You Will Need

Playing the Game of Masks requires the following:

• A standard pack of playing cards.
• A standard Western set of 28 dominoes (“double six” - the ones which go from blank to six pips).
• A number of “Face” tokens per player, perhaps 20–30. These can be poker chips, draughts/checkers/backgammon pieces, plastic discs, glass beads, dried beans or whatever is available. Stacking ones (like poker chips or draughts) are probably best, as it is easy to compare quantities based on how tall the piles are.
• A number of players between about 5 and 10. Fewer than 5 will provide little scope for webs of relationships, while more than 10 will slow the game too much.

Avatars

“Avatars” in the following means what would usually be referred to as “player characters” (that is, characters continuously played by the players, who are the focus of the story). This use of terminology is not whimsy, but because the term “Character” has a specific meaning in the setting, and using it in two senses would be potentially confusing. Thus:

There are three layers of persona involved here rather than the two of other storygames. There is the “player” layer, the “avatar” layer (what would normally be called the “character” layer) and the layer of the characters that are being portrayed by the avatars.

So, for example, a male player can be playing a female avatar who is portraying a male character. Refer to Twelfth Night for a parallel example (Shakespeare’s original actors, including those who played female parts, were all male).

Avatars in the game are young people just starting out in their adult roles in the City of Masks. They have been somewhat sheltered up until now, but they must now take up the responsibility of adult relationships and loyalties.

Masks

Each mask your avatar possesses has proper actions, each with a face value.

A proper action is an action one may perform by virtue of wearing the appropriate mask. In some cases, it is an action one must perform if one is wearing that mask. It includes abilities, such as seeing the conventionally unseen while wearing a mask with a peacock feather on it.

Everyone has access to the mask of the Uncast. However, while one is Uncast one may not take any action which would draw the attention of anyone else. (One may buy food and drink, etc., from someone to whom selling these items is Proper, however, since it is not part of their proper action that they see the person they are selling to; it is merely proper to them that they exchange items for coin.) The mask of the Uncast’s only proper action is to remain inconspicuous and uninvolved, and this has 0 face value. Show that you are using the mask of the Uncast by displaying a card in front of you face down, or a blank card if you have one in the deck you are using.

Everyone also has access to the mask of their role in society. This is their occupation, job, position or title. If they have more than one role - for example, they are Baron Granthor and also Lord Chamberlain - they have a mask for each. Proper actions for a social role’s mask each have a face value of 1. (?????)

Every avatar in the game has the social role “Young Nobleman” or “Young Noblewoman”, which they have recently received at their coming-of-age ceremony (they were previously masked as “Noble Child (Male)” and “Noble Child (Female)”. They do not yet have access to other social role masks. Show that you are using your social role mask by not displaying any card in front of you.

In addition, each player begins the game with one mask for their avatar. These will be “character” masks, meaning that they are based on a historical, mythical or legendary character, archetype or stereotype.

Character masks are represented by the court cards and Jokers from a deck of playing cards, and are drawn at random at the start of the game. You need not reveal what mask you get until you come to use it. When you are wearing a particular mask, display the card which represents it face-up in front of you.

Court cards each have a given number of points, related to their rank, to distribute among a number of proper actions. Jokers have 10, Jacks 11, Queens 12 and Kings 13. No more than 3 points should be allocated to one proper action, and there should be not more than one 3 and at least two 1s. Some attempt to relate the character name to the appearance of the card is encouraged.

You can use the default set of masks, but gaming groups are encouraged to create their own masks using these guidelines.

Example: Jack of Spades (the Dashing Swordsman).
Proper actions:

• Attempt to impress female bystanders (3)
• Challenge other swordsmen (2)
• Leap about athletically (2)
• Dress stylishly (2)
• Flippant humour (1)
• Pose dramatically (1)

Example: Queen of Diamonds (the Pious Moon Acolyte).
Proper actions:

• Support the Moon Temple and its rites (3)
• Be suspicious and hostile to non-devotees (2)
• Assist women (2)
• Oppose violence (2)
• Don’t draw attention (1)
• Take pleasure in the natural world (1)
• Keep secrets (1)

Additional masks can be bought with Hidden Face tokens (see below) at the cost of their total face values, reflecting the fact that a person of status can take on more than one role (with the permission of the Commissioners of Masks through the Keeper of the Book). If you have several masks, you can keep the others face-down or face-up underneath your current mask.

