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OOC: [My Life With Master] Out there, strolling by the Seine...
summeryclept
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello, friends. I would like to play a game with you called My Life With Master. In it, you play a minion - an Igor or Quasimodo type, socially inept, awkward, deformed and hideous, serving a dark Master, all the while trying to form a lasting emotional relationship with that special someone from the very town you are sent to menace.
It's a simple system revolving around rolling d4s and then adding them, and seeing who rolled the highest sum. You did that about once per scene. Check the following posts for the rules for play.
Before that, some thread rules. Please read these:
Okay, here's the player list, waiting to be filled.
1. simonwolf
2. Crimson King
3. Gandalf_the_Crazed
4. IamUnaware
5. jimninja
So really, we're looking for two more people. If you want to join, offer a !signup in your post and also post your character. I won't do first come, first serve, and instead will play favorites and accept bribes for who I think the best characters for the group are, should we have more than two available.
In each post, things highlighted like this are stuff I need you guys to post and give to me! So be sure to do that.
It's a simple system revolving around rolling d4s and then adding them, and seeing who rolled the highest sum. You did that about once per scene. Check the following posts for the rules for play.
Before that, some thread rules. Please read these:
Number one: You need to be able to post at least once a day. If you can't do that, then I will call you a terrorist and not let you play. This is to help keep the game moving and as not to promote premature abandonment of the game. So before you join, be honest - can you post once a day? You know if you can or not. Save us all some time and hassle.
- If an emergency comes up or real-life issues get in the way, that's fine. Just let me know and we'll send your character off with no hard feelings.
Number two: the Master tells you what to do, and you go do it. Standard stuff! But if you want the game to be fun at all, you'll need to willingly attempt your own side quests to spend time with your Connections, in game. Read this as: I'm not going to hand you opportunities for that on a silver platter. You have to request those! Never request such a scene, and it will never happen! That part's up to you alone. You're responsible for requesting what you need.
Number three: Just some things you should be aware of - First, minions will rarely cross paths, all being sent on independent missions. So if you're looking for acting as a team and working together, you won't find it here. You'll occasionally meet each other, maybe even work together, but for the most part, you're all flying solo!
Expect to have the Connections you worked so hard to create and maintain threatened at every possible moment. If you're someone who gets upset at the thought of having your hard work reduced to ashes in a sullen empire at your feet, hoo-boy is this not the game for you. I will indiscriminately threaten, attack, and try to kill whoever your character loves. It's part of the game!
The entire tone and atmosphere of the game is set against the players. You all fail hard, and fail often. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't play.
- If an emergency comes up or real-life issues get in the way, that's fine. Just let me know and we'll send your character off with no hard feelings.
Number two: the Master tells you what to do, and you go do it. Standard stuff! But if you want the game to be fun at all, you'll need to willingly attempt your own side quests to spend time with your Connections, in game. Read this as: I'm not going to hand you opportunities for that on a silver platter. You have to request those! Never request such a scene, and it will never happen! That part's up to you alone. You're responsible for requesting what you need.
Number three: Just some things you should be aware of - First, minions will rarely cross paths, all being sent on independent missions. So if you're looking for acting as a team and working together, you won't find it here. You'll occasionally meet each other, maybe even work together, but for the most part, you're all flying solo!
Expect to have the Connections you worked so hard to create and maintain threatened at every possible moment. If you're someone who gets upset at the thought of having your hard work reduced to ashes in a sullen empire at your feet, hoo-boy is this not the game for you. I will indiscriminately threaten, attack, and try to kill whoever your character loves. It's part of the game!
The entire tone and atmosphere of the game is set against the players. You all fail hard, and fail often. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't play.
Okay, here's the player list, waiting to be filled.
1. simonwolf
2. Crimson King
3. Gandalf_the_Crazed
4. IamUnaware
5. jimninja
So really, we're looking for two more people. If you want to join, offer a !signup in your post and also post your character. I won't do first come, first serve, and instead will play favorites and accept bribes for who I think the best characters for the group are, should we have more than two available.
In each post, things highlighted like this are stuff I need you guys to post and give to me! So be sure to do that.
summeryclept on
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Posts
The setting: an un-named central European country, in some small town, somewhere around 1805.
