This is my shortest-possible page of advice for folks running *Masks* for the first time. # Aesthetics “Superheroes” is a *really big* tent. So you’ve gotta pitch more than just “superheroes”. You’ve gotta pitch an aesthetic. That *can* be “wacky anything-goes mishmash!” or it can be “Like *Justice League: Dark* with spooky supernatural powers and issues” or “Think *Star Girl* meets *Runaways*” or “It’s *Invincible*, just, straight up” or “it’s everyday stuff like Matt Fraction’s run of *Hawkeye*.” So pitch a thing, make a collaborative mood board, use a want/will/won’t board. Use a published *Masks* Playset, or do world-backstory generation with a game like Microscope before you make characters. Just, get folks on board with what *kind* of superheroes we’re talking. # Powers Characters have superpowers, and the game prompts and shapes what they can be. But it’s vital to remember to ask the players, during character creation, about where those powers came from, and even more importantly, what constraints exist on them. Sometimes the answer might be “I dunno, I just kinda have this power”, but then you can ask “OK, so how did you first find out? Who was there?” etc. # Moves There are *a lot*! Breaking them into sections helps: basic, playbook, influence, team. In session one, you want to ensure everyone gets to use a move or two, each basic move gets used, a few playbook moves are used, and there’s at least one moment of someone telling someone Who They Are and How the World Works. Team moves… well, the only one you need in session one is “when you go into a fight”. The vulnerability and celebration and stuff team moves can be in later sessions. Tell people “There are a lot of moves. Let’s start by checking out the basic moves, and I’ll help you bring in more as we play.” A great way to make this happen is to open with a fight, with a throwaway villain, followed by downbeats about the team and the people affected by the fight. # Supporting characters There are a number of different kinds of supporting characters. Include some peers, some rivals, some kids who look up to the heroes, some kids who the heroes want to help, authority figures of all sorts (parents/guardians, mentors, corporate execs, news media folks, government officials…) And then there are villains. You will make a lot of these, and the rules for making them in the book are solid. Know that many villains are throwaway, one-use. You won’t always know which these are when you make them, but it’s also *OK*. A villain in comics is often there for one issue, until a later writer picks them up and reimagines them, right? So let the recurring ones emerge naturally based on which ones the players respond to. (By the way, one of the failure modes I’ve seen in *Masks* was a game where there weren’t villains, just rival superpowered classmates. There weren’t big-V villains. This game *really* benefits from supervillains, albeit ones with understandable motivations, but nonetheless, ones who are *doing a bad thing*.) # Arcs and Hooks They’re good! But don’t think about them until after session one. Arcs are hard, and I don’t think the book describes them quite well enough. I think of them as this: “if the heroes do nothing, this is the villain’s trajectory”; know that you’ll not have half of them happen, but they’ll inform what does (“prep to improv” as it were) and they serve as a threat over the PCs if they’re inept or unwilling. Hooks work for me as-is, but having a hook sheet helps. I have a design for them that I think improves a little over the one in the GM sheets that come with the game, I’ll make it and post it. # Playbooks I always omit Soldier, Innocent, Joined. They deeply don’t work for me, for reasons I can get into. Every other playbook is good, but I do encourage folks who’ve never played before to stick with the basic set; the others actually get in the way of your understanding the basic rules at the outset.