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Attempting to review My Life with Master now, in 2008, is absurd. It's over five years since it was published, and since then it's received so much attention and inspired so much design that it's impossible to see it just for what it is. For a role-playing game designer, trying to see this game as just a game separate from its context is impossible – in the same way that a literature professor can't possibly read Don Quixote as just another novel.
Dear reader, what am I supposed to tell you that you haven't heard already? If you want to know about the mechanics, you can just read Steve Darlington's review on this site. It's a good review; I have nothing to add to what he's written.
But I want to tell you something about the game, something that might be of use to you. So this is what I'll do: I'll tell you about the three times I've ran My Life With Master.
The first time I ran it was four years ago. It was the very first time I ran one of those new indie games for a group of friends. I had read the PDF, and studied the threads on the Forge to try to understand all these new concepts. «Scene framing»? Only one die roll every scene? Fortune in the... what? It was scary, new, challenging, and I didn't know if I could handle it. So I invited some friends, got drunk, and played the Master as hard as I could.
That first master was a wonderful, pathetic wretch. He was rolling around in a wheelchair, terrorising his minions, asking them to kill children and betray their loved ones. I reeled around in my living room, bumping into the players, making disgusting noises and going especially hard on the player I knew the least. (It was the start of a wonderful friendship, and now we're writing novels together.) Later that evening we were impressing each other with our drawing-nekked-women skills.
I ran into two problems that first time. The first was: Who gets to ask for scenes when? I don't know if the text has been changed since then – but in this edition, it's fairly clear how it works. The second, however, is still the same: Having to check the rules every scene to see what dice to roll is an immense speed bump. If you can memorise what dice pools go where, good for you; none of us were able to. This «one die roll at the high point of each scene» is still a part of very many indie games – and I hate it, because it breaks my flow.
The second time was three and a half years ago. This was at Arcon, a Norwegian game festival; there were two or three groups, and I GM'ed for one of them. This was my first attempt to bring indie games to the general public.
I got a group of players who knew each other, and ran the game. I was performing. Walking around the room, standing behind players, and using overt, blatant manipulation. Playing favorites. Cultivating hatred for one, love for the other, and complete emotional unpredictability for the third. The game is demanding to run in itself, and played with a group accustomed to a traditional «GM-runs-everything» style, it can be draining. Players need to be active to get something out of it – but at the same time, the power structure inherent in the setting and the rules can make it hard for them. I was hoping and waiting for the characters to rise up, to attempt to crush Master, but it never happened. In the end, to achieve some sort of closure, I pushed and pulled and orchestrated a dramatic uprising.
The third time was a year ago, at HolmCon, a minicon at my house. Some of my guests were curious about MLwM. We'd been talking about it earlier, how much it had inspired our design, how cool it was. A few of us went upstairs to play. Once again, I was the master – this time a feral beast, sniffing and growling at the players, pacing the floor on all fours.
Once again, manipulation. Once again, forcing the poor minions to do what they didn't want to do. And all of a sudden it was feeling old, like going through the motions. I was struck by designeritis. I'd understood the game, I'd played it and knew how it worked – and now that I could see right through it, knew what strings I was pulling and why, I couldn't quote make the magic work anymore.
We finished the session after a few hours; I don't remember how. We'd understood what the game was about, and went on to do other things.
Dear reader - having now violated most of the unwritten rules of game review, and told you nothing of what you expected to read, I hope I've still told you something useful. I've told you how it can feel to run the game, so you can decide for yourself if this is how you want to feel, or how you want to run your game. I've told you how it works in different contexts, so you can think about what context you want to run it in. I've told you what worked for me, and what didn't, and perhaps that can inform your play.
I recommend this game. Of course. However, I recommend it knowing it has faults and shortcomings. I recommend it knowing that it doesn't suit my play style perfectly, and possibly not yours, either. I recommend it because you'll learn something from it, and because it will challenge you.
