My Life With Master - "The Countess"

When an unexpected gap in my schedule appeared, I decided to offer a "one-shot" or "demo" game. I really like doing that because it's a great chance for me and prospective players to try something out without having to commit to any further sessions.

Some games are especially well suited to this format, which is why you often see them played at conventions. This time, I returned to one of my favorite games of all-time, "My Life With Master" by +Paul Czege . It's billed as "a roleplaying game of villainy,self-loathing and unrequited love", and it certainly lives up to that. The game is about the Minions (think of characters like Igor), who are servants of a terribly evil Master. They have miserable lives and are trying to find a way out.

We had a small group of four players, the ideal size for this. Three were experienced players with a taste for dark games (yes, +Tony Reyes was one of them), the other was a total newcomer to roleplaying, and she handled it brilliantly.

As a one-shot I spent the first hour on creating Master and the Minions (the player characters). Creation of Master and the setting are done collaboratively, Minion creation is done by the player.
We then jumped into the game, which is played in "scenes",each owned by a player,giving the game a cinematic feel. I also altered the game balance and math to make it feasible for someone to trigger the "Endgame" in a single session. All "Master" games lead to this, culminating in the death of Master. To do this, a character must accumulate enough "Love" points to overcome their own weariness and fear of Master and successfully stand up to him/her.

The scenario that we created was one where Master was "Countess Elizabeth", an old crone living in castle ruins who wanted to act out fairytales. The actors in the play were special "toys", human beings captured from the nearby village and surgically altered to fit their roles. The Minions were a tailor (also the surgeon), the kitchen girl, the overseer of prisoners and a pretty girl who would lure victims from the village. The Minions made their attempts to protect or woo ("Overtures") the objects of their love with mixed results, some of which,in true "Master" fashion, were disastrous, sparking a village revolt.

In the end it was the soft-spoken tailor who rose up to protect a young boy,and killed the Countess. He went on to make a new life for himself in the village, two minions were killed and another took his own life.

All in all, everyone had a great time and were genuinely surprised at how dark this game really was. Having run this before, I can honestly say that the level of darkness we reached was fairly typical and to be expected in this! It really is a game like no other and I love running it. You do need a group that can deal with very dark,mature themes with a good dose of black humor.Next time I will run this for several sessions to play it out as it's meant to be played, and I look forward to seeing what the returning players will come up with second time around.