The Master is single. Widowed, engaged maybe, but currently single. He has good grounds for insecurity and a passion to transcend it. The Master is an egomaniac.
Choose an Aspect for the Master. Pick either Brain or Beast.
- Brain, influenced by conversation, influences through language, colored by a rationalization that there is some objective good in what he's trying to do,
- Beast, physical and primal, influences through pain and sensation.
Choose the Needs and Wants of the Master.
- Needs are what the Master needs to have from the Townspeople, yet they also threaten them in some way. This informs the roles of the minions, as they are the ones out gathering and collecting.
- Wants are what the Master wants from the Outsiders.
The Outsiders, now, are a group of other people whose opinion the Master values, be it pining for their admiration or for the perfect chance to prove them wrong.
Needs are tied in with Wants. The Needs allow the Master to somehow pursue the Wants, such as a Master who collects living children as prisoners (Needs) in order to form a family with his infertile, soon-to-be wife (Wants). The Outsiders in that situation could be, say the wife's family.
Choose a Type: Feeder, Breeder, Collector, or Teacher.
- Feeder, about personal sustenance, possibly for nourishment or even some sort of physical addiction,
- Breeder, about creating life, usually monstrous and unsettling,
- Collector, about collecting a certain type of person or thing. You may notice shared territory here with the Feeder. The difference is, the Collector has standards for who they take, and the Feeder doesn't care,
- Teacher, about demonstrating or showing off their view of the world. They need not be always Brain-aspect! A beast teacher wants to show off the horrific and awful things in life (think Hannibal Lecter).
Create a Demesne, which is simply an area where the Master lives. Give it character: a crumbling, moldy, bug-infested gothic manor on the hill? An elaborate network of caves with skeletal artwork adorning the rough-stone walls, and spiders the size of small dogs?
The Master has two stats, Fear and Reason.
- Fear is the whole of th Master's presence and the force of it into the environment.
- Reason is the influence of the Townspeople within the enviornment.
Simply cast your votes for each:
1. Aspect
2. Type
3. Needs / Wants
4. Demesne and Outsiders
In your post, pick at least an Aspect and Type, and then will tally votes and break ties and all talk about it and decide and whatnot. For Needs and Wants, just throw some shit out there, I don't even care. Same for Demesne and Outsiders. Don't worry about being too controlling or stepping on other peoples' toes: we'll never know if you don't make a suggestion in the first place! So throw out ideas and we'll all discuss it.
I understand that this part of the game in threads like these is what takes the longest, so if after a little bit we haven't done much discussion, I'll just pick shit at random. But I'm giving you all the opportunity! I'll pick Fear and Reason myself.
Here's your character! Give me all this.
Minions are human, but they are misunderstood: bizarre, asocial, horribly deformed, hideous and unnatural. Weird and distant they may be, they are still people, with feelings and emotions like the rest of us.
Your stats are: Self-loathing, Weariness, and Love.
- Self-loathing is how much you think of yourself as a true monster, probably due to the Master abusing you and calling you a good-for-nothing.
- Weariness is your overall condition of physical healthy, beauty, and endurance, but is very vague and general. A high weariness could mean you have several scars, a terrible limp, you're missing a few limbs, or even that you're just so stressed and emotionally taxed that you can hardly bear it anymore.
Divide three points between these two stats any way you wish. You can dump all three points in one stat if you like, leaving the other at 0.
Here's the hard part: More than Human and Less than Human. Think of them as odd, quirky powers, that display the minion's position as outside of human society.
Less than Human is an excessive, crippling limitation. Think of one, make it really awful. Stick in a very narrow "except" or "unless" condition (this is mandatory).
- Examples: is blind, except when the moon is full. Cannot get close to another human being, unless he intends to kill them.
Expect this to come into play quite often. Expect it to be horrible, excessive, and very limiting. If your Less than Human applies in a situation, the dice rules aren't even consulted. You just lose. That's a theme of this game: you lose a lot. Don't be afraid about that.
More than Human is a powerful and surreal ability, successful and impressive. It, too, suffers from an "except or unless" clause, in which the power is null and void.
