[Primetime Adventures] Urlaubsreif! (Lost meets The Office)

[Georgios Panagiotidis]

This is my first proper AP report so please bear with me. I ran two episodes of Primetime Adventure at our local con today. This is the first one, which went well. The second one was an utter disaster... but I'll open a different thread about it. Due to some trouble in getting my regular gaming group to do some playtesting, this was also the first time I got to run the game.

The first session went over fairly well with just two players. It was a little difficult finding our feet and figuring out how to play the game. We kept the focus on the interaction between the two main characters, which helped I think.

During our setting discussion, we agreed to run a mixture of Lost and The Office. The mystery elements were replaced with office politics mostly. Instead of invisible monsters and flashbacks, we had our group use the same hierarchy that they had in their job as copy machine salesmen in Bottrop (third most boring place on earth). One important aspect was to make the show not a scary or gritty drama, but a little fantasy-fable about the adventures of five city people thrown into a carribean paradise.

One character (Alexander "Alex" Feschen-Hausmann) was the hapless boss, who'd delegate all work to others and avoid all responsibility of any kind  - which was also his issue. Think David Brent, but charismatic. Likeable but still an egocentric schmuck.
The other (Sebastian Sembritzki) was a fairly nerdy guy, stuck in his mid-life crisis. His characters issue was feeling stuck in his life and job and trying to break free from his habits and strict rules of behaviour. His personal set was established as a little grotto, he'd occasionally go and explore some more in his free time (behold the awesome symbolism!). Imagine Tim (from The Office), if he'd never gotten out of his job.

The supporting characters were:
Rene - a sociology student,  
Elizabeth - the flight's stewardess and friend to Sebastian
Connie - Alex' secretary

We decided to play the third episode. The characters had crashed on the island in the middle of the pilot and had already found shelter, food and fresh water in episode one.

The episode opened with the characters sitting down to think about finding a new food source. After two weeks of eating fish and fruits, they longed for a little variety. Also, exploring the rest of the island might turn out to be a good idea.
We had a few scenes kind of tread water a little, as we weren't quite sure how to go about playing this. I also made the mistake (?) of wanting to avoid the all too obvious "the island has a secret" plot for the time being, focussing instead entirely on the characters themselves. This turned out to be both a curse and a blessing. It allowed the players to delve into their characters and get accustomed to PtA's style of gaming, but it also made it very difficult to come up with conflicts for the scenes. As they really were just people arguing and talking. I also was hesitant to call for rolls during those scenes, as a roll would have meant taking character control away from the players, which I felt very uncomfortable with.

During the dialogue scenes we established a couple of things:
- Alex's secretary has a small crush on him. He is completely unaware of it. (This was agreed upon before play.)
- Rene - the sociology student - talks a lot of crap. Such as arguing about the necessity of any society to aqcuire and use the ressources available to them to support the ruling class... or working class... or the other way around...
- Rene's blathering came about when Sebastian mentioned that he had used Alex surfboard to kill lizards, which Alex was furious about
- after Alex forgot to prepare food for today, thus not doing his part of the share keep the group fed
- ... no actually it was the ruling class using ressources... no, wait... stealing the ressources from the working class... as a necessity for progress...
- Alex wants to get into Elizabeth's pants
- Sebastian, now angry, had a talk with Elizabeth, the stewardess... in which he went on and on about "following the rules" and "doing your share", she asked him "why?"... and Sebastian couldn't come up with a reason... (this was supposed to be picked up on, later on - the reason being because you choose to, because you accept that some things are more important than your pleasure - but I had forgotten about it by the end of the episode)

The last one was a very interesting scene. It illustrated Sebastian's character quite nicely: a man who has followed rules and regulations for so long that he has forgotten why... leading him to question his way of life. What if the rules he followed all his life, were actually doing him more harm than good?

Alex had another scene coming up in which he was just about to do what was asked of him (find coconuts), but halfway through felt the urge to go surfing instead. Would he give in to temptation or do what's expected of him? We rolled the dice, and Alex ran to the shore... his surfboard under his arm.

Once out in the sea, Alex' player suggested being attacked by a barracuda to regain some of the group's goodwill after constantly failing to do even the simplest tasks. He fought and killed the barracuda with his hunting knife... and brought it back to the group.

Alex began bragging and explaining in heroic detail how he faught the barracuda.

Alex: So I had to dodge, without falling of my board. I whipped out my knife and attacked him *makes stabbing motions*.. like this and like this. It was really dangerous.
Elizabeth: As a vegetarian, I don't think I want to help with gutting it.
Alex (not missing a beat): It died quickly and painlessly.

We had a break about this time for some food.