Changing masks: you can’t change masks when challenged, but you can before challenging.

Hidden Face

In addition to your mask, you have a “Hidden Face,” a second set of proper actions with the same total face value as your mask. This represents your avatar’s personality as it is beneath the mask. The rules for creating this are as follows:

1. No more than 3 points should be allocated to any one proper action.
2. There should be not more than one 3, and at least two 1s.
3. Some of the higher-value actions should conflict directly with your mask.
4. None of the actions may be, or closely resemble, proper actions of your mask.
5. You may choose proper actions from another mask or masks, including ones already allocated to other avatars, but not more than three actions from any one mask.
6. At least two of the proper actions you choose must be ones not allocated to any mask.

When you play out some of your “Hidden Face” actions during the game, you gain Hidden Face tokens which are kept in a special pool. These can save your avatar from dire circumstances later in the game, and can also be used to purchase additional masks.

You can also sell your mask to another player for a mutually agreed sum and use the proceeds, in combination with your Hidden Face, to buy another mask which fits your Hidden Face better. You must spend Hidden Face on your new mask first, and ordinary Face only when you have spent all the Hidden Face.

If you do this, you must revise your Hidden Face, replacing those actions which were in your Hidden Face and are now in your new mask with actions from your former mask.

Keep your Hidden Face tokens separate from your Face tokens. If possible, they should be visually distinguishable from each other (for example, different colours or markings), but if this is not feasible, ensure they are kept physically separate in distinct areas.

Setting Up

Read these rules all the way through so you know what you’re doing.

Lay the dominoes face down in the middle of the table (or, if you are not around a table, somewhere else where everyone can reach them easily) and shuffle them. Alternatively, put them in a bag for people to draw from randomly.

Separate the court cards from the non-court cards in the deck, and shuffle both groups of cards.

Draw a court card each. This is your avatar’s initial character mask.

On your relationship tracking sheet, write a name for your avatar.

Create your avatar’s Hidden Face.

Write down a few brief background facts about your avatar. Background facts can include fears, desires, childhood experiences, personal qualities, attitudes and beliefs - everything that makes the avatar a unique person.

In consultation with other players, you may want to specify existing relationships between your avatars, such as “sister”, “cousin”, or “betrothed since childhood”.

Fill out your relationship tracking sheet as per the instructions under Relationships, below. This specifies whether your avatar’s relationships with the other avatars and the factions in the City are positive or negative, and how strong they are.

Draw 10 Face tokens each from the central pool.

You are now ready to begin the game.

The Arbiter and Rounds

In each round, the player with the most non-hidden Face (including the face value of his or her masks) is the Arbiter. If more than one player is first equal, they do a quick domino drawing to break the tie, drawing as often as necessary to get a single winner (determined by the total value of the domino pips, blanks counting seven).

The Arbiter of each round sketches the scene, which could be a ball, a festival, a meeting in the street, a service at the Temple, etc.

The Arbiter is assumed to be present at the scene he or she has sketched. Then, in descending order of Face (including face value of masks) from the Arbiter, each player indicates either that his or her avatar is present at the scene or is elsewhere, naming the other location. Those with equal Face to each other draw dominoes for priority as above. (If there were several first equals and their tie was broken by domino drawing, use that domino draw to determine their order – no need for another drawing.)

A player may declare that he or she has arranged to meet another avatar or avatars (whose players have not yet declared their actions) elsewhere at the time of the scene. In this case, the other player or players concerned may, when their turn comes round, indicate that they did not go to the agreed meeting place at the agreed time, but to another location, including the scene described by the Arbiter.

Any player may also indicate that his or her avatar is not present because he or she was following another avatar or avatars who have already indicated that they were elsewhere. In this case, a challenge must (in the Encounter phase) be played to determine whether the attempt to follow them was successful. Count this as an opposed challenge against any of the avatars being followed.

