The Forge Archives

So, I'm a sucker for taking games and seeing how far I can stretch them in terms of altering the setting, or subverting the paradigm (like, with Paladin, making the side of light full of villanous Code components), and still leave them as recognizable and full of all the juicy goodness they had to begin with.

The whole 19th century village thing is probably the easiest thing in My Life With Master to modulate.  So, I've had the whole notion of how to frame it all differently bouncing around in the back of my head since I bought the game yesterday and consumed its flesh in a voracious hour of reading.  (Something about the presentation made me feel I need to go back and read it twice to 'get' it mechanically, but that's for another thread someday.)

So I'm sitting there shooting the breeze with my manager today, and he mentions how back at corporate HQ, there's a vice president who sits in an office at the end of a row of offices.  The closer you get to his office, the greyer the hair of the occupants of those offices along the way.  The VP, though?  Picture of health and vigor.

Lightbulb goes off.

So now I'm running around with visions of a CEO or VP or whatever Executive Master, a Feeder Brain probably but not definitely, who's draining the lifeforce of the executives who are reorged into his presence (probably through the villanous work of his minion in HR), as well as feeding on the vitality of the company itself (the village analogue), driving it deeper into debt, bankruptcy, and ruin over the course of the game.  The Outsiders are, naturally, VPs of other departments, or peer execs from other companies.

You can really go full Dark Dilbert here (or maybe more appropriately Swimming with Sharks, etc) in terms of the minions he has under his sway, too, and office politics, romance, etc seems like a deeply tasty source to draw from.  The game might be a little more subtle than something more overtly "frankensteinian" in terms of the "special effects" of it all, but it feels like it would root the storyline in a lot of modern psycho-horror if done just so.

Figured I'd toss the idea out there in case it plants a dark seed in some other GM's garden.

See the Origins game I posted about:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7043&start=0

I'm a big fan of the idea that you can do this in any setting. Let's start a list of ideas. So far we've got:

Modern Office
Small Town America

I'll add:

Jungle Lair (think Heart of Darkness)
Antarctic Research Station
Mountaintop Monastery


Any of this evocative?

Mike

This one hits the mark.  Mista Kurtz -- he dead.

The 'town' in this case is the tribe of natives, I think, with the 'outsiders' are the rest of the army from which the master has detached himself.  Dennis Hopper as a minion does bad things to my brain, too, to take it forward to Apocalypse Now.

These work less for me, I think, mainly because they seem too isolated. The presence of "the town" and semi-easy access by the outsiders seems important.

I also keep trying to figure out a way to bring this into something I do with the Amber setting (this is a favorite exercise of mine: "Yeah, great system, but can I run Amber with it?").  Sure, it requires a lot of shoehorning to make it even possible, but I'm fine with that.  Right now I've got this image of Oberon or Brand as the master, the outsiders as Chaos or the Princes, and the town as some segment of shadow, Amber herself, etc.  Could be a bizarre little gig, a kind of way to turn a "throne war" scenario on its ear (perhaps by working as a precursor to one even).  But this is my own private little section of thought exercise. :)

It does suggest a particularly twisted notion to me, though, where King Arthur is the master and the knights of the round table are minions in some fashion.  The master's goal is the grail, only this time, his methods and motives are bad, bad, bad.  All of Britain becomes the town, and one could potentially position this as a period of time when the King is without his sword.  Dunno quite where I'm going with this, but (one of) the great thing(s) about this game is that all you've gotta do is toss a few seeds out there and collaborate the rest of the details into being with your players.

As per previous discussion, I think a Paranoia game, with the Computer as the Master, Alpha Complex as the town (with a very low Reason) and the Outsiders being that the Computer is trying to gain success with regard to being "the Communists" -- it wants to impress the Communists that Alpha Complex cannot be invaded -- has potential. Of course, the fact that the Communists don't really exist as an outside force the way the Computer thinks of them is an interesting thing.

