a curious endeavor: Master creation

[Paul Czege]

Wherein is detailed the curious endeavor of five otherwise good tempered individuals:

1. The group, consisting of myself, in the role of gamemaster, Tom, Scott Knipe, Matt Gwinn, and my girlfriend Danielle, started into creating a Master for our playtest game by considering the Types and Aspects listed in the rules. After some discussion, which was substantive enough that I plan to describe it in another post, and guidance in understanding the categories but almost nothing in the way of opinion from myself, the group settled on a Collector-Beast. I think there was some interest in straying from they typical, and not going with a Breeder Master, like Aloysius Dees, or a Feeder. Although, in some ways, what we ended up with is a Feeder.

2. Part of what we discussed at this point is the distinction between the Brain and Beast Aspects, which is something I've been struggling to define effectively in writing for the rules. Look to my other more detailed post for more on this part of the conversation. For this post, perhaps it's enough to say that Aspect is about whether the Master is immersed in the world of thoughts and words or the world of sensation, and how that colors the Master's understanding of what motivates others. A Brain Aspected Master is influenced by conversation, and acts to influence others via language. His pleasures and manner are perhaps veneered with gentility, and more importantly, his personality is colored by a rationalization that there's some objective good embedded in his monstrous endeavors. A Beast Aspected Master is influenced more by physical and primal interactions, by sexual interactions, curious gustatory pleasures, and sadistic and masochistic exchanges. He will act to influence others in physical, more primal ways, perhaps through inflicting pain.

3. We then discussed his Need, that is, what the Master needs of the Townspeople. The discussion was sort-of a way of determining what our Collector type Master actually collects. And it was determined, by a powerful and inspired suggestion from Matt, that the Master is a once great, but past his prime actor, engaged in an ongoing and desperate endeavor of cannibalism, from which he ingests the victim's experiences, thereby informing the quality of his acting, although the effect is fleeting. And everyone pretty much said, "Ooooh...that's good!". It was resolved that a decomposing corpse somewhat rapidly loses its ability to convey memories by being consumed, and thus, that the Minions would have a lot of work to do procuring dead people on behalf of the Master's ongoing greatness.

4. The Master's Want and the nature of the Outsiders were both easy at that point. They are out-of-town critics, and the sophisticated theatre-going elite. And he Wants their admiration.

5. The rules only say that the Master and Minions reside in the rough wilderness outside of the town. The group discussed the nature of the residence, and easily decided it was an ancient playhouse in the style of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

6. Finally, it was decided that Fear would be 6 and Reason would be 4.

The whole collaborative creation process hung together so phenomenally well that I can't help but be fantastically thrilled, and think that I've hit on just the right components and recipe for Master creation. At one point I was considering writing the game with a library of Masters that play groups would select from, but the sheer more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts player enthusiasm produced by Monday's Master creation process has totally set the library option aside for me now.

What do you think? Is it a set of steps for collaboratively producing an infinite variety of horrific, menacing, and genre appropriate Masters? Is there anything missing from it? Is there enough guidance embedded in the process that a group of Nar-inexperienced players can be successful with it?

Paul

[Paul Czege]

And just for fun, since the Master hasn't yet been named. Give us your best name suggestions for him. Remember that the game is set somewhere around 1805, in an unspecified central European country. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~poindexterfamily/OldNames.html">This site has a nice list of Victorian names that might be useful for inspiration.

Paul

[Mike Holmes]

Well...he must be...Master Thespian!

Sorry, it jsut had to be said.

My entee into the naming contest would be Attor Fuseau (mangled European meaning something like Consume Gore).

I think the system sounds great. And I would agree that the story will speak to the players more if they, too, participate in the creation of the Master. Seems like a slam-dunk to me.

Examples are still a good idea, but otherwise I think that people should be able to get the process.

Mike

[hardcoremoose]

Attor Fuseau sounds like a fantastic name.  Very Euro-Trash.

I'm not sure what more to say about the whole Master creation process.  We were pretty much winging it, but everything came together in a way that seems, in retrospect, fairly intuitive.  The Types and Aspects were enough to get us talking, and once we started expressing things of interest to ourselves (in this case, the notions of collecting memories, cannibalism, and Shakespearean theatre) the Master virtually appeared, whole cloth.  Yeah, we discussed the particulars - like whether he would be young or old - but I don't think any of that was ever in doubt.

- Scott

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I wonder what it would be like to play The Whispering Vault, if creating the Unbidden were a group effort?

It's interesting because most of the fun conflict in WV (as I see it) is internal to the Stalkers, rather than logistic or strategic regarding "finding the Unbidden." So making up the Unbidden as a group shouldn't detract from play, especially since its actual play decisions would be handled by the GM.

... that's what this thread got me thinking about. It also seems to me that such a tactic would have benefited WV immensely, and negated much of the short-sighted criticism that pegged it as a "monster hunt" one-shot game.

Best,
Ron