Each player selects a mask for their avatar to wear during the scene, if they possess more than one. They then, in the same order as they declared their location, declare their actions in the scene and play out any wooing or challenges (as per the rules given below). This is the Encounter phase.

Other Resources and Other Characters

Assume, for purposes of narration, that you have access to any material resources that you could reasonably expect to have as a young noble in the storygame setting.

Most of the time, unless you draw the attention of the authorities, you are left to get on with things with minimal interference, and have minimal interaction with people outside your “circle” (that is, the other avatars involved in this game). If the appearance of a character other than the avatars is required in a scene, any player may introduce him or her in narration. If the interaction calls for it, a player not otherwise involved may volunteer to temporarily play the character.

Non-avatar characters may not be wooed, since their relationship to the avatars is left deliberately vague, and challenges against them should usually be treated as unopposed for the same reason.

Relationships

Each avatar has a web of relationships with other avatars, including allegiance to one or more of the groups in the City.

As well as one court card, each player is dealt as many non-court cards as possible given the number of players in the game (an ace counts as a non-court card; aces are low). Each player assigns these on a prepared sheet to the other avatars in the game and to the four major factions (Commissioners of Masks, Sun Temple, Moon Temple, Personalist underground) to represent the strength and type of relationship they have with that person or group. There will probably not be enough cards to cover all of these, so once all the cards are assigned and have been noted down, they are reshuffled and dealt again, as often as necessary until all relationships and allegiances have been assigned. This will probably give you some choices in the last round, because you will not need to assign all your cards.

You don’t know initially what other people’s relationships and allegiances are; you have to find this out through gameplay, either by inference or by getting them to tell you.

The denomination of the card indicates the initial strength of the relationship: A: mild liking or dislike, 10: obsessive devotion or hatred. The strength and direction of relationships can be changed in play as described below.

The suit of the card represents the type of relationship (love/loyalty or hatred/antipathy) and how fickle or enduring it will be, as follows:

Suit	Type of relationship	Permanence
Hearts	Love/loyalty	Fickle
Diamonds	Love/loyalty	Enduring
Clubs	Hatred/antipathy	Fickle
Spades	Hatred/antipathy	Enduring

“Fickle” means that when actions occur which change the relationship towards zero, it changes immediately, while “enduring” means you have to build up the full number of points against the relationship that would take it to zero, and then it changes abruptly.

For purposes of adding and subtracting, count loving/loyal relationships as running from +1 (red ace) to +10 (red 10) and hating/antipathetic relationships as running from −1 (black ace) to −10 (black 10).

Encounters

There are two kinds of encounters: those which concentrate upon changing the relationship, and those which do so as a side effect and have as their main focus the gaining of Face by defeating an opponent in some way. The former are referred to as wooing, the latter as challenges.

Challenges

Challenges need not be physical challenges (although they can be). They can be duels of wits, chess games, insult contests, artistic performances, library research, public speaking - anything that your avatar could potentially fail at, whether directed against another avatar or not, is a challenge.

A challenge consists of:

1. Naming the proper action(s) of your mask which you are bringing into play, and any other actions you are performing (including Hidden Face actions).
2. If challenging another player, agreeing on stakes and counterstakes (see below). You may have to call on your allies to help you cover your stakes.
3. The contest resolution, using dominoes.
4. Narration of the loss by the loser and the win by the winner. (i.e. each player narrates his/her own avatar’s actions and feelings), including whatever outcome was included in the agreed stakes.
5. Paying of the stakes or rewards, if any, in Face.
6. Distribution of the winnings, if allies assisted you.

There are unopposed challenges and opposed challenges.

An unopposed challenge (one which does not involve another avatar) works as follows:

The player names the action(s) his/her avatar will attempt. These can be proper actions, Hidden Face actions and/or other actions.

Refer to the face values for the avatar’s current mask for the proper actions, and to the Hidden Face section of the relationship tracking sheet for the face values of the Hidden Face actions. For all other actions, the face value is 0.

