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Of course, the jury is still out on this one. One of the strengths of a game like Trinity is that it combined a whole host of sci-fi concepts, themes and approaches, so you can select the one with which you wish to run it, be it high-action superheroic space opera or dark and gritty conspiracy-busting SF. Other games, like Blue Planet, provide an almost completely neutral world, not free of action but free of any particular spin or plot mode; everything on Poseidon has a flavour of politics on the new frontier, but what type of stories you might run there are conspicuously (and deliberately) absent from the book.
Most of the big games on the market take this approach; we provide the tools – the imagery, the physics, the people and places, often these days even the tropes of the kind of genres being emulated – but you decide what they do. Exalted and Unknown Armies are two good examples that define feel far more than narrative structure. Others, like D&D, define the kind of things you will be doing, the challenges and structure of the plot, but leave the feel of the game and much of the setting up to the GM (or a sourcebook). Others, like Buffy or Feng Shui, work by encouraging the emulation of a particularly well-known narrative formula from other media, not just in setting but in plot structure also, to the extent of building narrative awareness into the character design and the rules of play.
Then there’s the next step forward, which is something of the new millennium these days, and is all the rage over in Forge-land, where the so-called indie games spawn like dark shadows on the edge of consciousness. This is dealing less and less with simulation and avatarism, of playing a character, and more and more about building mechanics to actively create the narrative, rather than what the characters are doing in the narrative. Some games meet in the middle (Inspectres, Dust Devils), while others are almost purely story-telling devices (Universalis, The Pool).
So far, most story-making games have been fairly generic, which brings us back to that quote above. Paul Czege takes the approach of a very tight focus on a very specific genre – as seen in games like Dust Devils and Paladin - and applies it totally to story. In his previous short work, (Nicotine Girls), the end result was something which initially seemed more akin to a computer program than roleplaying – you simply feed in your stats, run the probabilities and it will spit out the scenes you need to play, and the outcome of your story. In a sense, your character no longer has a choice in how their stories end, and they don’t have much chance of it being happy either.
But Nicotine Girls was more an experiment and less a complete game. My Life With Master builds, expands, elaborates and improves on the concept, and as a result produces something not only more interesting, but which hopefully more people will be convinced to try – assuming they can get past the name.
Despite appearances, My Life With Master (hereafter MLWM) has nothing to do with kung-fu or even Doctor Who. Rather, MLWM is a horror game about being Igor, Quasimodo, or perhaps the golem of Doctor Caligari. It is the game of being the sick, deformed minion of an evil, demented genius. Archetypically set in a perpetually bleak, terminally isolated rural town in mainland Europe around 1805, you will serve your master by going for bodies, kidnapping beautiful young ladies and quite possibly being killed by the mob in the penultimate act, as they head for your master’s demesne with torches flaming. As you may have gathered, the gothic (in the cinematic definition) atmosphere drips off page one, thanks mostly to Czege’s genius with the written word, conveying both amazing poetic imagery and crystal clear instructions with the same exquisite economy.
Czege also understands his genre deeply and fundamentally. I have always believed that simply reading and playing RPGs is a literary education because emulative RPGs crystalise genre conventions and thus teach us to better understand said genre, as well as sharpening our instincts to spot such things elsewhere. MLWM is a perfect example of this, as it quickly becomes hard to distinguish his choice of attributes from a high-level academic deconstruction of the character tropes in gothic horror films at a level which could easily be found on a college reading list. As a result, even if you never play this game, you will be smarter simply for having read it.
That does not mean it is ever dry, or boring. As I said, Czege writes with both economy and verve, which means by the time you’ve finished savouring the mournful imagery he’s conjured up, you’ve learnt the next page of rules. The PDF version (don’t sweat it, hardcover has just also become available) is 64 pages but this involves a lot of spacing and art, resulting in a book not much over ten thousand words. Those who rage at game designers daring to charge money for anything smaller than Encyclopaedia Brittanica should leave now. Those who know that good things can come in small packages should draw closer to the fireside, and let me paint the full magnitude of ghoulishness awaiting you inside.
A game of MLWM begins by players and GM designing their Master, and the book begins with the same. Masters have two “stats” but in keeping with the game’s approach, these stats aren’t really measures of personal abilities. Fear determines the Master’s grip on his Minions, the townsfolk and even the landscape. Reason, on the other hand, determines how much the townsfolk and society (and sometimes the Minions) are able to escape the fearsome predations of the Master on their hearts and minds. Masters are further defined by Aspect and Type, Wants and Needs. Aspect and Wants describe the manner of the Master, whereas Type and Needs determine the nature of the evil he perpetrates. There are no game effects for the choices made here, they are simply to determine the setting for the story, and, through Czege’s brilliant eye for genre, make sure that story and its creators, are in just the right mood.
