[MLWM] My Life With The Viscount.

[jburneko]

Hello All,

Long time, no post.  My weekday group has started a game of My Life With Master.  During master/character creation one player suggested doing something related to the French Revolution and another player suggested modeling the master after the Marquis De Sade.  Thus our Beast/Teacher The Viscount Phillippe Arden was born.  His Need is to Quell The Masses and his Want is to convince the Revolutionary Council (the outsiders) that he is not a threat.  Fear is 3 and Reason is 1.

The Minions:

Marlaina, Arden's Mistress
MtH: Can kill anyone expect when they are alone.
LtH: Can't win a duel unless fighting a master swordsman.
Connenctions: Jaques the local Barkeep and Henri the local Blacksmith.

Franc, Arden's Alchemist
MtH: Can brew any potion except those that affect emotion.
LtH: Burns in sunlight unless he is wearing protective ointment.
Connections: Marc, the local Grocer and Jaquline, an old childhood love.

Beau, Arden's Scribe
MtH: Can flawlessly lie except when physically threatened.
LtH: Can't defend himself unless the agressor wants to destroy books.
Connections: Nico the choirboy who is also his son, Marie the local school teacher.

Dilette, Arden's Attache
MtH: Can charm anyone except those he loves.
LtH: Cannot be sexually stimulated except through voyeuristic means.
Connections: Poincar, the baker who is also his father and Blaise, a young revolutionary who is also his brother.

The last two characters raised an interesting question.  Can Connections be relatives?  I didn't see anything in the rules forbidding it so I let it stand.  I just don't remember anyone else doing it from Actual Play posts I'd read.

After the first session the overall reaction was VERY VERY favorable.  The player who was least interested in playing the game, Beau's player, commented that the game turned out to be nothing like he expected and was actually a lot of fun.  Franc's player commented that he especially loved the Horror Revealed mechanic because it lent depth to the environment and people that you don't see in most other games.  Marlaina's player actually seems to be having more fun playing Horror Revealeds than her own character.

Here's a brief summary of what the minions are up to.  The Dilette is tricking the love interest of Blaise into believing he is really a cad. Beau is organizing a "propaganda" play at the local theater which included convincing the local priest that the master's sado-masochistic writings were "allegorical." The Marlaina is busy seducing and winning the confidence of the young revolutionary. Finally, Franc is off poisoning the well to "quell the masses" and framing the town doctor for the murder of the town drunk.

Here's the most striking thing about our session.  Both Franc and Marlaina seem to deliberately going for broke with Love Points.  Early in character creation they spoted the Epilogue condition of "Love equals zero: The minion emerges from the ashes of the Endgame as a force of Fear in his/her own right" and both said something to the effect of, "That's the ending for me!"  This effectively means that every other turn for these two characters is a Horror Revealed scene because they aren't and have no interest in gaining any love.

Horror Revealeds have produced: A psychopathic little girl slitting the throat of the town drunk. A young actress comitting suicide. A young boy witnessing a Guillotine being smuggled into the town. A mysterious figure tricking a Priest and a School Teacher into believing they've had an illicit affair. A person watching, helplessly because they've been drugged as a loved one dies. A doctor discovering that he may have murdered the town drunk after a black out period.

This leads me to the one major complaint I had from a player.  Dilette's player thought the Horror Revealed mechanic was really slowing him down.  He's in the process of executing some very specific plan that involves a lot of Villainy so he too is getting a lot of Horror Revealeds.  He thinks they are interupting his flow.  He also said,  it's not that he's ignoring his connections or Love Points but rather that he isn't ready to deal with them yet.

Overall the game is very bleak and very tragic.  Anyone who knows me knows that I'm just eating this up.

The most humanizing element of the entire game is Beau. So far he's the only minion that appears to believe in something outside of doing the master's bidding. Basically, he believes in knowledge and the innocence of children. He took his son fishing, he cared for the local priest when he fell ill from the well's poison and he saved the school teacher from the darker more cynical aspects of the revolution. He's the only character rolling in Love and is well on his way to being the character who ultimately overthrows the master.

