[PTA] Chubby and Tubby's

[Jason Morningstar]

Me, Remi, Mark, and Andy went to Go Play Southeast this weekend and, faced with a five hour car ride, decided to put it to good use playing Prime Time Adventures. 

I produced, and stipulated an initial concept for the show that everyone liked - a gorcery/variety store that employed extranormal weirdos.  We fleshed that out and I used some bits of my own history to suggest setting it in West Seattle, in the venerable (and I think vanished) store Chubby and Tubby's.  Andy played a succubus cashier.  Remi played a violent  ex-supersoldier with an erratic dimensional door in his head (he was a greeter).  Mark played a failed god with total control of the elements but deep issues with self confidence, working on inventory control.  We set it in 1992, and explicitly tied the game to the ascendence of the grunge scene - everyone took a connection to a known personality of the time and place, so Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and others made appearances and were influenced by the protagonists.  Trish, the succubus, hated what she was and deliberately dressed in the least provocative way she could, thus starting the rage for flannel.  We played out a complete pilot and it was lots of fun. 

The interesting thing for me, and the reason it's worthy of an AP report I think, is that we played in a moving car without much of a hitch.  Remi was driving the whole time, so I handled the minor paperwork associated with his protagonist, and the other guys handled his cards in conflicts.  The cards themselves were easy to deal with across the car seats.  The only difficulty we had was a lack of eye contact, and this was certainly problematic but not a show-stopper.  So I can recommend PTA as a travel-friendly game - maybe next time we'll try it on a flight to Europe or something...