A couple weeks ago, I joked that I should try to identify the main tropes that show up in our current Masks game.
Unfortunately, some part of my brain didn’t know I was joking. So.
- Adaptive Armor – Jason’s Nanobots
- Alternate Company Equivalent – The HHL as this world’s Justice League (hopefully the JL and not The Authority)
- Alternate Continuity – The Sepiaverse
- Animal Superheroes – Possibly? No one really knows what’s up with The Animal.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing – Hyena and Jaguar spring to mind.
- Badass Normal – Agent Waters, for sheer preparedness. Various Ponies are also pretty useful in their own ways.
- Beware the Superman – Not quite true – our world is more Earn Your Happy Ending, but this might still come up in some situations.
- Brought Down to Normal – A bit, in that everyone in the Bodyswap is, to one degree or another, dealing with not having their powers right now.
- Brought Down to Badass – Mostly though, the swap has worked out to you being a different kind of awesome.
- Building Swing – I mean, if Link hasn’t done this he really should.
- Bus Full of Innocents – Or cars full. Or schools. Whatever.
- Can’t Stay Normal – Seen in the HHL.
- The Cape – I mean… obviously?
- Cape Busters – AEGIS
- Captain Ersatz
- Notably in the HHL, though there’s a lot of recombining and remixing going on.
- Hecate is Grey Witch from Dreadnought (note: haven’t read the 2nd book, so don’t assume too much here)
- Vigil was supposed to be a Batman analog, but now they’re much cooler.
- Sigrun the Valkyrie is sort of a Wonder Woman/Donna Troy/Thor thing, I guess.
- Golem started out as sort of The Thing, but has a bit of Doomed Tony Stark in there now.
- Nautilus is kind of Drunk Tony Stark, plus Namor the Asshole of Atlantis, plus Captain Nemo.
- Hyena is sort of The Question, plus Vixen.
- Captain Ethnic – Ugh. Did I do that with Tatanka? I hope not. He’s not a stereotype, I hope, so…
- Captain Geographic – Iron Cross (Villain), Dread Queen (Villain).
- Captain Patriotic – We kind of notably don’t have a lot of star-spangled heroes active in Halcyon right now.
- Chest Insignia – Only Concord right now, I think, which is a darn shame.
- Chrome Champion – Maybe Pneuma is a bit of this when she’s in ‘fight form’? I’m not sure.
- Civvie Spandex – Jason, although that might count as Not Wearing Tights at all.
- Clingy Costume – Probably Jason? Also probably Ghost Girl, if you squint.
- Code Name – Of course, though not in all cases.
- Comes Great Responsibility
- The Commissioner Gordon – Agent Waters
- Corporate-Sponsored Superhero – Rook has these.
- Cover-Blowing Superpower – Concord, at the very least.
- The Cowl – Hyena and others.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check – totally.
- Dating Catwoman – Not yet. For now we’re stuck with Foe Romance Subtext.
- Fastest Thing Alive
- Future Spandex
- The Good Captain
- Heart Is an Awesome Power
- Henshin Hero – Concord
- Hero with Bad Publicity – Not yet, though we keep trying. 🙂
- Heroic Fatigue
- Heroic Host – Concord
- How Do I Shot Web? – Well… during the body swap, anyway.
- Idiosyncrazy – Ghostheart. Maybe Iconoclast.
- Imagination-Based Superpower – Concord
- Instant Costume Change – Concord
- Lamarck Was Right
- Legacy Character
- Magnetic Plot Device
- The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life – Poor Harry
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling
- Psychic Radar – Concord and Ghost Girl
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage – Concord
- Recruit the Muggles – Ponies, sometimes
- Rogues Gallery – the Gales
- Rogues-Gallery Transplant – also the Gales
- Secret Identity
- Secret Identity Apathy – Generally true of Concord’s enemies, if not his family and friends.
- Secret Identity Identity
- Secret Keeper
- Star-Spangled Spandex – Concord
- Stock Superhero Day Jobs
- Super Fic – You better believe it.
- Super Hero Paradox
- Superman Stays out of Gotham – Or super adults don’t bother with modern age super-drama, usually.
- Superman Substitute – Transcendent, except not really since we tweaked their background, but they started that way.
- Superpowered Date – Some day. Some day…
- Super-Power Meltdown – Iconoclast totally had this happen.
- Super Registration Act – Kind of? AEGIS is watching…
- Super Team
- Supervillain
- Swiss-Army Superpower – Jason(ish) and Concord
- Thememobile – Hoverdisk!
- Triple Shifter – Jason
- The Unmasking – Inevitably
- Villain Team-Up – Inevitably
- Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?
- With Great Power Comes Great Opposition
- With Great Power Comes Great Perks