My Life with Master is the result of experimenting with a basic structural issue in role-playing games, which is about the role of plot and story. Instead of an open-ended campaign of exploration, or a story arc which is supposed to depend on player choice but often ends up yanked back on course by a gamemaster’s heavy hand, My Life with Master explores the impact of small choices within a predetermined plot arc—in particular, the classic Gothic-horror story of hubris and fall. In order to make this work, players take the roles not of the story’s primary character, but of the minions who serve this master, and who, through the effect of their small kindnesses and acts of resistance, might be able to redeem themselves even as their master tumbles to destruction.
So to begin we need a Master, who will be played by the GM. The taxonomy of Masters is not particularly complex, although the designer warns us strenuously that it is a guideline rather than a straitjacket. A Master may be a Beast, motivated and influenced by more physical and primal stimuli and attempting to affect others in the same way; or a Brain, whose primary medium of influence in either direction is conversation and the exchange of ideas. They are further categorized by the way in which they threaten their neighboring community: the Feeder relies upon them for sustenance; the Breeder’s creations threaten them either physically or psychologically (whether that fear is justified or not); the Collector seeks to assemble something very particular, whether it’s a menagerie of special people or the parts to reinvent themselves as someone else; and the Teacher seeks to imprint their twisted worldview upon others.
In addition, we must determine more specifically what the Master needs from the Townspeople, as well as what the Master wants from the Outsiders whose approval/support/interest they crave. One of the classic examples is Victor Frankenstein, who wants the respect of the scientific community and needs to rob his neighbors’ graveyards for the experiments he believes will earn that respect (and the result of which will frighten and eventually physically harm said neighbors).
According to the rulebook, a well-designed Master has “good grounds for insecurity, a passion to transcend it, and a certain amount of egomania.” That doesn’t sound like too difficult a mark to hit. I like the idea of a musical aspect to the Master’s madness; let’s say he wants to recreate the sound of the angels’ choir by stealing the voices of children and transferring them to some sort of Device that will convert their innocent music to a simulation of the divine. That’s blasphemously ambitious and likely to have gotten him rejected by a relevant group of Outsiders. In the taxonomy that would make him, I think, a Collector; though I am not sure whether his musical obsession makes him more Beast or more Brain. This question matters, because it’s going to color how our Master interacts with his Minions. Let’s try to spin this out further and perhaps telling the story will resolve the question.
After decades of obsession with seeking the Voice of the Divine, Charles Emmanuel Phillips has finally built the Ourania Chorodia. The device will vindicate his theories that the choir of Heaven can be recreated by the ingenuity of Man and shame all those stodges who called his obsession mad, even blasphemous—especially the rectors at the University of Leipzig who revoked his degrees and blacklisted him in the musical community. Unfortunately, in order to activate it he needs the voices of children, and once taken those voices (as far as he has been able to determine) do not return. And yet it is worth the cost, for what price could one place on the ability to bring the celestial symphony to Earth?
I’m still torn on the Brain/Beast divide. Stealing voices is pretty physical and sensory, and music certainly affects people at a level deeper than conscious thought. Perhaps he fancies himself an intellectual, but his attempts to function at the level of words and ideas are too frequently overridden by his fundamental sensuality—for him music is all about the feels, whatever words he uses to rationalize that visceral response. A Beast who tells himself he’s a Brain.
All right, then. We need to assign values to two attributes that are linked to the Master but more properly belong to the setting: Fear and Reason. The former quantifies the strength of the Master’s presence; it empowers him and his minions, and it also works to control those minions. The latter represents the influence of the Town’s residents over the environment. The higher the Fear value is relative to the Reason value, the harder it will be for Minions to develop connections to the townspeople and resist the Master’s control. Charles’ plan is pretty awful, but I don’t want him to be too overbearing; this is our first game, after all. I’ll set Fear at 3 (two points below what the book recommends for truly horrifying Masters) and Reason at 4.
Now we can turn our attention to a player character, i.e. a Minion. The Master needs Minions to interact with the Town on his behalf, and since his needs pose some kind of threat to the Town, the Minions embody that threat. But the Minions are human; they need love, and they suffer under the Master’s demands (and his wrath when those demands are not met). A Minion has three statistics in My Life with Master. Self-Loathing measures the degree to which the Minion sees themselves as a monster, willing to commit harm in service to the Master. It empowers the Minion to do violence and hinders making connections with Townspeople. Weariness measures the Minion’s fading inner strength; it makes resisting the Master more difficult, but it also makes the Minion more vulnerable to harm when carrying out the Master’s commands. Most importantly, it does not hinder making connections with Townspeople. The final statistic, Love, measures the strength of the connections the Minion has made with various Townspeople. In a standard game, the player divides three points between Self-Loathing and Weariness, and Love begins at 0. I’m going to start Self-Loathing at 1 and Weariness at 2 for a more sympathetic Minion. All three of these values will change over the course of play.
Although a Minion is fundamentally human, they also have qualities that separate them from the rest of humanity. Each minion has a quality that makes them More than Human and another that makes them Less than Human. Both qualities are hedged with closely specified exceptions. The Less than Human quality is a crippling limitation that affects the character in all circumstances except those defined in the exception; the More than Human quality is a surreal and extraordinary ability that is likewise limited by a very specific condition. Given the nature of our Master, it makes sense for both of these qualities to have some kind of relationship to sound, if not specifically music.
This character is starting to come into focus now: a young woman, an orphan, one of Charles’ first experiments, whom he raised to adulthood out of some sense of responsibility for stealing her voice (and of course because he wanted a Minion). The experiment was not entirely successful: Maria can sing when provided with instrumental accompaniment, though otherwise she is incapable of speech. That’s her Less than Human quality, and Charles absolutely exploits it. Her More than Human quality is that she can whistle beautiful and intricate tunes, loudly enough to fill a room—except in the presence of dogs.
The final step before play is to create two Connections among the Townspeople for Maria, people with whom she will seek to build positive relationships represented in the game as Love point. The first is a kindly old man named Janos who plays dance tunes on the recorder at his table outside the café for the children playing nearby. The second is a little girl named Sophie, who reminds Maria of herself as a child (though Sophie is not an orphan).
Not much to put in a statblock here, but let’s set out what we have:
Maria, Minion of Charles Emmanuel Phillips, inventor of the Ourania Chorodia and thief of children’s voices
Beginning stats:
Self-Loathing: 1
Weariness: 2
Love: 0
Less than Human: Is incapable of speech, except when singing to someone else’s accompaniment.
More than Human: Can whistle beautiful and intricate tunes loudly enough to fill a room, except in the presence of dogs.
Connections:
Old Janos is so kind, and he plays such sprightly tunes on his recorder for the children!
Little Sophie reminds me of myself before Master Phillips adopted me, though her life is happier.
Fear: 3
Reason: 4
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