"But Master, Why Must I Feed the Children Maggots?" A Narrative Game Review
I just recommended Nosferatu in my most recent Weekly Geekly Rundown and as I was thinking about it, I was reminded of a role playing game I own and have played a couple of times over the years. It’s a very dark game that isn’t for everyone, but it incorporates a lot of interesting elements so I thought I’d give the game a brief review.
Introduction
In his introduction to his collection of essays The Film, Andrew Sarris writes that "Vachel Lindsay's major contribution to film aesthetics consisted of distinguishing the artistic ends best suited to the differing expressive means of the stage play and the photoplay." It may seem odd to begin a game review with a quote from a collection of film criticism, but it isn't when the game being reviewed is My Life with Master by Paul Czege.
Paul was a very active participant in a particular indie gaming subculture of designers who once gathered at The Forge. This group was aggressively pursuing the philosophy and psychology of roleplaying games as a form of play as well as attempting to create useful analytical taxonomies. This group of game theorists and designers often stressed the value of roleplaying games as art as opposed to as mere pastimes. In particular, they usually discussed roleplaying games in the framework of the narrative art form. Unlike the shamanistic and Jungian approach of earlier designers like Greg Stafford who focused on role playing games as ritualistic art, the designers at The Forge rooted their analysis in post-structuralist and other more modern frameworks.
One major source of inspiration, though certainly not the source of inspiration, for participants in The Forge movement was Greg Costikyan's game theory manifesto "I Have No Words and I Must Design." The essay was originally published in the second issue of the short lived procademic (pro/academic) publication Inter*Action/Interactive Fantasy and an updated version of the essay is available for free at Greg’s website. I’d recommend getting both as Interactive Fantasy is a highly underrated glimpse at late 90s game designers that provides context to a lot of what is happening in the industry today not that the authors are now in significant leadership roles.
In the original essay, Costikyan writes that "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." While we might debate the merits of this definition of game noun by noun, it is important to note that Costikyan is emphasizing games as a form of art. For many in the community that made up The Forge, role playing games would best be described as a form of narrative art.
It is all well and good for a critic, or theorist, to talk of a particular entertainment medium as art, not artifice which by definition includes all man made things, but Art, it is quite another to apply such criticism/theory to the medium in question. Yet that is exactly what the community at The Forge did on a frequent basis. Quite a large number of excellent, well thought out, and interesting games have grown out of The Forge's fertile intellectual soil. My Life with Master is one of those games. Make no mistake, this "review" will not be a discussion as to whether or not My Life with Master is a good game, rather it will be a discussion of the reasons why it is an important game.
Theme
My Life with Master is a game in which the players create a narrative simulating romantic/gothic horror like that of Nosferatu, Dracula or Frankenstein. The players take on the role of minions of a twisted master. They are the Knocks, Igors, and Renfields to the game master's Count Orlok, Victor Frankenstein, or Dracula. As the author Paul Czege describes the theme, My Life with Master is "a roleplaying game about the horrific and dysfunctional ties that bind a monstrous Master and his or her minions."
Think about how Knock interacts with Thomas and what that costs him mentally or a grounded and complex presentation of Renfield and you’ve got a good idea of what My Life with Master is aiming at.
Throughout the play of the game, the game master in the role of the Master will give various commands to his or her minions in an attempt to achieve some horrific goal. Examples from literature/film might be the use of Igor to dig up bodies so that the Master can fulfill his goal of reanimating a corpse, or asking Knock to arrange for Thomas to journey to Transylvania to engage in contract negotiations. The minions may succeed or fail in carrying out an given command, but one thing is certain. Eventually, the Master will fall at the hands of one of his or her minions as the minions finally resolve an internal conflict between self-loathing and empathy/love. It is only a matter of time, the broad outcome of the game is known, play is about the how and the why. What is interesting here is that contrary to many of the films that inspire My Life with Master, it isn’t the heroic protagonists who bring down the Master it is the minions.
As I mentioned above, this is a very dark game and Paul Czege begins his game with a warning message discussing the game's non-traditional play style and the creepy subject matter the game covers. The inclusion of this warning sets a preference for using the rules in a particular manner. I can imagine children playing a Warner Bros. cartoon or Black and White Universal Monsters version of the game. For example, maybe they want to play a game similar to the Bugs Bunny Episode Hair Raising Hare. It may not be the tone intended, but not every group has Nicolas Logue1 as a Game Master or Player.
