Epilogue Question

[Michael S. Miller]

We played MLwM yesterday and had a blast. I had to make one ruling that I wanted to ask Paul about (but anyone is, of course, free to jump in). Once the dice showed that the minion had killed the master (and there was much rejoicing), I had everyone figure out their Epilogue values before we narrated the Master's actual death. As there was an innocent already extablished in the scene, the question came up of whether or not to use the innocent-enhanced Reason value for the calculations. I ruled that if that 1-point boost made the difference of qualifying for a particular Epilogue or not, then the player had the option of taking that epilogue, so long as they included the innocent within the epilogue.

If this is kosher, you might want to add it to the Margin Notes (they're very cool, Paul, but maybe you should get someone to write them who doesn't loathe you so much 8^)

[Christopher Weeks]

During that same game, a question came up about applying aid to someone with a negative value.  Do the aided dice start counting from the person's negative score or from the one that the negative defaults up to?

MLwM is magnificent.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

I'd think that it would have to be from one for several reasons. For one, I think the text supports it better (it says to add it to their pool, not to the calculation before the end of determining the pool). But more importantly, if you added it to the lower figure, it would make aiding often irrelevant. I'd posit that it's one die characters (with lower totals) who get aided most often anyhow. So you'd be killing the rule, effectively.

I do like the idea that one character's ineptitude can suck up another's ability, however. So I do find the other method tempting.

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

Regarding Providing Aid to a character with a negative pool, I'd almost certainly rule, as Mike suggests, that the Aiding dice are added to the single die that the character would otherwise roll without the Aid. In my experience, Aid scenes are almost always quite dramatic, but rare because they're risky for the Aiding character, and so I'm disinclined to further disincentivize them.

Regarding whether the presence of an Innocent during Endgame should be allowed to impact a Minion's Epilogue constraints, my "game designer" suspicion is that your ruling is a slippery-slope away from allowing players to use any Innocent in their Epilogue, whether the Innocent was present for Endgame or not. So maybe with that in mind I'd not have ruled the way you did. But at the same time, I think social contract is probably never stronger for a group than right at the moment of the Master's death, so I'm inclined to think that what you decided was right for your players and your game.

Paul

[Michael S. Miller]

Regarding whether the presence of an Innocent during Endgame should be allowed to impact a Minion's Epilogue constraints, my "game designer" suspicion is that your ruling is a slippery-slope away from allowing players to use any Innocent in their Epilogue, whether the Innocent was present for Endgame or not. So maybe with that in mind I'd not have ruled the way you did.

Hey, Paul. I'm not quite following you here. I think I understand that you're saying "A player may include an Innocent (or any other NPC) in their Epilogue whether or not that NPC is present for Endgame."

But the game mechanics question is probably better phrased as: "Under what conditions, if any, can a player use the Innocent-enhanced Reason value to determine which Epilogues they qualify for?"

[Paul Czege]

Hey Michael,

I think I understand that you're saying "A player may include an Innocent (or any other NPC) in their Epilogue whether or not that NPC is present for Endgame."

Actually, all I'm saying is that I think I may not have allowed a Reason bonus from an Innocent for purposes of determining Epilogue constraints.

And yes, there's no restriction on which NPCs a player may use in their Epilogues, provided another player's character is not deprotagonized in the process.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd also like to clarify, if anyone is confused about it still, that there's no such thing as a "negative value" in My Life with Master. You are always rolling one or more dice.

Best,
Ron

[Christopher Weeks]

We decided in the game, for basically the reasons cited, to add Aid dice to a pool of one.  And the extra point of reason from the Innocent didn't actually trip anyone's Epilogue options, it was just something we discussed and Michael allowed, a scene or two before we actually finished the old sicko off.

Chris