I am DESPERATE to find out how the characters react to all the questions and expectations the world is imposing upon them.

Make sure your players have a good grasp of the tone of story so they can make characters that gel well within it. For me the tone is a lil more adult because I'm not personally into younger morality tale stories in tone, it's pretty grounded, and I think comedy and tragedy work hand in hand so I lean into them.

Talk. A lot. Talk about the characters, talk about the world. MASKS is fun because it's a LOT of talking and figuring out the narrative together. It's not a lot of crunchy mechanics, it's all around seeing how the characters react to the world narratively, all hurt and comfort and emotions which (for me) requires people to have a good grasp on their characters and the world. I like to give my players "homework" where I ask them a question involving their characters in some way like "what hero did your character look up to as a child?" so they get to come up with past heroes, or "How does your character feel about _____?" etc etc. The only fans are gonna be your table and fans love to talk so be the biggest fans of the PCs!!

Figure out your framing. I know in MASKS they suggest framing it like a comic book, and basically talking about the frames on screen. For me, because I'm more into movies and tv than comics, I frame it like that. So I have an active "camera" in play during sessions and will ask things like "would anyone like to grab the camera?" to encourage the players to put the character into a scene or "what does the audience see as the camera focuses in on your character in this emotional moment?" There is a LOT of playing up to the camera and framing the sessions as episodes of a show, so it's like, okay, you have several options but what is going to be interesting for the audience to see? I find this encourages the players to have their characters take bigger swings and feel comfortable letting us into how their character is feeling because it all looks GREAT on camera. The camera loves it. The PCs are the story after all.

Because I frame it a show, I also like to play individual ending songs over the "credits" at the end of each episode. So I asked my players to make playlists for their characters so if I feel an episode had a lot of emotional focus on one character in particular, I can play one of their songs at the end of the episode! I also made a general MASKS playlist with a bunch of songs from the era we set it in (2004) to pull from. It's a fun little addition that I really enjoy and that I hope makes it all feel more special.

The Dino Donut Effect: create landmarks in your world. (OK THIS IS GONNA BE LONG BUT WORK WITH ME HERE) They don't have to be locations, more solid landmarks of the story that the characters can refer back to and lean on to make the world feel more "real." I call it the Dino Donut Effect because in our world the thing that made everything click into place was talking out the backstory of one of the PC's figuring out they had the power negation ability. We were talking one night trying to figure it out; we wanted the character to fall out of a building and be caught by a flying superhero and accidentally turn off their powers, so they toss the kid to another flying supe whose powers also get turned off. But we were like... holy shit what is the height of a building needed that can handle this much action in the air without them hitting the ground in 3 seconds. So after a long night of talking about terminal velocity and looking at Splat Calculators we figured out the height of the building, and we needed them to crash into something that wouldn't fuckin kill them. The first suggestion was a truck full of bananas. Nah. We landed on a giant balloon that could take the impact. And the balloon became a giant T-Rex holding a donut that was the mascot of the city's beloved decades old donut shop Dino Donut. And so we decided that one of the two flying supes grabbed onto the kid and the other and flew into the giant balloon to try and keep them all alive, which destroyed the balloon, which was a city institution, and there was a crowd of children there that day that saw their friend Dino Donut die. Killed by a superhero. The balloon deflated loudly so it sounded like Dino Donut was screaming in agony. All the kids were traumatized (screaming crying throwing up), the city was furious because everyone loved Dino Donut, it was constantly in the news cycle, and it ruined the career of the supe that "killed Dino Donut." AND THEN THEY REPLACED THE DINO DONUT BALLOON WITH A LAME "UPDATED DESIGN" DINO DONUT STATUE which everyone hates and people consider to be a memorial to the old Dino Donut. ANYWAY, the Dino Donut effect is that now all the PCs have one single incident to refer back to that they all have feelings about. A couple of them were there that day and heard Dino Donut scream, one is now the protege of the disgraced superhero that killed Dino Donut so she feels uncomfortable talking about it, there's the kid that was saved that day but was sworn to secrecy by the supe so no one would find out about his power negation ability, and then there's the kid that wasn't there because she's an alien that just arrived to earth and now the kids have to explain the incident to her with all their varying opinions. Now the PCs' meeting spot is at a Dino Donut. Having this one solid incident that is both funny and kind of goes into the themes of the world has been an absolute treat. Creating "landmarks" like that in the world has done so much and now I'm like okay I'm gonna try to do this moving forward with any other thing I run.

anyway these are my extremely specific to me tips. my RP standards are kind of high which makes me a bit of a terror but also when the flowers bloom from it it feels GREAT. i'm not sure if this will help but hopefully there is something there that can be useful!