Then the players move on to create their Minions, who have three stats. The main two are Self-Loathing and Weariness. Neither are good things. Self-Loathing measures how much the Minion believes he is a monster, and aids them in doing evil deeds, and makes it easier for the Master to manipulate them. Weariness is how disconsolate the Minion has become with his lot in life, impeding his ability to carry out the actions the Master commands, yet also making it harder to resist those commands. Yes, they both make it harder on you: MLWM shares with Nicotine Girls the same almost unbearable callousness towards the PCs, in stats as much as story. As a result, no game since Wraith has been this bleak and hopeless.
The one shining light of hope in a Minion’s life is Love. Love measures the relationship between the Minion and some Connection(s) among the townsfolk, such as the little blind girl who can’t see your monstrous visage. The stat begins at zero but by making in-game, roleplayed-out overtures of affection to the Connections, Love will increase. The more Love you get, the more chance you’ll have of disobeying your Master and breaking free of his terrible clutches. Of course, failed overtures of Love also increase Self-Loathing, and the cycle continues.
Minions also have a virtue and a flaw, the things which makes them More than Human, and Less than Human. These are absolute: they do not affect dice rolls, they make them impossible. A mute Minion can nevver make a roll to talk; an inhumanly strong one will always win in a fight. However, to keep the tragedy alive, each has an exception as well. The mute minion may be able to sing hymns beautifully (which mayhap his love will hear?); the inhumanly strong beast may fall weak in the light of the sun (yet his Master keeps cruelly sending him out into it). These are pure descriptors, like the Wants and Needs of the Master; where the Master's descriptors determine the background for the whole story, these produce the ideas for the individual scenes, just like good Virtues and Flaws should.
Back to the numbers: all of them typically range from one to around five or six. The mechanics of the game are scene-based; a player describes what he wants to do in a given situation (resist his Master’s orders, perform an act against the townsfolk or a fellow Minion, make an overture of love) and a dice contest is rolled. The specifics of the contest depend on the nature of the action, normally one of those three listed. For example, to resist your Master’s orders, you roll your Love minus Weariness while they (under the auspices of the GM) roll their Fear plus your Self-Loathing.
Once these totals are calculated, the number represents the amount of d4s rolled by each party. Any fours are discarded, the results are then totalled and the winner has things go their way for that scene. This result is then narrated or roleplayed out. Typically, success and failure will also change the stats of the Minion.
A few things quickly become apparent: firstly, until Love gets high, you will be failing lots of rolls. Indeed, the game actually finishes when a Master’s command is resisted, assuming that Love is also high enough (greater than Fear plus Weariness). This is not a game for those keen on success or rolling high. Indeed, you might think it impossible to succeed if Self-Loathing keeps rising, but it can never rise above Love plus Reason; any time it would do so, Self-Loathing remains the same and something horrible happens somewhere else in town. This is one of the few flaws I found in the mechanics: in a game with high Self-Loathing scores and low Reason, this is going to happen all the damn time. Sure, it helps build the horror, but scenes involving none of the major characters would, I think, quickly become dull for the players involved. Nobody cares about NPCs, even if they're playing them.
There is a way around all these failures, however. Bonus dice – a d4, a d6 and a d8 – are available to be added to any roll (on either side, although the Master can never get the d8) if the player makes their dramatic overtures poignant enough to earn them. The d4 can be obtained for Intimacy (a Master combing her Minion's pretty hair, a Minion nursing a hurt child), the d6 for Desperation (a Minion begging for mercy, a townsfolk fighting back with all his strength) and the d8 for Sincerity (a Minion baring all their weaknesses and throwing themselves on the mercy of their Master or their beau). Both the emotional and mechanical impacts of these dice are abundantly clear, and they seem to balance the game nicely. I only wish there was more advice on when to hand them out, for it is simply down to GM fiat - and they can't run out.
A second thing that occurs about all these totals to roll is that there are a lot of them to keep track of and remember, especially since the statistics they are based on keep changing. Luckily, all of them are collected in a table at the end of the book. I think it would be better if they were on the character sheet, instead of the Endgame conditions, however – although those are important so you can know what to aim for.
