[OrcCon][My Life with Master] Everyone got married so it must have been a comedy

[jburneko]

Hello,

This is the third and final actual play post from this weekend at OrcCon.  This one had another surprisingly large turn out.  I had a full load of six, sort of.  Six people signed up.  Six people showed up, one of whom wasn't on the list.  Don't know what happend to guy six.  Before we began one of the guys decided to bow out.  Notably, he had played Inspectres with me a few years before (he remembered me) and Capes the night before.  I think he figured out that I run "weird" games that are just a littel too weird for him.

For preperation I had brought two sample masters with three sample minions each.  If I had had a smaller turn out I would have given them the option to build their own master but with such a disparate group of strangers I requested that they choose.  They went with The Bride.  This master was actually my wife's idea a while back.  She's inspired by Mrs. Haversham from Great Expectations.  The jilted bride, made the laughing stock of her family, who never got to have her day.

Only one player, initially, chose a sample minion from my sheet.  She took the bridesmaid.  The other minions, were the portrait artist, the manservant, the coachman, and the priest.  All of them were down to earth except for the coachman.  The coachman was created by a very large and loud fellow who was borderline disruptive.  Several times, I had to ask him to please hold on, while I finished with or moved on to another player's scene.  His character, just had to be this crazy, demonic coachman with ghostly demon horses.  Not a bad, character, per se, but was clearly expressive of the player himself.  I had the Master call him a "drama queen" several times.

I was very very nervous about running My Life with Master with no prep time between character creation and play.  Turns out this was not a problem and, in fact, is very easy.  Here's my formula.  When the Master hands out the first round of tasks to each minion make sure the task involves harming or inconveniencing a connection that belongs to another minion.  When that minion arrives to attempt to accomplish his task frame the scene into a small situation that involves both the target connection and a third minion's connection engaged in a way that's not so easly untangled from one another.  Worked like a charm.

Here's something odd that happened.  We had just finished character creation and were about half-way through the first round of scenes when one of the con organizers brings this guy into the room, saying he'd like to observe.  However, all the other players started insisting that we had just started and he should jump in.  I noticed how none of them asked me if that was okay.  He ended up playing The Chef from my sample minion list.  Over the next few minutes, I began to realize that this guy a) had never roleplayed in his life and b) wasn't even an attendee of the con.  What I think happened was that he saw people or overheard games and had asked someone about what was going on.  I have no idea how they chose my game.  I don't know if they read off the list of events and he found my game interesting or if they brought him because my room was next to RPG HQ.  He ended up having to leave early but he seemed to have a good time.

What I liked most about this game was that a couple of players were very good at incorporating their Overtures of Affection with their orders from the master.

The Master had sent the manservant out to seduce the local nun, because no one in the town was allowed to be as pure an innocent as she was.  First scene, he uses Villainy with a helping of Desperation to convince the nun that he's in dire need of her help and must acompany him to his cottage.  This worked.  The player then looked very concerned and said, "Unfortunately, I think my next scene may be an act of violence."  The entire group cheered.  Only in My LIfe with Master do you get players cheering on the rape scene.  However, on his next scene he didn't rape her and instead used Villainy again, telling her that he was dying and that he'd never been with a woman.  This worked and the nun broke her vows.  He then added the nun as a connection and then used his third scene to do an Overture of Affection and asked her to marry him.  I thought this was brilliant play.  At the end of the game the player asked quite sincerely, "Did you all think I was really going to rape her!?"  To which we all shouted, "YES!"

Another good integration of task and overture was done by the player who made the priest.  The task The Master set before him was to pick any two townspeople and run a practice wedding because she didn't want him messing it up come the special day.  His first scene was an Overture of Affection to his connection who was a local prostitute he was trying to reform.  He promised to set her up with a good man who would love and take care of her.  Of course, he then used Villainy to break that man up with his current love by convincing him that she was a whore and that those stories about his girl being a whore, were just vicious "rumors."

The oddity, was the coachman, who seemed to like the Overture of Affection mechanic but insisted on carrying them out in a kind of barbarian drags woman away to his cave way.  His first Overture was to sweep up this girl he was sweet on in his arms during a drive-by with his flaming demonic carriage and insisted that she scream for him.  I kept hearing Paul echo in my head, "GM doesn't judge Overtures, GM doesn't judge Overtures, GM doesn't judge Overtures."  After seeing the manservant get engaged to the nun, and the priest put the hunter and the prostitute togther he decided to propose to his own connection as well.

In between all this there were other things going on as well such as the kidnapping of the groom and finding a suitable test subject for the nightshade wedding cake but in the end it really came down to these three romances as all the minions converged on the local church either to get married, marry a couple, or stop these weddings (once The Master found out some of her minions were getting married before she was, she got a little angry).

By this point the crazed demonic coachman had found out that the priest had called his connection a whore.  He then proceeded to attack the priest with round after round of Violence.  I could tell the player wasn't going to stop, even after I made it clear that there was no way for him within the rules to actually kill another PC minion.  So, I had the bride show up and order him to stop.  He resisted, succeeded and low and behold his Love was high enough to trigger end game.

I did one more round of scenes involving various upsets at the local church and then the demonic coachman trampled The Master to death.

The artist ended up finding a new master who happend to be the town priest (not the minion priest).
The manservant also ended up finding a new Master who happened to be the nun he married (once getting a taste of sin, she goes a little wild).
The chef settled down and opened his own restaurant.
The bridesmaid ended up eating the nightshade wedding cake.
The priest, mortified at not being able to do gods work, hung himself from the belfry.
Oddly, I can't remember what ultimately happened to the demonic coachman.

Observation: I started the game with Fear 3 and Reason 2.  I was so concerend about the game being so long that I gave everyone 3 Love to start.  I think this was too much and the game was almost too short, lasting about 2 hours and 40 minutes of a 4 hour session block.

A neat moment: At one point I was looking at one half of the table and when I looked back there were two copies of My Life with Master on the table.  I asked where the second copy came from and the guy next to me said, "Oh, I've had this for a while, but never got the chance to play."  I thought that was pretty neat.

Another neat moment: At the end of the session the guy who played the manservant copied the website out of my book.  So, Paul you may have a sale on the way.

As always, hope that was interesting.

Jesse

[Sydney Freedberg]

Sounds like a rousing success to me. You had a drama queen, a total newbie, and sexual content -- three things any of which can snap a game, fast -- and all three ended up making enjoyable contributions to the game.

When the Master hands out the first round of tasks to each minion make sure the task involves harming or inconveniencing a connection that belongs to another minion. When that minion arrives to attempt to accomplish his task frame the scene into a small situation that involves both the target connection and a third minion's connection engaged in a way that's not so easly untangled from one another. Worked like a charm.

Ah.... If there were a jotting-this-down-in-my-notebook emoticon, I would have printed it now.