MASKS is fun and simple once you get the hang of it, though, so I'm sure whatever you do you and your players will have a lot of fun! especially if you're someone who is into RP which is the background I'm coming from too; MASKS is extremely narrative! i'll be looking in the tag for your game hehe

(The Day Dino Donut Died art by JD)

#masks: a new generation #ttrpg #text post #biji text #i am so sorry this is incredibly long but i just really really really like RP SLKDGM #also another tip: make the npcs hot #hot npcs are great okay #this is the advice from someone who has run checks notes 2 episodes of MASKS #2 episodes but like 7 sessions in total because what it is time management #i've also known my players for a many years and we met in an RP group so i felt more comfortable being this level of intense with them #otherwise i would have tried to be a lil more laid back and normal........... #but also as the GM you're going to be doing a LOT of work so it's fair to ask your players to do some work too to help lighten the load! #have fun!!!! MASKS is a lot of fun!!!

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Just a 30 year old father tucking in his 97 year old son.

#i don't know how 'old' oscar is actually supposed to look #i do love how sam knows exactly how to his an emotional note to fuck up his gm though #he's very good at reading a room #candela obscura #candela obscura spoilers #circle of tide and bone

[rookdaw]

#ocs #city of roses #funny parade #clover #miryam #gm: remember to take session notes! #the session notes:

[mellohirust]

anyone else do that thing where after nightmares you jolt awake and you're in that weird state of feeling your heart pound but also you're too exhausted to properly process it so you're just sitting there like

#z.txt #on that note you'll never believe what just happened to me. gm chat

[mrpsychokiller]

DID CATMASK START FOLLOWING ME?

#🧃 #HI. I JUST WOKE UP. HELLO WHATS GOING ON #apparently that one post i made last night got a bunch of notes and somehow most people agree with me. wild that never happens on tumblr #anyways gm everybody

[gunthermunch]

how do you plan your story? what’s your writing process, it seems really put together behind the scenes i’m curious how you work

I talked about my process multiple times already but yeah i dont plan on the go. i have all of part three figured and written out already. BUT that doesn't mean things are not prone to change as the story progresses. in fact, i tend to get off the rail sometimes (that's the way the goth club scenes happened) it depends on how many epiphanies i have

#max was meant to kiss ale but it wasnt planned to happen that way #it wasnt on my notes. but then i thought hold on HOLD ON- #ask #gm reply

[blackplaaague]

Me after making up a folklore character to be mentioned in passing in-session and then getting the entire party realm-hopping to find her: uuuh... I see... interesting... I wonder if... Oh look, that guy's face is a skull look at him instead

#ttrpg #bp rambles #tabletop game #dnd dungeons and dragons #dm #gm #game master #dungeon master #yes this is the same campaign where it was supposed to be a threeshot but then I added a romance subplot #yes this is the one where I planned it with color-coded notes and it all fell apart in two sessions #yes this is the one with like 4 bbegs #bbeg #rpg game

[jnsnte]

the way… THE WAYYYYY

#I WAS GONNA REBLOG THAT BUT HE BEAT ME TO IT 👹 #he knows me too well #but anywayyyyy #gm world i love lee minhyung<3 #꒰ ۟ ⠀ ౨ৎ ٫ notes on a conditional form. 🍂〞 ꒱

[clenastia]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 崩坏：星穹铁道 | Honkai: Star Rail (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jing Yuan & Yanqing (Honkai: Star Rail) Characters: Jing Yuan (Honkai: Star Rail), Yanqing (Honkai: Star Rail), Fu Xuan (Honkai: Star Rail) Additional Tags: Not Beta Read, Slice of Life, Attempt at Humor Summary:

The general's home has a much nicer hall for display than his own, and... maybe, if he's honest, a lot more room, too. Buying two of every sword he admires is all well and good in theory, but in practice, well. He needs a lot of space for them all. And it just makes sense, to keep the blades he actually fights with in his own home, and to take advantage of the general's very nice display hall for the ones meant to be admired. In theory. In practice, well. In practice, it would probably work better if he hadn't gone over budget for the second time in as many days. Oops.

