I ran Masks of the Mummy Kings by Nathan D. Paoletta on the weekend; it was my first time playing or running this RPG which was published in 2015. It worked perfectly as a zero-prep one-shot, but I am unsure about the distribution of authorities.
MotMK is a fun, light, storytelling game. Players play nameless rogues who warily team up to rob the haunted tomb of the Zodiac Emperor. Rogues wear masks to hide their identity.
You make your character sheet by choosing two half masks (half sheets of letter or A4 paper). Each half-mask — Thief, Ox, Scoundrel, Monkey Scarab… — has some flavour text, stats and abilities on it. And you might find more powerful half-masks in the tomb, and may choose to put them on instead! The Faceless, The Mystic, The Ibis,…
The game extremely easy to run with zero prep. Character players are encouraged and empowered to contribute to the descriptions of rooms, monsters, situations. It’s primarily a storytelling game with little to no tactical component.
A simple token economy manages the success of PCs actions, leaving players free too narrate just about anything they want.
My players were of the dramatic Critical Role of sort, they really dug in and enjoyed contributing to the fictional world and the situation. A very fun time was had by all.
BUT.
I’m not sure if there’s a clear division of authorities between character players and GM. It seems like both are free to describe the situation, monsters and NPCs. Outcome authority clearly belongs to the GM. But narration authority, I don’t think is clearly assigned.
Was there murk?
I did have some problems towards the end of the session, but not related to Murk I think, when players wanted to backtrack, and then split the party. The game’s simple structure very clearly works one room at a time.
So my quandary is, there is no clear division of authorities, but in play the game functioned just fine. Perhaps because the players were excellent. Everyone respected the established fiction, listened to each other’s contributions, and reincorporated.
20 responses to “The Masked RPG”
It’s a little hard to tell from the description, but I’m not seeing any outright confusion, regarding authorities. Without going into a tedious interrogation about the details, I want to stress that play is the topic, not texts. If a text is vague about something, there might be enough clarity in everything else so that the group merely fills in the vague spot with some functional arrangement, or in ordinary language, the rule. The same thing applies if, perhaps, the text is clear but the people’s reading isn’t, so they do the same thing.
So – at the risk of circularity – if there wasn’t any confusion about where play was occurring, what was present, what it was like, or what might be happening … if people could continue to talk, and to understand and apply what they heard … then I’d presume that in practice the authorites’ arrangement during that time was operating fine.
Let me try to say the same thing a little differently. When you say “both are free to describe [the various things],” you’re not saying there was some collision of description, right? That one person said it was a demonic yak and another said it was a green gorilla? Again, based on a little guessing or interpretation, I’m pretty sure you’re saying otherwise: that there wasn’t any such moment of cross-talk and contradiction or, I think, extended negotiation about what the creature was. Instead, at this moment of play, people knew, or arrived at, some means of knowing that you say X and this other person says Y.
I’m interested in various details of play and I could follow up especially regarding that very intriguing feature of outcome authority, but for now, this larger topic is more important. Do my attempts above make any sense?
Hello John,
I’m curious as well like Ron to have more details from your experience in play.
In particular, I’d be interested to hear more about the following point you’ve made:
“I’m not sure if there’s a clear division of authorities between character players and GM. It seems like both are free to describe the situation, monsters and NPCs. Outcome authority clearly belongs to the GM. But narration authority, I don’t think is clearly assigned.”
Can you report a moment in play where everyone had difficulties in establishing a fact in fiction? If so, how did you overcome this difficulty and manage such blurry division of authorities?
That’s what I’m unclear about in the first place. From what I can tell, there wasn’t any difficulty. If that’s correct, then there was no confusion to repair, and, well, “nothing to see here” (in a good way).
Hey John. I’m curious about the same matter of authorities that others are asking questions about. I don’t know the system. Is it prescriptive about who owns or doesn’t own narrative authority in the text of it? Or is the issue that it’s not and you envision it could have created an issue? Either way, you seem to not have had an issue in practice and this does make me want to discover the game at some point.
Hi folks (replying to Ron, LordPersi and Denis deG),
I guess there wasn’t, in play, any collisions of descriptions or confusion over who could describe a thing. But I think that’s because the turn-taking was pretty clear. On one’s turn, while describing one’s character’s actions, one can describe new features of the obstacle (monster, trap, spell, etc.) or room. The GM, when they respond, “yes-and”s that description, and describes the outcome(s) of that action and what the obstacle does next.
I’ll get into the mechanics a little bit. On a character player’s turn, if that player has Action tokens, they can spend a token and describe taking effective action, e.g. stabbing the monster or exposing a trap’s mechanisms. On the other hand, if they don’t have an Action token, they can describe their chr “slipping and struggling, mystified or defeated”, and in doing so they *get* an Action token. (There are two other action types as well: helping, and being lucky, each corresponding to a token transaction.) There’s a bit more to it, but this is the foundation.
So the token economy paces the conflict, and signals the outcome of each action by the PCs. The GM has outcome authority, but outcomes are pretty much controlled by the token transactions.
