In March 2022 we presented the new Masks Bundle, featuring Masks: A New Generation, Brendan Conway’s RPG of young superheroes from Magpie Games. For most of a century Halcyon City has seen every kind of superhero, villain, and team. Masks: A New Generation lets you join the latest wave of superhumans, young adults trying to figure out who they are and what kind of heroes they want to be. Masks creatively adapts the Apocalypse Engine rules for stories full of action, youthful angst, and dazzling bravery in the vein of Young Justice and Teen Titans. The up-and-coming supers of Halcyon’s fourth generation balance schoolwork, social life, and a world full of people telling them what to do and who to be — and kick some butt along the way.
“Masks is kind of like Apocalypse World had a baby with Smallville,” Rob Wieland wrote in a September 2016 RPG.net forum post. “The playbooks are based more on teen hero concepts than power suites (though there’s a little bit of both there). It’s more important to figure out who plays the Starfire-style outsider or the Spidey-style kid balancing being a hero and a regular teenager.
“Stats are the different ways teenagers perceive themselves, and they shift up or down on a regular basis. Ask a boy out to prom and he shoots you down? Your Mundane goes down and your Freak goes up. Save a bus full of regular kids? Your Savior might go up and your Danger goes down as you learn to use your powers for good. Adults can cause your labels to shift without your say-so, so you can either go along with what they say or try to fight it off, but that’s what gets your character conditions. Rather than harm, you get emotional conditions like Angry or Afraid that hinder your moves until you make a move to remove them — which usually is doing something stupid a teenager would do, like lash out at a friend or make out with someone bad for you. I think it’s a great Apocalypse World riff and a fun take on the teen supers genre.”
This new offer presented the entire Masks line (retail value $55) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the Masks: A New Generation core rulebook (plus the Masks Phone Edition) along with all three supplements: Unbound, Halcyon City Herald Collection, and Secrets of AEGIS.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this Masks offer’s pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
