This week I began writing My Life with Master up for publication. So I've been working my way through feedback from private messages and threads in this forum to make sure I've thought carefully about people's suggestions and incorporated needed clarifications into the game text.

And I'm confident about all the decisions I've made...except one. Many folks have reported frustration from playtesters at how quickly Self-Loathing spiralled out of control, and have requested a mechanic for its reduction. I'm mostly unmoved. I think players are adopting too much of a lone-wolf style of play, largely ignoring the mechanics for minions aiding each other, and then feeling frustrated. There is, for instance, no reason a minion couldn't ask another minion for aid in making an overture to a Connection. "Ludwig, will you play the violin for me while I sing to her from the yard?"

Still, I feel compelled to consider the workability of mechanics that provide for the reduction of Self-Loathing, since I do think a natural, genre-appropriate mechanic would be a good thing for the game, as long as its usage was pretty infrequent. I don't want to allow for retrograde of the game's escalation, just for an occasional stutter-step. And so last night I found myself trying to rework the "shirking" mechanics that we discussed previously. This is what I came up with:

Despair

When a minion loses a Connection (i.e. the character dies), all the Love attached to that Connection is lost and the minion enters a state of Despair. While in Despair a minion is vulnerable to another player character minion using physical and verbal abuse to force a command issued to himself off onto the Despairing character. This is resolved by the acting minion rolling his own Self-Loathing minus Reason against the Despairing minion rolling Love plus his own Weariness. If successful, the acting minion reduces his Self-Loathing by one, and the target minion is considered responsible for the Command in question. It's delusional, of course, but the acting minion has just shrugged off a little bit of feeling icky about himself by getting someone else to do something he didn't want to do. If the acting minion fails, a point of Weariness is taken. The conflict with the Despairing minion has left the acting minion wrung out psychologically, or a bit roughed up physically. A minion emerges from Despair when either a point of Love or a point of Self-Loathing is gained.

Anyway, I liked it a lot when I first thought it up yesterday. But I'm not going to use it. It's basically the same as the shirking mechanics, except constrained to working only on other minions when they've just lost a Connection. I like the shirking mechanics a lot, but I've come to believe they'll cause character vs. character conflicts to eclipse the character vs. master conflict in significance. And the Despair mechanics are, upon consideration, even worse. Now, in order to lower my Self-Loathing, I have to kill your Connection first. My intent was to restrict the occurrence of shirking so there would be less escalation of character vs. character, and what I did was create a mechanic that will actually provoke a more vicious escalation.

Convince me otherwise? Any other suggestions on mechanics for infrequent reduction of Self-Loathing?

Paul

I'm going to look at this from a gamist viewpoint. MLWM has a definite endpoint and a way to win the game. Since the only way to win the game is to resolve the conflict with the master, it cannot be eclipsed by any amount of character conflict. However, character conflict would still be important as it makes sure that no other players can win before you do.

Now, if you do not want MLWM to support such a gamist outlook, you might want to not use the proposed shirking and despair rules.

I think players are adopting too much of a lone-wolf style of play, largely ignoring the mechanics for minions aiding each other, and then feeling frustrated. There is, for instance, no reason a minion couldn't ask another minion for aid in making an overture to a Connection. "Ludwig, will you play the violin for me while I sing to her from the yard?"

Damnit, the way the new message tags work, I sometimes miss this stuff. So here I am almost a month later replying.

I'm still not seeing the idea at all. By telling you to do something bad, I feel better? I mean even if it's delusional, I still don't see the basis of the rationale. And, yes, this might foreground the character stuff too much. I'm agin it!

What I think would work better is simply finding a way to make Self-Loathing not spiral. I have an idea.

Think of it this way, people talk about hitting bottom. There is a bedrock below which Self-Loathing cannot go it seems to me. IOW, instead of Self-Loathing making getting Self-Loathing more likely, make it less likely. This is cool because as one gains Self-Loathing it becomes a barrier to more. So from a player POV, you're being tempted to do things to gain more so that you're better in a fight. But at no point do you go so high that you are disempowered entirely to resist the Master. You're unlikely to ever be out of the running entirely for any endgame, either.

This requires reworking, of the Getting the Love you want rule, of course:

Current rule: The Minion rolls Reason minus Self-Loathing against the target of the Connection rolling Fear minus Reason. If the Minion fails the roll, in addition to the Love point, he also gets a point of Self-Loathing.