#IM SORRY CY I TRIED I TRIED SO HARD #I STARED AND STARED AT MY GOOGLE DOC AND MY NOTES FOR THE NEXT GM CHAPTER #AND YET SOMEHOW. GM DID NOT COME OUT #AKSJDFLKASJDFLKJASDF #clena's fanfic #star rail fanfic #yanqing is best boi #fite me

[technofinch]

Okay! Mulligan time!

The crew found themselves on a tiny escape ship with two dead xenomorphs, three live xenomorph eggs, and fifty colonists in cryosleep. The nearest inhabited colony six hours away and run by Weyland-Yutani, the very company that they've stolen from and are attempting to avoid. No plan, no options, no way out.

We have Mulligan, our captain, incredibly traumatized former alcoholic who has already located the ship's bar. Miranda, the psychologist, who is so over dealing with every part of this situation and would very much like to go back to her well-paid and safe job. Mr Cuddles, her trained therapy/guard dog. Karina, the disgraced scientist who finally got proof of the alien life she was looking for only to realize how dangerous they truly are. Bink O'Heron, the space marine, who wears a landmine strapped to his chest and is itching to reenlist and go far away from here. And the NPCs - Jack, engineer and first mate; Reed, the other space marine; and Julio, the mysterious surgeon & ex-marine.

Immediately Mulligan gets into a fight with Miranda about how to deal with the xeno eggs. She wants to destroy them, he wants to keep them for leverage/cash. Karina sides with Mulligan, Miranda turns on her & starts psychoanalyzing her & being generally a dick (this is a theme with Miranda, she's the worst and we love her for it). More fighting ensues. Mulligan reveals his plan for dealing with the situation, which is to claim full responsibility for stealing the ship & everything else and say that he threatened the rest of the crew into compliance.

"Wow. You're really stupid." -Miranda

Miranda tries to take the gun out of his hands but it slides across the floor & gets wedged under a panel. Mulligan is not amused. Miranda starts ordering people around, so Mulligan takes his leave and goes to the kitchen, with Mr Cuddles following to keep an eye on him. He tries to bribe the dog with beef jerky before pulling out the liquor, but it doesn't work and the dog alerts Miranda.

She's well past the point of having any interest in dealing with any of his bullshit, so she leaves him to wallow in his misery (with mr cuddles babysitting) and alerts the rest of the crew that the captain is drinking on the clock.

Mulligan asks to talk to Reed, and gives him a message to pass on to Jameson (the former crew member who turned out to be Mulligan's son) about a storage locker on New Constantinople with various photos and family effects and such from Mulligan's mother.

"Reed, I was never going to be a good father. I'm just trying to be a decent son." -Mulligan

Julio overhears and takes it as an opportunity to impart wisdom about fatherhood, Reed takes the opportunity to "borrow" the bottle from Mulligan. Miranda and Julio get into another spat (they REALLY don't like each other), Jack gets involved, it's a whole thing.

MEANWHILE, IN THE SCIENCE LAB...

Karina has locked herself in the science lab with the two xenomorph corpses, one of which is still partially embedded in a human corpse, with Bink standing guard at the door.

"Uh…. everything alright in there?" "…please don't tell me you fucked with the eggs." -Bink

After too many concerningly wet noises and silence, Bink summoned the rest of the crew for help.

Miranda was able to make contact with Karina and bust down the door after Bink gave up, gave her his rifle, and went to take a nap. She found Karina & the lab covered in chemical burns from improperly dissecting the xenomorphs. Acid blood, yay <3

Everyone scrambles into action to deal with All That, except Mulligan (who saw the desecrated corpse of the guy he shot and Is Having A Bad Time About It) and Bink (who's just a sleepy boy) who retreat to the corporate suite and crack into a bottle of whiskey together.

