Character sheet comes with gigantic illustration

Yeah but if they say big they should be buff, not some 8ft tall lanklet.

Why? Super-strong and super-tough means it's not necessarily dependent on how buff you look.

I too love imagining that I am being oppressed

>shaman
>no whitey
>not running superior celtic druid master race
Oh so this is a game aimed at noobs? I've never heard of it before.

The idea is like, you don't have to have a character. You start the game, run through the sheet, pick one and in 5 mins you're ready to play.

I generally agree with though.

here's the rest

That's why I pointed out the word big and not tough or strong.

Looks like shit. Anyone ever play this?

Yeah and that's why I said you don't have a sense of scale on the big. Lanklets are still big.

Well looking at it you're totally wrong and the only class that can't be white, or any other race, are the literal aliens. Now why you need to take all the space to say that every single time is another argument.

I do. It's evocative, plus you can see what your table neighbors' PCs look like all the time during play. If you have space to spare, make your character art as large as possible.

No one actually plays Powered By The Apocalypse games, it's like the RPGMaker software or worldbuilding, the fun part is brainstorming and designing and imagining what if other people played it.

>Goddamn I hate every PbtA game out there. They all suck shit. They are straight rip-offs of AW that imitate it in the most pathetic way possible
As if AW was all that great. A game without any situational modifiers whatsoever...

Is this supposed to be Teen Titans? They have a straight up Starfire, Raven, Robin, and Superboy class.

Who made this and why?

What if you want to play a character that doesn't look like the one on your sheet?

Situational modifiers would have broken down the game. The moves in AW weren't about task resolution anyway. They were "story nodes," it was a pure narrative game, and an actually good one because the results of the "moves" were explicit and well-defined.

oh boy here we go again

>illustrations
You shouldn't need a pic to get the point across. I sure don't.

I've played it a few times; it played out pretty well. It plays pretty much exactly as you'd expect a Dungeon World game would.

It's designed to simulate cartoons like Young Justice or Teen Titans and it actually does so pretty well; death doesn't REALLY come about until it's required by the narrative, the stakes are always presented as high in much the same way that it does in that media.

It gives identity fetishists a shot of adrenaline seeing an aspect of themselves mentioned

So what is the game?

Masks

I don't suppose anyone has a .pdf for full perusal?

Shit

>the bull

Wew, lad

Well it is a pre-gen character. Having art is pretty standard.

Do you have no imagination?

That's the thing, it's not supposed to be a pregened character.
You could use it to make some male dude or whoever you want, but no matter what you are stuck with the author's mary sue printed on your character sheet.

This. They even have lists of "Look" options printed right there under the illustration, for fuck's sake.

>What makes you think it's not a restriction? I'm willing to bet my ass that there's some kind of a shaman or a samurai class there, with no whiteys allowed, because that would be cultural appropriation
No, it's just in there for the D&D kiddies who see "choose your race" and immediately think "elf, dorf, or hobbit".

>only distinguishing characteristic in Look for the Bull is hands, which all have descriptions with connotations of using them or having powerful hands

What did they mean by this?

Is this the "I don't understand games that aren't 'realistic' combat simulators" thread?

No

I'd say it's more 'games that aren't D&D make me scared and out of my comfort zone' thread.

>Asian, south asian, black, hispanic/latino, indigenous, middle eastern, white
What if I want to play a celtic or slavic character?

Write it in.

>celts and slavs
>not white

>white

>slavs
>white

>They think Irish and Slavs are white

But remember,
No russian.

great job hitting that wiffle ball on the tee

>A game without any situational modifiers whatsoever...
Missing the entire point of PbtA.

Shut the fuck up about racism.
When the first thing I see in the core book is basically a little bedtime story about one specific person in one specific situation to "set the mood", instead of an overview of the setting as a whole.
I know fluff is important but please, start from the top. Give me the hard facts that every player in this setting most likely needs to know. This amount of personal focus is not worldbuilding, it's plot, and it's not the plot of my campaign.
The time to "set the mood" is when you're about to start actually playing, in which case I should hope you've read at least part of the core book already.

Masks is a pretty good game. Focused in premise and IMO not suitable for longer campaigns, like most PbtA, but pretty good. What's all the fuss about?

It's written from an American perspective cause it's a game written by Americans in America about an American medium (superhero comics) and it uses a variety of races American people would be most familiar with and make the most distinctions on.

And it lists them because you're expected to pick up and play it and it gives you an idea to make a character of a race you might not have otherwise considered.

There's your explanation now shut up.

lol wtf are you talking about

No, they listed black

We get it, we just don't like it.

>Advancement
>[ ] Take an adult move
Is this like fellatio proficiency and stuff?

The main rulebook has lots of pictures of the main characters, so I guess you are pretty much supposed to play as them.

kekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk how fucking disgusting can a character sheet possibly be

...No?

Lots of games have iconics they use as recurring characters in the artwork. It's just to give the game a consistent aesthetic.

...Yes?

Aesthetic is fine for the rule book, these specific characters are featured prominently on the actual character sheets.

But the game explicitly contradicts you. Fuck, even what people were bitching about earlier, the sheets giving a variety of ethnicities and styles for you to choose from, shows that the statement 'you are pretty much supposed to play as them' is groundless.

It's also worth mentioning that Playbooks are also something kinda different to character sheets, since they're also full summaries of each 'class', outlining your progression and so on. Great for convention games, although personally I tend to prefer making my own sheets, cutting out all the stuff I'm not using until I pick it up later.

>transguessing woman
what in the fuck did he mean by this?

Something made with 'Powered By The Apocalypse' is shit? Color me surprised!

Look, if a RPG character sheet has a huge picture of a character on it, at that point it doesn't really matter which little tweaks you select, in everyone's mind his character image is locked in.