- Examples: Is strong enough to break through anything, except when people are watching. Can read peoples' thoughts, except if he's afraid of them.
This is the converse. You automatically succeed if this comes into play.
Remember Love? Our third stat! You get points of Love to be spent over your Connections. Get enough Love, and you can take on the Master.
- Create two Connections, people your minion has a strong emotional tether to, yet who have no idea your minion even exists. You start with no Love with either of them. They can be any of the Townspeople.
First, some rules:
1. If a dice pool ever goes negative, you instead roll a single die.
2. If there is a tie, the conflict is considered interrupted.
3. You roll d4s. Sum up all the dice you rolled, but discard any 4s.
If a Master attempts to control his minions, and the minion wishes to attempt to resist the command, here's the roll:
The Master rolls (Fear + Self-loathing), versus the minion rolling (Love - Weariness).
If the Master wins, the minions has carry out the command, but that obligation is lifted after a single roll towards its cause. Although, if you don't actually complete the task, the Master will be pretty angry at you.
Don't expect to win this roll anytime soon! In fact, when you do win this roll (and have a Love score greater than Fear + Weariness), that's the end of the game!
To gain Love with one of your Connections, you make an overture to that character. Ask the GM to give you a scene in which to make the overture. You'll be in a location together, and you roleplay emotional risk to further the relationship with the connection. You also roll:
The minion rolls (Reason - Self-loathing) versus the connection rolling (Fear - Reason).
If you fail, you get a point of Self-loathing, and you play out the scene with the NPC's reaction delivering a crushing blow to your self-esteem. Here's the cool thing though: even if you fail, you still get that point of Love! You have demonstrated your humanity, and so hurrah to you. If you succeed, then play out the scene giving way to development of a shared bond.
You can invent new Connections at any time. You can even pick NPCs that other players have picked.
To act with hostility or violence against the Townspeople, do this:
The minion rolls (Fear + Self-loathing) versus the opponent rolling (Reason + Weariness).
(if fighting another minion, both roll (Fear + Self-loathing).
If you succeed, you take a point of Self-loathing. If you fail, you gain a wound, represented by a point of Weariness.
To act with villainy, mischief, or evil, but not with violence, here's the formula. It's:
The minion rolls (Fear + Self-loathing) versus the opponent rolling (Reason).
If you succeed, you gain a point of Self-loathing. If you fail, well, nothing much happens.
The Intimacy d4, the Desperation d6, and the Sincerity d8.
Probably, you'll need more dice in some of these conflicts. To get them, roleplay one of the above emotional cues: be intimate with your opponent, be desperate with your opponent, or be sincere with your opponent. NPCs and the Master can do these as well (though the Master can never attempt the Sincerity die).
Only one of these dice is allowed per any given conflict. So if you notice your opposition trying to be intimate, it might be a good idea to start laying on the desperation to get the higher die! (They, in turn, could try to be Sincere.) You don't have to go the next highest die - you could respond to intimacy with Sincerity for example, or you could start with desperation or sincerity if you wanted.
In depth:
- Intimacy is an emotion-less attempt to provoke favorable emotions from another person through use of physical proximity, touching, shared comfort, grooming, shared food or drink, gifts, or nice language.
- Desperation is an emotional effort to provoke a better outcome through sheer emotional distress, primarily through language, and by attempting to give ownership of one's emotional distress to the other person. ("Please, Master! Let me stay inside, or else the ghosts will surely be disturbed and torment me!")
- Sincerity is genuine concern and feeling for another person. You'll know it when you see it. It's, according to the rulebook, "having influence over the outcome, rather than provoking it,"
Minions can aid each other by contributing dice equal to their (Love - Weariness) to someone else's roll. They will, however, suffer any consequences of failure on that roll, if such an outcome should arise.
If a conflict results in a minion's Weariness increasing to greater than Reason, you are captured as a result of that conflict by the Townspeople or Outsiders. Don't worry, this is only temporary. It's basically a lead-in to the next scene. Make your daring escape!