When we picked the game up again, I had decided to include a more obvious plot hook. Sebastian and Rene, on their way to explore the island had found some claw marks and animal foot prints. They returned to the group and had to decide how to deal with this potential menace and/or food source.

It was agreed to go deeper into the island and find whatever had caused the claw marks and deal with it. Alex quickly agreed to stay and protect the women. We decided to play the scene straight, with none of the other characters picking up on Alex obvious attempt to get closer to Elizabeth.

Alex strolled around a little before returning to the women. After an unsuccessful attempt to start a conversation he left again. Rene and Sebastian went looking for clues in the jungle, without much success. Suddely a scream coming from the camp!

They ran back, only to find the camp deserted, with claw marks at the walls of the camp. The three had to act. Alex quickly explained his plan to Rene:

Alex: Look you go and find the bear and try to start one of your meaningless discussions about ressources and the working class or whatever with them. This is so boring and pointless that the bear will be occupied for a while. We then go and rescue the girls and Bob's your uncle.
Rene (with utter contempt): You're. Full. Of. Shit.

Alex, for the first time seems to realize that not only is this serious, it's also not something he can just leave for somebody else to handle.

The three arm themselves with spears (and one axe they had found in the plane) and head into the jungle until the tracks split in two directions.

Alex: Don't worry. I'm sure they'll send somebody for us.
Sebastian: How do you know?
Alex: How do I know? I've gone missing! (pause) I mean we, of course.

Alex and Rene decide to head right, while Sebastian (weilding the axe) heads left. Sebastian gets caught up in a net trap. He can make out human-like shapes approaching him. He starts to scream for help.
Alex and Rene quickly turn around and run back to help their friend.

The episode ends with one of the human shapes using a blowgun (?) on Sebastian, and his screams suddenly stop.

....to be continued

(not really)
--------

The game had a great character focus. Partly due to the lack of proper plot, no doubt. ;) But I think also due to our discussing our expectations and preferences before playing. I was really interested in seeing how the characters' issues would play out. Something I was never interested in during my other games. As a GM I was usually more interested in my plot and setting, but this time I wanted to see just what would happen to the characters of my players. Which was a new experience.

Calling for conflict rolls:
This was really difficult for me. Much more so than I had thought. Looking back it might have been because I didn't get the process of requesting a scene and preparing a scene right away. Especially describing the scene's agenda and developing a conflict from there wasn't as intuitive as I expected.

Especially when it came to handling two conflicting character interests. Who would get to roll with what?

A clearer plot would have helped, I think. It would also have helped in figuring out the difference between a character and plot scene. It was only after the break, that the difference between the two became obvious to me. Before the break, the two would usually blend into one another.

Sadly the following game was an utter mess, due to two very dominant and disruptive players. The experiences I had made during the first game were of almost no use to me there.

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Joe:

This session sounds pretty good. One thing that you seem to have absolutely rocked at is making sources of conflict between every important pairing of characters (i.e. protag + protag, protag + supp character).

So in any scene where you can't think of what the conflict is about, there's your answer. For example: If the scene has Alex and Elizabeth in it, then no matter what's going on, it's really about him trying to score. If it has Alex and  Elizabeth and the secretary in it, then you have an even better conflict going on.

See what I mean? Most good conflicts can take place in any setting or situation. Fighting vampires, surfing, refilling a stapler, whatever.

I think you can apply the same tricks to the mafia game you talk about in the other thread, but I'll address that over there.

[ScottM]

Joe, sounds interesting.  I was wondering-- since it was a Con slot, everything was compressed, right?

How long did it take to come up with the series concept-- or did you skip that step?  Was character creation quick enough that you had several hours of play?

Thanks,
Scott

[Georgios Panagiotidis]

How long did it take to come up with the series concept-- or did you skip that step?  Was character creation quick enough that you had several hours of play?

We had 5 hours in all for explaining the game, creating a series concept and characters and playing it all. I think the players got the basic idea of the game fairly quickly, but it took us a while to get a handle on the specifics.

I went to great lengths to make sure we were all on the same page as far as tone and style of the series was concerned. These things provide the framework and the guidelines from which players create the character concepts and issues, after all. I wanted to make sure that we all had a fairly good idea what balance of comedy and survival drama we were going for.

Compared to the game that followed this one, I cannot stress this enough. Make sure all the players are thinking along the same lines before you start mapping out issues and relationships, let alone story arcs.

Explaining the game's concepts (i.e. Narrativism) and various series and character ideas took about two hours. The game itself was interrupted for a 15 minute break once. Toward the end we ended up discussing RPG theory... so I guess, the game itself took about 2 - 2,5 hours.