At Seven Bells (see the setup here) played its first real session on Friday, and I found myself with mixed feelings both about my own ability to run the game the way I'd like to, and the system and implementation themselves.

I'm still not sure I can articulate exactly where the problem lies.

We opened with a set of three errands from the Master, directed at three of the five minions/pairs. "Bring me three girls - young, beautiful, and clever. You [Ariakus], bring one, you [the Wight twins], another, and you two [Smith & Smythe], another. We have much work to do, yes." The other two PCs received "placeholder" errands, ones not requiring V&V, to get them out into the town and interacting with their Connections, one of whom (each) was a young, pretty, and clever girl. Real simple. My hope was to get three girls gathered (including, unless they worked at it, the two Connections) for use in the lab and the voice-stealing ritual, and cap the session with the theft of voices using whichever one the Masters found most suitable.

I'm not sure this wasn't too much structure to set up, off the bat.

Much of the initial sequencing went quite well. Algernon saw the blacksmith's daughter and was smitten, wrote her an anonymous love letter late into the night, and delivered it (success). Ariakus found the blacksmith's daughter as well, and decided to make her the bait which would make his connection Charles into a hero (sticking point - see below) and get him out of the duty. Doktor Karol ran his errand to the apothecary, met the apothecary's daughter, and made his overture in turn (tie - the door banged open and there was Smith, in the doorway). Smith & Smythe went to pay their rents first and got to chatting with their landlady, who encouraged them to settle down, stop working so late, find a nice girl or two. Best failed overture of the game, in my opinion: "Like that Amelia Grayson girl, the apothecary's daughter. You'd like her... she's young, she's pretty, she's smart... I think she'd be perfect for you." S&S nearly choked on their tea.

After that, though, we started to have cohesion troubles - the narrative stumbled in several spots. I'm having trouble pinning down the exact cause well enough to ask for suggestions.

Partly, I think I overplanned it, and the plot was overintricate/overparallel. There was a discrepancy in the timing of the various "return with the girl" phases depending on how their scenes went and so on, which turned the smooth parallels into jarring too-much-to-do (in the remaining OOC time) versus I'm-all-done discrepancies, and my desire to wait for the "voices stolen" climax before embarking on more Master-driven story meant that my main tool to address this - more errands - was inaccessible. Not much to be done about this one except that I need to keep working on flexibility when I GM... I have Illusionist/Participationist roots which I'm trying to transcend.

Partly, there were some disconnects in the system, and/or in our understanding of the system. These cropped up in a couple of places, specifically: screwy or indirect Overtures, places where the player wishes to fail a roll, and a seeming inevitability of the Ever-Ascending Self-Loathing Spiral.

By screwy and indirect Overtures, I mean a couple of instances of play, where what the player considered an Overture, I wouldn't have called one. I didn't want to be a discouraging tightwad (sic), but at the same time going along with it got us into some tight spots where the rules' outcome of the situation failed to match expectations. Ariakus' first Overture, for one, was made to Charles Black, the blacksmith's fearless (at least of Ariakus!) apprentice, by way of making him out to be a hero... waiting until Charles came to his master's shop, then making his move on the blacksmith's daughter. Wanting to fail his Villainy roll, in the ensuing kidnap attempt. I opted to let him roll both Villainy and the Overture, and he failed at both rolls (thanks to a Desperation die we agreed Charles should receive due to her screams), thus gaining him (statistically) a point of Love from Charles, a point of Self-Loathing, and a failed errand from the Masters. Yet, in practice, Ariakus was not Loathing himself, he was pleased with this small rebellion; Charles was not Loving the beast that he saw, he was hating it. Having Charles follow his assailant with a scathing "I pity you" hardly made up for the situation, it just put a light veneer of "the proper result" onto it. Similarly, when Doktor Karol was forced to put his own Connection, Amelia, under the knife and remove her throat and heart, he did well to have had the foresight to obtain a spare of each beforehand... but he then asked to make an Overture out of the situation, on which I was torn. He was being loving, in his nasty and unpleasant way, by keeping her as alive as possible and hoping against hope to be able to restore her bits... but had to keep her anesthetized throughout, and as a backup had masked himself so as not to be recognized. Thus, his (failed) overture roll didn't map well either in success or failure to what the statistics said should occur.