The player can also invest up to a total of 3 points of Face or Hidden Face to boost his or her chances, so even with a base ability of 0, the avatar has a chance to succeed. The number of Face points invested may not exceed the face value of the proper actions being attempted, and the number of Hidden Face points may not exceed the face value of the Hidden Face actions being attempted.

The player draws one domino, holding it by one end.

The held end is the inner court. The other end is the outer court.

The avatar succeeds at all the tasks for which the number of pips in the inner court, minus the number of points of Face/Hidden Face invested, is less than or equal to the face value of the action (blanks count as 7 pips). For succeeding, the avatar gains Face for proper actions, and Hidden Face for Hidden Face actions, equal to the total of the face values for all the actions in which he or she has succeeded. Actions ommitted from narration do not confer points.

Points won come from the central pool. Invested points which are lost go back to the central pool.

An opposed challenge is resolved by each party to the challenge drawing a domino and turning it face up with one end pointing at the other player, holding onto the other end. Lay the dominoes next to each other, keeping track of which belongs to which player. The player with the higher domino total (inner and outer courts, plus invested Face) is the winner. Ties go to the challenger.

Either or both parties to an opposed challenge may choose to modify their relationship with the other, in either direction, up to the number of pips in the opponent’s outer court (counting blanks as sevens). The change should be consistent with the narration and with the avatar’s nature. For example, an avatar being played as mean-spirited would be negatively affected by losing a fair fight, but one with a generous nature might regard the opponent with more respect as a result of the fight.

Both players must narrate (in accordance with the outcomes as per unopposed challenges) their own actions and how they led to the win/loss outcome.

You start with your chance of success (or failure) as per unopposed challenges, and can invest Face or Hidden Face to improve chances in the same way. Lost Face goes to the opponent; lost Hidden Face goes to the central pool.

Wooing

Different actions move the relationships in either the positive or negative direction, for oneself or others. This can be literal wooing in the romantic sense, or seeking alliance/toadying.

The aim of the person initiating is always assumed to be to move the relationship in a positive direction - nobody sets out to make someone dislike them. However, they may fail.

The wooer plays out an opposed or unopposed challenge, first declaring his or her intent to use this to woo one or more other avatars or factions.

The player of each avatar being wooed decides whether the success or failure affects his or her avatar’s relationship with the wooer, and in which direction (positive or negative), based on the roleplaying. It can be affected by a number up to the total number of pips in the domino’s outer court (counting blanks as 7). The wooed player may keep the effect secret.

The wooed player may also allocate Face to the wooer, up to the total in the outer court. This Face is not given to the wooer but is made available for the wooer to call on in future conflicts. Both players should note the amount of Face made available on the relationship tracking sheet.

The wooed player may not allocate Face that he or she does not possess. That is, if he or she currently has only 4 Face, even if the domino’s outer court shows a 6, the wooed player may only allocate 4.

The wooed player may allocate the same Face to multiple wooers. This is resolved at challenge time as described below.

The wooed player may not allocate Hidden Face.

Note that the response of the wooed player is not mechanically determined in any way by whether the wooer succeeded or failed in his or her task, but should be determined by the wooed avatar’s imagined personality and existing relationship with the wooer. Nor is there any necessary relationship between the amount of the effect on the relationship and the amount of Face assigned, but generally they should be similar.

Other onlookers who are present at any challenge, opposed or unopposed, and who already have strong relationships (greater than 5) with a participant in the challenge may act as if they were being wooed, even if this is not the declared intent of the participant(s).

Stakes

Stakes are both the amount of Face at stake in a contest and also the narrative outcomes. The players discuss, out of character, what the narrative outcomes (loss/gain) will be for the contest and also what the stakes in terms of Face are. Staking a lot of Face means the outcomes will be major. Effectively you are bidding for the seriousness of the consequences.

Narrative outcome stakes should strive to create two interesting possibilities, from both of which the action can move forward, but one of which favours one avatar’s interests and the other of which favours the other.