Game ends with the players (Troubleshooters) finally destroying the Computer, resulting in MegaWhoops Alpha.

As for Amber, if you view the creation of Amber as a reaction to Chaos, you can make Dworkin the Master, with Oberon and kids as Minions, Shadow (or Amber itself) as the Town with Chaos as the Outsiders.

Funny, you should say that because my test is, "Can I run Ravenloft with this?"  Let's see.  Darklord = Master, Town = Domain.  Yup.  Suddenly, my entire Ravenloft collection just became my stock list of Masters and Towns.

Jesse

A Space Station Colony (the "townsfolk" are the colonists, the "outsiders" are perhaps traders who come to and fro?)

A Western Mining Town (the "townsfolk" are the miners, the "outsiders" are... um... um... I'll get back to you)

the Antarctic Research Station does have too little Townsfolk factor, but a Mountain Monastery doesn't... usually they're close to a number of small villages, which together could provide a "town."  I'm not sure what the outsiders are in a monastery, though.

a Sumerian Ziggurat?  (the "townsfolk" are the local people, the "outsiders" are, perhaps, fellow priests?)

I love the King-Arthur-as-master, by the way.  It rocks.  :)

And finally... a variant Willy Wonka as a deranged Master, the Oompa-Loompas his townspeople, and the Outsiders the people he's brought in with the golden tickets.

Ravenloft is almost too easy -- it's practically the same genre, after all, with the whole "Dark Lord" thing.

What about more abstract Masters? Like an organization, instead of a single person, and the Minions are the people on the bottom rung. That could make for an interesting Illuminati-style campaign, with the Minions overthrowing successively more and more powerful Masters... The "town" is the world itself, and the "outsiders" could be nearly anything, including aliens, depending on what you think the "goal" of the Illuminati is...

That could make for an intersting long-term MLwM campaign.

Now we're talking!


LOL. That's awesome.

I like all of these suggestions. The space station idea is really cool for it's isolation. Fear could be very high indeed if the Master controlled the environment. Thinking about it, this makes The Black Hole a totally MLwM game. Right down to the Master's robotic minions Bob and Maximillian.

I ought to have taken the tactic that others wisely have, here, and included what the the townskolk are. Outsiders this is tougher for each setting because Outsiders are more specific to the Master's needs. But I'll include some samples.

Antarctic Research Station
Townsfolk: The folks at the little military base that people use to get in and out
Outsiders: the men funding the research

Mountaintop Monastary
Townsfolk: The little village at the bottom of the mountain
Outsiders: monks from an associated temple

Working any better now?

Western (to follow up on Lxndr's idea)
Townsfolk: Farmers (bet the Master is a rancher)
Outsiders: US Marshals

I'll play old Zeke, the toothless miner who works for the Master scaring farmers off their land late at night.

As for abstract, and working off of the office idea:

ReallyBigCo
Townsfolk: consumers
Outsiders: Investors


Mike

MLWM/Little Fears crossover has some meat to it too -- with the parent as a master, other parents in a stepford wives kind of community as the outsiders, suburbia as the town, and the *kids* as minions.

Gets real interesting if you imply that the rest of the homes in the little community are having their own MLWM games going on in them too.

I'm also curious about the possibility of "shared world" stuff, where you have more than one competing Master...

To go with the multiple Master concept, there's also the possibility of doing a riff on _A Night in the Lonesome October_ (Zelazny) where each player plays the minion "companion" of a Master who is taking part in the game... but I'm not sure the mechanics would bear that all that well.  

Who knows.  Maybe you?

Actually, I think it would be cool to do this with a Thug-Eyed perspective on the superhero genre.  The Master would be one of the supervillians.  The Town would be whatever city the superheroes normally defend.  And the Outsiders would probably be the superheroes themselves with the Want being to be recognized as the superior opponent.