There certainly should be some discussion of how to present the dark and potentially disturbing material for different audiences and comfort levels, but this particular warning sets guidelines for a “proper” tone for game play. It hints that those playing the game will have to ask themselves, "how far are you willing to go in describing the horrors of the Master and the horrific actions of the minions?" A question that can lead down some pretty creepy roads, even if Nicolas Logue isn't in your playing group. You will learn a lot about your friends when you listen to "how" they describe the acts they are asked to perpetrate.
Mechanics
While it does favor a particular style of play, I believe that one of the great successes of My Life with Master as a game is that its theme and its mechanics are perfectly integrated.
The mechanics of My Life with Master are simple, deceptively simple. At their most basic, the player and the game master roll handfuls of dice, add the totals, with the highest total winning the contest. Winning a contest also allows the winner to describe the victory as they wish, within the limits of the possibilities of the scene and the overarching narrative. This is a very reductive version of the system and I recommend buying the game to get the full version of the system.
That said, I want to highlight that the factors which influence the success or failure of any given action are directly related to the theme of the game. How fear-inspiring a Master has significant influence on how actions are resolved. So too is how superstitious a community is contrasted with the level of reason in that community. Is the town filled with fearful peasants or elites educated in Alienism during their days attending an Austrian University? This provides a perfect mechanical environment for simulating a romantic/gothic setting. This is especially the case given that the amount a minion is loved or can love is balanced against the amount a minion experiences self-loathing or how weary a minion is from all the horrific acts he or she has perpetrated. These are the factors that matter in the game and not how high a minion's dexterity score is.
Most of the decisions which shape the environment of play are crafted as a shared experience by all who are playing. Together, the players and game master create the town. Even the design of the Master is collaborative as the rules recommend that everyone contribute to that design. Given the “you win the conflict, you control the narrative” aspect of the rules, this is a game where everyone tells stories at some point. Over time every player will tell several stories, where each minion is the protagonist and where the Master is the universal antagonist they all work for. One of the key innovations of My Life with Master is the way it emphasizes the protagonistic nature of all the player's characters.
Gameplay
There are not many role playing games that I would recommend as a game you should use to introduce players to the role playing game hobby. Many, like GURPS or Hero, are very complicated and can be intimidating for the inexperienced. My Life with Master is one of those few that are perfect for this role, but take note that I wrote "to use to introduce players" and not "introductory game." An introductory game should be both easy mechanically and narratively. 4th and 5th Edition D&D meet these requirements, as does Savage Worlds. Both can be narratively complex, but needn't be. They can be played as "kick in the door, kill the monster" games and still be rewarding experiences.
My Life with Master is a completely different beast. It is great for introducing others to the hobby because it protagonizes all the player characters, the mechanics are simple, and it emphasizes social interaction with other players. The game plays on all of the strengths of the gaming hobby. It does however require a commitment to the creation of narrative. If the players are not committed to telling a good story or are uncomfortable with improvisational story telling, the game is not fun. It requires creative investment, not talent just full commitment.
The new gamer might need "coaxing" to tell their story with some fun detail. As a Game Master, this game requires you to becomes a major facilitator in ways other games often don't require. The My Life with Master Game Master can be put into the position of drawing stories out of the players, rather than the more common “watching players react to a fairly scripted adventure” style of play that many rpgs employ. This can be a challenge and requires experience and/or commitment from the game master and players.
The game play of My Life with Master is the creation of story during game play, not after game play. The emergent story happens in real time. Very few games attempt or achieve this goal, but My Life with Master game does a good job in this area. By having the basis of the mechanics in the thematic elements of the milieu, rather than in physical/mental attributes, the game play focuses on describing outcomes thematically rather than mechanically. "I attack for 6 points of damage" is a sentence that thankfully makes no sense in the mechanical structure of My Life with Master.
Conclusion
This game is one which really tries to meet Costikyan's definition of game. By this I mean that it attempts, and I think succeeds, to create art. Though one could argue that some group's play is more art that another group. It also provides a major contribution to our understanding of the artistic ends of role playing games. Czege's proposed contribution, as demonstrated by this game and not including any outside material, is that role playing games ought to create meaningful protagonized narratives.
It can certainly be said that his game, designed with that goal in mind, demonstrates that a game dedicated to creating meaningful narratives makes for an interesting role playing game experience.
Nicolas Logue is one of my personal favorite role playing game writers, but his material can "wax Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque." It was a running joke in my Los Angeles gaming group that when the players were reacting to a particularly horrific narrative description, they would say in unison, "we get it...blah, blah, blah, Nicolas Logue...blah, blah, blah." We began using a "Logue Rating" for evaluating horror movies/scenes. Maybe I’ll bring that over to the Substack.
The most obvious way to do a kid version of this, I would think, is a Despicable Me take.