Thank you, Matt!

[Norbert Matausch]

Hi there,
Matt, I wanted to let you know that we've played PTA two days ago. This time (it was our second try), your game worked! No, let's make this a stronger word: PTA rocked! That evening, everything we tried worked so well; it went so smoothly...

We played the pilot episode of our series (called "Sinister Friendships", a cop show with supernatural elements) -- and were hooked. What a great game. Thank you, Matt. When time allows, I'll post more. Thanks again!

[Matt Wilson]

Awesome! I'm glad you had a good time.

[Mr. Sluagh]

I just got it in the mail and read it in one sitting.  It makes almost all other RPGs seem like unwieldy messes of extraneous crap by comparison.

Curse you for making me hate RPGs!  Cuuurse yoouuu!

[Norbert Matausch]

Yeah ;-)
I played Realms of Arcadia the other day, one of the big name fantasy roleplaying games in Germany... playing it felt awful, sluggish, slow and non-focused... the players tried to portray their characters -- and the rules didn't, no, couldn't help them... the results were disastrous: flat, boring characters, none of them with an Issue, none of them the stuff legends are made of. Traditional rules tend to do that to characters because they cover skills and attributes, but not the really important thing: the characters.

I've played Primetime Adventures, and it changed my way of playing forever...

Yes, I agree with Mr. Sluagh here: Curse you, Mat, for inventing this game!

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Norbert,

I just read the thread about your first experience playing PtA. In that thread iit seemed like everything you and your group wanted simply was not going to work in PtA.

Could you break out what you did differently / what happened differently this time?

Thanks,

Christopher

[Norbert Matausch]

Hi Christopher,

we did several things differently this time:

1) Last time, we had about two weeks time between the first session (genre and setting) and the pilot episode. When we met to play, we were in a completely different mood that day -- our premise felt awkward, but we held onto it. Big mistake.
This time, we met to roleplay. No specific details, only this "roleplay". We considered playing Wushu, but PTA was what we chose. Wise choice, I might add. There was no break between the establishing session and the pilot. I think this helped us a lot.

2) Last time, we were carrying a lot of gamer baggage around -- scene framing felt strange, so we fell back into the "good ole days" of roleplaying and just played along -- thus ignoring an important rule for focused play. This time, we played PTA by the book, and it worked its magic.

3) Last time, I allowed my players to control important NPCs. This might work if you have some experience playing PTA, but not for the first session. This time, the players were allowed to control the protags and certain NPCs I had labelled "public property". Worked very well.

4) Last time, finding good, interesting, dramatic conflicts was not easy. In fact, we had only two or three of them. The reason for this meager quote was also gamer baggage: going without scene framing and without a properly formulated agenda destroys focused play. This time, our conflicts worked well and were really interesting.

What helped us develop the certain type of discipline that's required for PTA was (sorry to mention this, Matt) reading and re-reading the book, playing and discussing Dogs and Wushu. Comparing those rules with other, traditional systems helped us a lot.

Greetings from an uncomfortable Bavaria!
Norbert

[Mikael]

This post just caused me to order a PDF version of PTA.

Cheers,
+ Mikael

[Norbert Matausch]

:)
You'll love it.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Norbert,

Thanks so much for the reply.

If you have the time, I'd love to hear about the the good, dramatic and interesting coflicts.

Could you offer specific examples? Could you offer the specifics of what you were doing (and what others were doing) at the table, that made this possible? I undersand a lot of it was frontloaded by preperation (reading and re-reading the book, thinking through and analysing different play styles)...

But anything you could offer about actual play would be of great interest to me. Just a couple of examples if you have the time.

Thanks,

Christopher

[Norbert Matausch]

Hi Christopher,
just one example for conflict in our pilot episode that we considered good:

(We're playing a cop show with supernatural elements, kind of NYPD Blues mixed with a dark version of the X-Files.)

a) One of the cops has the Issue "Hollywood Cop": He MUST be the role-model cop, something that's hidden in his soul forces him to play the best police officer one can imagine. He is willing to go to extreme lengths to do this. Something has happened in his late childhood, something that planted the seed of this demon within him.

Scene: a dirty, run-down brothel somewhere in town. Cut to the bathroom. Blood. Everwhere blood. A hooker is lying on the floor, twisted, bloodied, mangled, dead. The camera doesn't show anything explicitly. Just hints, and this is what makes the scene so frightening. Enters the Hollywood Cop. Examines the bathroom, after closing the door shut. His player comes up with an idea for a conflict: Will the Hollywood cop take pictures and sell them to the newspapers, along with a good story? We brainstorm, tossing ideas around, and somehow, the conflict emerges: "Will he change the scene of the crime? Will he rearrange pieces of evidence so that the photograph will look good?" He loses the conflict, changes the position and the posture of the dead body, rearranges things, his hands bloody. He washes his hands and calls one of his buddies, a journalist.

This scene was so intense as it gave us a glimpse into the character of the protagonist; and this glimpse was frightening, disturbing.

Mechanically, what happened, was this: The Hollywood cop player requested a scene with his protagonist, in the brothel, and told me what the agenda was. Then, we took actor stance and played it out till the player saw an opportunity for conflict. He phrased it and brought it forward. We bounced our ideas around the table till we had reached a mutual goal: a new conflict was born.

A couple of weeks prior to playing, one of the players and I had tried and phrased many different stakes; we played around and explored the possibilities. The other two players hadn't done anything like this at all, they came as innocent as babies. Our rule was: "What would we like to see on the show? What would we like to read in a damn good book?"

Granted, I have good players, players who like to explore the depths of their characters and show their issues and dark sides. The PTA rules are excellent tools for this.