Example:

The Master: The Joker
Town: Gotham City
The Outsiders: Batman, Robin, Oracle, Batgirl, Nightwing, Huntress

You could even stretch the end game such that the Minion doesn't kill the master but is instead somehow instremental to his capture.

Jesse

The Master: Frankenfurter
Minions: Riffraff. Columbia. Magenta. Rocky.
Townsfolk: The party attendees.
Outsiders: Janet. Brad. Dr. Scott.

That's DOCTOR Frank-n-furter, to you, mister!

S/He didn't attend evil doctor school for many a year not to be addressed by the proper title!

Mike

How's bout a southern plantation, ca. 1862?

The master - the slaveowner

The minions - the house staff

The townsfolk - the rest of the slaves, mostly the "field staff"

The outsiders - the North

You couldn't really play this one, but it's interesting. The original Star Wars trilogy is a perfect MLwM story:

The Master: Emperor Palpatine
The Minion: Darth Vader
Townspeople: The people the Empire terrorizes, especially Vader's family.
It is by winning Luke's love that Vader is finally able to destroy the Master, though he must commit some pretty terrible violence and villainy before he gets there.

Here's one you could play:

The Master: Lord Vader
Minions: Imperials serving on Vader's flagship Star Destroyer
Townspeople: Inhabitants of the worlds the Empire terrorizes
Outsiders: The Rebellion. Vader's Want is to show his superiority to the Rebellion and crush its spirit.

Others:

The Master: Shang Tsung, master of the Mortal Kombat tournament
Minions: Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and the other "bad" fighters
Townspeople: The good fighters and the people they care about
Outsiders: Demons from hell that are checking up on Shang to make sure he's holding up his end of the bargain.

The Master: A tyrannical Hollywood film director
Minions: Members of the cast and crew
Townspeople: Other members of the cast and crew
Outsiders: The studio execs

The Master: A mad submarine commander
Minions: Members of the crew
Townspeople: The rest of the crew
Outsiders: The Navy
[This would of course work on a whale-hunting ship just as well. :)]

The Master: The Don
Minions: Mafiosos
Townspeople: The Big City
Outsiders: FBI, other crime families

Holy crap.

I mean.  Holy crap.

Lancelot and Guenivere because Arthur told them to.  And they didn't have enough Love to resist.

Yikes.


Has anybody else here seen Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead?  I keep trying to get Paul to watch it but he won't.

-Vincent

You just found out why I had such an incredibly evil giggle at the whole thought.  Though in my scenario, only Lancelot is the minion, and is doing what he's doing in order to fulfill some machiavellian plan of the king; while he may be trying to get love from Guenivere, he knows that he's perpetrating some Villany on the part of Arthur, and thus it isn't a case where he's accumulating Love -- only Self-Loathing.  Which eventually drives him nuts and sends him running naked through the forest. Alternately, Lancelot feels no connection to Guenivere at all, and is doing all of this as some sort of cold manipulation scheme.

It's a great retelling of the whole myth, I think, and gives me a certain sense of glee in terms of how much you can go back, look at the legends, and then start thinking about how it was all just a terrible, awful lie.

Any thoughts on how to work Mordred, et al into it?  Are they the outsiders?

 It's brilliant.  Might need to bend it a bit in order to fit it into this paradigm, but not by much.  It certainly puts forth a nasty, nasty scenario for how a master might deal with minions who screw up a job.

Academic Setting

The Master: Thesis Advisor
Minions: Grad Students
Town: Undergrad Students
Outsiders: Other Professors

Now, take a look at the character sheet and think about outcome #5 and the thematic ramifications in this setting.  Kind of scary really.

Jesse

True dat.  Beyond this, looking at the endgame scenarios in terms of adapting them to the theme is another great way of looking at this.  In a royal scenario where the master is a king, the minion without any love ends up taking the throne, and so on.  Very, very interesting.

