[PtA] Nevermore

[Jasper Polane]

Our group has been playing Primetime Adventures for the past few weeks. The show is called Nevermore, and it's a 1920's horror/mystery show, set in a small harbor town. Think Lovecraft and you wouldn't be wrong.

This is our second PtA show. So far we've had three sessions of Nevermore: One for prep, the pilot, and the first episode. In total we've played about 10 sessions of PtA.
We used the complete first session (about two-and-a-half hours) for coming up with the show and the cast, and in the following week talked about and changed a lot of details over e-mail. Also, we made a lot of changes during and after playing the pilot episode.

The cast:

Jeff Forrester, private eye, played by Michael. The body of his dead mother was abducted from her funeral and his brother is committed to the asylum. At first, Jeff's issue was Driven to investigate the supernatural because of this, but in the pilot episode we discovered his real problems are money problems. So we changed it afterwards.

Julie Dangler, female reporter for the local newspaper, played by Jorrit. Born in Nevermore, moved to the big city, but returned recently after being fired. Julie has psychic powers, not really defined but including telekinesis and prophetic dreams. These gifts have made her paranoid, which is her issue.

Don Moreno, mobster, played by Maarten. His issue is redemption. We decided during prep Don had left the mafia and came to Nevermore to hide. But Maarten wanted to change the character completely at the start of the pilot. Now he's still in the mob, and Jeff owns him a lot of money.
In the pilot episode Don was attacked by a shadow creature and half of his soul was sucked out. Now he has one foot in the afterlife, and he can see the spirits of the dead.

Alice Dangler, Jeff's secretary and Julie's sister, played by me. Her issue is Focusing too much on other peoples problems and not enough on her own, which is perfect, since I'm also the producer.
The way we play, the other players take over a lot of producer tasks, providing conflicts for the other protagonists. One of the things we do a lot is requesting scenes for each others characters, the player requesting the scene also framing it. Me being producer means I have to step up when nobody wants to.

One thing we noticed about this show is that's already much better than our first series. Because we all know what to expect from the game, and keeping this in mind when doing the series bible, we hardly if ever run into trouble while playing. This game just keeps getting better!

--Jasper

[TonyLB]

In the pilot episode Don was attacked by a shadow creature and half of his soul was sucked out. Now he has one foot in the afterlife, and he can see the spirits of the dead.

There's something about the straightforward way that you can change characters like this in PTA that makes me very happy.  You can do something huge, that changes everything about the way they treat the world, and not fear that you're "breaking" anything, because you know what their Issue is and that's what's important.

Very cool.

[Danny_K]

How is it working, playing a Protagonist and producing both?  We're re-booting our PbP PTA game, probably superheroes now, and I admit I'm itching to play.

[Jasper Polane]

Tony: Even better, the character's issue made it happen. Because Maarten had decided Don was still in the mafia, we needed some event in the pilot to set him on the path of atonement, that being his issue. So when he was attacked by the creature, Maarten was like "this is it!" and wrote on his character sheet: "I see dead people." After seeing a few ghosts, it became pretty obvious he had a choice: Going mad, or help lay the spirits to rest. (Pretty much as in the sixth sense, really.) So helping the spirit will be his way to redeem himself.

Dan: It's working great for us. I think the most important thing in making this work is the other players providing conflict and framing scenes not only for my protagonist, but for each others characters as well. Because we're pretty much used to do this by now, it occurs naturally and smoothly. So it's not "Okay, it's Alice's scene, who's going to produce this?", but it just sort of happens.
I'm not sure how much this is the effect of me playing a protagonist, though, because I've never played without one.

--Jasper

[Frank T]

Regarding the scene framing. I've seen players who would be eager to frame scenes for all the other protagonists, but I'd be inclined to say this is an old GM habit that comes through because they have "GM power". My understanding of PtA scene framing is that it's perfectly okay to set your own protagonist in scene. If everybody does it, it works out fine and every protagonist gets his five minutes.

On the other hand, I've seen games work very well in which players framed whatever scene they thought would fit best next from the "GM point of view". It tends to remove you a little further from your own character and put you a little closer to the story as a whole. Of course, both ways can work whether or not the producer has his own protagonist.

- Frank

[Jasper Polane]

I've seen games work very well in which players framed whatever scene they thought would fit best next from the "GM point of view".

This is what we've been doing, mostly, requesting scenes with an eye towards what would fit best. Not from a GM point of view, more from a "television point of view". If this was on tv, what would the next scene be?

My understanding of PtA scene framing is that it's perfectly okay to set your own protagonist in scene.

We had a bit of a struggle with this the first couple of times we played PtA. Any time a player would frame his own protagonist in the scene, he would frame him "out of conflict", so to speak. It became very hard to introduce conflicts or make the scene meaningful in some way. As a result, the episode wouldn't go anywhere.
Now, when a player requests a scene for his own protagonist, another player (not always me) frames at least part of it. That works much better.

--Jasper