Once the acid is dealt with & Julio has stabilized Karina, Miranda goes and collects Mulligan's gun & the bomb Karina made earlier (don't worry about it) then finds a quiet place to type away on her spipad (space ipad (that she also uses to spy on people))

By this point, Mulligan has passed out. He's taking a lil nap. It's the first time he's slept in several days. Don't worry about it <3

Miranda goes to check in with Karina, where they establish that there is still no plan for how to survive upon landing at the spaceship, but Miranda seems..... suspiciously optimistic.

"I never expect mercy from W-Y. I expect them to know how much I'm worth." - Miranda

After their conversation, Karina (who is still in massive amounts of main and a non-zero amount of high on pain meds) gets on her personal comms and sends an encrypted message offering to sell her research to get safe passage for all of us. Including the fact that it was based on xenomorphs... She did get an answer, however, from someone taking her up on the offer. Or claiming to, anyway..

We arrive at the habitation ring and dock. Jack, Julio and Reed take defensive positions. Mulligan is still asleep. We're immediately greeted by a crew of corporate guards with pulse rifles.

"FORMER CREW OF THE OPHELIA YOU ARE UNDER ARREST BY ORDER OF HEAD MANAGER DUMOIS FOR THE KIDNAPPING OF MIRANDA KESTRA AND THE DOGNAPPING OF HER ASSISTANT MR. CUDDLES, LAY DOWN ALL YOUR WEAPONS AND APPROACH THE DOOR WITH YOUR HANDS UP, DR. KESTRA PLEASE APPROACH THE DOOR WITH YOUR ASSISTANT AND ALLOW US IN."

Miranda walks casually over to the door and opens it. She hands over the guns she's collected, and makes her way with her dog into the protective circle of soldiers. Who are still pointing their guns at the rest of us.

At this point Mulligan stumbles into the scene, still half drunk, and immediately gives up. Karina is apoplectic with rage at Miranda's betrayal, the rest of the crew are still in defensive positions. The scientist Karina contacted eventually steps in. It's one of her old professors, though none of us but her are aware of this. He's able to take custody of Karina and up to one other person to go with her as a guard/negotiator given the fact that Karina is... still covered in chemical burns.

She's not happy about this, given that she was promised safe passage for the whole crew, but when there are 8 very scary people with guns, your options are very limited. She holds a gun to his head - then drops it, unable to go through with her threat. Mulligan urges her to take Bink, so she has some muscle and bc Bink doesn't need to be involved in the whole "arrest" situation, but they're running out of time and Karina can't make the choice. Julio tells Mulligan to go with her, and ends up physically dragging Mulligan over to the soldiers.

Mulligan resists Julio, sandbagging him and remaining firmly on the floor. "I'm not leaving my crew." "I'm not fucking leaving them, okay? I'm not going to run off like Reese did. This is my mess, I'm gonna fucking deal with it." Mulligan is still half-drunk and almost belligerent. He also very much does not have a plan.

Mulligan gets handcuffed, and he and Karina are led away from the ship, leaving the rest of the crew to the mercy of the Weyland-Yutani goon squad. As he's dragged off Mulligan calls out one last time for Jack, despite being too far away to hear any response.

Aaaaaand scene! tldr; Miranda sold out the rest of the crew and we all got Super arrested and will probably be put on trial, Mulligan & Karina have been separated from their friends, Miranda is no longer going to be a player character 😔 but! we'll be getting a fun new player character next session :D

#now with pull quotes bc this was all text rp on discord lmao #turns out its pretty nice to have a text record to reference of literally everything that was said and done by the characters #instead of relying on incredibly half-assed notes taken while distracted by the session itself #(its also less fun over discord but the gm won't be back in town til may :( ) #mulligan #also! he still hasn't gotten his bagel! but he did at least get a nap! small victories!

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Nothing makes you feel dumber than trying to solve a dungeon puzzle in D&D. However. I am two for two in being the one at the table to solve the puzzle.

