My LARP with Master

[GB Steve]

I'd like to run this game as a LARP. I had thought of My Life with Masters - all the players are the minions of Phil Masters at a British RPG convention charged with helping him to create an rpg in a day, but this is slighty more serious than that.

It's not very hard to come up with a system for the Minions using pretty much the same rules as the TT version. The only difference I see is that the villagers judge as to whether connections are succesfully approached, plus some bits and pieces for the effects of violence of the villagers.

The master in turn gets success points or whatever as his plans succeed.

What is harder is what the villagers do. Obviously they have plans and schemes of their own and I suppose that they should use the same currencies as the minions.

I've got some vague ideas and I wondered if anyone else has anything to propose?

Here are mine:
- Fear and Reason are the same for everyone
- The villagers are the source of Love and can hand it out to anyone they deem worthy - villager and minion alike.
- Villlagers only have a limited supply of love so there is competition for it.
- Love for villagers can be used for several things. For those interested in status it can be used to get votes in the upcoming mayoral elections. Others can use it to get paramours.
- Love is always freely given but can be turned down. Minions are unlikely to do this but some villagers, such as the poet, want unrequited love.
- Unrequited love can in itself be used for other things. The poet can change it into poems, the lover can use it for spite.
...

[Mike Holmes]

Following the TT game, love should always be gained by overtures, it seems to me. It's the character's own sense of love, not whether or not it's requited, that determines their score. What the villagers should have is the ability to give Self-Loathing to the character by rejecting an overture.

I'm seeing blotchy patches that they can hand out to characters for whom they feel revulsion upon an overture, given out with a heart for each overture attempt (having on it the name of the person from whom the love came, so it can be removed if that Villager dies). The hearts, should, of course, be worn on the Minion's sleeve for all to see.

Make the SL patches limited, such that the villagers are out of the game if they run out of Self-Loathing patches. The effect is the same then in that the minions will compete to get love without Self-Loathing. The villager can make a decision stretch out for a while in order to promote good play (requiring the acting to go on some before giving the heart).

Minions can then have Intimacy, Depseration and Sincerity (IDS) tokens, which they can bargain as part of play to the villagers to avoid getting SL. These would count as points (1, 2, 3 each) for the Villagers. So, basically, it's a classic bargaining game.

Um, no minion may make an overture to a villager without making an overture to another in between (to mix things up).

If the Master (A Ref?) comes around, he can make a minion player do anything he wants as long as the player doesn't spend enough IDS tokens to add to his love enough points to overcome the Master's Fear rating plus the Minion's Self-Loathing. So, if the Master had a 4 Fear, and the Minion a 3 SL and 4 LV, the player could spend a Desperation and an Intimacy token to boost to 7 and resist the master's command.

Basically, have these sorts of calculations worked out before hand on a card, and use the tokens instead of randomization for Villainy and Violence as well. For the final conflict, have some total requirement of Love-Weariness. Then the player has to have enough tokens and love to resist the Master, and it's all over.

Something like that might work well. Lots of strategy:
The Villagers can only score points from the Minions, but they can also be killed and tossed from the game only by a minion. So they have to be careful in discerning what the Minions are up to. They could be sent by the master to kill them (works to create the appropriate atmosphere of paranioa). Other tactical considerations for Villagers are that if you are behind, you'll want to give out Self Loathing to Minions in the lead so that the game is extended. As Villager, you'll very much want to be the most attractive so that you can get out in the lead, and get the lead character to win. OTOH, this makes you a target for the Master.

Um, awards for the minion who destroys the Master, and for the Villager with the most points and still alive at the end of the game.

Sorry for the fragmented nature of the post. But this is going to be very cool when worked out, IMO. And will attract the Vampire crowd, methinks.

Mike