[MLWM]The Untitleable

[Mytholder]

After a long break, I've started gaming again, with two groups. One group is playing Runequest at the moment. The other group is playing 'whatever odd stuff I bring to the table this week'. Last session, I ran a playtest of a game I'm working on. This week, we tried My Life With Master. I sort of sprung MLWM on my poor players... I'd intended to mail them during the week with a precis of the rules and get some brainstorming started, but totally failed to do so. The players didn't know anything about the game (most of them hadn't even heard of it) until we sat down. This meant that the character generation was slow and awkward, which wasn't helped by my lack of familiarity with the rules.

The tone of the evening was set when it was decided that the Master would be based directly on Charles (a friend of everyone in the group), if he were a disembodied head floating in a steampunk life-support machine who intended to take over the British Empire. Obviously, the first step was to ring Charles and ask him what he'd do if he was a disembodied head floating in a steampunk life-support machine who intended to take over the British Empire. He took the question in stride, and outlined a plan involving infiltrating high society.

The Master (Jacques de Charlesier) dwells in a mansion in a small town near London. His clockwork lab and life support system is hidden beneath the neighbouring graveyard - the minions keep the mansion running as if everything were normal. Oh, and it's some time in the 1830s.

Fear was set at 4, Reason at 2.

The minions were the products of Jacques de Charlesier's bizarre experiments:
Gregory, a clockwork cyborg who could become invisible, but needs to be wound up regularly. He's married(!) to one of his connections, a maid called Fanny. His other connection was her brother, a stage magician called Mortimer the Most Marvellous Mage.

Bert, a werefish with the power to travel through the sewers at great speed, but who grows obviously inhuman and hairy at the full moon. His connections were the local vicar, and a grave-robber.

Ivan, an igor-type figure who can procure any item, as long as it's for someone else, but is deathly afraid of fire. Connected to the Mayor's daughter, and the local gravedigger.

Jezebel, a girl with monstrously long arms. Her arms become wings when the moon is full. She's connected to a local circus ringmaster, who she works for on the side, and her brother, Simon, a police inspector (the long arm of the law).

Everyone went for Self-Loathing 3 and Weariness 0, apart from Ivan, who's Self-Loathing 2, Weariness 1.

Normally, the group socialises and messes around for hours before we start gaming, so I expected character generation and plotting to take up the whole evening. However, we'd turned up at Jezebel's player's house a lot earlier than normal, so we leapt straight from generation into play.

The game began with the Master summoning Bert and ordering him to kill off the local Member of Parliament, so that the Master can take his place in a by-election. Bert obeys, and swims through the sewers into Parliament. He emerges from a toilet, kills entirely the wrong member of Parliament (Lord Fizzlebottom), and swims back to the mansion.

Jezebel is visiting her friend the Ringmaster in the circus, when she encounters a new addition to the circus - Mortimer the Most Marvellous Mage. She then returns to the mansion, where Ivan's watching three figures in the neighbouring graveyard. One's his connection, the gravedigger; the Vicar's there as well. The third person is a well-dressed young man. Ivan tries to creep closer to the gravedigger, but the young man lights a pipe, terrifying Ivan, who flees home.

The young man follows Ivan to apologise, and meets Jezebel at the door. He turns out to be the local MP, Winston Smythe, canvassing for votes. She invites him in, just as Bert arrives with the head of Lord Fizzlebottom.

Meanwhile, Gregory is invisibly following his wife, who's working as a maid in Parliament. He discovers that she's in league with Fenian revolutionaries who may be plotting to blow up Westminster. Gregory ends up intimidating the Fenians to stop using Fanny. She's rather alarmed that he's been spying on her invisibly again. Fanny's brother Mortimer is there too, and Gregory wins him over by teaching him his 'invisibility trick'. Fanny begins to worry that Gregory's going to bring Mortimer into the service of the Master too. As a token of thanks, Mortimer gives Gregory some tickets to the circus.

Ivan, Bert and Jezebel debate killing the MP, Winston Smythe, but settle for locking him in the cellar. Bert was told to kill the MP, but Jezebel's a little taken with him. Ivan's then sent by the Master to get the brain of the local Mayor, who's an expert in politics. The Master will need this knowledge when he becomes an MP. Ivan tries first to bond with the Mayor's daughter, and then to kill the Mayor and extract his brain, but ends up just bringing both back to the mansion. On the way back, they meet Gregory, who's off to the circus. A bit of bluffing and persuasion later, and Gregory & Jezebel end up bringing the Mayor's daughter, Lucrezia, to the circus with them...

While half the cast is going to the circus, an increasingly unstable (full moon) Bert goes to the Vicar, ranting about evil and demons. The Vicar tries to shut the door on an obviously crazy and hairy Bert, but Bert forces his way in...

Back in the house, Winston Smythe is still locked in the cellar, the Mayor's in the drawing room - all the parts of the Master's plan are falling into place.

The Horror got Revealed around this point (it should have been revealed a lot earlier, but I failed to keep track of Bert's Self-Loathing properly). Jezebel's brother, Simon the police officer, was investigating the murder of Lord Fizzlebottom, and managed to track the killer's trail of blood through the sewers to the mansion. He broke in, found the disembodied head floating in the toilet, and was so shocked he fell back down the stairs, breaking his neck...

For an entirely random series of ideas without any real cohesion, it came together pretty well. The tone of the same was something like League of Gentlemen, with overly earnest characters like Mortimer or Winston Smythe running into absurdly thuggish brutes (the Fenians) and grotesque horrors (the PCs). There was a lot of confusion at the start - the players initially blanked when it came to choosing More Than Human and Less Than Human qualities. The Connections chosen were also a bit off; I didn't make it clear enough that Connections start off unrequited, which is why we've got PCs running around with wives and siblings. The other main problem was trying to keep track of all the NPCs running about - the main plotline at the mansion is working very well, but the side tale of Fenian conspiracies and invisible men hasn't linked up with that at all yet, and I've no idea what I'm going to do with the Vicar. And I've also got a grave-digger and grave-robber to work in somehow.

Still, it turned out better than I expected it to be, and the players are all looking forward to the next session.

[Adam Dray]

For MtH and LtH, I remind the players that these are traits that should tie into the Master, especially his quirks and his hold on the minions. For motivation, I have each player tell me why their minion does what the Master orders? Why don't they just leave? Minions are pathetic, broken people (especially with Self-Loathing 3!) and the Master exploits that.

In a game with more than one session, as you have, you'll want to slowwwwly escalate. Here are my favorite Master tricks:

* Make the minion do something mean to another minion's connection.
* Praise one minion while lambasting another. Set them against one another.
* Treat one minion much better than all the others until they're hated by the others.
* Make the minion do something mean to his own connection.
* Make the minion do something mean to another minion.
* When a connection's Love gets too high, have the Master attempt to kill that connection (another minion works great).

Now, the Master should be pitiable too. Like all bullies, he has a terrible self-esteem problem, too. He just hides it well most of the time. You didn't mention who The Others are in your game. That's very important. Who does the Master need to impress? He Wants to take over the British Empire. What are his Needs?