[MLwM] A strange choice for the Outsiders?

[Arturo G.]

Hi, there!

Last week I organized a session of MLwM during PuCLN (a national Spanish games convention). It was highly successful. I think players really enjoyed it. Indeed, it was something really different from the role-games they were used to.

Our Master was living near a town in the Ruhr mountains, in a mining area. He was a young engineer at a mine when it collapsed killing most of the people at his charge, most of them close friends. He was also very near to die, surviving several days imprisoned in a dark tiny space in the rubble. After a period of insanity he became obsessed with the stupid idea that all the townfolks were the responsible of the disaster, as there were other near mines, where they were also digging, perhaps making his mine unstable. Thus, he decided to make the townfolks pay for it, killing them in tiny, dark, and closed underground-places, to make them suffer as the people at his mine suffered.

For my taste the story of this Master contained a kind of justification for the Master insanity and actions that I was not sure it was appropriate. But I was sure it had potential enough for a good session. Thus, I decided to go on.

But when I asked about who could be the Outsiders, someone said: "His father". I told them I thought it was a soft answer. We needed something more dysfunctional. OK. Then, "his father, who is already death!"

This was unexpected. I added that the rooted corpse was in a back room of the house were the master was spending many ours talking with him (something like in the movie Psychosis), and everyone looked happy with the idea.

I'm not yet sure if the whole situation was really appropriate. Anyway, the death father brought some grotesque but interesting scenes, when one of the minions received a command to bring the local judge to the house and make him talk to the death father until he, the judge, understands the wrong he did when the old mine collapsed.

What do you think about the whole situation? Was the death-father a proper choice for the outsiders?

Arturo

[Arturo G.]

Oooopppss.. In the previous post I wrote several times "death" where it should be read "dead".

It's funny how the mind works. When I'm really tired at the end of the work day, some mistakes like this one, coming from the times I was learning English at school, arise again.

Arturo

[baron samedi]

Creepy! I like the notion of the dead Outsider... :)

[Christoph Boeckle]

Hello Arturo!

I think it rocks! Why do you think it might not have been appropriate?
As long as the Master wants something from his father, thinks he can get it and works toward getting it, then you have all you need from an Outsider-Master relationship.

The scene you described must have been amazing. Tell us more about how the players and you interacted with the Outsider. You should know better than any of us if it was appropriate, after all.

I'll be throwing the idea around next time I play, thanks for sharing it!

[Arturo G.]

Well, I didn't know if a dead-outsider was appropriate because I was not sure if it was possible to create the proper interaction with him. Probably this was the reason I immediately shifted to the Psychosis-like idea. If the master feel the need to justify all his actions to his dead-father, looking for his approval, it looks like a good source of problems.

However, as it was a quick show (creation of the master and play in less than four hours) we had not enough time to really exploit it. I described the master coming from "the room" a couple of times, some low-voice conversations heared across the door, and when we were approaching the end I commanded one minion as I told you above.

There were really two chained scenes. In the first one, the judge came back from his unconscious state inside the room. When he saw the corpse, he begun to cry desperately. Then, the minion decided to try to circumvent the master command, trying an overture with the judge, letting him to fly away!!
Instead of directly remind the player that he couldn't resist the master command, I let the things go. When the judge was arriving at the front-door the master appeared. Then I reminded the minion about his duties in a more hard and pressing way (both, in game terms through commands from a very angry master and talking with the player about mechanics: he failed to resits the command, sooner or later he should do something to accomplish the master command).
Thus, in his next scene the minion was compulsed to try to force the judge to talk to the corpse. Of course he needed to use some violence to avoid him to try to fly again. I needed to introduce again the presence of the master to pressure the minion more and more. It was really surrealistic, because the player was not really able to think in a way to force the judge to talk and listen to the corpse. We ended the scene with the judge fainting again.

It was fun. 
But I was not sure if the situation was easy to be exploited too much.
Perhaps it would have come naturally if the game would have continued. Indeed, it doesn't matter if the outsider cannot communicate with the minions, because the master is the one who wants something from him. The master is the only distortion device of his own chanelled interests.

Arturo