Once again I speak of Endgame. Yes, when the game ends (or rather, goes into its climactic scenes) depends on a die roll. What is more, how the game ends depends on stat totals. When the Endgame occurs, the Minion who made the roll in question begins a violent struggle with the Master which will probably end in the Master’s death. Meanwhile the others have to deal with their current situations without the benefit of Fear to their rolls. The actual end result for the characters is also constrained by various totals of their stats. For example, if Self-Loathing plus Weariness is greater than Love plus Reason, the Minion is killed, but if Self-Loathing is greater than Weariness plus Reason, the Minion kills himself.
There is some choice here; although the dice determine how the stats move up and down, the players can choose their scenes somewhat and thus work towards the outcomes they want. I do wish though that the totals were more transparent. Not only is it hard to figure them out mechanically (quick, if you want to increase your chance of suicide, is it better to attempt to kill villagers or talk back to your Master?) it’s very difficult to see what it all means in the narrative as well. If this game is a computer program, it is a terribly mysterious one, whose code I could not always fathom and whose outcomes are far from clear. The plus side of this, though, is that players may still be surprised by outcomes and twists in the story…although it seems strange that this arises because of unfamiliarity with or opaqueness of the rules, not just the unpredictability of the dice.
The mechanics done, the book ends with a chapter on running the game. This offers a few tips on running the game and setting up interesting scenes, which is useful, but probably not enough for the newbie – for example, no mention is made of the fact that the party will often be split for the entire duration of the game, and thus it is an exercise in performance far more than most RPGs. Following this is tips for playing the Master, and advice on good Minion creation, and making the most of the hooks both roles provide. We close with an extended, useful and much appreciated example of play.
So: if you’ve made it this far you’re probably okay with MLWM’s somewhat different approach to roleplaying in general. I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the mechanics do their job well; I can attest with no doubt whatsoever that the descriptors and the flavour of the text set the scene perfectly. With very little work, weeks of deeply disturbing gothic horror gaming can be easily produced from this book. There is no denying that this is a roleplaying game of outstanding quality and unique brilliance, and, what is more, one which pushes the ideas of game design in new and exciting directions. What flaws it has are more than made up for by its intelligence, its style and its wonderful originality.
The only question that remains is: do you want to play it?
If you have any love for horror games and narrative mechanics, the answer will quite likely be yes. The only objection I can see arising is having no love for or knowledge of the core subject matter. But the beauty of MLWM is that it doesn't have to be set in a gothic mansion in some European village. It works anywhere where there are Masters and Minions, and as gamers, we know they can inhabit any genre. Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings is one from classic fantasy (remember how his story ends, particularly); Glory's minions in Buffy fit perfectly; Vader's underling admirals Piett and Needa would be amusing; even the Borg in Star Trek, although mindless, could be possible. For even more fun you could use James Bond sidekicks like Oddjob or Knick-Knack or bumbling cartoon sidekicks like the Ogres in the Gummi Bears (Duke Igthorn makes an exquisite model for a Master) and an argument could even be made that the heroes of Aliens are Minions (of sorts), set to doomed and evil purposes by Master Burke. Heck, I was just watching Blazing Saddles, and the character of Mongo (and his development) is clearly a MLWM campaign in action.
What is more, the Master can even be metaphorical, and that’s the deepest secret of this game. On the surface, it is about Igor trying to escape from Dr Frankenstein, but all but the most casual readers will soon discover there is a darker subtext of escaping from an abusive relationship, be it with a drug (as in Nicotine Girls), an obsession or a loved one. Looking at the two games, I expect that if Czege is not employed in counselling or social work, he probably knows someone who is, because there are few depictions of addiction in literature that are so brutally accurate. Indeed, I think this game of “villainy, self-loathing and unrequited love” isn’t just scary, it could be considered therapy, and you might find it hitting all the wrong buttons with your players. Which makes it one of the very few horror games that may actually need disclaimers, and maybe even safe words too.
The level of scholarship and insight in its genre deconstruction makes MLWM a game I would happily present to a literary professor as something which might belong on his bookshelf. Moreover, the potential for psychological depth and emotional catharsis in its play makes it a game I would eagerly hand to a counsellor or nurse as something which might very likely belong in their box of tools. Even if you never play it, therefore, simply reading its few, easily digested pages will not only make you smarter, they might also help you discover a little something about the darker corners of your psyche.
That’s probably worth nine bucks, right?
Style: 5 Substance: 5
(Note: although some of the links above are frivolous, you can download or order MLWM from the link at the top of the page. No fooling.)
