Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering
Boarding School & Correctional Facility
My life with Master – play report

I ran a one shot demo of MLWM at our Monday game night. My ambition was to run the game from Master Creation to Endgame. (I let the players set Fear, then I set Reason at Fear –1 and gave every player starting Love = Reason.)

I had four players and myself as GM. Creating a Master and Desmense took about 35 minutes. I didn’t want to be too directive, so I let them through out ideas. We floundered for 10 or 15 minutes before we decided on a “Catholic School” as the setting. Then things gelled and details came quickly.

Demesne

Our Sister of Perpetual Suffering.
An isolated, co-ed boarding school.
Late 20th Century.

The Master

Kevin, an 8 year old super-genius
Wants to prove his theories to the League of Young Evil Geniuses
Needs living victims to implant mind control devices in.
His secret lab is in the Catacombs below the school.


The Minions

Walter Knecht
Maintenance man. Keys can open any door, except the Master’s catacombs. Deaf, except to machinery.

Luthyr
Goth Kid. Always draws attention of authority, except when he’s guilty. Can’t speak in the presence of girls, except when ordered by master or an adult.

Heather
Cool Girl. Can rope anyone into a “cool” action, except when opposed by logic. Can’t touch icky things, except when persuading someone else to do it.

Sister Agnes
School disciplinarian. A rap on the knuckles produces obedience in any child, except the master. Flees gestures of intimacy, except when reaching out.


Favorite Scenes

The Master producing a push-button voice repeater to talk to Walter.

Walter was ordered to pick up a delivery at the back door and kill anyone who saw it. He found his connection Bobby near the back door. Just as he finished rolling a connection, the delivery man arrives and puts a box on the stoop. Bobby asks “What’s that Mr. Knecht?” Who do you think Walter killed? Who got to watch?

After battering Eddy, the jock, Luthyr hides in the bathroom. He finds his friend Olay smoking a cigarette and convinces him to hide. The stand on toilets in stalls. Eddy arrives, finds Olaf. While Luthyr crouches in his stall, Eddy drubs the unfortunate NPC. However, when Eddy tires of that, he tries another stall and Luthor burst out, knocking Eddy back against a sink. Eddy lies dead, a pool of blood spreading. “I did it for you, Olaf!”


Actual Play

I think four players is a stretch. Near the start it was difficult to avoid a repetitive pattern where the Master gives each player a task. When players weren’t obeying the Master or seeking a connection, there was a sort of uncomfortable dead air.

It took me a while to learn a few things.

1) Good tasks are more complicated than “go there, do this” and complications give more meat for the player and GM to work with.

2 ) Consequences of actions are good for producing action outside Commands and Connections. In the game, things came to life when the jocks started hunting Luthyr, or the police showed up looking for Walter.

3) It’s important to coach new players into connection scenes – otherwise Self-Loathing can outstrip it rapidly.

4) I discovered a great question to ask a player after they won a conflict: “How do you earn your point of Self-Loathing?”

5) I wish I had found ways to create situations that played to the character's More than and Less Then traits. In future, I think I'd take a break after charracter generation and list some ideas before proceding to play.

Comments

We played 3.5 hours but didn’t quite get to Endgame before we were exhausted. I think this is partly because it took a while for players to understand the importance of Love points.

We had one Horror Reveal, which I think the player enjoyed, and which add a caroming lynchmob of jocks seeking nerds and Goths being added to play.

The Fortune in the middle single roll resolution works like a dream. Players narrate actions, sometimes angling for bonus dice. The dice are rolled, then the Love, Self-Loathing or Weariness changes suggest details for resolution description.

Once I got going, I had a blast as GM. There is a knack to choosing the right tasks to send Minions on, and in framing complication and consequence scenes. I don’t think I always got it right, but when I did the players got strongly engaged too. I wish I could distill the principles for producing this. Right now, it escapes me.

The key principle, to me, of making good tasks for minion A is to have them conflict with the priorities of Minion B. That way things get all tangled up.

How did you establish the kid as the Master? That is, what control did he have over the minions? Why were they required to do what he said? Did they have his mind control devices implanted in them? I'm not seeing why they would follow his orders.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: The key principle, to me, of making good tasks for minion A is to have them conflict with the priorities of Minion B. That way things get all tangled up.

Mike Holmes wrote: How did you establish the kid as the Master? That is, what control did he have over the minions? Why were they required to do what he said? Did they have his mind control devices implanted in them? I'm not seeing why they would follow his orders.

Mike you sim bunny you! We never even thought to ask those questions.

Hey Alan,

It sounds like a very fun game. And I quite like the inversion in it, where the Master is a child who holds sway over adults.

Can I ask, were your players experienced Narrativists, or rookies? Or hard-to-impress traditional gamers? What did they think of the game?

Paul

Mike:

As soon as I started answering your question, I realized that details on how the Master controls the minions have definite potential as material for play. So it is something I will definately get the group to detail the next time.

Paul:

Three of the players have played a few one-shot demos of narrativist games, (though they haven't become raving narrativist converts like me). The fourth is a newcomer and an unknown. I think they're all from pretty traditional-rpg backgrounds and part of the floundering near the begining came from that.

Everyone had fun, and I know that Lukas, who played Luthyr, saw the potential of the game. The others: I think it was just a fun demo game to try.