Hope that was interesting.

Jesse

[Valamir]

He also said, it's not that he's ignoring his connections or Love Points but rather that he isn't ready to deal with them yet.

He doesn't really have to "deal" with them in order to make a connection...a furtive glimpse from across the street where he starts to move towards them and then stops because he has other priorities while sadly watching them walk out of view would be a perfectly fine connection in my book.  

Failing the roll could result in the connection noticing she was being stared at by some freak and putting her head down and walking quickly away.

[TonyLB]

I am intensely interested to hear how the end game progresses, group-wise, with only one person attempting to garner Love.  

If nobody garnered Love... would the game even end?  Or would things just keep getting worse and worse and worse?  My understanding of MLwM isn't sufficient to figure out that answer without serious research.

It would be offputting (but sensible) if the folks who wanted to portray their Villainy started killing off Beau's loved ones in order to keep the game from ending.  I know that's what I'd be contemplating right now, were I in their shoes.

[jburneko]

Strictly according to the rules if NO ONE gained love then, yes, the game would never end.  Basically each player would rapidly hit the Self-Loathing ceilling and would alternate turns between their own and a Horror Revealed.  Things would just get worse and worse and worse and worse until I suppose the group just gave up and the master and his minions stood alone in a wasteland of corpses and ruined lives.

But only two the players I know are deliberately going for zero love.  I don't quite know where Dilette's player is going.  He earned one point of love in the beginning when he warned his revolutionary brother that the Viscount was on to him.  He failed the roll though and Blaise mocked his warning as some kind of disingenious attempt to scare him off.  So he may pull through in the end.  He just keeps getting Horror Revealed's because he's also executing what appears to be a rather involved bit of villainy.

One thing I did want to not in my initial post that I forgot about was the experience I had preping the game.  I reread the game before starting to prep and I noticed something.  The book does an excelent job of explaining how the game should be played on a moment-to-moment basis but it doesn't go into much detail about what the GM should bring to the table at the start of play.

The two clues I was working with is the advice not to have any sort of anatogonistic situation outside of the Master, like bandits raiding the town, and the bit in the book about a Magistrate NPC who had recently arbitrated a land dispute between two brothers.  So this is what I decided: I would take the eight NPC generated from character creation, create eight of my own and link them all up via non-villainous, though perhaps problematic, relationships.

So basically I started with a story map of 16 NPCs.  Each one linked to at least two other NPCs via some sort of personal relationship.  The hardest thing was not making these anatognistic relationships.  For example, I avoided having anyone blackmailing each other.  But one character is financially in debt to another.  There's a number of one way love interests.  A couple of characters work with each other.  One marriage is troubled because one spouse supports the revolution and the other doesn't.  By the end of the first session I was up to 23 NPCs because several had been created via Horror Revealed scenes.

If anyone is interested in the full story map I started with I'd be happy to post it.

Jesse

[Paul Czege]

Hey Jesse,

The Dilette is tricking the love interest of Blaise into believing he is really a cad.

Blaise is his own connection? Was he commanded to do this? How much of what the minions are up to was forced on them by the Master?

Paul

[jburneko]

Paul,

The minions were ordered to peform fairly broad tasks.  The details of the execution of that task the minions have been planning and executing on their own.

In Dilette's case he was ordered to gain the confidence of an old widow who lives near the edge of town because the rest of the towns people often turn to her for advice.  The love interest of Blaise is her daughter, Jaqueline, and the widow disapproves of Blaise.  So he is discouraging the daughter's relationship to gain the widow's respect as per the master's orders.  However, in his last scene of the last session he did something that implies he is planning on taking Jaqueline back to the master as a... erm... "gift."  This is totally his own devising.