In retrospect, I think that despite the Monarda Law ("say Yes whenever possible"), I should have nayed both of those as possible Overtures. That I will talk this out with the group, and discuss the basic fact that an Overture assumes that the PC is approaching the Connection (a) as themselves, and (b) with intent to gain their sympathy or human feeling, toward themselves. Which seem like straightforward rules, but as we saw in the above, not necessarily. Perhaps I failed to explain Overtures as well as I thought I understood them, or perhaps the explanation (a week previous) needed reinforcing. Or perhaps we just needed this shakedown in why nonstandard ones don't particularly work, because they produce statistical outcomes which are jarring in context.

(Algernon's anonymous love letters make me realize that requirement (a) can be relaxed to approaching the Connection under a pseudonym which we acknowledge will sooner or later be broken. Certainly the Cyrano-like pattern of Algernon's letters is one I'm happy with overall; she loves the author of the letters, which for now is what counts.)

Partly, analysis of their odds on the various rolls and the resulting outcomes is looking a little frustrating for the players - Gorra/Ariakus in particular. He does not anticipate succeeding on any Overture roll in the near future, nor failing on any Violence or Villainy roll, and thus expects that his Self-Loathing (started at 3) will continue to stay maxed out at his (Love plus Reason, Reason of 3), in lockstep, forever. And finds this frustrating, and I don't blame him. A couple of solutions do present themselves, though, so I'm not that worried... if he wraps his head around the bonus dice successfully (which we were all having a little trouble with off the bat, partly because the Overtures were being so peculiarly constructed that the bonus dice didn't usually seem to apply), or waits and gets help, he should be able to bring his Love up a little bit out of that lockstep. I'm also planning to suggest that his play of Ariakus suggests something other than his start of all Self-Loathing, no Weariness, and adjust his stats accordingly.

What do others recommend happen, when we hit the point where a minion wishes to fail a roll? Ariakus made an honest try at giving Charles a shot at heroism, but the problem was that it was still 8 dice (Fear 5, S.L. 3) vs. 3 dice (Reason 3) right off the bat, despite the fact that Ariakus' heart really wasn't in it. Now, I'm also not sure, here, whether "heart wasn't in it" is any excuse - he was on an errand for the Masters, on his first roll of the dice toward that end. Anyway, it was sticky, and awkward... left us feeling unsure about the way the rules were set up.

Though overall they're working fine, the minion pairs are finding one problem... relating to their Connections. Some of them (Mrs. Potts the landlady for example) have no problem interacting with the pair as a unit, but others aren't so easy, and moreover we have cases where the hope of one of the pair with respect to a Connection is clear (Mr. Smith wants Constable O'Reilly to respect him) but the other is very much not (Mr. Smythe is if anything criminal in outlook). This may sort itself out, though, since I plan to talk to them about it being okay for a Connection to love one of you and be weirded out by the other - esp. with any Self-Loathing loss incurred being seen as in-pair friction from this event. And Myrna, at least, is planning to sit down to talk to James about what it is that they want out of the relationships with each of their Connections, so that they can direct their Overtures better.

On the plus side, however, the pair motif seems to facilitate black comedy something fine. (Liberty Wight comes up in a dumbwaiter right before the butler's eyes, Hope throws a cloak over his head; they struggle, he gets the cloak off, Liberty pops a potato in his mouth and Hope pops the potato sack over his head instead of the cloak. They tie him up in the sack, stick him in the dumbwaiter, and let it whizz back down to the root cellar on its own. Or, later, the same two white-faced figures sneak across a garden carrying a girl tied into her own bedsheets, and enter the sewers via an unscrewed Cupid statue... one lithe figure - pop - one sausage roll - shoop - and the last one down - pop, sound of Cupid getting screwed back in, silence.)

