Masks: A New Generation
Masks: A New Generation is a teen-superhero TTRPG about identity, influence, and team drama in Halcyon City, using PbtA moves and shifting Labels to make emotional fallout as important as the fight.
Teen superheroes • PbtA labels and influence • 2-5 players + GM • Paid core book with free play materials • Best for relationship-forward campaigns
Masks: A New Generation is still one of the best TTRPGs for groups who want superhero action to be the pressure around the real story, not the whole story. The fights matter, but the game is really about young heroes being told who they are by mentors, parents, teammates, rivals, and their own mistakes. If your table wants Teen Titans or Young Justice energy with feelings that have mechanical teeth, Masks remains a benchmark.
It is a weaker fit if your group wants point-build power engineering, balanced tactical supers combat, or emotionally self-possessed heroes who mostly solve problems by hitting harder. Masks assumes that growing up is unstable, that adults are loud, and that identity is always in motion.
What the game is
Masks: A New Generation is a superhero TTRPG by Brendan G. Conway, published by Magpie Games. The core premise is a team of young heroes in Halcyon City, a place with a long history of older generations of superheroes behind the current cast. The PCs are not finished icons yet. They are still deciding whether they will become paragons, disasters, symbols, or something messier.
That difference matters. Many superhero games ask how far your powers can go. Masks cares more about who gets to define you, what happens when you disappoint people, and how a team changes when admiration, resentment, romance, fear, and legacy all get tangled together.
Publication history and editions
Magpie's own 2016 retrospective says Masks: A New Generation arrived "just in under the wire" in 2016. The current official line still centers on that original game rather than a second edition or major rules reboot. What has expanded over time is the surrounding support: Magpie's current Masks line still points readers to the core game plus supplements such as Halcyon City Herald Collection, Secrets of A.E.G.I.S., and Unbound.
That means the advice for new groups is simple: treat the core game as current, then decide whether you need more playbooks, more setting material, or alternate campaign frames.
What you need to play
The real entry point is the core book. Magpie describes it as including ten core playbooks, GM materials, rules for superheroic action, interpersonal drama, and changing identity, plus guidance for building villains and custom material.
Before buying anything else, it is worth grabbing the free Core Book Downloads. Magpie currently provides the Basic Moves, Gamemaster Materials, and Playbooks as a no-cost download. That is enough to see whether the game's emotional vocabulary and playbook structure make sense for your table, even though the core book is still the full rules baseline.
Major supplements and current line
Magpie's current Masks collection and Standard Bundle show the live product line clearly. Halcyon City Herald Collection adds five new playbooks. Secrets of A.E.G.I.S. adds two playsets and two playbooks. Unbound adds four playsets and three playbooks. The line also includes card accessories such as Deck of Influence and Deck of Villainy, but those are table aids rather than required rules.
For most groups, the supplements are less about fixing the base game and more about changing the campaign frame. If the core book's version of teen-hero drama already works for your group, the extra material is there to widen the bench, not to patch missing fundamentals.
Core rules and play structure
Masks uses the Powered by the Apocalypse family of design, but its version of that engine is tightly tuned to comic-book adolescence. Scenes do not revolve around action economies or precise power measurements. They revolve around fictional triggers, move outcomes, and what happens when characters push too hard, lash out, comfort each other, or try to live up to impossible expectations.
The game's basic rhythm is issue-shaped. A problem appears, the team reacts under pressure, adults and villains complicate the situation, and the fallout feeds directly into who the characters think they are becoming. Between sessions or issues, advancement, relationship shifts, and team changes matter because the game assumes the heroes are growing through repeated crises, not resetting to baseline after each fight.
Playbooks, Labels, Influence, and advancement
The most important character layer is not raw power design but the playbook and the shifting Labels attached to it. On Magpie's current play page, the publisher still foregrounds characters such as the Legacy, the Delinquent, and the Nova because the playbook tells you what kind of pressure this hero lives under before it tells you what they can bench-press.
Labels track how a young hero currently understands themself, and other characters can shift those Labels through praise, judgment, rejection, mentorship, fear, or closeness. Influence determines who can get inside your head in the first place. Together, those tools turn identity into a live subsystem. Advancement matters, but it matters as part of an arc: heroes lock in aspects of themselves, reshape relationships, unlock bigger moments, and eventually decide what adulthood is going to look like for them.