If one player is unable to exercise sufficient Influence (see below) to cover the Face the opposing player is risking, there are a couple of options:

1. Backdown. The player with insufficient Influence yields to the other and accepts the narrative of loss for his or her avatar.
2. Desperate Attack. The player with insufficient Influence gambles all on winning the confrontation. If he or she loses and has insufficient Face to cover the Face stakes, his or her avatar becomes “beholden” to the winner’s avatar and must accept his or her orders until such point as the Face debt is paid off.

Hidden Face may not be used as stakes.

Influence

Influence is the total Face an avatar can call upon through his or her relationships and allegiance.

If you don’t have enough Face to cover your opponent’s stake, you can call on your allies for assistance. Your relationship with your allies, developed through wooing, gives you access to an agreed amount of their Face. They are then said to “lend their face” to the course of action. They can increase this up to the maximum of their relationship with you if they see you doing something they particularly approve of, or decrease it if they disapprove, so you have to stay on their good side (bearing in mind the proper actions of their masks).

It costs you 1 Face, paid to your ally, to solicit each direct ally to lend his or her Face.

You can also call on your allies’ allies and so forth. Each link further back in the relationship chain costs you more Face, because your ally must pay his or her ally 1 Face also, so you are paying 1 Face for a direct ally, 2 for an ally’s ally, etc. This is also a divisor for the amount of Face you get, i.e. if person A has a relationship with you, person B has a relationship with her of value 10 and commits the whole 10 on A’s word, you actually only get 5. (Round fractions down.)

The amount of Face A asks for from B may be no more than A’s relationship with you. The amount you actually get is the amount B commits, divided by the number of links from you to B (in this example, 2).

As you build relationships, the amount of “influence” (total Face as above) that you can call on increases.

You can’t use influence directly when wooing, but the amount of influence you are known to have should incline or disincline people to ally with you.

Lending Face is requested and accepted by formal gestures. A hand gracefully turned upwards asks: “Will you lend your Face?” A graceful inclination of the head, as if bowing, indicates “yes”; the amount offered is signaled with the fingers, palm down, just above the table.

The signal for “No, I will not lend my Face” is turning the face away. Refusing to lend face is liable to damage the other person’s opinion of you (worsen the relationship from their side).

You may not lend your Face to both sides of an opposed challenge, even if you have relationships with both parties.

Anyone who lends Face in a challenge is expected to narrate briefly how their avatar supports the avatar performing the challenge. Hence, normally your avatar must be in the same place as the other avatar in order to lend Face. A messenger may be dispatched to fetch support, but if the other party to the challenge presses the issue, the messenger may not get back with the support before the challenge begins.

Side bets are permitted by players whose avatars are present at the challenge. Signals for side bets: slide Face tokens towards another non-involved player, bow indicating the player you are betting on; the other player slides forward Face in response, less or more - bets must be equal in both directions, so you can increase or reduce as others bet until the two sides are equal.

When you win Face by borrowing Face from someone else, you are expected to repay it with interest; this will increase their opinion of you and make them more likely to lend their Face in the future.

You can betray them and hold onto all the Face for yourself. This is likely to break the alliance.

If you lose the Face you have borrowed, their relationship with you will worsen by up to the amount of Face they have lost (player’s choice). If you repay the Face, their relationship with you will improve by up to the amount you pay them above what they lent you.

Hidden Face may not be lent or used in side bets.

Allegiance

Allegiance is a special case of relationship - it is not to another avatar, but to one of the factions in the city.

The factions are impressed only by results and directly in proportion to those results. The same rules as for challenges and wooing apply, but with no player choice, as the factions are not played by any player. So if you succeed in an action aimed at wooing the Moon Temple (which must be something the Moon Temple would approve of and would be aware of), the Moon Temple commits Face to you equal to the total in your outer court (blank = 7). Its relationship with you (which is assumed to start at 0 unless otherwise specified in your current mask’s description) is improved by the same amount.

If you fail, however, the faction will reduce the amount of Face committed to you, and its relationship with you will worsen, by the total in your outer court. Once the Face committed to you reaches 0 it will go no lower, but relationships can worsen down to −10.