First session ended with a lot of sleepy players, so the "steal all your voices" ritual is scheduled for the beginning of session two. Amelia is captured but bears the heart and throat of a prostitute in place of her own (and Karol ended the session with his Master choosing, to his relief, one of the other girls' throats, and then saying curtly, "Excellent. This one sings sweetly. Burn the other two."); the blacksmith's daughter, Marion, is still free, and thinks that heroic young Charles Black is sending her anonymous love letters; the reeve's nameless daughter is still alive and pent below the earth, heartless and throatless; and a last girl, also nameless but with a voice like larksong, seems to have fit the Masters' taste perfectly...

- Eric

Hi Eric,

We didn't have the problem with combining overtures with villainous or violent deeds in our game. I think everyone was clear that overtures are a separate thing entirely. I did have a situation when one player really wanted to make an overture before performing a first action towards a very specific Master command. This was frustrating, and I simply didn't allow it. I also requested that overtures be tangible in some respect to the object of love, i.e., anonymous love letters works, the extension of life by an anonymous torturer is stretching it a bit.

One of the aspects of MLwM that I like is the fluctuations in the stats as consequences to actions taken by the character and the tragic circumstances that this inspires. The minions are exceeding good at doing heinous things; it's connecting to people that's difficult. And so I find the plot to make Charles a hero not satisfying as either a villainous deed or an overture. I would have lobbying for keeping the villainy and the overture separate actions. For example, Ariakus could have kidnapped the girl and hid her away somewhere. Then, he could make an overture to Charles by letting him know where she is.

Keep us posted on your game!

Julie

The idea about tangibility is interesting - I'll have to think about that one to make sure that it does not eliminate any of the things that I think of as Overtures. But yes, per the above, I think - now - I would disallow both of my problem Overtures from the first session.

OTOH, my gut has been saying that I'd like to give the players more control over their pacing... if they want to do an overture scene before an opportunity comes up to fulfill a command, I'm letting them do so. If they already had everything they needed to fulfill it, I suppose I might enforce some scene order there.

And lastly, I think I figured out one way to fix a couple of problems: I'm going to add "encounter with a (specified) minion" to the list of types of scenes they may request. Let them actually arrange for chances to commiserate, seek information, or ask for aid. We'll see how that turns out.

- Eric

Where to start. First, to answer the last post, is there actually a list of types of scenes that the players can request? If so, I missed that, and have never played it. As I've played, players can request anything in terms of scenes. They just don't tend to get anywhere unless they're doing something that leads to a roll. But, of course minions can look for other characters. They can go take a nap if they really want to (it'll just get them in trouble).

You and your players do seem to have some problems with the paradigm in general.

Harlequin wrote: Partly, I think I overplanned it, and the plot was overintricate/overparallel.

Wanting to fail his Villainy roll, in the ensuing kidnap attempt. I opted to let him roll both Villainy and the Overture, and he failed at both rolls (thanks to a Desperation die we agreed Charles should receive due to her screams), thus gaining him (statistically) a point of Love from Charles, a point of Self-Loathing, and a failed errand from the Masters.

He was being loving, in his nasty and unpleasant way, by keeping her as alive as possible and hoping against hope to be able to restore her bits... but had to keep her anesthetized throughout, and as a backup had masked himself so as not to be recognized. Thus, his (failed) overture roll didn't map well either in success or failure to what the statistics said should occur.

analysis of their odds on the various rolls and the resulting outcomes is looking a little frustrating for the players...

I'm also planning to suggest that his play of Ariakus suggests something other than his start of all Self-Loathing, no Weariness, and adjust his stats accordingly.

Now, I'm also not sure, here, whether "heart wasn't in it" is any excuse - he was on an errand for the Masters, on his first roll of the dice toward that end. Anyway, it was sticky, and awkward... left us feeling unsure about the way the rules were set up.

esp. with any Self-Loathing loss incurred being seen as in-pair friction from this event. And Myrna, at least, is planning to sit down to talk to James about what it is that they want out of the relationships with each of their Connections, so that they can direct their Overtures better.

First session ended with a lot of sleepy players, so the "steal all your voices" ritual is scheduled for the beginning of session two.

