[My Life With Master] Master Popescu's Medicine

[Remi Treuer]

So we just wrapped up a 4-session game of My Life With Master. The Master was Herr Doktor Popescu, a Moreau-like ex-doctor who used the village below his ornate mountainside castle as a petri dish for horrific medical experiments.

Clinton played Canius, a man who could only bark when looked at, but who could write supremely convincing prose as long a he did not put his own name on it.

Jason played Radu, a monster whose looks could make even the staunchest man run, but in church he was as normal as you or I. He had hands that could rend wood and stone, but against human flesh were as gentle as a baby's.

Joe played Vladimir, a winged man who could fly, but only as long as he was bound to earth with a string. He was a lover of music, which crippled him with delight (I can't remember the 'but').

Our first two games were fairly tentative, but by the third game we had really grasped the system and the horror that it induced, and those last two sessions were pretty cookin'. However, there were a few trip-ups.

The biggie was that we didn't take the text's admonition that a 5 Fear Master was truly horrific quite as seriously as we should have. Jason, Clinton, and Joe were all 'bring it on', but it turned out that the Master's orders were nigh-godlike as a result. Due to some minor procedural problems in the first few games (few Love scenes, the death of a character with fairly high Love investment, lots of Minion-on-Minion conflicts, and a lack of care in gaining Self-Loathing) it was clear that after four sessions the minions were nowhere near defeating the Master.

I called the game, not because it wasn't fun, but because our group's dynamic is to change games fairly often. Plus, it seemed like even after another session we would still be two or three sessions away from the minions being able to resist the Master consistently. The dynamic at the table after the group had failed to resist the Master's orders a couple times was 'Let's try it again! Let's get to End Game!' Once in End Game, though, they would have had to fight the Master all together to defeat him (eventually). This would have meant few scens not involving the direct conflict with the Master, which would have made it difficult to wrap up the other threads and characters in the story.

So the game ended with Radu and Canius lobotmizing Vladimir at the Popescu dinner table, bound in service forever to their twisted Master. It wasn't a great ending, but it was what we had. Next time I play, I'll have a better idea where to set Fear/Reason, as 5/4 seems to set up a 5-7 session game.

There was lots of great stuff, though! The minions each developed very strong, contrasting personalities, despite never appearing in a scene all together until the very last session. We had a relatively small cast of townspeople, with the Church characters becoming very central to the story. Both Father Simeon the priest, and his daughter Anetta figured largely in the game. Anetta became a focal point for all the minions.

We also touched on lots of subjects that we don't normally see as much of in games. Some themes were addressed in a darkly humorous way, some in a painful, dramatic way. Both worked, and sometimes a theme that came up as a semi-humorous escape valve would come back later as pain. It was marvelous to see the game reinforce this over and over again. When an action raised a minion's Self Loathing, it added flavor to the resolution description of that scene and that carried over to later scenes.

Playing the Master was very difficult for me, at first. I really had to suppress my improv desire to Yes, And suggestions. My instinct is that if someone asks for something once, I deny, but if it's asked for again, I relent or heighten. This was really a bad fit for MLwM! I toughened up a bit, and things went much more smoothly, with minions able to beg effectively against a pitiless master.

Once I got the hang of the playing the Master, two things really helped to reinforce the character's impact. One was a little hand-motion I did whenever I was Popescu. I'd hold my hands in front of my chest, limp-wristed, knuckles together. It got to the point where I didn't even have to preface a scene where the Master was ordering the minions about, I just had to make the hand motion and the player would groan.

The other was to constantly shift the Master's moods around. An example is  when Vladimir came back from successfully following the Master's orders (kill a prostitute), and the Master berated Vladimir for doing so and not standing up for himself. These sorts of tonal shifts made the Master seem dangerous and unpredictable, even if it was in service of another 'go fetch me . . . ' mission.

I'm curious to see what the players might add, but those were the big things for me.

[Jason Morningstar]

God, Remi had this thing where he folded up his hands when playing the Master, as though they were vestigial burdens, that made us all moan with despair when we saw it coming. 

Having a group scene with all the players together every so often seems like a strong choice.  It propelled our game when we finally got around to it. 

Many early Love scenes, when they are easy to win, ought to be the standard course of action.  We didn't know this and suffered. 

I played Radu, who was pretty thoroughly boned mid-way through the game.  The woman he loved got turned into a werewolf and knocked up by Canius.  Her father, the priest Radu admired, got mutilated, my church got burned down.  My sister, a Love connection, got murdered, brought back to life, and murdered again by Radu's own hand.  I had gone into the game expecting to play a creep, but discovered that Radu was deeply faithful and good-hearted, and decided to play his toward avoiding Self Loathing.  He was a good guy, but horribly ineffective - player-on-player conflict ramped up the Self Loathing, dashing my hopes.  In the end I had some great play once I let go of my expectations and let him get freaky and angry. 

MLWM is a harsh game that really ramps up the dread.  It is, at times, a little uncomfortable.  That's remarkable.

[ODDin]

I wonder, did you do anything special when Radu had to kill his own connection? Something to represent how different this mission was from any other mission? I've been thinking that such situations need some actual mechanical attention, but I don't know what kind of attention.

[Jason Morningstar]

I'd already lost the connection - she had been killed earlier in the game, and Radu just re-killed her after she'd been re-animated.  So there was nothing problematic from a mechanical perspective.  I think Remi's intention was to allow the connection back into play, if I'd been cool with keeping Radu's sister alive as a living pipe organ in agonizing pain.  Had I taken the bait, it might have raised some procedural questions that I think we would have hand-waved away.