Power 19 for City of Masks

(The source for the Power 19(approve sites)).

1.) What is your game about?

Court intrigue (alliance and competition) among nobles and the major factions of the City of Masks, and the internal struggle for identity faced by young people in general and young people in highly structured societies in particular.

2.) What do the characters do?

They use the masks they possess, and the proper actions of those masks, to build alliances among themselves and gain advantage in the factional politics. In the course of so doing their relationships with one another and with the factions change. They also experience conflict between their masks and their underlying personalities.

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?

The players use alliances and rivalries and the proper actions of the masks their characters possess to gain a currency called “Face” which reflects their standing in the game.

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

The setting is a highly stylized one in which the distinction between the mask and the wearer is denied. Who you mask as is who you are. It is a society based on the competition of factions and the intrigues of nobility, played out through what they refer to as “The Game of Masks”. However, there is an explicit mechanic that undermines the setting’s orthodoxy by requiring the mask and the wearer to have conflicting aspects.

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

Relationships (their initial strength and direction) are explicitly part of character/avatar creation, as are the masks the avatars possess. Your avatar starts the game with positive and negative relationships with other avatars.

The avatar must also have a “Hidden Face” which conflicts, in part, with his or her mask.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?

Rewarded: Alliances and efforts to build relationship. (Either loyalty to one of the factions and/or to one another.)
Also rewarded: Rivalry (fighting each other) and fighting for or against the factions.
Also rewarded: Roleplaying which appeals to the other players.

7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?

Alliance gives you temporary access to some of your ally’s Face to use for your purposes (if your ally agrees).
Betrayal enables you to take some of your erstwhile ally’s Face permanently.
Fighting and rivalry, if you are successful, build up your Face by taking it from others. If you are unsuccessful, interesting things happen.
If you roleplay appealingly, other players will make some of their resources available to you for use in contests.

8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

Everyone narrates their own avatar’s actions, successful and unsuccessful.

9.) What does your game do to command the players’ attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

It offers both competitive and collaborative strategies, and in order to win you must both collaborate and compete.

It has enough variation in tactics (different masks) that there are several ways to achieve each goal.

It sets up both external and internal conflicts, and these drive the gameplay.

10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

They involve dominoes matched to each other and to the capabilities of the masks. There is also “player choice” in the success of efforts to build relationship (i.e. there is a pull as well as a push dynamic).

11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

You can use Face to boost your domino throw.
You can use some of your ally’s Face to cover an opponent’s stakes.
You win Face proportionate to the other end of the domino.
Some of the Face you win goes to your ally.
Hidden Face helps you earn additional masks and so more narrative control.

12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

They gain more Face and their relationships strengthen, weaken and change (from love to hate, etc.), and they can gain more masks by exchanging Hidden Face for them.

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

Advancement is achieved by allying and by competing.
Playing out Hidden Face is the only way to get more masks, and this gives the character greater priority in narration.

14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

An experience of living in the logic of the City of Masks for a while.

Enjoyment of both competition and collaboration.

Reflection on the value of both competition and collaboration in achieving goals.

15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

The mask descriptions, because they give atmosphere and help the roleplaying.

The factions, to encourage people to be aware of them.

I am advised that a map would be good for atmosphere/colour; since the first action of each round is to set a scene in some part of the city, this seems like good advice.

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

The relationship dynamic - by making it part of the game mechanic it foregrounds the importance of relationships and alliances in the setting.

The Mask versus Hidden Face dynamic - internal conflict built right in.

17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?

It gives them a safe, “putting on a mask” place to explore their desire to dominate, manipulate and backstab other people.
It gives them alternative strategies which must both be used to reach an end state.
It offers both internal and external conflict, simultaneously.

18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?

To include it with the City of Masks novel to introduce novel readers to storygames and storygame players to the novel.

19.) Who is your target audience?

a) People who enjoy the novel and want to explore the setting using the storygame.
b) Storygamers who will enjoy the novel more for having played the game.

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