Hmm... as often happens, I both agree and disagree with a lot of the above, in terribly intermingled doses. Some of it clarifies and some muddies the waters.

On the one hand,

Mike Holmes wrote: That said, I think with a bit of thought, almost anything can be an Overture. Overtures are not some contest of charm or something. They're the chance that the minion's own Self-Loathing becomes present in the setting in such a way to make him loathe himself even more.

Mike Holmes wrote: Despite my saying that the minion can intentionally fail with success every time, this doesn't exonerate them from the need to perform one violence or villainy if they fail to resist the master.

For what it's worth I think you're trying to hard too.

MLwM can be run, as Mike says, with no prep at all. The first part of the game where everyone pitches in a decides on a Master and create the minions is essentially the prep time.

I think that it's very important to have this shared process at the start of the game. It means everyone is playing on the same field and everyone has an immediate stake in what is going to happen. Probably the worst thing that anyone can do is prepare characters in secret.

That said, I've not run the game under ideal conditions yet, both times I had just over 3 hours to play the whole thing. In this situation I do some prep. I'd probably do some measure of these things in a lessed stressed game too.

I think about what the theme of the game is going to be, the standard Gothic one, a variant thereof, or something less usual (such as my Santa game). I get an idea of what might be in the village and what kind of things the characters can be asked to do by the Master. I might make a list of names, to pick from for NPCs.

It's not too bad setting up the Master before the players show, as long as you know it's going to be OK for them, such as with Santa, but one thing I wouldn't do is plot.

There is already an arc in the game: the Master has his needs and wants and will try to satisfy them through the actions of the PCs. Once you get going with the first round, there is usually plenty of material generated by the players to allow you to make the Master's demands interesting.

Harlequin wrote: ... the assumption on which both Gorra and Mike based their "questionable" Overtures.

Mike Holmes wrote: Despite my saying that the minion can intentionally fail with success every time, this doesn't exonerate them from the need to perform one violence or villainy if they fail to resist the master.

... which latter, btw, isn't supported by the text. If the command was to pet the puppy, then there would be no V&V involved. (It could even be really creepy and resist-worthy if the puppy was - say - the undead revival of the puppy belonging to the minion's Connection, and said Connection was watching in horror. Petting it would still be neither villainous, nor violent, merely hapless.)

When the master commands you, you're obliged to the tune of one roll, kind unspecified - are you saying that a sufficiently clever player can satisfy a command with an Overture and count it finished (probably as a failed command, if the Overture succeeded)? I'm not talking issues of player trust or system abuse, here, either - I'm talking about my and my players' comprehension of it. Is that in the spirit of the thing as written? That's not my impression, but your assertion that the minion is obliged to the tune of one V&V roll isn't present in the text. Should it be?

The rule about how it always increases, even on a failed Overture, says it does so "because he has demonstrated his humanity." (To whom? I had assumed, to the Connection. "To himself" seems to be your answer, which I'm still wrapping my mind around.)

Which implies that the Love score is a humanity mechanic. However, especially in the case of a totally-internalized "Love is his human side emerging" the loss of it if and when the Connection dies is, well, strained. If I saw a minion grieve huge hot tears over his loss, I'd count that as redemptive - his Love score ought to increase, not drop. So there's a conflict in here, somewhere, between the two interpretations (and yes, each game, or even each player, could set their own interpretation, as with Sorcerer's Humanity; this does not remove the contradiction, since it arises within the context of a single Overture)... and my group managed to insert their chisels and pull, right off the bat.

Is it not, Charles loves Ariakus, but rather, Ariakus is proud/humanized that he's building a hero up to someday challenge the Masters? Charles is just an instrument? Is Amelia just the mirror in which Doktor Karol sees himself, and can thus sleep through the whole procedure yet serve her function in redeeming him?

Love needs to be felt by the Connection, if that theme is to exist.

And the "strained" part still has some strength to it - the character loses faith in themselves because they've allowed someone important to them to die. They lose faith that anything is worth doing because everyone dies eventually.