[MLwM] Problematic initial sessions, advice? Link to full session summaries.

[Alan De Smet]

The full session notes for this game are online if anyone is interested.

The Situation: After two sessions, the Minions all have around 6-7 Self-Loathing (SL), 1 Weariness, and 2-4 Love.  They're up against a Fear of 5 and a Reason of 4.  I'm currently running about 1 Overture per Order from the Master (which typically means 1 act of Villainy or Violence).  The high SL has created self-reinforcing feedback.  High SL means it's easy to succeed at Violence or Villainy, which increases SL.  Short of lots of minion-on-minion violence, Weariness seems unlikely to rise significantly.

The Problems:

1. The game threatens to run too long.   With the above numbers and style of play, resisting the master is long odds.  Add in that the players sometimes accept the master's orders without resisting and it seems like the game could go on for a long, long time.  The game isn't dragging yet, but I fear it's getting close.  I don't know if this is a real problem but I'd rather not find out that it is a problem after we've crossed into the realm of boredom.

2. The Epilogues look preordained.  Given the above numbers and style of play, it looks like all of the Minions are doomed to death at their own hands or the hands of others.  That would be a fine result, but it's less fine that it seems so certain. The fleeing result is basically impossible as it's not feasible for a minion to acquire so much Weariness.  Their SL ensures that they'll succeed at Violence or Villainy.  Integration seems right out unless I shift to having more than one Overture per Order.  Knowing the result of the story in advance removes much of pleasure of the mystery and encourages a certain level of detachment.  It feels somewhat like a sporting event where one team has a monstrous lead halfway through the game; you just stop caring and are tempted to tune out.

3. The players feel disempowered and are detaching themselves from their PC's actions.  Part of the problem is number 2 above; I'm concerned that some players feel their Minion is doomed and have detached themselves at least somewhat from their emotional involvement.  There is also a problem on a moment-to-moment level as well.  Knowing that Violence and Villainy are almost certain, or that resisting the Master is almost impossible, the players feel disempowered and as a result are detaching themselves.

I would appreciate any suggestions.  Are these real problems, or are we misinterpreting things?  If some are real problems, how do I best move the game forward?

[Adam Dray]

Allow one of the events of play -- generally one of the players' successes -- to spread through the Town, thus lowering Fear. Basically, just lower Fear enough to balance the problem. Raise Reason as necessary, too.

Encourage players to find ways to perform an action towards their Order, but get Overtures in after or on the way back. This will increase Love, at least.

Order the minions to do violence to each other to raise Weariness.

[Callan S.]

Whoa, before setting the situation as you see fit to by altering numbers - what have the players actually done so far to beat the master?

I'm not familiar with the system. What options have they taken to try and overthrow him so far? I've got the vague sense they did nothing but fluff about at first, and are now detaching 'when the game turns out bad'. Rather than the game turning bad, it's rather like fluffing about in chess with your moves - and suddenly realising you've lost a bunch of pieces and its all a matter of time until you lose. But that's not really the game turning bad, it's a player not realising adversity would be applied.

How far off am I? Or alternatively, how inappropriately cynical am I?

[Adam Dray]

I feel that the closure of killing the Master is so important to that game that it's a by-gone conclusion that it will happen. In My Life with Master, such awful things happen that it's important to kill the bastard at the end. There's no option in the epilogue for "the minions totally fail to kill him." In fact, you can't get to the epilogue until the Master dies. So drive towards the epilogue with all the power you have.

My first suggestion does tinker with the numbers, but it can fit within the fiction pretty well and I usually ask the players if it's cool if I do that mid-game (usually in one-shots though where we have 4-6 hours to play out a scenario). No one has ever complained.

My second and third suggestions don't involve doing anything outside the bounds of the rules. Just play the Master mercilessly and things will resolve.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Actually, I am wondering about a system-based aspect of your game.

Self-Loathing can't go above a certain value. When the character hits that value, the sheet doesn't increase Self-Loathing, and the player's next turn is required to narrate a Horror Revealed scene, which includes no rolls.

So when a minion hits that point, the only scores that go up, depending on what happens, are Love and Weariness. In my experience of play, the characters who do this often enter a "positive Love spiral" that can lead to the initially most-awful-horrid minion actually being the one to make the most dramatic turnaround and even end up with an uplifting Epilogue.

I am not 100% sure I get what that maximum value of Self-Loathing is for your game, and the book's not in front of me right now so I can't look up how it's arrived at. But is it possible that you guys are missing this key aspect of the system?

