Since I know the Sunday Mechatron game isn’t happening, I’m getting this done a day early. This was a week for superhero gaming.

As before, we had a few cancellations and a few shining moments of gaming.

Monday’s Henshin! game cancelled because the GM got summoned for jury duty. I proposed a Kamen Rider/Phoenix Wright crossover, which didn’t go well. The more serious proposal was well received, which is that if we ever need filler content, we can come up with a second Henshin! concept and sample PCs, then describe how they interact with our regular PCs during the inevitable crossover film.

I cancelled Tuesday (again) due to illness that lasted through Thursday, which wasn’t fun.

Friday and Sunday didn’t happen because people had other stuff going on.

That leaves Thursday, where the group ran another Sentinels Comics one-shot with characters from our old Masks campaign, rewritten in SCRPG stats.

Two of the players (including me) had multiple Masks PCs. Last time we did this, we’d played the newer PCs (Alycia and Summer). This time we played our originals (Jason and Leo), and the vibe was very different. The GM prewrote the character sheets, as before.

SCRPG uses what’s called the “GYRO” system (Green Yellow Red Out). Basically, as you lose HP or as the scene progresses naturally, you progress through these phases. The good news is that you gain access to more and more powers as you do. The bad news is that if you run out of red phases, the villain wins.

The premise was that we were at a technology expo set in a ski lodge. We had a few fun interactions between PCs and with NPCs (my character’s Lex Luthor-like archenemy showed up for example), until disaster struck. A sudden blizzard outside and a fire inside took us a couple of rounds to deal with. This meant that the villain showed up while we had just entered yellow, so we had less time than we’d expect to take them down.

We got halfway through the scenario before running out of time in the session. We don’t even know the bad guy’s name yet, just that he’s here for one of the NPCs we met (and it’s not the archenemy, surprisingly).

The system is fun and entertaining to play with - you roll three dice and use one, two, or all three of them depending on which power you use. Different character archetypes do play differently, even with the few core elements you have: attack vs. defend, boost vs. hinder vs. overcome. It’s nice to revisit characters with friends (though with a caveat below). And the Roll20 support for the system is excellent.

We may end up doing SCRPG at least once more. Another player is trying to spin up Brindlewood Bay, but is fighting against the lackluster-to-nonexistent VTT support for it on the system we use. We talked about using characters from a different Masks game we played for a much shorter duration (only 13 sessions, not 63). Regardless, it’s been interesting regardless of which characters we play.

So what’s the caveat mentioned earlier? I’ve been writing extended fiction from that original Masks game, over the course of years. I only have a couple people who have ever had any interest in reading it. I’ve tried to interest a couple of other people, with no success (a recurring theme in my creative life). And those two people - my fellow players in the Masks game - just do not seem to have any interest or time in either reading or commenting on what I’ve written.

It’s therefore discouraging to see the other players get excited about an SCRPG one-shot in the same universe where I’ve been putting so much work. This isn’t their problem to solve - this is only how I feel about it - but it’s frustrating because I’m told they like that I’m doing it, but that they don’t have time to engage with it. So while Thursday SCRPG has been interesting, I’m honestly ready to move to Brindlewood Bay to get away from feeling disheartened.