New rule: The Minion rolls Self-Loathing minus Fear against the target of the Connection rolling Weariness minus reason. If the Minion fails the roll, in addition to the Love point, he also gets a point of Self-Loathing.

Using this, as soon as Self-Loathing gets to a certain point it's unlikely to get higher unless his weariness gets higher. But that's unlikley as his Self-Loathing is already high. Still, there's always a chance, which is cool. Anyhow, this makes getting Love less painful in some ways, but then, in the original system what we're worried about is a similar phenomenon where the character just doesn't care anymore about Self-Loathing (and therefore has no impediment to going for Love in that case). Anyhow, when someone does sink to a new level of Self-Loathing it'll be all the more impressive.

I think it works.

Fear and Reason would both need to be lower, say about 1 or 2. But that's no biggie.

So, what problems do people see?

Mike

Paul and I have been tossing some ideas back and forth via PM. One idea I had come up with is that should anyone get Self Loathing up beyond a certain point, each additional point ups the Reason in the game.

My logic behind this idea was two-fold: One, it increases the consequences of the actions of the minions, the townsfolk are becoming intolerant and starting to take more active measures, etc...

Second, it makes Getting Love easier, which then leads to a quicker endgame. The basic idea is that as one guy starts acting out more, the current relationships tend to grow stronger and get strained more("But you're not like the bad ones...you're good, I know it!"), and of course, that the one guy who is going down the hole is pretty much at the "end" of their story path(that is, its unlikely for them to turn around at this point).

Typically in any story like this, the one guy who chooses to jump into the abyss serves as a catalyst for the other minions to fall or come forth triumphant. At the point that someone is pushing the point of no return, the other minions should also be getting close to endgame as well.

Does this idea jive with anyone?

Chris

Spoink!

What Chris said? Chalk me down as "me too." I am Chris' minion in this matter.

Best,
Ron

Okay, so all the options I'm considering for the issue of Self-Loathing gone amok are on the table...

Pain

If a minion's Self-loathing ever grows greater than Love plus Fear, the character is lost briefly from gameplay, having been stricken with excruciating pain or psychological distress. The GM will describe a scene depicting the character's suffering, subsequent to which the character is back again under the control of the player, with Weariness elevated to the level of Self-Loathing.

Paul

Hello Paul,

I like Chris's idea also, so chalk up my obsequious "Yesss" to Ron's. I'm not so sure about the consequences of Pain, though. Sounds a bit too grim, possibly deprotagonizing (though I'm not sure how much that's an issue with MLWM). I do like the idea of a temporary removal and the suffering scene, but beyond that, Pain sounds like an instant ride to the bottom.

Best,

Blake

Hi Paul,

I'm not clear on what the idea of the Pain mechanic is for...I'm assuming the goal is to stop folks from jumping into the abyss without a second thought... but...

If a minion's Self-loathing ever grows greater than Love plus Fear, the character is lost briefly from gameplay, having been stricken with excruciating pain or psychological distress. The GM will describe a scene depicting the character's suffering, subsequent to which the character is back again under the control of the player, with Weariness elevated to the level of Self-Loathing.

The Minion resists by rolling dice equal to the total of all his Love points, across all his Connections, minus his Weariness.

Outsiders and Townspeople resist by rolling Reason plus the Minion's Weariness. A Minion resists by rolling his own Fear plus Self-Loathing. If the attacking Minion is successful, his Self-Loathing increases. If he fails, he takes a wound, which is represented by an increase in Weariness.

If a conflict resolution ever results in a Minion's Weariness being greater than Reason, the Minion is captured by the Townspeople or Outsiders. This is a temporary situation, however, basically a lead into the next scene.

Mechanically, as described above, the Master controls the Minions with Fear, by rolling Fear plus the Minion's Self-Loathing against the Minion rolling Love minus Weariness. Endgame is triggered by a Minion whose total Love is greater than Fear plus his own Weariness rolling a successful resistance to a Master's command.

Hi,

Seems to me that Chris' idea about Reason makes Pain irrelevant. Why not just pop in the Reason rule, eliminate any and all other notions that have been brought up, and have done?

Best,
Ron

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all your thought on this...

Please let us know what you want Pain to do, game-wise and narratively, maybe we can give you suggestions closer to what you're looking for.