Best, Ron

[Fergus]

Cool master and setup, gives me chills down my spine reading it.

My first thought after reading the play example, is you do not have enough overtures, your master is a wimp, and your players are not making use of either "aiding another minion" or "bonus dies."

Let Gabriel's player have as many connections or as many love points in 1 connection as they want to have.  This is a good thing!  You can threaten them with the master later.  Let the players get an overture in between every order for villainy.  Since they are so successful at villainy, they should have plenty of time for a quick attempt.  I would alternate player turns so that player gets order, player sneaks in an overture (but the Master always knows!), and on their third turn do the villainy.

The reason this is important is because low weariness and high love means the minions can aid one another like gangbusters.  A 4 love and 1 weariness means one Player can give another player's minion 3 extra dice!  2 or 3 minions aiding each other means things can move forward quickly.  Cooperation among minions makes them strong.  Otherwise, you've got to have a really dedicated minion doing all they can for love to break free, and that motivation comes out of a realy horrid master.

Gabriel is showing you the way out of your dielmma.  Let the player have what they want!  Make sure the players know they can aid one another!

And really, really important, make sure the players know they can call for the bonus dice often, whenever they make an effort.  Not just the townspeople or the master, but minions especially!  Just give it to them if one of those dice is obvious.  The master is tough enough to take it.  Sincerity is amazing when it comes up.  Its something the players can use to surprise even the master.

It doesn't sound like your master is doing enough to make the players grasp how messed-up he/she/it is.  2-4 love means juicy ripe victims.  Have the master begin ordering 1 minion to capture/tie-up/torture/ultimately kill a high love connection.  Do not hesitate to put connections in danger or even kill them.  Give the minion a chance to save the connection or stall as long as possible.  The connection might die, but meanwhile the other minions are pumping up their connections because the master is wasting time on this one connection he's trying to destroy.

Annah didn't care about killing the puppy?  Really?  She feels helpless?  Good, praise her for being a good little doggie who understands the master, unlike those other less reliable minions.  Then have her do more of the same, only worse!  Gretel doesn't like her work?  Too bad.  She gets more of it, and the master beats the crap out of her and yells at her for doing a poor job because she's ungrateful (the mechanics allow this as a descriptive)!

Start pushing buttons, whatever will drive the player to hate the master.  Praise, mock, whatever, but make sure the master acts on the player's complaints and stomps on them.  Make sure your players understand that this is normal, according to the rules, and that they made the master the way he is!  He is supposed to be a jerk so they will hate him!  Then make sure they know its okay to actively seek love, help one another and call for bonuses -- that's their powers, let 'em have it.

I don't know how close you are to "the horror revealed", but stuff like that can really push a group to realize they have to get cracking or its going to be ugly.  Push the envelope with the master, don't hold back.  This is one of those games where its okay to be a monster.

Regarding the endgame, you have a high reason there, and some high loves.  With a low weariness, if the master is destroyed that means integration is still a possibility.  Explain to your players that if they don't get the love, they are choosing to be killed by the townsfolk or commit suicide.  Is that what they want?  If they do, cool, milk the tragedy!  If they don't, its because they don't understand the pit they are digging.  They are looking to you for direction, instead of making a stand themselves.  You should make sure they understand that they have to be the ones to call for overtures in between orders.

And if they don't make the effort, if they choose the easy way out, then don't they deserve death at their own hands or somebody else's?  Self esteem takes work, and it requires that the person seeking it make the attempt.

Make the next session the last one.  You could introduce an innocent and pump up the reason of the town by +1 or 2, then have the master obsess with this innocent's "perfect breath" as the event he's been waiting for.  You could have the innocent turn out to be one of the player's connections.  While the player is bringing the innocent to the fort/putting them in their cell/master is gloating over the poor soul/getting ready to hook 'em up the machine, give that minion tons of chances for overtures.

If at the end of the session, nobody challeneges the master and they are getting bored, ask if everyone's done with this game, and then go to endgame.  If everyone dies, so be it.  Let them choose their end and how their failure to break free resulted in death.  But if you push the knife in with the master AND let the players have the tools above, this won't happen.

Addendum:  Ron actually pointed out an important point.  Self loathing can't be higher than reason plus love - the horror revealed is triggered instead.  This is an important part of showing how the master's evil is growing out of control.