Beau was told that the local theater was putting on productions of a certain distasteful "satirical" piece.  He was to put an end to these productions and replace them with a piece of his own devising selected from the master's diaries.  It was Beau's idea to turn the piece into a kind of "spiritual" musical and bring the priest in on it.

A particularly interesting bit of interaction ran like this:

Beau's Scene: He convinces the local theater manager to produce a play based on the viscount's writings.  In the process he upsets the theater's lead actress, Gabriella, because she will be forced to perform some of the horrid sexual acts described in the book on stage.

Marlaina's Scene: Gabriella recognizes Marlaina from the Viscount's illustrations and pleads with her to please explain what it all means (I was playing Gabriella as extremely naive).  Marlaina callously claims that Gabriella is mistaken and that it's none of her concern.

(Next go around...)

Marlaina's Horror Revealed: Gabriella slitting her wrists.

Marlaina, herself was instructed to seduce Blaise and infiltrate his revolutionary organization.  She has successfully done this and learned some of the people who are working with him.

Franc was ordered to dump something into the water supply to make the people lethargic.  He succeeded in that.  The master then ordered him to obtain a sample of the dead drunkert's blood put it on a knife and frame someone.  Franc choose the doctor.

So that's more or less how things are playing out.

[Tobias]

Arrrgl.

That is all soooo cool. Now I know why I needed MLwM.

Thanks for that.

[Michael S. Miller]

I've also had players that, since they created the Master, feel reluctant to take him down. What I've done (I'm not saying you necessarily ought to do it, that's for you to decide) is make the Master even nastier. Remember, he needs the minions, but he hates needing the minions. Nothing they do is ever good enough. If praise is handed out, it is only done so to hurt one of the other minions, or is very conditional. Here's an example:

However, in his last scene of the last session he did something that implies he is planning on taking Jaqueline back to the master as a... erm... "gift."  This is totally his own devising.

If I were playing the Master, he would reject this gift outright and visciously scold the minion for his impertinant presumption. "You have ruined all of my plans! I needed her where she was, not here! Why must you be so willful, you wretch!"

Anything they take pride in, knock it down. Or order them to destroy it. If they've struggled hard to accomplish something, have the Master change his mind and deem it trivial, or obselete. Maybe I play too rough, but I do everything I can think of to *make* the minions hate me ... er, I mean, hate the Master. Yeah. That's it.

Just my 2 cents.

[TonyLB]

Michael, it sounds to me (correct me if I'm wrong) as if you are recommending ways to undermine the sense that the villainous accomplishments of the minions are "theirs".  In other words, pointing out more clearly that the things they do in the service of the Master are for the Masters benefit, and only the Love that they steal in defiance of the Master truly belongs to them.

That sounds like an excellent thing to throw into the mix, and perhaps a particularly useful element in a game where people seem to be getting an unconflicted kick out of raw villainy.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Jesse, you're not wimping out in playing the Master, are you? When I run this game, the Master humiliates the minions in all possible ways, and most especially in his commands to them. He or she is always a real fucker. Doesn't matter if it's emotional, physical, or social humiliation; the more the better.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Hmmmm... Maybe I'm not playing the master ruthlessly enough.  Which is probably a global problem I have with villains.  Personally the *worst* kind of vialliny I can think of is the kind of villainy that without force or threats tricks you into WILLINGLY working for it.

"Oh, of course, I'll do that for you, after all, you're so kind to my son and any man who's that wonderful with children can't possibly be wrong."  Then when you come back from doing whatever you were sent to do you discover that your son now respects him more than he respects you.  Now you CAN'T refuse him because, well, we want to disappoint you son now would we?

*brrrrrr* The kind of villain that never actually does anything "wrong" himself and can point to all his "good" deeds with a smile.  Humiliation, abuse, threats, viollence, it's a little too honest and well... sincere for me.

But I was thinking of going in that direction.  I was thinking that bringing Jaqueline to the master was *not* what the master asked for and so might be a tad upset with Dilette.