What happens in play when a character's Self-Loathing hits the low to mid double-digits, and Weariness is low, is that violent actions become no contest for the character. This is the near cousin to the Chalk Outlines/OctaNe issue. The GM frames the scene, and the player describes the atrocity he commits, with the dice effectively a non-factor. This is the source of deprotagonization. A character disengaged from his human side, who commits atrocity after atrocity absent meaningful antagonism is boring to watch. Protagonism is about audience interest in a character.

I like the Reason solution conceptually. But what it represents is the play group turning its back on this character. Increasing Reason by a point, in parallel to a Self-Loathing score likely already more than five or six dice higher, is not meaningful antagonism. The rest of the play group will complete the game more quickly, and the character with Self-Loathing gone amok will continue to be boring.

The Pain mechanic equalizes Self-Loathing and Weariness, which resets the potential for audience interest in the character by re-injecting uncertainty. It is again possible for the character to fail at a violent act, because Self-Loathing and Weariness effectively cancel each other out.

What do you think of the idea of combining both mechanics:

Pain and Outrage

If a minion's Self-loathing ever grows greater than Love plus Fear, the character is lost briefly from gameplay, having been stricken with excruciating pain or psychological distress. The GM will describe a scene depicting the character's suffering, subsequent to which the character is back again under the control of the player, with Weariness elevated to the level of Self-Loathing, and Reason increased by one point, representing the increasing outrage of the townspeople.

Paul

My idea was that bad?

Anyhow, I think we have a major disconect going here. Paul, the problem is not that high Self-Loathing makes the character succeed at violence more easily. It's that it makes violence about the only thing he can do successfully. See, at that point, he won't bother going for Love because what's the point? It'll only result in more Self-Loathing. And if you make Weariness catch up that just means that you've now also taken away the ability of that Love to enable the Minion to trigger endgame.

And the Minion can't resist the master anyhow. With Self-Loathing that high, he's a pawn of the Master.

That's a real deprotagonization problem right there.

No, the problem isn't that violence becomes an easy option, it's that it becomes the only option. And the only way to stop that is too either never have Self-Loathing go that low, or for it to be reduceable in some way.

Your Pain mechanic reminds me of the Time Out's that we give our two-year old. Except that when Time Out is over, Alex has something else to do, and can therefore do that instead of getting into trouble. In this game, as soon as you're done with you're Time Out, you're right back to where you were when you want into prison. See psychological papers on prisons and recidivism. This is no prevention at all.

In fact with the increasing weariness option you're making the character less able to do anything. With all three, you cripple the character. Why play at all at that point.

And why are we using punishment mechanics at all? Aren't we all in agreement that they are poor motivators? Wost of all, it's not like the player has a choice. You seem to assume that there is some behavior that the player has that leads to this problem that they can adjust in order to not spiral. But there isn't. The main way you get Self-Loathing is by attempting to get Love. Which is how you win. So, players are just going to fail occasionally and it's not their fault. The system is pushing them to get more Self-Loathing.

And you want to punish them for it.

Mike

Hey Mike,

...the problem is not that high Self-Loathing makes the character succeed at violence more easily. It's that it makes violence about the only thing he can do successfully. See, at that point, he won't bother going for Love because what's the point? It'll only result in more Self-Loathing. And if you make Weariness catch up that just means that you've now also taken away the ability of that Love to enable the Minion to trigger endgame.

And the Minion can't resist the master anyhow. With Self-Loathing that high, he's a pawn of the Master.

This isn't true. The game mechanic for minions aiding each other is available. Like Christian de Neuvillette, a minion can ask another for help getting Love. And he can get help resisting the Master too. A minion always has the option of aid when trying to accomplish something.

The only deprotagonizing certainty of outcome I've seen in play is violent actions when Self-Loathing is gone amok.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I think a key issue that we need to look at is this:

This is the source of deprotagonization. A character disengaged from his human side, who commits atrocity after atrocity absent meaningful antagonism is boring to watch. Protagonism is about audience interest in a character.

I will be the first one to admit that a lot of this stuff is over my head, but how about...

What about when Love is achieved successfully, then the player loses one point of self loathing.

Or, if a minion successfully gets another minion to help then with a point of Love, (...play the violin while I serenade) self loathing is reduced by one. With the bonus dice, it could be done.

In both of these cases, something goes in right, and a person would feel better about themselves and it should show in some respect. Since love is harder to get then self loathing, you wouldn't be causing too much damage to the s-l score but may be keeping from not getting too high and letting (getting) the players work together.

