Actual Play: Castle of Spiders

[joshua neff]

I began a MLWM run this past Wednesday, with myself GMing & Mike Holmes, Julie, & our friend Ryan running the PCs. Here's what we ended up with:

The Master: Baron Augustus von Rachna, a Beast of a Feeder with eerily long limbs who, like a spider, liquifies the internal organs of people & sucks them out. (Why? Because he can & likes to. No deep motivations for this creep.) The Baron lives in a crumbling, turretted castle. Spider webs abound, naturally. He wants to be immortal in posterity, so he wants the Greatest Writer in the World, a Frenchman, to come to his castle & write his memoirs. He plans to keep the writer trapped in the castle, so that the memoirs will only be released after the Baron dies.

Fear: 4
Reason: 2

His Minions:

Annette (Julie) (Self-Loathing: 1, Weariness: 2), a bookish Frenchwoman in Coke-bottle-thick glasses who serves as von Rachna's librarian & secretary.  She's totally blind unless she's reading & she can read any language, but only by natural light (sunlight or moonlight).

Tor (Ryan) (Self-Loathing: 2, Weariness: 1), the gargantuan manservant & all-around henchman. Tor has superhuman strength, except when he's being yelled at (& of course the Master yells at him all the time). He constantly breaks things (he's clumsy & doesn't know his own strength), unless he hears soothing music.

Wilhelm (Mike) (Self-Loathing: 1, Weariness: 2) is the groundskeeper & major domo. He has uncontrollable palsy, except when he's drunk. Despite that, he's completely convincing (i.e., he automatically wins any Villany roll), except to children, who see right through him.

I won't go into excruciating detail as to what happened in the game. I will give some of my favorite bits:

* Tor went to one of his connections, Greta, a pretty student at the town's small university. She was studying late in the library by candlelight, with Tor outside, framed by the window. Ryan declared that Tor was looking at her, just looking, with absolute sincerity on his face. It was such a sweet moment, I absolutely gave him the sincerity die. He succeeded & got a point of love as he touched Greta's heart. Later, he went to see her again. This time, she ran into another student, the handsome & vain Gustave, who tried to "walk her home." Tor stepped in & when Gustave insulted Tor, calling him a monster, Tor got mad & slammed Gustave up against a wall. Despite this display of brutality, he succeeded in another Connection roll & bumped his Love with Greta up to 2.

* The Master ordered Annette to write a letter to the Great Writer. Sadly, it was the middle of the night & Annette couldn't see a thing, so she went to both of her Connections. Professor Wolff was happy to oblige (& she got 1 Love with him), but had some qualms, worrying that the Master would harm the writer. When Annette tried to further convince him, they tied the roll--an interruption. I had Greta suddenly knock on the professor's door, asking to speak with him. (In my head, she wanted to talk about the feelings she had suddenly developed for this ugly giant she'd seen, but that was never actually established "on screen.") Then she went to the town doctor, Dr. Schoenherr, who wrote her the letter.

* When Annette presented von Rachna with the letter, she mentioned that Dr. Shoenherr had helped her. The Master smiled & gave her a pat on the head, dismissing her. Then he summoned Tor & ordered him to go to town & kill the doctor. (This was the cliffhanger we ended the session on. The next session will begin with Tor getting to roll to Resist the Master.)

* I love the whole surrealism & absurdity of it all. Tor, on orders from the Baron, goes to town & kills the town drunk. He carries the drunk back to the castle, but Ryan declares that the drunk is bleeding heavily from the head, so a trail of blood leads to the castle. The Master is furious when he sees this (yelling at Tor, which causes Tor to drop the drunk on the floor, which causes the Master to yell more). He orders Tor to fetch Wilhelm to clean up the blood. Tor intercepts Wilhelm on his way to town (because the palsy makes him absurdly easy to catch), but Wilhelm is so convincing he convinces Tor to clean up the blood instead. Wilhelm, meanwhile, is trying to prepare the drunk for the Master's consumption, but there's a vital ingredient missing from the kitchen: the Master loves juniper berries seasoning his meals. Wilhelm goes to town to get some juniper berries from one of his connections, getting some Love in the process. And the Master keeps ordering Tor to fetch Wilhelm & bring him back to the castle. It's wacky.

So, at the end of the first session, Tor had managed to bump his Self-Loathing to 4--but luckily his Love has gone up at similarly, because he's constantly on the edge of the Horror Revealed--& all of the PCs have managed to establish some Connections, so that each of them have at least 2 Love total. Which means in the next session, the Master is going to start hitting at their Connections & setting the Minions against each other as much as he can.

I love this game, by the way.

[Russell Hoyle]

Wilhelm (Mike) (Self-Loathing: 1, Weariness: 2) is the groundskeeper & major domo.

Groundskeeper Wilhelm?
Hoots, mon!

;)

Thanks for the post, I cant wait to find someone with whom to play MLWM

(online or ftf - any interest, drop me a line)

Rusty

[Jason L Blair]

I didn't even get that until Russell pointed it out.

Groundskeeper Wilhelm...that's the funny.

[Mike Holmes]

That was totally a coincidence (as far as you know).  I made up the character concept as groundskeeper* and then when asked for a name just blurted out the first German name that came to me. Probably more linked to the Kaiser than anything else.

OTOH, maybe in the back of my head...

Mike

*The idea is based somewhat on the groundskeeper character Flash played in the Origins game. Less loathsome, however.

[joshua neff]

Simpsons fan that I am, I have to admit I didn't even think of the Groundskeeper Willy/Wilhelm connection until you guys posted it.

Sheesh.