In The Sorcerer's Soul Ron suggests playing a game of Sorcerer, and then playing a second game, this time among the prior generation of characters, and which results in the situation that was dealt with by the characters in the first game. When I read that suggestion I asked him how it played. And he said he didn't know. That he'd never done it.

Recently, for only the second time ever, I had the experience of playing My Life with Master, as a minion, rather than running it. My wife Danielle ran the game. So in that game there's this scene where I'm wanting the Sincerity die and I'm roleplaying for it. And Danielle says, "If you want the Sincerity die you're going to have to do better than that." So I close my eyes and think for a bit, and then I come back with more passion, and more intensity. And she gives me the die.

What I've realized is that I designed My Life with Master to do that.

Honestly, I don't think I'm a very good player. I tend to create emotionally repressed characters who aren't particularly interesting for other players to watch. Yes, if the GM does everything right with his or her delivery of antagonism to my character, for maybe three sessions, everything, then my character explodes into dramatic protagonism. And it has happened. Once. Usually the GM doesn't do everything right, and my character fizzles, or rather, remains...unaccessed.

I designed My Life with Master to stretch me as a player, to train me where my skills are weak. And as a GM too. The whole group gives me, as GM, a challenge of delivering meaningful antagonism through the concept of Master they create, stretching the range of my creativity.

Bacchanal teaches me to create narrative that holds the interest of the other players using uncommon content. And in current local Acts of Evil playtesting I've realized the game is a crash course for the GM (with a player feedback loop) in creating interesting NPCs.

What I've realized is that I design games, at least in part, from an awareness of my own creative weaknesses and a desire to move through them. And I think then my games are compelling to folks who share my creative desires. Acts of Evil still has me in its clutches (in a way that Nicotine Girls doesn't), because it still has something to teach me.

I think that's what My Life with Master tries to show other designers that I'd be excited to see from them as a consumer: games you designed to challenge the limits you perceive to your own creative and collaborative skills when you play them.