Face committed to you by a faction is then available as part of your web of influence. Again, the full amount is always available, providing that the challenge you are attempting is something which the faction would approve of. The following modifiers apply:

• If your challenge is directed against another faction, but not the opposed faction, add 1. (See table below.)
• If it is directed against the opposed faction, add 2.
• Per proper action of the faction which you include, add 1.
• Per proper action of the faction which you breach, subtract 1.
• Further modifiers as below.

Faction	Opposed Faction	Further Modifiers	Proper Actions
Sun Temple	Moon Temple	+1 if your avatar is male	Actions promoting the masculine; physically bold, intimidatory or coercive actions; actions involving wealth.
Moon Temple	Sun Temple	+1 if your avatar is female	Actions promoting the feminine; hidden, subtle or secret actions; actions involving pleasure.
Commission of Masks	Personalists	+1 per character mask you possess	Actions reinforcing the masking conventions, other than adhering to the proper actions of your mask.
Personalists	Commission of Masks	+1 per proper action of your mask you are breaching	Actions undermining the masking conventions, other than breaching the proper actions of your mask.

As with Face lent by other avatars, repaying with interest will improve the relationship by the amount of the interest, while loss of Face will worsen the relationship by that number of points.

Alienation

If your Hidden Face exceeds your Face by more than 3 points at the end of any scene, you are at risk of Alienation. Draw a domino, adding 1 point to the inner court for every point above 3 that your Hidden Face exceeds your Face. So, for example, if your Hidden Face is 8 and your Face is 3, the difference is 5 and you need to add 2 points to the inner court.

If the inner court, adjusted as above, has a total greater than the outer court (blanks counting as 7), you are Alienated and you must add the total number of pips in the inner court to your relationship with the Personalist Underground and subtract the same number from your relationship to the Commissioners of Masks.

Becoming Unmasked

If you breach the proper actions of your mask, by omission or commission, you are Unmasked and any citizen who has observed this (and has a negative relationship with you) may denounce you to the authorities, who will arrest you if they can. Treat their attempts to arrest you as opposed challenges, with another player drawing on behalf of the authorities. You will then receive a somewhat perfunctory trial before the Commissioners of Masks, unless you can summon enough Influence with the Commissioners to get off. Treat this also as an opposed challenge in a similar way. Otherwise, when convicted, you will be punished by public flogging and lose all of your Face. However, you retain your Hidden Face.

Ending the Game

There is no inherent reason why you can’t just stop the game at an interesting point or predetermined time, pick it up again at a later time, and keep playing until interest flags and you want to move on to something else. But if you prefer to have some kind of victory condition, here are some suggestions:

• Play until someone has 20 (or 25, or 30) Face. (Decide whether or not to include Hidden Face.)
• Play up to a climactic confrontation between two of the factions, with everyone involved on one side or the other.
• Write down secret goals at the beginning of the game, expressed in terms of amount of Face, amount of influence, specific achievements which will require a lot of buildup, etc. When someone achieves their goal, the game ends. (To make it fairer, you could each write one or two goals on a small card, such as the back of an old business card, and draw them randomly, so that people couldn’t set themselves goals that were too easy.)

‹ Storygame Setting | COM Storygame Index | Power 19 for City of Masks ›

ABANDONED IDEAS DUMP:

Moon Face/Sun Face? Different coloured tokens (white/gold for preference), gained by different kinds of use of mask. Also perhaps Moon Relationship/Sun Relationship. Moon is feminine, hidden, manipulative, subtle, secret, illegal or uses pleasure; Sun is masculine, open, intimidatory, coercive or uses wealth or generosity. Both can be positive; helping someone secretly is Moon, helping them openly is Sun.

How is relationship increased/reduced? By actions taken in Character. But can we make this numeric? You increase it by doing proper actions which gain you Sun Face, and lose it by actions which gain Moon Face?

Relationship shown by dominoes - strength/balance of the relationship. Perhaps 9-pip dominoes with blanks, so relationship can go from 0–9 on both sides.

OR: relationship given by drawing cards (A-10 only) and assigning them, player choice, to the other avatars in the game, the major groups, and their own parents. Avatars are young people who have been somewhat sheltered and are just emerging into society and the Game of Masks.