#erin plays d&d #'it's a sundial!' the gm yelled when we finally solved it #and i looked down in my notes #and the little sketch i drew of it LOOKS like a sundial #i was so annoyed at myself lol

[lexicals]

Pathfinder tonight was a big ol combat which started out as a looney tunes fight with our new sorc/magus friend summoning a giant t rex made of bushes and our witch turning into a unicorn, quickly turned terrifying as we realised this enemy was incredibly hard to hit & also crit almost every attack, and ended desperate when our witch got petrified into a giant unicorn garden ornament and was half an hour away from that condition being permament by the time our party healer figured out how to reverse it, mostly by accident while trying something else along a similar vein. Insanity

#wastepaper basket #Worth noting gm spent almost the whole fight trying to hit ME w the petrification beam before getting annoyed that I kept rolling too high #And redirecting his attention to my squishier friend who instantly failed the save. Which actually was probably a good thing in hindsight #Can you imagine if he'd lead with that & just picked people off we'd all be dead or statues rn #mammoth wrestler campaign #I had keo heal by giving the healer a drive by high five and then we almost straight up lost a party member. Man

[eusuntgratie]

26!

26. if you were gm of your favorite team for a day what would you do?

i would be the worst gm in the world. (well. not really. the bar's pretty low.)

KYLE I'M AVAILABLE FOR THE GM POSITION FOR ONE DAY.

I promise to

make our cap situation unsalvageable by getting our babygirl and chaos gremlin back BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. dumo wants 9 million a year? give it to him. zucker wants it written in blood that nobody will take him off geno's wing ever again? i'll donate mine, let's do this.

yeet desmith into the sun with my bare hands. gimme two days; i'm about to start my period and i could do this via pure force of rage.

i don't know how but i'm getting rid of petry. every time i remember that he makes more than geno and tanger i become violently angry. its insulting. he's gotta go. (or he can stay for half the salary. your choice, babe, i can be reasonable here)

bring flower back (sorry MN). LET HIM RETIRE A PENGUIN. i'll bring murray back too so jars has a buddy since having flower back will probably be stressful for him. flower/jars tandem with enough rest for both, murray's on ltir so he's just chillin' presumably in some sort of polycule situation with jars featuring very large dogs, our other 62 goalies are hanging out in wilkes-barre, i guess. sorry boys.

i'd try to get karlsson, who would laugh at me, because i spent all our money getting dumo and zucker back, so i'd have to send sid in to get that deal done, but i have faith in that ass to make miracles happen 🥰

hockey asks | ask me

#vibes only #hockey asks #ask grace #i should probably note that if tanger asked me for literally anything as gm i would immediately do it #get me 12 million #okay baby you got it #get rid of this random person i hate #DONE #is he manipulating me with his good looks or his death glare? #both? probably both

[loserdudes]

I just read an article about Bergy's agent Kent Hughes trying to convince him to play for Montreal back in 2013 for a $9.something million contract but he refused and decided to take a lower contract with the Bruins instead and this man is just everything to me and this team the fact that we get him UGH

i saw that video a few days ago! video attached here for anyone that didn’t but patrice is amazing i love him (not to mention brad refusing to take more than patrice)

#asks #anonymous #boston bruins #hockey #patrice bergeron #brad marchand #also fun note about kent hughes is he’s no longer bergys agent cause he’s the habs gm lol

[maocakke]

okay hi good morning hot ppl

#idek if i want to say gm or gn because i feel like i did not sleep at all #anyways i'm never staying in my studio overnight ever again 🥳 ( i probably will ) #݁ 🩰 𓂃 𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝'𝐬 notes ഒ ָ࣪ ˖

[aquadestinyswriting]

You know a d&d session is a good one when you're still having thoughts (tm) about it years after it ended. This is how I ended up writing dramatisations of several sessions that are posted here; those sessions were so memorable that I still rotate the events in my head even now.

I decided to look for the email I wrote describing the Laurence Tate Debacle just in case (to make sure that Dru was apprised of the... uhhh... Situation that had unfolded) and I was immediately catapulted back to that February Sunday evening as soon as I read it. Sadly, I still can't recall most of the mono- and dialogues that happened (which is a shame because my husband and the fellow who played Quentin knocked it out of the park roleplay-wise), but I think I can recall juuuust enough to make up something that can approximate the feel of those monents. I don't think the piece will cover everything that happened, but I will certainly add in Felix's improvements to the Watchhouse Eight coffee machine 🙃.

#writing meta #aqua rambles #I know dru was totally panicking just reading the scant notes I sent her #but I was gm-ing that session #and just thinking #“welp. it was nice knowing you laurence” #“better get arrested before Snotgrut and Elowyn break protocol and absolutely murder your ass” #“and even that might not save you”