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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 2742000" data-attributes="member: 18549">My Life With Master (half meme press)In this game the characters are minions of an evil master who terrorizes a town in an unspecified germanic location.  This game is different than most RPGs in that the outcome of the game is determined from the beginning.  One of the players will betray the master and kill him.  This outcome cannot be changed, but the manner in which it happens is important, and the focus of the game is on the characterization rather than achieving a goal.In the beginning, the players and gamemaster sit down together and decide on a Master.  You could create Doctor Frankenstein or Lucretia or any other anti-social madman that would victimize a town.  There are rules for constructing the Master.  The Master has one ability: Fear.  He uses Fear to control the player characters.The town also has an ability: Reason.  The town is civilization and technology, the Master opposes this by being a force for romanticism, his motivations based on emotion and passion.Player characters have two traits to start with: Weariness and Self-loathing.  Whenever a character must perform some act of violence or attempt to resist the Master, Weariness comes into play.  Self-loathing makes it easier to commit violence against townsfolk, but also makes it more difficult to resist the master.  It also makes it more difficult to make overtures to the townsfolk.Overtures are ways of making connections to the people in town in a human way.  The minion, being a tool of madness, usually interacts with the townsfolk in an inhuman way.  But if they can find some way to make a human connection with a person living in the town, they can generate a third ability: Love.  When Love is high enough compared to Weariness and Self-loathing, the character with Love can challenge the Master.All minions have some trait that makes them more than human and some trait that makes them less than human.  In metagame terms, they have a situation in which they always succeed and a situation in which they always fail.  This is always phrased in terms of "X, unless Y".  So a character's less than human trait might be "Cannot speak at all, unless church bells are ringing," or "Hideously ugly, unless viewed in a mirror."  A character's more than human trait could be "Unbelievably swift, except when he is wet," or "Strong as an ox, unless standing on holy ground."All task resolution is based on a single die roll per scene, and the game is broken up into cinematic scenes.  As an example, a minion tasked with stealing a special item from a townsperson might sneak into a house at night, and root around for the item, but be surprised when the townsperson enters angrily.  Violence is needed in order to escape, so the minion will roll Fear plus Self-loathing versus the townsperson's roll of Reason plus Weakness, and the winner decides the outcome of the scene.  If the minion succeeds, he gains Self-loathing.  If he fails, he gains Weariness.  There are also conditions under which the minion can be captured, but unless those occur, the minion escapes the scene.Modifiers to rolls come from playing other people's feelings.  You can get bonuses from Intimacy, Desperation, and Sincerity.  Intimacy is easiest to arrange.  Give a friendly pat on the shoulder, brush someone's hair, pin a flower to his lapel, pour her a drink.  Desperation is an attempt to provoke a reaction based on sheer emotional distress.  Beg and plead, burst into tears, scream hoarsely.  Sincerity comes from showing genuine concern and feelings for another, often at one's own expense.  The Master cannot be Sincere.  Sincerity trumps Desperation, which trumps Intimacy, so the various characters will have the option to increase the emotional tenor of the scene, if the gamemaster feels that the effort is appropriate.And, that's pretty much it.  Players get scenes in which they must do the master's bidding, while trying to arrange contacts in the village to build Love, and the Master finds new ways to make life hell for everyone involved, eventually attempting to kill off sources of Love and preserve his tenuous control of the situation, which is doomed to break down eventually.  Play is designed to emphasize tension and press emotional buttons, making the game fairly intense for all involved.  Since the outcome is predetermined, it helps to make play non-adversarial, making how things play out more important than what happens in the end.</blockquote>

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