Does Self-Loathing go up with a Horror Revealed?

[neelk]

When a player does something that would push their PC's Self-Loathing above Love+Reason and they trigger a Horror Revealed, does the character's Self-Loathing go up, or is it capped at Love+Reason? So far, we've been playing that it does go up. Is this right?

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Incidentally, I learned last session how great Horror Revealed scenes are. The first session of the game, we forgot that this was possible(!), and last week we changed to bring them back in. The effect was really great -- in the first session I had felt really uncomfortable because I-the-GM had a lot more forcing power than I was comfortable with, and in the second the balance shifted back to a much less lopsided point.

There was a second wow! moment when the players realized that they could use their Less than Humans traits to deliberately fail at their Master's commands, and gain Weariness rather than Self-Loathing. (This realization also freed me up, too, because I realized that I could go to town with even more insane ruthlessness as the Master.)

[Paul Czege]

Hi Neel,

When a player does something that would push their PC's Self-Loathing above Love+Reason and they trigger a Horror Revealed, does the character's Self-Loathing go up, or is it capped at Love+Reason? So far, we've been playing that it does go up. Is this right?

From page 36:

"If a roll would ever result in a minion's Self-loathing growing greater than Love plus Reason, a revelation of horror and consequences in the environment is triggered instead.

The resolution of the current scene is roleplayed just as if Self-loathing were gained, but Self-loathing actually remains the same..."[/list:u]So, the answer is that Self-loathing does not increase.

Paul

[xiombarg]

So, the answer is that Self-loathing does not increase.

In fact, speaking as one of the playtesters who influenced the creation of this rule, I'd like to mention that not having Self-Loathing go up is the whole point. A rapid too-high upward spiral of Self-Loathing can result in a not-fun situation where the character can't effectively do anything positive, only violence. Check out the original playtest discussion if you're interested...

[neelk]

Thanks for the link. We did have that very problem -- all of the characters ended up dying in the epilogue, except for one. However, the epilogues were generally very cool, so all's well that ends well. I definitely want to run MLwM again, though I figure we'll have to do something else first, as kind of a palette cleanser.