Also, if a roll would ever result in your Self-loathing growing greater than (Love + Reason), a revelation of horror is triggered in the enviornment. Resolve the scene, and you miss your next scene. Instead, that minion's player narrates a scene of horror among NPCs. The Master, nor any other PCs can be part of the scene, and no NPC carrying Love for a player's minion can be killed.
Endgame.
During this segment, the GM will jump rapidly from minion to minion, putting them in dangerous situations. If any of them make a roll, they are not allowed to use Fear as part of it. The minion fighting the Master, when it's his turn, rolls:
The minion rolls (Love - Weariness) versus the Master's rolling (Fear + Self-loathing)
If you fail, we get another round of scenes, and then you try again. However this time, players get to call for scenes! If the Master wins the above roll, the minion gains a point of Weariness, and the player and GM negotiate the events of that scene. We will then alternate: rounds of scenes that the GM makes with no player input, and scenes where the players call out and suggest situations. And yes, if you like, you can suggest going into the fight with the Master to join in and help.
After the Master's death, each player gets an epilogue. The one rule for epilogues is that you can't undermine another minion's emotional or intellectual value. Okay, so here's how to determine what your epilogue will be about. Look at your stats, and then reference:
- Weariness is greater than Reason + Self-loathing? You run or wander off, giving up on your struggle. You've worked long and hard for the Master, and now you just don't know what to do. You can't go on!
- Self-loathing + Weariness greater than Love + Reason? You are killed!
- Self-loathing is greater than Weariness + Reason? You destroy yourself.
- Love + Reason is greater than Self-loathing + Weariness? You integrate yourself into the society of the Townspeople.
- Love equals zero? You emerge from the situation as a force of Fear in your own right.
Probably you'll like a certain one. When the Master is in battle with the minion during endgame, those scenes thrown to you are your chance to raise the relevant stats to get what you want!
This game looks amazing. I love all the great stuff these boards expose me to.
Master Votes
Aspect: Beast
Type: Collector
Needs: Blood from living subjects (if the subject dies, the blood can no longer be used)
Wants: Adulation and fame
Demesne: From the outside, it appears to be a simple thatched-roof cottage in the woods, but below the cottage is a labyrinthine series of tunnels and chambers dug into the earth
Outsiders: Rich and powerful aristocrat types
Susurrus
Self-Loathing: 2
Weariness: 1
More Than Human: Supernatural agility and dexterity, unless anybody is looking at him
Less Than Human: Suffers intense physical pain from sounds louder than a whisper, unless a person has both of their hands on him
Connections: Delia, a widow in the village who often keeps her bedroom window open at night. Susurrus has never seen her awake nor heard her make a sound. He finds her oddly fascinating, and he loves the fact that she does not snore.
Arron, captain of the village guard. Susurrus fears and respects this man (and envies him a bit too). Arron is a clever and lucky man and has nearly stumbled on Susurrus at work gathering for the Master several times, although Arron does not actually know this.
Susurrus is capable of feats that would put any ninja to shame... as long as he isn't being watched. Under the gaze of people (including the Master), he is clumsy to the point of oafishness.
He doesn't like loud noises... or noises at normal volume... or even sounds that most people would describe as "soft". In the presence of such noises, he is afflicted by a sharp pain that radiates through his bones. Certain types of sounds are more painful to him than others, such as metal striking metal.
He appears mostly as a normal human male, although he is a bit on the tall side and unnaturally, unsettlingly thin. His fingers are long and spindly, which usually aids his dexterity. Due to his constant agony, his features have twisted into a permanent grimacing mask that does not fade even when the pain recedes.
Physical contact from both of a person's hands can provide relief from his nearly omnipresent pain, but only until the contact is broken.
Did I do that right? Is there anything else you need? Are the Less Than/More Than Human traits appropriate?
Master Votes
Aspect: Brain
Type: Breeder
Needs: The hair, teeth and fingernails of beautiful young women.
Wants: To construct the finest puppet show in all the land.
Outsiders: The wee children of the village. All he wants is to make them happy.
Demesne: The abandoned theatre in the heart of town, built in a somewhat richer age, and now left to rot.
Boris
Self-Loathing: 1
Weariness: 2
More Than Human: Capable of astonishing feats of strength. Can lift houses, bend steel and wrestle bulls to a standstill. However, if he can hear someone singing, he becomes as docile and gentle as a lamb.
