[pta] Primetime Exalted for "newbies"

[pippo_jedi]

Hello,
I'm a longtime rpg player, like my game group, but we always played white wolf's game, D&D and that sort of games. some were better than others, but never something like PTA...

Now speaking with my friends, they seems pretty unconvinced that pta could work and, that's my impression, a little scared that there be another 'style of play' other than theirs... :-P

Now, to the point: we're playing exalted and we really like the setting so I'll may be able to seduce them to the dark side of role playing by playing an PTA Exalted game.
Now, speaking with my friends they said that the things that they like are (the following) and I've come up for some ideas, please tell me if they make sense to you

1)
Q: They are unconfortable with the idea that the final authority on the story shifts between Prod and players. The main reason is that in this way they think is difficult to have a coerent story.
A: Only Prod has final auth on narration (like most rpg), altough the players contribute. I think that this changes a lot the game as it written, but the overall type of game would be still pretty close to the original idea.

2)
Q: How could be the exalted style of uberpowerness end cool powerz made, if there is no such thing as a charm list that says what the pg and npg do and can't do?
This is not mechanic issue: I'm in the need of making an example...

classic scene: the villain, an abyssal on a magical 'motorcycle', kidnaps a little girl for reasons unknown and the pg are after her.

classice exalted play: everybody rolls his ability, activates charms or whaterver, if they're faster than the abyssal they catch up, otherwise she escapes. other than the end result the fun stems from doing the pg do impossible things like running on walls, jumping hundrends of meters from roof to roof and the like.

PTA play: we prepare the chase scene, the Prod introduce the scene everybody put his/her stake (being from "save the little girl" from "destroy by accident the guild HQ" or "impress my fellow solar"), we turn the cards determing who wins the stakes, then we narrate what happens. but narrating we are at odds: how can I (the player or Prod) know if my pg has that cool ability or not? What prevents players to have "a run for more cool powerz" or fearing that overreacting in the opposite play where "all the coolz powerz are not there anymore"?

A: the most inteligent answer would be "the players (all) must decide those things at the creation of the series and play accordingly". Sure, but this would be the same as saying "we play exalted, we are super inteligent and we will always play correctly" :-)
Now my idea is this: being accustomed to the classical exalted play I will have the players (not always the Prod) have classical Exalted Char. sheet handy, done with the exalted rules. Now, the sheet will be mechanically useless and it's only usefull for having an idea, an hook if you will, about describing what the pg do and don't do. in this way it could be easier describing the scenes and having the same "high action" feel typical of exalted.

3)
Q: The idea of evolution based on issues is great, but I want my pg to become more powerfull in time: it's fun to begin as a small solar and after some playtime have a powerful solar that turns cities with a thought.

A: basically the qeustion is the same as 2. given the 2 Answer, I thought the following: at the beginning of each episode the char earns a number of Xp equal of N*Screen presence (where N is a number depending on the series and the tastes of the group) and may spend them anytime the player deems appropriate.
Example: Maschera, a dawn caste warrior, has her spotlight episode and gains 30px (N=10) at the beginning. some time later she has a combat scene  where a group of strong warriors oppose her alone meanwhile the abyssal (bad bad abyssal) runs for his unlive away. We decide that the issue is "will Maschera deafeat the group fast enough to catch up with the abyssal", she wins the stakes so she do, but, the plater thinks that having the charm that allows to make 6 attack in a blink of an eye, would be cool to use in this scene, so she spends 24px and buy it. with this rule we have a simple answer other than the first one of 2A. one that I think is easier to come up with for a group used to another style of play...
note that the outcome of the conflit was already in place, this is an idea only to preserve the "exalted feel" in what I think it's a fair way for my group.

That is all for now. what do you think? flames? suggestions?

bye bye!

[Matt Machell]

I've done this kind of thing (using PTA for Shadowrun) so here's some thoughts:

It's entirely possible your group has no interest in co-creating a story at the table using PTA. You can't trick people into being interested in this style of play, if they want it they'll lap it up, if not, no amount of tweaking to make it like another game they really want to be playing will help.

That said:

Really highlight that it's not Exalted it's a TV adaption of it, play up those elements. Get them thinking in terms of scenes and character development, episodes, commercial breaks and so on. This'll help. Everybody knows how TV series work.

Their worries about coherent story, play up the fact that it's their responsibility to ensure it's coherent. Nothing will stop them being whacky if they want, but nothing ever did in Exalted either really, they just chose not to because of the cues on the character sheet. PTA has different cues, traits and home sets. Play up the use of fanmail to say, "hey that's cool more of that please" and its lack as "er, not so much please".

Getting more powerful over time, well, again it's not what the game is about. But that doesn't mean the story can't be about it, if that is what interests the player... If they want a guy to start out as a bitpart and get more important as the series goes on, well attribute screen presence accordingly.

-Matt

[pippo_jedi]

I've done this kind of thing (using PTA for Shadowrun) so here's some thoughts:

It's entirely possible your group has no interest in co-creating a story at the table using PTA. You can't trick people into being interested in this style of play, if they want it they'll lap it up, if not, no amount of tweaking to make it like another game they really want to be playing will help.

