Victor GijsbersExactly one week ago, I wrapped up a 3-session game of My Life with Master, the 2003 RPG by Paul Czege @PaulCzege. We played in a contemporary high school setting in a rural Dutch town. The master, Esmeralda van Eersthoven, was a teenage witch who wanted to become the most popular girl at school and the girlfriend of local cool guy Floris. Her minions were three girls from school whose various talents were used to gain ingredients for harmful potions and spells. #MyLifeWithMaster #ttrpg 1/n
@PaulCzege The players were mostly unfamiliar with the game, but they took to it very well, and enjoyed both their own characters and the mean bitch master. I loved playing that character to the hilt. Giving your minion an awful task to perform at the school party, a task that will harm the girl they're secretly in love with, and then, just as they leave the room almost sobbing, add: "Oh, and please, this time, wear something *nice*." You've got to make them hate the master! 2/n
@PaulCzege The master ended up dying at that school party, a 'schuurfeest' in a farm barn outside of town, killed with a pitchfork while the fire alarm was blaring, the partygoers had fled, and the sprinklers were raining down water on the protagonists. I realised that this was the most 'realistic' setting I had ever used for MLwM, also with the youngest master, and that this was risky. It's easier to rejoice in the death of an insane nazi scientist trying to clone Hitler, than... 3/n
@PaulCzege ... to rejoice in the death of a 19yo teenage witch, no matter how awful she was -- and she was trying to kill people by the end of the third session. I think it worked, but it didn't have *quite* the same feel-good atmosphere as other MLwM endings, even though all the minions came out okay. They came out okay because they took a lot of overtures, and I think they took a lot of overtures precisely because of the setting. 4/n
@PaulCzege If you're some misshaped minion living in an isolated castle, you're more cut off from the townspeople than if you're a high school student spending all day surrounded by the townspeople. So it just made narrative sense to have a lot of overtures, and this generated high love, which made the minion come out fine in the end. Not a problem, but something to consider when choosing a setting. 5/n
@PaulCzege I also realised only at the end that I had inadvertently mixed up the categories of townspeople and outsiders -- the cool kids at school were supposed to be the outsiders, but they also turned into targets and connections. In the event, I don't think this led to any problems, but it might have if the master had been more successful for longer. Anyway, a good game! We've planned a one-shot Fiasco i a few weeks, and then we'll embark on something else, not yet chosen. 6/6