-Danielle

Danielle,

Love already is the morale boost that one gets from getting love. You are never unsuccessful at getting love, anyhow, as it stands; all you risk is getting Self-Loathing right now. You could have it where success at the Self-Loathing roll makes it go down instead of staying the same. But then you have a spiraling up effect as well. And it would allow the game to go on much more interminably.

Paul,

What Chris said. You always have the option to get aid. The fact that you can only succeed with their aid later doesn't mean you have more options, it means you have less. And after a point even aid won't be able to save you. That's the problem with Self-Loathing increase. It takes away options. Worse, there's no effective way to avoid or reduce Self-Loathing. You can't win without Love, and you can't get Love without risking gaining Self-Loathing. It's a viscious circle that sends the unlucky player to a place of no protagonism. Descent into the monster status isn't even authored by the player, it is, from what I've seen, fought tooth and nail. It's only once there's nothing better to do that players start thinking, "Well, if killin's all I can do, might as well kill."

Another option would be to somehow make high Self-Loathing open up new vistas of action. Though I can't imagine what they'd be (accumulating Pure Evil points to vie for becoming the next master?)*.

Other than that, the options I see are:
A. Make getting a high Self-Loathing more difficult, especially as it gets higher.

or

B. Make it so that you can reduce Self-Loathing.

Mike


*Hmm. Maybe there's an answer there. Allow a player to convert Self-Loathing to Evil or something with a roll. This lowers Self-Loathing, and allows the character to be effective again. But Evil points definitely affect the potential endgame that the character is going for. And can probably still be allowed to add to your killin rolls. Evil would represent the Minion rationalizing that he's not to blame for the nasty things he does, but instead that it's the world's fault. Meaning he doesn't have to be "right" anymore. Evil could also counteract Love making the character less able to kill the Master, though no more able to kill him. Hmmm. Lot's of possibilities.

Bankuei wrote: The reason I suggested the Reason option is that a player is only going to hit that Self-Loathing mark under two conditions; either they simply rolled bad the whole game, or else they really do want to play the villian. In the first case, the player wants the game to be over with, just like a sports game where its beyond the hope of a comeback. In the second case, the player is looking to have the "bad end" and wants it to occur. Meanwhile, the other players who are trying to redeem their characters, will have an easier time of getting Love(if they want it), or causing Endgame as they see fit.

Hey Kirt,

In my ideal world, at least, bad rolls should make things more interesting, and give you DIFFERENT choices than good rolls, but it shouldn't LIMIT your choices.

I'm not sure I entirely agree, since I believe the cycle of pressure and release of limitations on player choices is part of the game. Constraints fuel creativity. But at the same time, the notion of putting the player in a different situation relative to gameplay is a pretty good one. What do you think of something like this:

the Horror Revealed¹

If a roll would ever result in a minion's Self-loathing growing greater than Love plus Fear (or perhaps Self-loathing minus Love growing greater than Fear plus Reason), a revelation of horror and consequences in the environment are triggered instead. Self-loathing remains the same, and the minion misses his next scene. Instead of that scene, the player of the minion narrates a scene of horror among NPCs, with two restrictions: neither the Master, nor other PC minions can be part of the scene, and no NPC carrying Love for one of the PC minions can be killed. It is as if the horrific psychological forces within the minion have overcome their containment and bled out into the environment. Reason is increased by one point after the narration, reflecting consequent outrage from the Towspeople.

Paul

¹ Isn't it wack how I have to name these proposed mechanics for myself in order to understand them in the context of the game?

I believe the term is "whack", isn't it? :-)

I like it. Lesse how it affects each roll:

Master control
the Master rolls Fear plus the Minion's Self-Loathing to command it. The Minion resists by rolling dice equal to the total of all his Love points, across all his Connections, minus his Weariness

Self Loathing
The Minion rolls Reason minus Self-Loathing against the target of the Connection rolling Fear minus Reason

Violence
the Minion rolls Fear plus Self-Loathing, Outsiders and Townspeople resist by rolling Reason plus the Minion's Weariness.

Killing Master
the death of the Master is tested for by the Minion player rolling Love minus Weariness against the Master rolling Fear plus the Minion's Self-Loathing

Thanks. I'd done some of that analysis myself mentally, informally, but seeing it laid out like that is nicely facilitative of my decisionmaking. And it leaves me with a few questions:

1. What does "the horror revealed" do to the dynamics of play? Is there a likelihood players will willingly accept commands from the Master as opportunities for maxing out Self-loathing...just so they get to use "the horror revealed"? Is it likely players will initiate unprovoked atrocities just to get themselves to where they can use "the horror revealed"? I don't want to have tipped the scales with the mechanic so much that Self-loathing is no longer clearly undesirable.

