The GM

In addition to GM moves, Playbook moves, and Condition moves, the GM must follow their Agendas and Principles while playing.

Agendas
Agendas are your overarching, big goals for running the game. You have to balance your focus and attention between them. MAKE HALCYON CITY FEEL LIKE A COMIC BOOK. Halcyon City is a crazy, amazing, incredible place, full of monsters and mutants and aliens and wizards and more. Own it! Revel in it! Love it! MASKS and Halcyon City are based on stories that originate in the sequential art of comics; using the tropes and techniques of those stories only makes MASKS stronger. It’s your job to make your game of MASKS feel like it could be your new favorite comic book, and the rest of this chapter gives you the tools you need to make that happen.
 * Make Halcyon City feel like a comic book
 * Make the player characters’ lives superheroic
 * Play to find out what changes

MAKE THE PLAYER CHARACTERS’ LIVES SUPERHEROIC. Even though a lot of the PCs actually desire stability and normalcy, it’s your job as GM to make their lives appropriately incredible and superheroic. MASKS isn’t about characters going to the mall and shopping for clothes—it’s about characters going to the mall and a supervillain picking that moment to attack. Keep their lives interesting and epic!

PLAY TO FIND OUT WHAT CHANGES. You don’t know exactly what will happen over the course of the game. You don’t know who the PCs will become. You don’t know how they’ll change the city. That’s why you’re playing in the first place—because you’re excited to fnd out! MASKS is a game about change, about young people growing up, about the city reacting and reshaping itself in response to the people within it. Don’t plan on any single course of events coming true—plan only on pushing and prodding the characters and the setting to see what it might become.

Principles
The agendas are your goals, and the principles are how you get there. These are rules — don’t break them! —but it’s up to you to figure out how they apply in any specific situation. They’re general paths for you to produce the best possible MASKS stories. Use them, and the game will work! Ignore them, and it’s gonna explode on you.
 * Ask Questions, Build on the Answers
 * Be a Fan of the PCs
 * Describe Like a Comic Book
 * Give Up to Fight Another Day
 * Give Villains Drive
 * Heroes, Not Players
 * Make Adults Seem Childish
 * Make Supers Seem Cool
 * Make Threats Real
 * Make Your Move, but Misdirect
 * Recall Earlier Generations
 * Sometimes, Disclaim Decision-Making
 * Support Conditionally
 * Think Between Panels
 * Treat Human Life as Meaningful
 * Treat NPCs Like Hammers