Jesse

[Mike Holmes]

Jesse, no, that's not it. No matter what Dillette does, have the master be an ass about it. This is a dysfunctional relationship. The master doesn't praise his minions when they do well. Well, at least not often. He may have in the past, but as play starts, he's gone off the deep end, and is causing the world to end.

This guy is so much a bastard that he can drive people to kill him. Must drive them.

So, next time the master sees a minion:

[*]He comments on how ugly they are, and how lucky the minion is that he even allows them in his sight. "Franc, I'd rather have my eyes put out than have to look at your disgusting exterior."
[*]He comments about their Less than Human. "Beau, if you were any less a man, you'd be Dillette.
[*]He comments about their lack of sexual prowess in the most demeaning way possible. "Marlaina, I've had better from quadrapelegics from the asylum."
[*]He puts them down in front of company. "See what I have to deal with Monsuier Gaston? Beau here is such an idiot of a scribe that he can't spell his own name correctly most days."
[*]He casually mentions being rid of them. "Franc, I think that I'm going to kill you the next time you mess up. Just thought you should know."
[*]Or, worse, replacing them, "You know, Marlaina, you've become quite tiresome. Gisselle is much more beuatiful than thou, maybe I'll take her to bed, and give you to Beau."
[*]He beats one of the minions. Beau presents the documents that he wants, perfectly done. "These are useless, just like you, Beau!" Then he takes his horsewhip and whips Beau until he can barely move (no game effect, but).
[*]He maims somebody. Dillette says somthing nice to the master, and the master cuts off his ear saying, "I'm taking your ear, because you soil mine with your pusilanimous lies, Dillette."
[*]He sends a minion for a ten year old girl from the village. "Nothing more delectable than deflowering an innocent."[/list:u]

And I'm being light here. In my game I'm sure that soon I'd have scenes involving hot pokers and genetalia. Or worse.

Preferably all of these are done in front of any remaining connections. Or anybody who the PC might care about in terms of opinions.

He's a beast not just a cranky individual. Your players have chosen to make their villain like the Marquis de Sade. That's a powerful choice. Nothing that I have above would even come close to matching the deprredations of the Marquis de Sade. I mean, he really existed, and he was really much worse than that. So you've got a hard goal set for you by the players if you want to make him the man that they want to hate.

Mike

[TonyLB]

I love Mikes examples, and agree wholly with his overall point.  The Master should give players (not characters, players) the screaming heebie-jeebies.

But, FWIW, I also get mileage out of mixing raw malevolence with properly coded dysfunctional affection.

[*]"Ah, Dilette, only you understand me.  Not like those other simpering idiots.  You know, don't you my love, that that is why I ask so much more of you than them."[*](Follow-up, a little later) "Ah, Beau, only you understand me..."[*]"Marlaina, you are looking so thin.  That simply won't do.  Beau, take her out and get her a decent meal, whatever it takes."[*]"Ah, Dilette, I love your hair.  If only I could have hair like that."[*]"You know Franc, I'd hate for anything to happen to you.  You're my favorite."[/list:u]I could go on and on, but my general take on it is twofold.  First, somebody who is relentlessly, unremittingly vicious is actually easier to deal with than somebody unpredictable.  Second, you can conceal an awful lot of dysfunction behind apparently kindly motives.

Anyway, there's my two cents.... or kroeners, or whatever they use in a conveniently ambiguous balkan village.

[Mike Holmes]

Well said. Indeed, mix it up, but keep somebody unhappy with the master with every move. In fact, I love how complimenting the one character insults all the rest. Masterful, Tony. :-)

Mike

[Trevis Martin]

One of the bits for Master that I've used in play is something that I've experienced in dysfunctional relationships.  The person expects you to read their mind.  I.e. they don't tell you everything they want and they get mad when you don't do what they expect.

It works.

Trevis