I've already talked about a bit of a merge with Little Fears for a game of children-minions in a stepford hell.  One could do a bit of a sorceror spin on all this, as well, where the master is the demon, only the demon is common and shared by all the sorceror-minions.  What other games come to mind for making "hybrids"?

Buckwheats!

Mike

Nobody liked my Willy Wonka suggestion?

The master is a dragon.

The minions are his henchmen, horrible freaks of nature he's collected to help him.

The townsfolk are the nearby towns, which pay tribute.

The Outsiders are the adventurers that keep coming to tryand kill the dragon... the master wants to impress them by roasting and eating them.

The Master: Lord Hiroshi
Minions: Samurai retainers to the lord
Townspeople: The lord's subjects

Mmmm... repressed samurai emotions, unrequited love, commiting horrible acts in the name of honor... good stuff. Ritual suicide would have to be an endgame in this version, probably a preferrable ending to killing one's lord.

I forgot to say that the Paranoia variant is just brilliant. I love it.

Ah, yes, Self-Loathing as personal perception of failure to obtain Honor. Oh, that's so very good.

Mike

Liked it just fine, it's just that we're awash in stuff here, I failed to comment!  Willy Wonka really is the trickster-Devil in so many ways, it's a good fit, and it really lets you mine the dark side of that whole story.

Yay!  Someone did like it.  :)  I afeared it was lost in the shuffle

you could set it in a banana republic...

Master:  el Presidente

Minions:  Henchmen (his "cabinet"?)

Townspeople:  the oppressed subjects

Outsiders:  um...  I'm lost here right now, but I'm sure someone will fill in the slack

(btw, my latest idea of merging Paranoia with something else is Paladin, but that's off topic here)

I wonder if things could be tweaked so that Honor replaces Love in the overall dynamic, though it might be difficult to adapt, since theoretically, serving the dictates of the Lord is honor-worthy, though the acts you may then perpetrate aren't ...

The Master: Owner of a record label

The Minions: The artists the master promotes; bonus if they're a boy band (pop music as an act of villany)

The Village: The fans (where the Love the minions are trying to amass is based on *really* connecting to their fans, not just paying lip service to it), the listening public, groupies, etc

The Outsiders: The music industry as a whole; entertainment critics; etc

Or as a twist on that one, Fred...

The Master: Carson Daly

The Minions: His MTV staff

The Village: Times Square (or wherever the hell MTV is in NYC)

The Outsiders: Single, young, female pop stars & actresses, who he wants to adore him

("Britney's gonna be here in an hour! Dammit, Kev, go buy me a new shirt! Go to that shop across the street!")

Fred, Mordred's the outsider, who comes to Camelot and sees into everyone's hearts.  God, Arthur wants his son's love.

I like Guenevere to be the minion at least as much as I like Lancelot to be.  What if the knights were the townspeople, and the ladies the minions?

My mind is made filthy.  I must go reread the Questing Beast now, to restore my spirit.

-Vincent

Great ideas there, Vincent.  Tasty, tasty ideas.  I really like the whole notion that the ladies of the court are running about doing Arthur's bidding, pointing the knights where the Master wants them going...

Here's this morning's thought.

The Master: Coach.
The Minions: The athletes.
The Village: The high school.
The Outsiders: Competing sports teams from other schools.

Hello,

The only non-canonical My Life with Master setting I'd consider is the surreal, modern corporate, Dilbert but even more evil one.

Why is my imagination so limited? I don't know. But that's the only one, aside from an isolated Central European town in 1805, that I'd play.

Best,
Ron

Damn, I thought I would have cinched ya with the subverted Arthurian one.

Yeah, I'd been thinking about something like this since I picked up the game, but -- well, the romantic/reason conflict is too important to me to drop, so I didn't see it quite like this.

