My Life With Master: The Alienist.

[ejh]

First report on gaming over lunch with guys from work.

The Master is a Brain and a Teacher/Feeder.  He is a mad psychiatrist who uses bizarre equipment to suck initiative and will directly from patients' brains... thus "curing" them into a state of listlessness.  Imagine a vampiric version of the lobotomy.  It involves a tube from the patient's skull to a giant machine to the doctor's skull, and liquid flowing inbetween.  He has become addicted to this process and keeps needing more and more "patients" to keep him sane himself.

Characters include:

Paulus, who is a former patient.  He can catch anyone he is chasing (useful while committing people), but only if they are male (hence the population of the asylum is largely male).  However, he has poor to no short term memory unless his memory is stimulated by the infliction of pain.

Ian is a current patient who is often used as a flunky.  He has psychic/prophetic visions, and can induce the visions in himself, but ("except") cannot control what the visions will be about reliably.  The master also uses him as a "crystal ball" as he is better at interpreting the visions than Ian is.

Augustin is a junior doctor, an intern.  He is the Master's public face in the town, and is able to lie convincingly except to loved ones.  He is able to convince an entire family that their father/husband is displaying signs of incipient lunacy and must be committed at once, for example.  However, he retreats into a state of crippling agoraphobia unless the master gives him special injections.

We only got a few minutes of actual play in, but so far Augustin and Paulus have committed Paulus's connection, Serge the Baker, much to Paulus's chagrin.  And Ian has been charged to drop a flask of green liquid, which gives him nightmares just to look at it, into the town's well.

RULES QUESTION FOR PAUL:

If a player is automatically successful committing Villainy because that Villiany consists merely of the exercise of his More Than Human, i.e. there is no roll, does he still accumulate Self-Loathing?

Augustin automatically convinced Serge's family that he was mad, and I ruled he got Self-Loathing for that.  But that wasn't covered in the game rules.

[Mike Holmes]

Augustin automatically convinced Serge's family that he was mad, and I ruled he got Self-Loathing for that.

I'm going to guess, yes. It's still villainy after all.

I love the Greater Than/Less Thans. Those are some of the best I've seen. How did you work them out? What's the second character's Less Than?

Mike

[ejh]

Forgot to mention that, thanks!  Ian cannot speak directly to anyone he can see.  (ties in with the "vision" thing.)  No matter for the Alienist, who seems able to plug directly into his brain for the visions.

[Mike Holmes]

I thought it might have been ommitted because it wasn't as good. But I'd say you scored a 100% on all "Thans". How'd you do it? I haven't been as able to get people to do as well. Just a gifted group? Or did you use some tactic?

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ed,

It sounds like the makings of a very cool game. I absolutely love the fluid that gives Ian nightmares just to look at it.

RULES QUESTION FOR PAUL:

If a player is automatically successful committing Villainy because that Villiany consists merely of the exercise of his More Than Human, i.e. there is no roll, does he still accumulate Self-Loathing?

This is a good question. On one hand, it was a despicable act, deserving of an increase in Self-loathing. But on the other hand, a More than defines the one way in which a minion functions in the game world as manifestation of super-natural forces. Do the carpenter ants agonize over what they're doing to my garage? I'd probably ask the player: "Do you get Self-loathing for that?"

Paul

[ejh]

Good suggestion, Paul.  I'll run with that next time.

Mike -- I don't remember the process by which we got More Than/Less Thans; we all chatted about them back and forth so I could have done a certain amount of leading.  But one thing I did say right off the top was, more or less, that their "More Than" ought to be a reason that they were useful to the Master, and their "Less Than" ought to be a reason that they needed the Master.  (I was much more longwinded than that but that is what it came down to.)  This was by way of suggestion, not command.

But that helped focus things.  For example, Paulus's original "More Than" was simply "extremely fast, except when chasing a woman."  After we discussed why that would be useful to the Master, it got focussed to "no one can escape him when he's chasing them -- unless they are female."

Still, when it comes down to it, this is a group that consists of ludicrously intelligent and creative people (I'm pretty lucky as far as quality of co-workers goes).  So I'm gonna have to drop the credit in their laps. :)

[Brian Leybourne]

Hey guys,

I'm seeing a lot here and there about "My Life with Master", and becoming interested in what I'm reading.

There's no forum here for it (that I can see). Where can I find some more info about it?

Thanks,
Brian.

[iago]

I'm seeing a lot here and there about "My Life with Master", and becoming interested in what I'm reading.

There's no forum here for it (that I can see). Where can I find some more info about it?

Yes yes yes.  I'm incredibly curious about it.  I've got one player in my group who would probably look at the game as The Most Perfect Game Ever from what I've heard about it.  Details, details!

[Mike Holmes]

Well, there's the splash page at www.halfmeme.com. But no info there, so that'll probably just infuriate anyone who goes there...

I believe that Paul is, more or less, sold out right now, and is putting together his PDF for sale. You can see details about that in the thread in Publishing, FWIW.

And there are a few more posts here and there discussing it, including my non-report of play at Origins in this forum.

Damn, it is hard to get information on this game isn't it?

Well, what do you want to know about it? You make a master. The players play the minions of said master who makes them do bad things. In the end, perhaps one of the minions kills the master. It's unbelievably tight in play. You'll laugh your ass off at the other players narrating terrible things. It's more fun than I can reasonably describe.

What more do you need to know than where to buy it when it's available? ;-)

Paul, wanna jump in here with a plug?

Mike