I'm running MLWM at a con in about a month. I've read some posts about sessions that might go for 4 hours.

But, what about a session that goes for 2.5 - 3 hours?

What I'm thinking of doing is:

1) At the start of the session, the players as a group choose the genre - I'm presenting Classic MLWM, Dungeon Overlord, Evil Genius and Super Villainy as my genres.

2) I shall pre-generate the master for each of the genres - quirks and personality of the master, Fear, Reason, Outsiders etc. This will hopefully cut down on dallying about before the meat of the session.

3) The players come up with their own characters in the first half an hour of the game. I'll try to push this bit so we can get on with the rest of the session. I might have some lists of example More Than and Less Than for each genre to help the players get an idea or choose from. I'll probably have to have a lower Fear rating for such a short session, and increased Love points - so maybe two connections or so each with 1 or 2 Love.

4) Run the game!

Any other suggestions? Am I doomed to failure? Or might it just work?

Hello, and welcome to the Forge!

You might find this thread useful for finding appropriate starting values for short games. It also links to the "database" which holds a larger variety of game lengths reported with the starting values.

My (little) experience in playing MLwM has been that you're better off creating the master all together: I think it hits on the fundamental values of the game, because everyone gets to add a bit to the master that will tyrannize their characters for the upcoming hours. Maybe reading this short post on the social structure of the game will make this point clearer.
Creating characters then naturally flows from master creation. Ideally, players add to master creation in a way that is meaningful to their character concept, or perhaps more correctly, they project some nagging issues into the master and then address them through their character.

Master and character creation together typically takes us slightly more than half an hour, for two to three characters.

So my advice is, have the players participate in everything, it will actually speed things up because the whole process of creating the starting situation will make more sense to them.