Less Than Human: Doesn't know his own strength, to a truly frightening extent. Is totally unable to distinguish between a gentle caress and a vice-like crush. Anything he touches will generally be destroyed or torn apart. Unless, again, someone is singing to him, in which case his touch becomes as light as a summer's breeze.
Connections:
Emily, a girl in the village with the voice of an angel. Boris has never seen her, but he knows her by her overheard voice, which is as simple and pure as a mountain stream. He is in love with her, of course. This can only end badly.
Piotr, Emily's lover. Boris spied on them once lying together in the woods. He has memorised Piotr's voice - a gruff country drawl - and the sound of it will send him into fits of uncontrollable rage. Piotr is a perfectly nice chap, of course, but Boris doesn't know or care.
Boris is a huge brute of a man, at least eight feet tall, with arms like treetrunks and a boulder of a chest. His skin is sickeningly pale and he has no hair whatsoever. His head is unnaturally small, especially his ears, which are almost nonexistent. He is of average intellligence, but people have been assuming he fits the 'dumb brute' stereotype for so long that he's begun to believe it himself.
Piotr won't make a very good connection if Boris wants to murder him! They need to be people that the minion wants to make a strong connection to and gain Love from. If you plan to gain Love and form a nice relationship during the game, that's fine though - nothing wrong with emotional issues in such a relationship! Emily works fine, though.
I plan for the relationship with Piotr to progress from 'blind, irrational rage' to something entirely different, so I think that's all right.
And for the converse there, if he is spotted, why not make him very clumsy and disoriented? As if he has stage fright. Just a suggestion!
Aspect: Beast
Type: Breeder
Needs: The skin and blood of young children.
Wants: To bring her sons and daughters back from the grip of the soil and into life once more.
Outsiders: The nobility of the land, who made her into an outcast of her after the deaths of her children.
Demense: A noble mansion that, while once grand and opulent, has decayed greatly and become overgrown with weeds and vines.
Cassiopeia
Self-loathing: 2
Weariness: 1
More Than Human: Possesses irresistible beauty to all except those who bear her ill will.
Less Than Human: Completely mute, unless touched by the light of the moon.
Connections:
Johannes - A young army officer, born of noble blood and placed in a rather relaxed position in the village. An object of desire for many of the young women in the village, and Cassiopeia is no exemption to this.
Hannah - One of the sisters at the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration of Our Lady of Solitude monastery, Cassiopeia has long been fascinated with the elder Sister Hannah's choices in life, and the parallels between their situations.
It would be wrong to call Cassiopeia a shape-shifter, but there is something about her that changes depending on how one thinks of her; the graceful, breath-taking beauty she possesses completely fades away once you have an ill thought about her, transforming her from gorgeous to rather plain in but an instant. She is rather young - barely sixteen - with raven-black hair that cascades across her alabaster complexion, with nothing from her physical appearance suggesting that would harbour as debilitating a disability as being unable to make any kind of vocal noise, from a pained scream to a whisper, unless she is illuminated by moonlight.
In the meantime, let's talk about the Master - do we like one particular person's Master, or do we want to mix and match, here?
let me put together my votes real quick, i'll edit them in
That actually is my intent, and I kind of touched on it in the brief description of him but I didn't really spell it out very clearly.
The Master
NEEDS: Deepest, darkest fears of the villagers, and their worst personal memories.
WANTS: Quivering obedience.
TYPE: Teacher
DEMESNE: Booby-trapped labyrinth which sprawls underneath the town.
It Lives!
1 Self-Loathing
1 Weariness
1 Love
LESS THAN HUMAN: Plagued by debilitating internal voices, implanted by the Master's experimentation with worst memories and deepest fears. EXCEPT when the wind blows from the east.
MORE THAN HUMAN: Can hear people's thoughts, mixed in with the internal voices. EXCEPT when the wind blows from the east.
CONNECTIONS:
1. Moni, the vicar's daughter.
2. George, the local constable.
2 Self-Loathing, 1 Weariness.
EDIT: Yeah, looked at it again. Don't know how I misread that the first time through. :P
Also can I make another character suggestion? I just had another idea.