[Alan De Smet]

There are a number of interesting things suggested already, but I'll need to think on, but I want to quickly address two points:


Ron Edwards:

Indeed, Self-Loathing is capped.  However, it's capped at Love+Reason.  The characters' Self-Loathing is currently at or near Love+Reason.  So assuming I keep things at the current rate, roughly 1 Overture per Order (followed by Violence or Villainy) I can expect both to continue to go up evenly.  That leaves Self-Loathing 4 dice higher than Love (Our game's Reason is 4).

Now, as the pair of Self-Loathing and Reason go up roughly evenly, the odds of successfully resisting do go up as the fixed 4 Reason dice become a smaller and smaller portion of the math.  My curiousity of how that would play out is why I ran the numbers.  When I ran the numbers, I failed to forsee that the game would lead to dice pools on the scale of 12 or more dice, so my table only goes to 10 versus 10 dice (a problem I hope to rectify eventually).  Still, based on those numbers and given our game's situation, it looks like adding 1 die to each pool gives the lower die pool about a 1-2% increase in chance of succcess.  Maybe that's enough.  At about 8 or 9 Love I'm guessing the character has about a 10% chance of resisting the Master, which might be enough.  But I'm not sure, and I'm definitely not sure how much longer the game can go before it wears out its welcome.

My math also doesn't include the bonus dice, so I'm not sure how much of an impact it will likely have.  That's why I'm not entirely sure I have a real problem.  Indeed, my players have been good at going for bonus dice when making Overtures, but generally haven't when Resisting the Master.  Perhaps as the situation gets more dire they'll use those dice more often.  But the most obvious way to make them Desperate and Sincere is to threaten their Loves; if they fail to resist there is a good chance of lowering Love.  Losing Loves is interesting, and I'd like to see some, but I need to balance it against the story coming to a reasonably paced conclusion.


Callan S.:

It's the nature of the system (as I understand it) that the Minions can't overtly try to overthrow the Master.  One needs to successfully resist an order from the Master, at which point that Minion is commited to a a life-and-death struggle with the Master. (I've glossed over some details, but I believe that to be a reasonable summary.)  Generally speaking no amount of pre-planning will help.  The key is to make as many Overtures as possible (to increase Love) and when the odds seem good or the situation particularlly dire, grab as many bonus dice as possible.  The bonus dice aren't a matter of planning ahead, but are based on actions right then and there.  (Upon further thought, you can plan ahead, but it's non-obvious.  You really need to put your character in a situation where is especially Desperate or Sincere.  Having lots of Loves for the Master to threaten seems the most obvious route.)

[Fergus]

One minion providing aid to another minion is not (necessarily) overt.

In the final battle with the master it can be, as minions take sides and help the master/help the minion resisting.  But in game play, remember that the master knows everything.  Gabriel could provide aid to Annah's "resistance roll" just by contemplating rebellion at that moment, and the master is weakened as he realizes one of his minions is disloyal at heart.  Gabriel could provide aid to Gretel during her overture just by encouragement - Gabriel is in view during the overture, Gretel knows Gabriel is there and the nod of the head gives Gretel strength to really try this time.  Gabriel and Gretel aren't actively opposing the master, its passive resistance.

But passive just gets you by.  Ultimately, you have to take action.  I don't know what the minions "love minus weariness" is, but if everyone is helping that resistance roll, that could be 3-9 extra dice (or more!), and whatever the bonus die is.  And if they are feeling that helpless and (secretly) sick of the master, why wouldn't they all throw in at the end?

And the bonus die can be anything if the group agrees.  You just know what's junk and what isn't.

Gabriel (intimacy, desperation and sincerity at once):  *grabs the master by the collar*  "I'm sick of this!  Your stupid experiments!  I can't take it anymore, I want to help people!  No more!"

Give the player the 1d8, and let the other minions dog pile on the rabbit.

And finally, there's nothing that says the Player's action has to be Order, Overture, Order.  It can be 2 Overtures, Order, Overture if the group agrees.  Its how you narrate the flow of events.  The master will act to counter it, and punish the minion who does this, but this weakens the master when he starts spending time trying to overcome his minions needs.

Also, remember, the minion is obligated to make 1 dice roll in service to the order, after that he has to somehow receive a new command, and he can make 2 or 3 Overtures on the way back to the fort.

The only thing keeping the minions back is themselves.  Once they begin to squirm in their bonds, the master has to fight to keep them focused on his agenda.