Newbie question

[Nev the Deranged]

I just got MLwM in the mail and read through it. I'm jazzed to play, but as usual, will have a devil of a time finding players, especially for something this intense. For some reason the local gamers have no problem playing werewolves and vampires and such that commit all sorts of atrocity, but balk at the idea of playing a game where the atrocities mean something, like Sorcerer or MLwM.

Anyway, I was wondering about scene framing and "turns". The book wasn't totally clear on it, but I get the impression the GM goes 'round the table offering each player/minion a scene which is always an Orders from the Master scene unless the player requests and Overture scene. What's to stop players requesting Overtures every scene? I read Jonathan Tweet's solution and that seems to make sense (IE only allowing Overtures every other scene_per_player). Is that the implied default or just a convenient tweak?

During conversation at my FLGS while reading the manual, we were chatting about the new King Arthur movie and comparing it to our own knowledge of Arthurian mythology, and one of the tales of the sword in the stone came up. In this particular version Arthur sends Lancelot to pull the sword from the stone, which is in the middle of a lake or river. Lancelot goes to obey, but the stone is inscribed "whosoever pulleth out this sword shall be slain by it", so he goes back without it. Arthur berates him, then sets Gawain to the same task. Gawain returns with the sword, accepting his own death as part of his service to his king (apparently Gawain had been reading Rashomon).

All this seems completely irrelevant, and it was, until I thought... what if Arthur was a Master, and the knights his Minions? Just because the legends portray him as a force of good doesn't mean he was. After all, he is often represented as the first Christian king, bringing new and no doubt frightening ideas to the pagan population, and being perfectly willing to save souls by force if need be. Hmmm... a Beast Teacher, perhaps? With the Need to convert the populace and the Want to be accepted by the Church...

Then again I haven't played yet, so I don't know how well this would work.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Nev,

I don't impose limits on the frequency of overtures to Connections when I run the game. And I don't believe they're necessary. If a group does Master and minion creation as described in the book, collaboratively, the minions are different in a very significant way from characters in a more traditional RPG: from the very start of the game they have an audience of other players who have an interest in them, who had a hand in determining the situational adversity they'd be facing, and who made a creative investment in the form of suggestions that shaped them. The game, in play, is about managing that audience interest. And I've yet to meet a player who failed to intuitively recognize and play the game with an awareness that the attention of others was focused on their actions. Forget being the one to kill the Master. The game is about having the interest of other players and playing with it. And repetitive actions, like requesting an overture every scene, are poison. They're boring. They quickly kill any interest others might have in the struggles of your character. Everyone recognizes this instinctively. And it's so rare in RPGs to have audience interest in your character, that no one ever risks jeopardizing it with uninteresting repetitive behaviors.

Paul

[Nev the Deranged]

Hmmm.. interesting.

Dammit, I'm so jonesed to play now >.<  I'm going to set up a forum-game with DannyK on RPG.net just to take the edge off, but I think I may just shanghai my regular game group into it on Friday. Maybe I can ease things a bit by... I dunno, making it a town full of clockwork people or something. *sigh* sissies.

Thanks for the tips, man. Hopefully I'll have some Actual Play to post soon.

[vhirvela]

Hmmm.. interesting.

Dammit, I'm so jonesed to play now >.<  I'm going to set up a forum-game with DannyK on RPG.net just to take the edge off, but I think I may just shanghai my regular game group into it on Friday. Maybe I can ease things a bit by... I dunno, making it a town full of clockwork people or something. *sigh* sissies.

Thanks for the tips, man. Hopefully I'll have some Actual Play to post soon.

*puppy eye look* Can I join your forum game too?

Btw. In the MLwM edition translated to finnish there is a intresting epilogue to the book. It talks about different kind of variations you *could* play it. One was "antimaster" It's kinda like MLwM reversed. Master is a good guy: Arthur/Jeesus you name it and they are trying to get the village/city to be good too. (Who ofcourse are evil) Minions are Proud knights (or disclipnes if master is Jesus)  anyaway these knights even though they are good have a little black flame in their heart. They would get envy of their good master every time they did a good deed because they would be so far from beeing as good as he is.  (In the end they would kill him?)

In game terms this could be played  with there few alternations to the rules: Use these on all formulas replace "weariness" with "loyalty" and "self-loathing" with "conscience" and "love" with "envy" and "fear" with  "love" finally replace "reason" with "humanity.

Now you are good to go. Of course you can also do that idea you had...

But this might be more fun. Tell us how your first game went! And which you decided to try.