Self-Loathing: 2
Weariness: 1
More Than Human: The Butler is always capable of knowing the wishes and desires of any human in his immediate vicinity, the better to carry out his master's every whim without even being asked. If someone wants something, he knows what it is. The exception is people of extremely low social status, the homeless and similar, as their wishes were deemed insignificant. This includes the other minions, obviously.
Less Than Human: The Butler is incapable of disobeying any instruction given by anybody, no matter who they are or what the order is. Even something as simple as 'Get lost', even in a statement merely overheard and directed at someone other than him, will compel him to become completely and irrevocably lost. The exception, again, is people with low social status, whose orders are of course irrelevant.
Connections:
Clara, the pigwidow. Being the most human-looking of all his servants, the Butler is frequently sent into town by the Master in order to purchase food and other such dull necessities. The Master has a particular fondness for pork trotters, which is provided by one Clara. She is a crippled old crone whose days are spent hauling pigshit and slicing off feet, and as such is sufficiently low-status for the Butler to be unable to read her. This fascinates him. Used to knowing everything, the Butler has no idea what someone like her could possibly want out of life. As far as he can tell, she seems content to spend the rest of her days coping with pigs.
Jacoby, the town's mayor. The Townsfolk want many different things, but when the Butler is around there is always one constant; they want him to go away and leave them alone. The only exception is Jacoby, the town's semi-elected mayor, who genuinely doesn't seem to despise his presence. They have only met twice, and each time the Butler saw a man who desired what was best for his people and his town, and didn't particularly want to burn him at the stake. The second time, they even played a game of chess. This is the only happy memory the Butler has.
The Butler was brought up to be the perfect servant for the upper classes. A combination of rote learning, crude behavioural modification and highly unethical scientific experiments made him the man he is today; absolutely dedicated to his master's every whim. In appearance he is a tall, elderly man in an old dusty suit with thin, pale hands; in behaviour he is impeccably mannered and utterly devoid of personality.
Aspect - Beast
Type - Feeder
Needs - human blood, to draw the wards at his door that silence his ancestors' clamorous voices.
Wants - to imprison the ghosts of his ancestors, in order to torment them as they have done him.
Demesne - in the middle of the dark wood outside the village, there lays what remains of a once-proud castle, the former home of a cruel baron. Its walls are crumbled and mossy, but in the center of the courtyard, there is a doorway standing still, oddly preserved, with twin iron doors swung closed. If you take the knocker in hand and strike it firmly against the doors, they swing open to reveal the keep in all its former glory. It is dusty and cobwebbed, except for the rooms Master frequents. Beneath the keep is a labyrinthine mausoleum, the family burial chambers of Master's ancestors.
Outsiders - the ghosts of Master's ancestors haunt his every waking moment. They have long since driven him insane. They goad him to greater cruelty.
Ignaz
Self-loathing: 3
Weariness: 0
Love: 0
More than Human:
His skin is impenetrable, unless it is raining (in either case, he suffers pain like a normal person).
Less than Human:
His hands are horrible, twisted claws, repulsive to any person and useless for anything except murder, unless he stands in running water.
Connections:
Marcus, the miller's son: whose hand was maimed in the wheel; with whom Ignaz feels a connection by trauma; whose friendship Ignaz wants to win.
Teresa, the taxman's wife: whose beauty Ignaz admires from afar.
Ignaz is a man removed from Man; he moves about hunched over like a leper, his eyes on the ground. He goes shoeless, for his skin is impervious to wound, except when it rains; his tunic's sleeves are baggy and shapeless to hide the twisted claws that masquerade as his hands. He is his own greatest enemy; his intense self-loathing cripples most any human interaction he has, and he is reduced to watching from shadow the lives of those he would befriend.
And hey everyone - we have one more character than we need, but I guess I'll go ahead and let everyone play. If anyone needs to drop out later on, since you guys will mostly be doing your own independent thing as characters, I have a wonderful machine lined up in the game that feasts on the bones and screams of minions that displease the Master. All is well.