On a player’s turn, that player has narrative authority for (may describe) the room and everything in it besides the other PCs. When the GM responds to a player’s turn, *they* (the GM) have authority for the room and everything in it besides the PCs. So it’s a bit of a talking-stick situation. Authorities don’t collide because they are passed back and forth.
I’m remembering from the People and Play course that talking-stick play is supposed to be problematic. Or maybe the talking-stick thing was an example of people failing to listen to and reincorporate each others’ contributions (which is certainly problematic).
So, to be clear, the game’s mechanics worked very well in play, we took turns adding details to the fictional rooms and obstacles, without any negation or confusion, while the token economy managed the success/failure of the PCs.
Let me know if you want more details of the game’s mechanics, or anything else.
Thanks! I want to stay pretty focused on your topic, and I’ll need your help with that because these discussions have a way of scattering into all sorts of little system things.
Focusing and drilling: the term “narrative authority” is an internet abomination which disrupts sensible talk about how play works. I’ve never used that term and there is no such thing. Please trust me that I’m not merely being pedantic and semantic.
The core point of authorities is that they are specific both to people and to components of the fiction. I can say what this sword is like and where it is, you can say whether you take this sword and strap it on, and neither of us can override the other. Each of us can ask about the other’s job and expect an answer (“is the sword heavy,” “do you do anything with the sword”).
Therefore: the sword’s presence during a sequence of play is a composite of people saying things about it, each according to their individual jobs at that time. To repeat: for the sword to be present in play, two or more persons’ inputs regarding subsets of content intersect. That’s why we should not be speaking of “who has the authority” as if a person has all of it for everything in that moment of play. [Footnote: this is the talking-stick problem; it’s also the mistake that people bring in every time “narrative authority” is mentioned.]
This might become complicated a bit because the authorities get rearranged across persons according to which type of content is involved (backstory, situation, outcome, narration [of outcomes]). Let’s not permit this fact to confuse us. Let’s stay with just one of them, the one you mentioned.
All that said … I think I have a better idea of your play-experience now. There is no talking-stick in what you’re describing about situation in play, in this case, a scene (“room”). The situation includes the player-characters; therefore, if person A describes the room and what’s in it, they still can’t say what any of the other people’s player-characters do. Other people have to say that. As play continues, i.e., entities played by various people do things, the situation proceeds specifically because more than one person is putting in content.
Maybe the shift from person A to person B for the next room, i.e., different people handling that “room” content, is throwing you a little. That happens if a person isn’t used to it, or maybe they’ve internalized that whoever does that is suppposed to do a lot of other things too, or even, unfortunately, a person may associate it with a curator role over play in general.
But really, it’s not anything except itself. It’s only describing the room and specifying whatever challenges and dangers it may contain, and, after all, someone has to do that. It may be Bob then Anne then Joey then you, or maybe it’s just Bob every time. That’s not a big deal; its current construction is a rule and it has properties, but the various versions are not profoundly different regarding play as such. And in each case, the situation develops (“play happens”) because different people continue to provide input from the standpoint of their various situational jobs.
Hey Ron.
I was very surprised by this comment: “the term “narrative authority” is an internet abomination which disrupts sensible talk about how play works.”
Do you have a video or a text where you talk about that?
I can’t reconcile the comment with the fact that some games are very specific (and view it as important) to state who between the player and the DM gets to narrate what and when. [For example, the name escapes me, but I have played a game before where the player gets and has to narrate a successful outcome of an action, and the DM has little say — and vice versa in a failure.]
Are you saying this type of mechanics is a bad idea? (I won’t argue the other side of that by the way…) And/or that “narrative authority” is a bad concept to describe them?
Thanks in advance!
Hey Denis, I think that’s what Ron was referring to with “Narration [of outcomes] Authority” (Narration, not Narrative — it’s important!).
What happens usually in games like the Pool that have explicit procedures for giving this authority to someone is that if you don’t have a clear understanding of the difference between Narration [of outcomes] and Backstory, you might end up in situations like this one (really happened to me) when a MoV is chosen.
We’re rolling to see if the guy’s character manages to sneak into a hidden base. The guy wins the roll and grabs MoV. He starts describing the inside of the base, who’s there, where the character he was looking for is, the position of guards, etc … way beyond what would be “friendly trespassing” into the GM’s authority.
When I tell him — no, you can keep narrating, but you need to ask me questions about the layout of the base and who’s there, he just froze up and thought I was taking narration away from him. Then he complained about me being a “traditional GM” and “railroading him”.
This player had been taught under the “narrative authority” mindset where if you can speak you can say anything. After a couple of sessions of painful play the player finally “got it” and play started being functional again.
*Into the GM’s authority on Backstory
Thanks Claudio. If that’s the case, this is a subtle difference. But I do see it now. Thanks for explaining!
It really shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
However, when players are used to making use or being subject to control techniques, they will have a lot of trouble understanding these notions.
See Ron’s post here: https://adeptplay.com/2022/11/26/inover/
I’d like to stay focused in this conversation on John’s experience.