The denomination of the card indicates the initial strength of the relationship: A: mild liking or dislike, 10: obsessively devoted or obsessive hatred. Anything above 5 you must act upon? Or, you must act upon your current strongest relationship in any given turn, and any other relationships which come up in the course of that turn? Secret orders written in advance?

Drive to even up unbalanced relationships (e.g. unrequited love)?

How to determine which kind of relationship - love, hate etc.? How to determine whether it changes or not (firmly-held devotion or hatred vs. fickleness?) Some kind of character quality (part of the person rather than the mask)?

Hearts: Love/loyalty, fickle. Diamonds: Love/loyalty, enduring. Clubs: Hatred/antipathy, fickle. Spades: H/a, enduring.

“Fickle” means you can reduce them a point at a time, “enduring” means you have to build up the full number of points against them and then they change abruptly.

Different proper actions should move the relationships in either the positive or negative direction, for oneself or others.

Ways to use relationships so that you get Face (or some other benefit) for the number of pips on the opposite side?

You don’t know initially what other people’s relationships and allegiances are, you have to find this out through gameplay.

Influence is your allegiance (to the relevant group) plus your Face? (Counting what you have spent on masks?)

Masks are face cards, perhaps plus jokers. Gives 12–14 masks. Suit determines their primary direction of effect (Hearts = Sun, Clubs = Moon, Diamonds = Commissioners of Masks/Social, Spades = Royal Council/Legal?) You can use Face to make them have a different direction? Don’t like this idea much.

Can dominoes and/or dice come into this? Definitely should use dominoes for the pun if nothing else.

Dominoes perh indicate the number of points of consequence of an action towards the target and towards you? How to determine which direction? Success/failure? What does that look like?

Assume you are the challenger. The comparison of the two ends of the domino you played determines whether you have a “sun win” (end closer to you is larger), a “sun loss” (end further from you is larger) or a “sun draw”, i.e. whether your attempted overt action is successful, unsuccessful or neither (????), and by what margin. The highest possible margin is 6 (6 pips on your end, a blank on the far end). You get Sun Face equal to the margin of victory or lose Sun Face equal to the margin of defeat.

The comparison of the ends of the two dominoes facing you determines whether you have a “moon win” (your domino half is larger than the domino half your opponent is pointing at you), a “moon loss” or a “moon draw”, that is, whether your attempted covert action is successful, unsuccessful or neither (????), and by what margin. You get Moon Face equal to the margin of victory or lose Moon Face equal to the margin of defeat.

The comparison of the two ends of the domino your opponent played determines their effect on you in the encounter. If the end closer to you has a higher number, the effect on your relationship with the opponent is to move it in the positive direction by the number of points of difference. If it is lower, it moves the relationship in the negative direction by the number of points of difference. [Flip polarity with equal strength if equal????]

The comparison of the ends of the two dominoes facing your opponent determines your effect on them. If your far domino half is larger than the opponent’s near domino half, the effect is positive, if smaller, negative.

Narrate the outcome accordingly.

[EXAMPLE GOES HERE]

ALTERNATIVE VERSION: You have dominoes face-down on the table in front of you. You and your opponent each pick one up, by one end, point them at each other and flip them over to reveal the pips.

The end you are holding is your inner court. The other end of your domino is your outer court. Your opponent’s inner court is your far court and your opponent’s outer court is your side court.

Compare your inner court with:

1. Your outer court. This is your Active move (attack).
2. Your side court. This is your Reactive move (defense).
3. Your far court. This is your Interactive move (influences relationship).

There could be other comparisons, of course.

The comparison could take (at least) three forms:

1. Win/lose/draw. (Are the inner court pips more, fewer, or equal in number to the court it is being compared with?)
2. Margin of victory/defeat.
3. Total pips (this isn’t actually a comparison, it’s adding the two courts together). You could take these as a positive number, or you could take it as positive if the inner court is higher or equal, negative if it is lower.

[Bounce: Does the relationship, when it reaches zero, switch polarity? Perhaps in the case of Domino doubles?]

---

The City of Masks is a fictional setting and is copyright © 1997–2006 Mike Reeves-McMillan.