It's like if you were playing D&D, and you picked to play an Elf Ranger, but you used a dwarf barbarian miniature, moving him through the rooms, everyone at the table is going to call you "the dwarf",

Why does every single one have that "ambiguous, man" and race list on it? Couldn't one just assume that you could just be a tranny blacker or a cis latino or whatever if every single one is going to have the exact same entry like that?

...The fuck?

So when a D&D class has a big old picture of an example of the class associated with it, do you think you have to play exactly that character? Your example just doesn't make any sense to me.

>So when a D&D class has a big old picture of an example of the class associated with it, do you think you have to play exactly that character?
It's somewhere in the rulebook though, not on the character sheet sitting in front of every player while they play, representing who they are.

Because it's made for a certain subset of adult people who didn't play TRPGs before since they were 'for nerds', but do now because it's cool. Basically, it has to be made retard proof so that they'll be able to understand it, and they have to be explicitly given the option to play as something or else they'll insist that it's not included by default.

But again, that's kind of the point. Playbooks are both character sheet and a part of the rulebook.

Although I don't buy that. Since when has been looking at other peoples character sheets a significant part of play? The character sheet is for you, the attention is on the people or on the GM, or in combat on whatever subsystem is used for that.

Then you choose a different sheet, I'd imagine.

Playbooks ARE the rulebook representation of the character archetype.

>Take an adult move

..?

The sheets will definitely be visible on the table while you play, depicting a specific character.

If they wanted to encourage people to be able to imagine up any character, tt would have been better to have the playbooks be text only, and not have a huge picture of some specific character.

I... Think that might just be you, mate? Or, at least, in my limited anecdotal experience I've never really seen anything like that. Might just be different playstyles and approaches to RPG's in different areas.

Might be a sex move?

...

Masks is balanced around teenage heroes, so their default moves are weaker or less reliable. Adult characters instead have Adult Moves, which are universally stronger and have less drawbacks than the default version. Taking one gets you a better option, and also represents some aspect of growing maturity in the character.

Adult moves are basically 'Upgrades' to existing moves to show you've gotten skill and experience in that area. So changing your 'Try to use powers' to 'Use them with finesse' etc as you are much less likely to have them cause trouble now that you've got fine control.

Character sheets SHOULD come with a gigantic illustration. If you make your own character, same thing. If it's a pregen, same thing.

If it's a blank character sheet, there should be a big blank section for your to paste in an illustration.

Unless it's a multipage deal with a dedicated "portrait" page.

I think it's the case where the author is so fond of his own characters, got lots of cool artwork to bring them to life, really wanted to use them to sell the playbooks he came up with, so proud of his iconic reimagining of superhero tropes, so then in designing the playbooks, it never occurs to him to maybe pull back, take this moment to consider the reader/player's own imagination and creative input. He's laid the groundwork, now time to honor the player's freedom to make a character as they choose. But no, he couldn't help himself to lock in that finishing touch of "aesthetics", on the sheet that represents the player's direct input now has the canon character front and center.

Character art is fine for the rulebook, but the character sheet should not have it by default. Let the player make their own character without a picture of the DMPC they are "supposed" to copy off of.

Is it really such a big deal? I'm not the biggest fan of PbtA, but I played a couple of short campaigns of Masks and this never came up as a concern. We all used our own imagination just fine, describing the characters in the usual manner. The art on our sheets never even came up.

Who the fuck is this made for?

Kids would be confused by it, and adults would think that it's too childish

All of the options are kind of mutually exclusive. I presume you circle the one you want or something.

>Character art is fine for the rulebook, but the character sheet should not have it by default. Let the player make their own character without a picture of the DMPC they are "supposed" to copy off of.

I think you are seriously jumping to conclusions there. I think it's more likely 'Pages with nothing but text look a bit dull, especially in a superhero-themed RPG'. Honestly, having a decent picture to break up a PBTA playbook is a nice change from all the ones I've seen where you can't actually tell what it is at a glance.

I just can't imagine a reason where you would ever want art of a specific character to be on a default character sheet. It's a pure negative. If you are able to overlook it then fine, but it would be better if it wasn't there.

Pretty much. PBTA playbooks are supposed to be something you can do in 30 seconds flat just by randomly picking options (Like say, at a convention) if you don't have a specific character idea. That and to give a bit of a theme for them, if they are on the odder end.

Like say, the Outsider (being an alien or magical being or something else not from here)

>strange body, animalistic body, neon body, human body

They could have used an icon or symbol, it would have accomplished the same distinguishing effect without interfering with the player's imagination.

>If you are able to overlook it then fine, but it would be better if it wasn't there.

Not really? Playbooks are not just character sheets, they are also the basic class description. This is like having a picture of the iconic paladin before the class.

But how does it interfere with a players imagination? I just don't get that.

Yes Really? This is slapping one more picture of the author's personal character over what is supposed to be your character.

What sort of Icon would half the archetypes used? Outsider, Legacy...most don't naturally flow to icons save for maybe Bull and Janus.

You've still yet to explain how. Like, I get it might be an issue for you personally, but explain why, since I've never experienced the same issue.

Made for brainlets who think anything that uses the framework of Apocalypse World's rules is good.

It's a huge picture of a character that is going to be sitting in front of you the whole game. You are going to be referencing your character sheet always thinking "This guy depicted on the sheet I'm using isn't my character, I circled these tiny words that are different."

I find this thread so weird. I'm not super into PbtA, I find them generally mechanically unfulfilling and only really enjoy them in shorter campaigns where the simple rules don't overstay their welcome, but for all the outpouring of hate in this thread there's very little complaints about the actual mechanics.