I've been running Masks for a while and it has to be my favourite RPG out there. The mechanics are perfectly designed to encourage you to play an insecure teenage superhero who's pulled in different directions by the influence of the adults in your life. The campaign before the current one, the PCs were vigilantes trying to protect their neighbourhood from the influence of the Prospero corporation, and frequently clashed with the cops. At one point, the team stole a Prospero executive's fancy car while she was trying to bribe the police chief.

Our current game is set 30 years in the future in Light City, in a world where the intervention of synthetic aliens known as the Benefactors saved humanity from runaway climate change. We have November (The Brain), Dean (The Innocent), Tori (The Legacy), Corey (The Doomed) and Madeline (The Janus, formerly the Outsider, an alien). This week's session was the culmination of November's character arc as the team faced off against the Reality Phage, an all-consuming form of matter that November created in a terrible accident. The Phage ate her childhood friend, a fellow scientist named San, and November believed her to be dead until recently - when she found out that the Phage had actually incorporated her as its guiding intelligence.

The Phage had been sealed away at great cost when it first emerged, transported to a pocket dimension by the adult hero Displacer. When the team arrived there, armed with November's newly invented Phage Destabiliser, they found that San had reshaped the environment to look like a twisted, surreal version of a painting she once made of Light City, made entirely of Phage-matter. San lashed out at the team, collapsing buildings on them, launching trains at them and cutting off their paths forward while struggling for control against the Phage. Only November was spared from the attacks, instead being invited by San's voice in her mind to join her.

Eventually the team made their way to a warped recreation of the Dawnforge Initiative building, the place where November and San were raised as genius disciples trying to create a better world. Memories of the pair's childhood bombarded the team, and November confessed that, although she hadn't realised it before the accident, she was in love with San.

In the building they found evidence that San had been searching for November the whole time she'd been part of the Phage. Confronting San in her lab, she was set up like a puppet, with strings connecting her remade watercolour body to the fractal pulsing mass of the Phage's core. She showed the painting she had been working on to November: the two of them together, happy in this perfect pocket world made by their hands.

In a desperate bid to separate San from the Phage, November armed the Phage Destabiliser to cut the strings that controlled her. The Phage would come at her next, seeking a new host and remaking her body into a monstrous form, but she didn't care.

Unfortunately for her, her teammates did. Dean, her best friend in the team, wrestled the Destabiliser out of her hands and caused the shot to go wild. The Phage retaliated, attacking the team, and they were only protected by the timely intervention of Tori with her shield. The Destabiliser skittered across the floor, lost in the confusion. Madeline picked it up, and triggered her Moment of Truth.

The Moment of Truth in Masks is the moment where everything crystallises, where your character takes full control of the narrative and can do pretty much anything. Madeline used it to connect the Phage Destabiliser to her alien power cells, boosting it way beyond what it was designed for, and utterly eliminate the Phage in a blinding burst of light. The device sparked and burned, fusing her human disguise to her skin. In a moment, the Phage was gone, and the team was left floating in the void of this empty dimension.

There wasn't much left of San. The Phage had absorbed most of her. There was enough of her body to let Tori use her healing magic, but there was no bringing her back to life fully. San's body didn't come back - it was more like she was made of stardust. She could hold on long enough to say goodbye.

Eyes brimming with tears, and fully lucid in her last moments, San apologised for all the trouble she had put November through. They talked for a little while, just like old times, but she started to fade. The last thing she said was "November, I love you."

November pulled her in for a kiss. She was insubstantial but still warm, and November closed her eyes as they kissed. By the time she opened them again, San was gone.

Afterwards, November's player told me he had actually cried at that moment (we play over Discord). It was easily one of the most emotional sessions I've experienced in five years of RPGs, and a true testament to the roleplaying of everyone involved. Scenes like this are exactly why I love RPGs, and Masks in particular. It's hard to do it justice without the full context of playing this campaign live, but I hope those of you who actually read this far appreciated the story.