Team-Updates #5: We’re Finally Playing Masks!
Good morning afternoon evening or medianoche! Stephanie here.
Run 9: See Issue X
By the time these words hit their first inbox you’ll have access to all of our arc for See Issue X, the game by Chris Longhurst where we deal out cards from a deck and construct an evolving, ever-expanding, regularly retconned comics continuum. The game can be played solo, or in a GM-less way at home, but we did it with Fiona as Master of Ceremonies and Guide to All Rules, and I’m pretty sure extra-special guest and continuity master Connor regrets nothing.
What do you mean, who’s Connor? That’s Connor Goldsmith. You know him from CEREBRO, the podcast that devotes several hours apiece to characters from X-continuity, from Magneto to Candy Southern. You mean you don’t know Candy Southern? Connor can tell who she is. Or sadly was. Unless that’s been retconned.
Connor also helped to create Stately Bishop Manor, where Charlotte Bishop and her family of magic-using magic patrollers reside. If you’re in New Arcadia and you're using magic to bad ends, look out for her. And for Chimera, who could be disguised as anyone: she’s a shapeshifter with angst about who and what, if anything, her real face might be. Sometimes she handles that angst with deep-fried… well, anything, since she works at the Northrop Fryer, the oddly literary convenience store that will fry anything, and they mean anything, on a Friday night. That’s why they named it Friday. That is a retcon.
We hear that Chimera’s been looking for more work superhero-ing, too. She’s registered with the New Arcadia Superhero Dispatch Association, hoping for some problems to solve. But we also hear she’s applying to art school. Could both rumours be true? She’s an artificially created life form, so they could be: she doesn’t sleep, and she’s got a bad case of Impostor Syndrome, for the best of reasons: she addresses it by trying to do new things to impress the people she already loves…
Run 10: Masks: A New Generation
This coming month we’ve got Masks: A New Generation by Brendan Conway, the Powered by the Apocalypse game that got me, Stephanie, obsessed (or really re-obsessed) with RPGs when Fiona introduced me to it. Everything about this podcast began there, for certain values of “began.” We’ve also got stars of the Actual Play podcast-verse joining us for our Masks arc: Indi Tan of Dice Comics and James Malloy of Stop Hack and Roll and Protean City Comics. Three heroic podcasters who understand production and sound engineering, plus me. Did I mention Impostor Syndrome? [Babe. You did great. —F]
Never Not Trying to Help
One of the great joys of this podcast for me is just the opportunity to create new heroic or anyway hero-adjacent characters every month. That creation feels different each time. And it comes with a dilemma I’ve been considering more and more lately, especially since we’ve played a few games (See Issue X is one) that put the supposed players in a position more like a comic book writers than like a comic book characters. Players should stay in character, right? You should do what your PC would do. That’s kind of the point of an RPG. If your PC would make a bad or a shortsighted or a dangerous decision, that’s good for the story, right?
But in a superhero game you’re also playing someone (most of the time!) who genuinely wants to help other people. Someone who’s trying to do the right thing (at least for certain values of right). When do you let your own sense of ethics, or pragmatism, or how to help, bleed over into your character’s choice, and when do you work to suppress your own sense of what should happen, how a problem might be solved?
I don’t think there’s a general solution. I think it’s a problem that generates engaging play. I also think — watching myself play, FWIW — that the problem works out differently for me depending on who else is playing and what their characters would do: the more chaotic, impulsive, or heedless the other PCs get, the more I’m tempted to play my PC as comparatively level-headed, or strategic, trying to get the plot back on track. I tend to build, and to like, characters who can try to lead, or to stay level-headed, when the PCs around them flip out — but just because they try doesn’t mean they’ll succeed! As always (and as Fiona likes to say) failures should have interesting consequences. Sometimes they’re far more interesting than success.
Stuff We’ve Been Playing and Listening To
Stephanie: My favorite new podcast (new to me, that is — it’s been going for three years) isn’t about RPGs: it’s 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, by Rob Harvilla of The Ringer. He’s a pop music critic who devotes about an hour to 90s hits and alterna-hits, to what makes them great or annoying, and to their receptions: why Selena mattered so much to so many; how many layers of tragedy lurk in the Gin Blossoms; what Liz Phair thought she was doing on that first double album (modeled on a Rolling Stones double album), and why her barbs hit the Chicago indie-rock patriarchy so hard. I can promise you that, back in New Arcadia, Tune is also a fan.
In other superhero-adjacent media, today I taught Kai Cheng Thom’s terrific fable Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. You can order it from its Canadian indie press at that link. And frankly, I think you should. It’s certainly not a memoir! Instead it’s a fast moving story about trans femme solidarity on the Street of Miracles, whose always-angry, still-very-young protagonist protects herself with a magical silver switchblade and a swarm of bees that come out when she’s mad.
And in actual comic book reading, this week I hope to get farther into the epic — or is it more like a serial novel? — that is James Robinson and Tony Harris's Starman series, from the 1990s. This Starman is Jack Knight, who’d be a Legacy in Masks: he’s the very reluctantly hero-ish son of the original Starman, Ted Knight, the inheritor of Ted’s Cosmic Rod, and he has to defend Opal City against villains used to facing his brother and his dad. Many feelings ensure. No spoilers please.
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Fiona: In the comics realm I’ve been catching up on Immortal X-Men, the series from last year by Kieron Gillen and Lucas Werneck. Backstabbity political bullshit and Mr. Sinister being the absolute worst are some of my favorite parts of the Krakoa Era.
Per everyone’s recommendation in our Spectaculars back matter, I listened to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Space found family, solid world-building, and a series of slice-of-life vignettes. Do recommend.
It’s been inspirational for my Thirsty Sword Lesbians… in spaaaaace! campaign (with T-UM All Stars Ceci and Shana) as well as a 1-shot of Scum and Villainy that I got to be a player in. (I know. Rare experience for me.)
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We hope you liked See Issue X, and we hope you’re ready for Masks! As always, please write us and tell us if there’s anything or anyone you'd like to see on the show — thanks to those of you who have suggested plot twists and games we might play.
You can reach us on Twitter (@teamupmoves) or Mastodon (teamupmoves@dice.camp) or at this address: show@teamupmoves.com.
And, as always, thanks for listening!