For Master, so far we've got everything under the sun! Use today, if you please, to figure out what would be most awesome for our rag-tag group of misfits. Look over the More than Humans and Less than Humans and see if there's a common thread that could tie in to the Master's Wants and Needs. Then fight viciously for your opinions, in what will surely be a bloody match to the end!
To speed things up, if we haven't picked something by when we're ready to play, I'll pick suggestions at random and come up with something. For reference, here's what we have so far:
A far as Needs go, the majority of you have been very grisly and chosen blood for at least one of your requirements. We also have odds-and-ends: hair, teeth, and fingernails. And then from left field, we have fears and bad memories! It all alludes to some personal, intimate violation of the subject.
Wants, we have adulation and fame, to put on a wonderful puppet show, to reanimate deceased love ones, vengeance upon ghosts, and stark, bold desires for obedience. A variety to work with!
Aspect, it's pretty even, with Beast leading by one vote. Same with Type, with Breeder leading by one vote. Good to see everyone's happy with all the options!
Now, Outsiders and Demesne will come better once we have established the above. It would be really forced if we chose those ahead of time and tried to pigeonhole the rest around it, so let's lay off of those and focus on the options above!
Also, if we decide we don't like what's here, we can continue to throw out a few more, but let's try to focus on narrowing it down rather than amassing more options. We really do have good suggestions here, it's just that we only get to have one Master. So, what'll it be?
Wants: My wants were also informed by the idea that the Master would think he was doing something valuable to the world, perhaps even heroic. He would want people to see him as a hero, to carry him on their shoulders through town, parades and parties in his honor, etc. Obviously these wants don't make much sense if the Master is aware that he is doing something that other people will not value.
Aspect: I'm a fan of beast, but I don't have any real reason or argument for that.
Type: I have no particular desire in any direction here. I just picked the one that went with the blood thing.
I liked that idea too, honestly, mostly because it's mine. So he's creating living dolls out of bits of people, out of an honest desire to please? But he needs something more - the brain, maybe, or somehow the soul - because he wants to infuse these dolls with real human personalities, and the easiest way to do that is to borrow them from townsfolk. People are waking in their beds minus an eye, three fingers, and all the skin off their left thigh, and the fact that they no longer seem to have minds is generally considered a mercy.
But yeah, the collection of random parts rather than any one thing from the village would be interesting to pull off, especially if the Master starts asking for souls and personalities.
I like this idea in particular. It's not that he's interested in hurting them. It's that he's so divorced from sanity as to be incapable of even realizing that they are people.
He can't identify with adults, anymore, but children? He can entertain them with his grisly puppets, surely. Adults don't have any innocence, something along those lines, so he doesn't mind mutilating them to make his marionettes, but he has to keep working on them, building up his cast so he can present the little children of the world with the greatest show on earth.
Aspect: Beast
Type: Breeder
Needs: All kinds of bits and pieces of the human body
Wants: To make a troupe of living puppets
Outsiders: The little children of the world
Demesne: perhaps he's constructed his own bizarre theatre from rotting wood and excrement in the sewers under town?
Also excellent alliteration there simon. The Master will be pleased.
This is really bizarre and creepy and I like it a great deal. I am totally behind this idea.
Are we set on having a male Master? Personally, I think the idea of some mad woman would be interesting. However, gender doesn't really matter that much.
Okay. I too am interested in maybe making the Master female, just to play against type. But I'll let you all pin that down, as you have done fine without me!
Get your last minor details and notes in, and sometime this evening, I'll assume whatever's last agreed on is current and get the game under way!
This seems good to me.
I think I just didn't like the idea of a "stage made of wood and excrement", mostly the excrement part. If it's a more Phantom of the Opera vibe, then I can definitely dig that, I just do not like the poo, it is something I do not care for. But if it's some kind of awful theatre deep in the cavernous underground sewers, I can deal with that quite handily. Even... even though I don't think a small Central European village in the 1800's would have had sewers, per se.
Summery, I'm going to make a small change to Cassiopeia and give her 2 Self Loathing and 1 Weariness.
And that's a good point - would there be sewers? I mean, there could totally be a cave, and town built on some sort of cliff, I think as was suggested.
Or why not just some decrepit old theater, used to be something else?