Dear John, let’s go back to Ron’s words for a second.
“But really, it’s not anything except itself. It’s only describing the room and specifying whatever challenges and dangers it may contain, and, after all, someone has to do that. It may be Bob then Anne then Joey then you, or maybe it’s just Bob every time. That’s not a big deal; its current construction is a rule and it has properties, but the various versions are not profoundly different regarding play as such. And in each case, the situation develops (“play happens”) because different people continue to provide input from the standpoint of their various situational jobs.”
Was the fact that this sort exchange between authorities in play wasn’t explicitly modelled/explained in the game’s procedures that created your perceived difficulty? Or was something else? Am I off target or on point?
Hi folks, replying to all again. Thanks for your thoughts and explanations so far.
I think I didn’t explain something clearly before. Ron said, referring to the job of describing the room and threat:
“Maybe the shift from person A to person B for the NEXT ROOM, i.e., different people handling that “room” content, is throwing you a little.”
(Emphasis mine.)
In fact, the job shifts around and around with the spotlight, within the same room. I’ll give an example:
GM: A square room with a well in the centre, and bas relief carvings on the walls. A giant scarab beetle climbs up out of the well. It’s coming towards you, mandibles clicking. Ahmed, what do you do?
Ahmed: There are runes inscribed around the rim of the well. I try to get around the beetle to read the runes, and learn what sorcery animates it. (Ahmed spends a token.)
GM: You learn that the ghost of a labourer who built this tomb is trapped within the beetle’s exoskeleton, and is compelled to attack any who enter. The beetle’s clicking sounds hollow, as if its chitinous shell is empty. It turns towards Ahmed and backs him into a corner. Betty, what do you do?
Betty: Through the gaps in the beetle’s shell, I can see the ghost glowing inside. I leap onto the beetle’s back and try to jam my holy symbol between the plates!
Etc.. Notice how each player, on their turn, was free to add details to the room or the NPC (the beetle). But they could not have described the beetle’s actions (or the room’s).
So, authority for characters’ actions is fixed, but authority to describe things in the scene shifts to whoever is speaking.
That is fine and it doesn’t change my point. I’m working hard to help you understand something, and what I’m saying can be applied according to your knowledge, without me necessarily grasping the precise circumstances perfectly.
Given any single subset and scale of specific situational input, it may be centralized to a single person, over many inputs, or it may shift among persons and thus arrive at a composite of input. The only question is whether the people playing understand how it’s done. By “how,” I mean, whatever they honor in play, among them; I don’t care what the text says.
(There is in fact a more fundamental question: whether at least some of this input must be utilized in play via reincorporation. If not, then all the alleged talking is empty blither, “describe describe,” e.g., during the caper in Blades in the Dark. You mentioned earlier that people were in fact reincorporating content among them, so I’m considering this question answered.)
In this case, when Betty speaks in this descriptive way, apparently no one had a problem “shifting” their understanding from the last person who did it to her content as eligible for reincorporation, which is what authority means. They knew that was the rule, “how to do it,” or at least, if I’m reading you correctly, they did. They weren’t confused. Does this make sense?
I loathe and dread the tedious round-and-round character of most internet discourse about role-playing. I’ve been trying to seize and hold this single point of focus for us, and I hope you can work with me on that.
This game seems right up my alley, I love both masks and capers/heists. It seems like you guys had a great time. If I may ask, how did the session end? You guys could finish the story in one session? Was it satisfactory? Do you think you’d play the game again?
Hi Santiago, the game was fun and satisfying. I enjoyed building and evolving the situations as the other players took actions and added details. And from what I saw, the players enjoyed building on their characters as we went along, and revealing their characters through the actions they took.
I would play it again. Ad I mentioned, it’s not a tactical challenge by any means, but it’s fun collaborative storytelling play. I like the given fictional backdrop, and it was very easy to set up and run. Recommended 🙂
Oh, you asked how the session ended.
The PCs survived the false tomb and found the real tomb, where they fought both the mummy king and some enchanted swords that fought all on their own. They defeated both. One of the PCs then found the treasure he’d been searching for (another found his earlier, and the 3rd PC found the mask of The Mystic).
Then everyone epilogued the future of their rogue after leaving the tomb. The game text sets some creative constraints on these epilogues as well, according to the token economy.
The only thing I would change next time is to start with more treasure tokens in the GM’s stash, so that play goes on longer before the PCs finally face the mummy king.
Thanks John! I’ll keep it in mind to play some day.
I think I got it. Authority for an aspect of the fiction (who speaks for it) can change any time, as long as it’s clear to everyone at every moment who has authority for what. And as long as there’s listening and reincorporation. The time scale doesn’t matter.
Yup.
I came to similar conclusions recently, after playing Cold Soldier. I get why Ron starts People & Play with reincorporation and listening, rather than moving onto authorities right away.
My initial defensive reaction (and I imagine, many people’s) to murky authorities was to focus on making them stable over time—and I imagine many games can solve the problem this way—but the real point is that at any given point in time, you just need to be able to tell who’s doing what. The stability has nothing to do with it.