Well, I don't want to play exalted with the rules of PTA, I want to make a PTA game with a setting we really like. we could be doing a Star Wars series without reading the rules of the SW rpg. Since Exalted is a RPG and the rules reinforce the setting, we're afraid that running a pta exalted would be, the first times at least, extremely difficult. Hence my ideas. I suppose that will be doing week A exalted game with a friend as GM, week B pta exalted with me... or so I hope :-)

That said:

Really highlight that it's not Exalted it's a TV adaption of it, play up those elements. Get them thinking in terms of scenes and character development, episodes, commercial breaks and so on. This'll help. Everybody knows how TV series work.

Their worries about coherent story, play up the fact that it's their responsibility to ensure it's coherent. Nothing will stop them being whacky if they want, but nothing ever did in Exalted either really, they just chose not to because of the cues on the character sheet. PTA has different cues, traits and home sets. Play up the use of fanmail to say, "hey that's cool more of that please" and its lack as "er, not so much please".

Getting more powerful over time, well, again it's not what the game is about. But that doesn't mean the story can't be about it, if that is what interests the player... If they want a guy to start out as a bitpart and get more important as the series goes on, well attribute screen presence accordingly.

-Matt

Actually there nothing that prevents you from running a game about people that acquire supernatural powers during the season, think about dragon ball, or Heroes. people develop powers, and they make a great part of the show: that means that sometime, speaking in game terms, the focus of a scene of plot development could be "will be Peter petrelli be able to control his powers?".
By using my ideas above is like we're saying at the beginning of the game, when creating the series: "ok, the pg are people with cool powerz, but it's not interessant to dwell to much on how they develop them, just to check ourselves and to give us story hooks we say that they develop power in this way"
it sounds reasonable to me... :-)

my two cents...
bye bye

[Matt Wilson]

One thing you might try, in order to try and get them jazzed about it, is to point at all that character background stuff they wrote up -- if it's a white wolf game, I just know they wrote up a whole bunch of background stuff. Point at it and say, "this stuff doesn't just sit on the back of your sheet. It happens in play. It's the point of play."

If they shrug, then maybe you'll have to wait until you can find a group that digs the idea.

The thing that Primetime Adventures will support, maybe better than other games, is that there's little connection between characters becoming powerful and the players gaining more power. You can say "my guy has the powers of Superman," and maybe I'm playing Jimmy Olson. Doesn't matter. We each draw the same cards and have the same impact on the game. You can tell them that, and they might ooh and ahh. Maybe not.

[pippo_jedi]

One thing you might try, in order to try and get them jazzed about it, is to point at all that character background stuff they wrote up -- if it's a white wolf game, I just know they wrote up a whole bunch of background stuff. Point at it and say, "this stuff doesn't just sit on the back of your sheet. It happens in play. It's the point of play."

If they shrug, then maybe you'll have to wait until you can find a group that digs the idea.

The thing that Primetime Adventures will support, maybe better than other games, is that there's little connection between characters becoming powerful and the players gaining more power. You can say "my guy has the powers of Superman," and maybe I'm playing Jimmy Olson. Doesn't matter. We each draw the same cards and have the same impact on the game. You can tell them that, and they might ooh and ahh. Maybe not.

to the first thing:
:-D I already used that with the girl of the group, who likes writing short stories about her pg (one is about 40/50 A4 pages and it's a good thing).

to the second, yes, I think "I get the game" regarding the thing that "who's more powerfull doesn't get more cards" approach and I find it... refreshing :-)
I thought about the charm thing as a tool to help beginning to play in a situation like the one in the example: I fear that the followin may happen

me: so Myria has 2 reds, everyone 1, she get the stake "impress my fellow solars", I have won final autorithy but everyone plays the scene starting from Myria

player1: emh... Myria does... mh well... I don't have to roll anything more, right? well... Myria jumps from roof to roof following the abyssal, who make the wrong turn and has a little accident, I get the girl in my arms and I jump away"

player2: well wouldn't be nice if she just kame kame HA the abyssal away? that would impress my warrior a lot.

player1: well yeah I would never ever have taken that power in usual play, so let's have it: kaboom!

that could be right, but what if the absence of a restraint of that type chages the setting we're playing too much?
or the opposite, the lack of the charms could change the setting too...
I think that after some play we all (me too) will "get it right" and we will check one another knowing what's good and what not for the play, but maybe for starters it could help us to keep in check with the setting we like. it's not that having more charm or whatever gives you more cards or whatever, but it could help us in describing what happens, as a 'describing hook' if the name makes sense :-)
Of course I will explain clearly to them the above so they will not mess things thinking in the usual terms of powerfulness and the like...

thank you for you help!

[Matt Wilson]

Players used to games where the GM basically says everything can sometimes require an adjustment period to games where they have a lot of room to shape the story.

It's funny how the first time through it can get a little bit like Lord of the Flies. "I get to say stuff? Okay, then the world explodes and I turn into a giant block of cheese and Fox decides to put Firefly back on the air, and..."

But it doesn't take very long to realize that if the game is getting weird, it's because the players letting it get weird. They get the power, and then they accept the responsibility, just like Spiderman.

If someone says anything like the above when they get authority, it may not say so in the game text, but you have my official permission to say, "stop being a dick." Then you can send them here and I'll publicly scold them.

One last thought: what I would do with a group that's new to this game, and if I were the producer, is to look to the person who has the narration authority, and say, "hey, you have the final say. How does this sound?" And then say what you would have said as GM in an Exalted game. "Anything you'd like to change or add?" That's a good way to ease people into it.

[pippo_jedi]

Well, thank you for your input, I hope to have a game in the next month, I'll try to make a report afterwards...

thank you again and to the next time