Going outside the village

[iago]

King Arthur is the master and the knights of the round table are minions in some fashion. The master's goal is the grail, only this time, his methods and motives are bad, bad, bad. All of Britain becomes the town, and one could potentially position this as a period of time when the King is without his sword.

Holy crap.

I mean.  Holy crap.

Lancelot and Guenivere because Arthur told them to.  And they didn't have enough Love to resist.

Yikes.

You just found out why I had such an incredibly evil giggle at the whole thought.  Though in my scenario, only Lancelot is the minion, and is doing what he's doing in order to fulfill some machiavellian plan of the king; while he may be trying to get love from Guenivere, he knows that he's perpetrating some Villany on the part of Arthur, and thus it isn't a case where he's accumulating Love -- only Self-Loathing.  Which eventually drives him nuts and sends him running naked through the forest. Alternately, Lancelot feels no connection to Guenivere at all, and is doing all of this as some sort of cold manipulation scheme.

It's a great retelling of the whole myth, I think, and gives me a certain sense of glee in terms of how much you can go back, look at the legends, and then start thinking about how it was all just a terrible, awful lie.

Any thoughts on how to work Mordred, et al into it?  Are they the outsiders?

Has anybody else here seen Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead?  I keep trying to get Paul to watch it but he won't.

It's brilliant.  Might need to bend it a bit in order to fit it into this paradigm, but not by much.  It certainly puts forth a nasty, nasty scenario for how a master might deal with minions who screw up a job.

[jburneko]

Academic Setting

The Master: Thesis Advisor
Minions: Grad Students
Town: Undergrad Students
Outsiders: Other Professors

Now, take a look at the character sheet and think about outcome #5 and the thematic ramifications in this setting.  Kind of scary really.

Jesse

[iago]

Academic Setting

The Master: Thesis Advisor
Minions: Grad Students
Town: Undergrad Students
Outsiders: Other Professors

Now, take a look at the character sheet and think about outcome #5 and the thematic ramifications in this setting.  Kind of scary really.

True dat.  Beyond this, looking at the endgame scenarios in terms of adapting them to the theme is another great way of looking at this.  In a royal scenario where the master is a king, the minion without any love ends up taking the throne, and so on.  Very, very interesting.

[iago]

I've already talked about a bit of a merge with Little Fears for a game of children-minions in a stepford hell.  One could do a bit of a sorceror spin on all this, as well, where the master is the demon, only the demon is common and shared by all the sorceror-minions.  What other games come to mind for making "hybrids"?

[Mike Holmes]

Has anybody else here seen Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead?  I keep trying to get Paul to watch it but he won't.

It's brilliant.  Might need to bend it a bit in order to fit it into this paradigm, but not by much.  It certainly puts forth a nasty, nasty scenario for how a master might deal with minions who screw up a job.

Buckwheats!

Mike

[Lxndr]

Nobody liked my Willy Wonka suggestion?

The master is a dragon.

The minions are his henchmen, horrible freaks of nature he's collected to help him.

The townsfolk are the nearby towns, which pay tribute.

The Outsiders are the adventurers that keep coming to tryand kill the dragon... the master wants to impress them by roasting and eating them.

[John Harper]

The Master: Lord Hiroshi
Minions: Samurai retainers to the lord
Townspeople: The lord's subjects

Mmmm... repressed samurai emotions, unrequited love, commiting horrible acts in the name of honor... good stuff. Ritual suicide would have to be an endgame in this version, probably a preferrable ending to killing one's lord.

I forgot to say that the Paranoia variant is just brilliant. I love it.

[Mike Holmes]

Ah, yes, Self-Loathing as personal perception of failure to obtain Honor. Oh, that's so very good.

Mike

[iago]

Nobody liked my Willy Wonka suggestion?

Liked it just fine, it's just that we're awash in stuff here, I failed to comment!  Willy Wonka really is the trickster-Devil in so many ways, it's a good fit, and it really lets you mine the dark side of that whole story.

[Lxndr]

Yay!  Someone did like it.  :)  I afeared it was lost in the shuffle

you could set it in a banana republic...

Master:  el Presidente

Minions:  Henchmen (his "cabinet"?)

Townspeople:  the oppressed subjects

Outsiders:  um...  I'm lost here right now, but I'm sure someone will fill in the slack

(btw, my latest idea of merging Paranoia with something else is Paladin, but that's off topic here)

[iago]

The Master: Lord Hiroshi
Minions: Samurai retainers to the lord
Townspeople: The lord's subjects

Mmmm... repressed samurai emotions, unrequited love, commiting horrible acts in the name of honor... good stuff. Ritual suicide would have to be an endgame in this version, probably a preferrable ending to killing one's lord.

I wonder if things could be tweaked so that Honor replaces Love in the overall dynamic, though it might be difficult to adapt, since theoretically, serving the dictates of the Lord is honor-worthy, though the acts you may then perpetrate aren't ...

[iago]

The Master: Owner of a record label

The Minions: The artists the master promotes; bonus if they're a boy band (pop music as an act of villany)

The Village: The fans (where the Love the minions are trying to amass is based on *really* connecting to their fans, not just paying lip service to it), the listening public, groupies, etc

The Outsiders: The music industry as a whole; entertainment critics; etc

[joshua neff]

Or as a twist on that one, Fred...

The Master: Carson Daly

The Minions: His MTV staff

The Village: Times Square (or wherever the hell MTV is in NYC)

The Outsiders: Single, young, female pop stars & actresses, who he wants to adore him

("Britney's gonna be here in an hour! Dammit, Kev, go buy me a new shirt! Go to that shop across the street!")

[lumpley]

Fred, Mordred's the outsider, who comes to Camelot and sees into everyone's hearts.  God, Arthur wants his son's love.

I like Guenevere to be the minion at least as much as I like Lancelot to be.  What if the knights were the townspeople, and the ladies the minions?

My mind is made filthy.  I must go reread the Questing Beast now, to restore my spirit.

-Vincent

[iago]

Great ideas there, Vincent.  Tasty, tasty ideas.  I really like the whole notion that the ladies of the court are running about doing Arthur's bidding, pointing the knights where the Master wants them going...

Here's this morning's thought.

The Master: Coach.
The Minions: The athletes.
The Village: The high school.
The Outsiders: Competing sports teams from other schools.