Signature mechanics
The signature mechanic is that emotional pressure is not just color. It changes the numbers you roll with, who can shift those numbers, and what kinds of choices feel safe or risky. That is why Masks feels different from broader superhero games: the system is not mainly asking whether you can win a fight, but what winning or failing does to your sense of self and to the team around you.
Magpie's current overview also still highlights the team and each playbook's Moment of Truth. That emphasis is accurate in play. Team mechanics keep the group from feeling like isolated solo heroes sharing a panel, and Moments of Truth give each playbook a deliberately oversized comic-book breakthrough scene. When Masks is humming, those moments feel earned because the rules have spent time putting pressure on the character first.
What play feels like
At the table, Masks feels fast, exposed, and emotionally noisy. Fights can be explosive, but the memorable part is usually what someone says afterward, whose approval mattered, who failed to show up, or which adult hero decided they knew what was best for the team. Sessions often swing between public action and intensely personal fallout without needing a different subsystem for each mode.
The best campaigns feel like an ongoing comic run where the cast keeps changing in meaning even when their costumes stay recognizable. Rivalries soften, friendships sour, mentors disappoint, parents interfere, and victories still leave residue. Groups that enjoy that rhythm tend to get a lot more out of Masks than groups who want every session to resolve the problem cleanly.
Running the game
Masks is lighter to prep than crunchy supers systems, but it is not prep-free. The GM needs adults, villains, peers, and consequences that can put pressure on the heroes from multiple directions at once. A good Masks threat is rarely just a bag of hit points. It is a problem that also tests loyalty, self-image, reputation, or obligations outside the costume.
The GM load is partly social. You need to read what the players are excited or nervous about, push on the right relationships, and let the heroes be impressive without protecting them from hard emotional fallout. If you run it like a sequence of balanced set-piece fights, it will flatten. If you keep asking who these kids are becoming and who gets to answer that question, it opens up quickly.
Campaign fit
Masks can run a convention-length issue, but it is better in short or medium campaigns where the same team has time to change. The game's strongest material emerges once Labels have shifted back and forth, Influence has passed around the table, and the heroes have had to revisit older choices instead of just making one dramatic first impression.
That makes it a strong campaign game and only a situational one-shot recommendation. If your table wants a single night of superhero action, other games can get to spectacle faster. If your table wants to watch the same young heroes become more confident, more damaged, or more self-defined over several issues, Masks is much harder to beat.
Reception and awards
Masks has long had the reputation of being one of the clearest successes in the teen-superhero space. Community discussion and review writing consistently praise how well Labels, Influence, playbooks, and team mechanics make identity pressure playable instead of merely thematic. The usual caveat is equally consistent: people looking for tactical encounter design, granular power construction, or a more emotionally detached superhero engine often bounce off it.
The awards record supports that broader reputation. The 2017 ENNIE Awards list Masks: A New Generation as the Silver Winner for Best Family Game. That does not mean it is a children-first game so much as a sign that its accessible rules and coming-of-age framing reached well beyond the usual grim supers niche.
Where it is strongest
- Teen superhero campaigns where identity, mentorship, friendship, and reputation should matter as much as punches.
- Tables that want Powered by the Apocalypse moves to drive emotional and social fallout instead of just action pacing.
- Groups that enjoy playbooks as character arcs, not just containers for powers.
- Campaigns that want each session to feel like another issue in an ongoing comic run.
Where it can frustrate groups
- Players who want point-build power engineering or tightly quantified superhero capability.
- Groups expecting tactical supers combat to be the main source of depth.
- Tables uncomfortable with adults, teammates, and rivals having strong influence over a hero's self-concept.
- One-shot groups that want instant spectacle more than cumulative relationship fallout.
Content and safety notes
Masks is usually less about gore or graphic horror than about social and emotional intensity. Common pressure points include adolescent insecurity, authority figures, family expectations, romance, rejection, betrayal, public failure, and the feeling of being defined by people who think they know you. Groups should calibrate for those themes the same way they would for any coming-of-age drama, especially if they want the adults in the setting to push hard.
Best starting path
Start with the core book, then download the free Core Book Downloads so everyone can read the Basic Moves and playbooks before session zero. If the game clicks, add supplements based on what your campaign needs: Halcyon City Herald Collection for more playbooks, Secrets of A.E.G.I.S. for new institutional and team frames, or Unbound if you want bigger alternate-campaign setups rather than just more of default Halcyon City.
Research notes
Last checked: July 5, 2026.