Muwahahaha! I'm da Master!

[loki's wrangling]

Just finished my first session with MLwM--and my first time GMing, too. (Lost my GM cherry! At last! :D) It went much better than I ever expected. Man, am I relieved. The players all said they enjoyed it(and one onlooker became a player when he asked to join after one cycle of scenes), but I don't put much stock in what might be simple politeness. The better barometer was the feel of the session--there were no embarrassing lags, no why-are-we-wasting-our-time kind of frustration, and a lot of at least passable roleplaying. One scene where a PC added to another PC's dice pool, too.

The part I expected to be the biggest hurdle, the more-thans and less-thans, were pretty difficult as expected--but they were pretty fun, too. One problem I noticed is that MLwM requires such a different mindset from the kinds of RPGs my players are used to. They're used to being cool heroes with Japanimation-influenced bravado, so the fact they had to play pathetic, deformed minions came as a bit of a culture shock, I believe. The particular genre of horror that MLwM is modeled after is pretty unfamiliar to Koreans, which complicated things.

Nevertheless things came through pretty well, though not quite so horrific as I might have liked. Instead of a hunchback with inhuman strength who was immobilized by holy water, as I might have expected, I got an attractive teenager with psionic powers and a phobia of other peoples' body heat. Which isn't so bad, just a bit unexpected. And I nevertheless got an autistic man and a woman with a terribly burned face, so I'm still happy. :)

As others have said, going into play "cold" right after chargen can be pretty hard. There's only so many "kidnap kids" commands you can give before it gets monotonous, you know? Next time I plan to add a command to murder a priest to divert the town's attention from the Master's diabolic activities, to steal a cross said to have miraculous powers, etc. And once players get more dice than the Master to resist his commands, I'm bringing in their Connections.

So overall, I had a blast. I only wish I could've played in my own game. :)

[Michael S. Miller]

HI, LW

That sounds like a great session! Glad things are turning out malevolently well for you.

And once players get more dice than the Master to resist his commands, I'm bringing in their Connections.

Why wait? The players created those Connections because they wanted to see them in play, so put them in play. Like I said in the article, threaten the Connections bit by bit, rather than killing them outright.

BTW, what's your Master's Wants and Needs? How many players do you have? How many scenes did you get through in your session?

[loki's wrangling]

HI, LW
Why wait? The players created those Connections because they wanted to see them in play, so put them in play. Like I said in the article, threaten the Connections bit by bit, rather than killing them outright.

Ooh, you're right. I have much still to learn about the ways of evil... I was intending to do as you stated in the article(a great step forward for cause of  Masters everywhere, btw), just thought I should let them build up their Love first. A Master, playing fair? What was I thinking? :D

BTW, what's your Master's Wants and Needs? How many players do you have? How many scenes did you get through in your session?

Wants: To revive his wife's preserved remains
Needs: Townspeople to provide body parts for his nefarious experiments

There are five players total. I started with four but one of the lookers-on begged to be included, which I take as a good sign.

Things tend to move slower online, so I got a cycle of scenes done in about an hour. So for the first session was an hour of chargen + two cycles of scenes. Hopefully I'll do three more cycles this session.

Thanks for the input!