Has anyone tried playing PTA with only two people? Are there any special techniques for making this work?
I ask because I may have the opportunity to play with only one other person, and I find it hard to see how the Fan Mail / Budget cycle would work very well, or screen presence work at all.
Charles
Sounds like a no-go to me, Charles. Like you say, the economy of the game was designed around the idea of an ensemble cast. So I'm thinking that you'd probably have to heavily modify things to have any chance of it working.
Maybe Matt can come up with the solo character version. Might be good for games that emulate shows like "Magnum PI" or "Ally McBeale."
Mike
Maybe you could devise a way to swap Producer-responsibility each scene, so you have two protagonists and each player produces the scenes for the other player's character?
That's a neat idea. I saw an RPG.Net post recentlyabout Actual Play using the same idea -- a World of Darkness Hunter and a Vampire in the same city, with the hunter and vampire's players switching off GM roles, and occasionally huddling in OOC to discuss where the story's going next.
We played a sitcom-ish PTA game (4 people).
Despite my protests, everyone else decided that one character/1player would be the only main character and everyone else would be Producers and supporting cast.
Is that sort of related to what you're thinking about?
Despite some rough edges (it was our first game together), it basically worked. It was very light and silly and the 3 GMs threw weird situations at the 1 player.
We had to modify some of the rules. I discuss further if anyone wants.
I was thinking it would have to be modified so much it mightn't be so attractive as a game, but switching producer / protagonist responsibilities sounds like it might be fun, and at least allow for screen presence.
I'm not sure exactly how I'd use the 3 producers one protagonist idea, Kenway, but I'd love to read an actual play report.
Interestingly, Brand Robins just posted an entry on his blog (http://yudhishthirasdice.blogspot.com/2005/06/you-and-me-baby-one-on-one-oh-yeah.html) about one on one play. He mentions how PTA is really good for ensemble casts, but that there's nothing out there for the TV show with only one main character.
Charles