2. A question for everyone, but particularly those who've played the game: imagine being in a later stage of gameplay where "the horror revealed" is triggered for your character. What kind of scene would you have narrated? What would you try to accomplish story-wise with your chance to do this kind of narration?

3. And finally, which of the two proposed conditions for triggering "the horror revealed" is best for the game: Self-loathing would grow greater than Love plus Fear, or Self-loathing minus Love would grow greater than Fear plus Reason? One concern here is that I don't want to inadvertently invalidate any of the endgames with the mechanic by somehow overly compressing its likelihood with the capping of Self-loathing and the increasing of Reason.

Paul

Well, it certainly needs playtesting, I think. Question: When you say a minion "misses his next scene", what does that mean? Do you envision some sort of round-robin where each player gets a turn at a scene? Because we didn't play that way at all.

To answer Paul's questions:

1. Yes, I think you might have someone accepting orders so he can do "the Horror Revealed". But I don't see this taking away from the idea of Self Loathing as a bad thing -- anyone who is doing that isn't being afflicted by bad rolls, but instead is going for the "I'm a villian" thing. This is cool, IMHO.

2. I was gamemaster, but I imgaine my players probably would have narrated something surrounding the mess at the Mayor's house... Focus on the most crazy situation in the game and turn it up a notch.

3. That's a pretty subtle difference -- it's only a few points. I'd prefer the second one because "the Horror Revealed" shouldn't happen often -- only when someone blows a lot of rolls or is trying to be a villian.


I should add that I really, really like the sound of "The Horror Revealed", of all the mechanics suggested so far.

Paul Czege wrote: 1. What does "the horror revealed" do to the dynamics of play? Is there a likelihood players will willingly accept commands from the Master as opportunities for maxing out Self-loathing...just so they get to use "the horror revealed"? Is it likely players will initiate unprovoked atrocities just to get themselves to where they can use "the horror revealed"? I don't want to have tipped the scales with the mechanic so much that Self-loathing is no longer clearly undesirable.

2. A question for everyone, but particularly those who've played the game: imagine being in a later stage of gameplay where "the horror revealed" is triggered for your character. What kind of scene would you have narrated? What would you try to accomplish story-wise with your chance to do this kind of narration?

3. And finally, which of the two proposed conditions for triggering "the horror revealed" is best for the game: Self-loathing would grow greater than Love plus Fear, or Self-loathing minus Love would grow greater than Fear plus Reason? One concern here is that I don't want to inadvertently invalidate any of the endgames with the mechanic by somehow overly compressing its likelihood with the capping of Self-loathing and the increasing of Reason.

Hey Mike,

A problem with both options is that as Love grows, it allows for greater Self-Loathing to occur. Basically as you always get a point of Love whenever you get Self-Loathing, you'll never max out until you lose Love due to a connection being killed.

"Acting out" successfully, both violently and non-violently also results in Self-loathing. Does this affect your opinion on whether Love should be included in the formula?

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: Hey Mike,

A problem with both options is that as Love grows, it allows for greater Self-Loathing to occur. Basically as you always get a point of Love whenever you get Self-Loathing, you'll never max out until you lose Love due to a connection being killed.

"Acting out" successfully, both violently and non-violently also results in Self-loathing. Does this affect your opinion on whether Love should be included in the formula?

Hey Mike,

SL-LV > RS
.
.
.
How's that sound?

I just spent my whole lunch working through permutations of Fear, Reason, Love, Self-loathing, and Weariness, assuring myself that this doesn't preclude any of the five Epilogues. And it sure doesn't.

It's real tight too. It keeps the numbers hovering right where I think they should be to not irrelevantize the Intimacy/Desperation/Sincerity mechanics. It's going in as SL > RS + LV.

Thanks,

Paul

Woo-hooo!

Was that the last detail? Are we due to see something complete out soon? Tell me I don't have to wait for GenCon!

Mike

Hey Mike,

Yeah, GenCon, I'm sorry.

Was that the last detail?

Well, I'm still on the fence about whether to raise Reason after a "Horror Revealed"...and I wish I'd seen more use of the aiding mechanics in play...but neither of these are the same order of magnitude as the amok Self-loathing concern.

Paul