Ever seen The Grifters? John Cusack as a small time con artist, Annette Bening as a small time con artist with delusions, but they aren't as important as the utterly visceral small time crime boss Bobo Justus played by Pat Hingle. There's a scene where he demands obedience out of Angelica Huston that seems to me to be the essence of the Beastial Master -- and if the last scene isn't demonstrative of a Minon using Desperation I'm not sure what is.

And there's something about the con as romance, while seeing through it is rationality. I dunno.[/i]

The Master: a designer & promoter of independent RPGs
The Minions: the people who work his booth at a celebrated RPG convention
The Town: the various gamers at the convention
The Outsiders: the judges of the Diana Jones Award

Hey, Ron, would'ya play this one?

Heh, heh, heh...

Ohmigod! This is the game Junta! The Outsiders? Yer kidding, right? It's so obvious. They're the superpowers with their "foreign aid" money!

Hey, Josh, can we switch to that for tonight's game?!?

Mike

Oh man...

Banana Republic rises from the ashes...

MLWM is another game I want to get. Maybe set up a game for Halloween.

Think it would work over IRC for the rest of my gaming needs?

Absolutely certain of it. I think the written style would actually have some improvements over the FTF version. I can only recommend trying this.

Mike

I kicked off some MLWM via MUSH and it worked like a charm. (More on it once I've gotten another couple sessions under my belt.)

During our game session the other night, we were riffing on MLwM settings, and someone said, "My Life with Dungeon Master." Everyone stopped and stared. "Dude. You could totally do that." Followed by, "I think I have done that."

lol

The latest bit to spring into my head involves the master being a tyrranical two-year-old (Beast Feeder!) and the minions being parents, babysitters, and relatives.  Lots of domestic household horror to be had, adults helpless in the face of the child's desires, etc.  Haven't quite figured out the Outsiders angle yet, but it'll come.

Dude, I'm living that one right now!

The outsiders? Easy. Grandparents. I don't even want to get into it. :-)

Mike

So it occurred to me that the Phantom of the Opera could be a Master story template.  Going off the musical because it's fresher in my mind than the book, you could have the Phantom as Master (a Beast Teacher?)...

the minions would likely include Christine Daae and Madame Giry...

the "townsfolk" are the minor employees and the opera-goers...

...and the outsiders are, oddly enough, the major staff at the opera house, the patrons and the prima donna and the other stars

(he doesn't want to impress Christine, really, he just wants to KEEP her...)

Another idea:

My Life With Bernie

Based on "Weekend at Bernie's", My Life With Bernie would involve a dead Master, and a bunch of minions who have some stake in convincing the Outsiders that the Master is alive.

God I've got to get this game.  I want to run a Cthulhu Mythos version of this so bad I could taste it:

Master: Wilbur Whateley
Minions: Cultists
Townfolk: Dunwich Residents
Outsiders: Investigators

Master: Herbert West
Minions: Medical Students
Townfolk: Miskatonic U
Outsiders: Investigators

Master:Obed Marsh
Minions: Half Human Deep Ones
Townfolk: Innsmouth residents
Outsiders: Investigators

I've been working on the idea of games that repair what I think is wrong with Call of Cthulhu, Inspectres was one, now I can add another to the list...

Hey Bryan,

Are you familiar with www.yog-sothoth.com? Paul Maclean, who admins the site as "Paul of Cthulhu," bought My Life with Master a few weeks ago and mentioned a similar interest in CoC-inspired play in his email to me. Maybe you two should compare notes.

Paul

A LONG time ago there was an rpg called 'Witch Hunt' it was a one'joke concept of conflict between magristrates and witches in Puritan times. In honor of that long lost game I present the followint MLwM variant:

Master: Covenmaster of nasty baby-eatring satanist witches
Minions: coven members
Townspeople: Townspeople
Outsiders: Inquisitors

Master: Witch finder general
Minions: His assistants
Townspeople: Townspeople
Outsiders: Nice, PC pagan witches

Atlternately you could run the last one with the evil witches, but who'd feel bad about doing bad things to one of them?