''My Life with Master'' is an
independently published role-playing game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...
written by
Paul Czege
Paul Czege is a designer of tabletop role-playing games. His '' My Life With Master'' was the third role-playing game to win the Diana Jones award. He is also the originator of the Czege Principle that states, "When one person is the author of bot ...
and published by Half Meme Press (it was first released at the
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...
Gen Con
Gen Con is the largest tabletop game convention in North America by both attendance and number of events. It features traditional pen-and-paper, board, and card games, including role-playing games, miniatures wargames, live action role-playing ...
gaming convention).
''My Life with Master'' is a game about role-playing the servants or minions of an evil Master or Mistress.
The game won several awards, and reviewers recognized it as well-written.
As of 2018, the game is only available as a
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
file download from the publisher.
Gameplay
The prototypical setting of the role-playing game is in an unspecified
Central Europe
Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the area' ...
an country in the early 19th century.
Players in the game portray the
Igor
Igor may refer to:
People
* Igor (given name), an East Slavic given name and a list of people with the name
* Mighty Igor (1931–2002), former American professional wrestler
* Igor Volkoff, a professional wrestler from NWA All-Star Wrestling
* ...
-like minions of an
evil Master (or Mistress) who preys on the nearby Townsfolk.
Like most role-playing games, there is a
Gamemaster
A gamemaster (GM; also known as game master, game manager, game moderator, referee, or storyteller) is a person who acts as an organizer, officiant for regarding rules, arbitrator, and moderator for a multiplayer role-playing game. They are m ...
(GM). In this case the GM plays the part of the Master. However, the GM and players together are supposed to "design" the Master, in terms of defining his "Wants", "Needs", "Aspect", and "Type".
These traits have no explicit mechanical effect, but are used to define the desires and mannerisms of the Master and how he interacts with the Townsfolk and his minions. Masters have two game
statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
, "
Fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
" (a measure of his power over minions) and "
Reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
" (how much minions and Townsfolk can resist the Master's control over them).
In contrast, the Master's minions, the characters portrayed by the players, are defined (in terms of game statistics) by their levels of "Weariness" and "
Self-loathing
Self-hatred is personal self-loathing or hatred of oneself, or low self-esteem which may lead to self-harm.
In psychology and psychiatry
The term "self-hatred" is used infrequently by psychologists and psychiatrists, who would usually describe ...
", and the connections of "Love" that they have (successfully or unsuccessfully) tried to make with the Townsfolk.
Self-loathing is a measure of the power that a minion has to intimidate the Townsfolk, while Weariness limits their abilities to complete their tasks.
Love allows minions to resist their Master and his demands on them.
Gameplay is generally resolved through a series of "scenes".
A player describes what their minion is trying to do, be it carrying out their Master's wishes or trying to resist him, interacting with the Townsfolk, attempting an act of Love (which could result in increasing their "Love" trait, or increasing their "Self-loathing" if the attempt fails), etc. A series of
dice
Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...
rolls are used to determine success or failure, and then the scene is played out according to that outcome.
Unlike other role-playing games that may have long
campaigns, ''My Life with Master'' games are typically designed to end after a small number of playing sessions.
As one reviewer stated, ''My Life with Master'' "strives to tell a story, and stories have endings."
Usually, a game culminates with the death of the Master at the hands of one (or more) of his minions.
Sometimes, the Master dies because the Townsfolk are "sick of his predations" and "storm his domicile -- pitchforks in hand and torches aflame".
Some or all of the players' characters might also meet their end in the hands of the Townsfolk, or the Master kills them as they try to resist his commands and suffer the consequences of their failure.
Critical reception
''My Life with Master'' won the 2004
Diana Jones Award
The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in Role-playing game, gaming". The original award was made from a burned book encased in lucite. The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, b ...
.
In addition, it also won the 2003 Out of the Box Award for ''Best Sui Generis RPG''
and the 2003 ''Indie Roleplaying Game of the Year''.
Steve Darlington, in his review, stated that "even if you never play this game, you will be smarter simply for having read it" since "it quickly becomes hard to distinguish
zege'schoice of attributes from a high-level academic deconstruction of the character tropes in gothic horror films at a level which could easily be found on a college reading list."
He also said that it is "one of the very few horror games that may actually need disclaimers, and maybe even safe words too" for its "darker subtext" about escaping from abusive relationships.
According to
Heather Barnhorst "Czege writes with wit and doesn't fear to let his understanding of game theory shine through. Colin Theriot's illustrations evoke exactly the right mood for the setting and are enjoyable as stand-alone art."
Reviewer Matthew Pook warned that "Despite the simplicity of the
ame #REDIRECT AME #REDIRECT AME
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mechanics ... they are not as clearly written as they need to be ... The GM will need to make a close read of the otherwise well-written text to help grasp how the outcome of a scene will alter a minion's statistics." He concluded his review stating "although not going to be everyone's cup of tea, ''My Life With Master'' is the most interesting roleplaying game released this year
has praised ''My Life with Master'' for the way it "evokes emotions and feelings rare in games", and considers it to work in part because the
theme has "a defined narrative arc: hubris and terror, followed by a fall".