two sessions in: how it's going for my group

[Welkerfan]

>More scenes per episode.  Having 12-15 scenes spread out over 4 Acts sounds ideal, but not if it makes our session 9 hours long.  I am hoping (and guessing) that it won't, *unless* we love to really linger – in which case, if we do that and want to keep doing that, we can always adjust the budget to compensate.

Here is where the job of the Producer comes in.  One of his major duties is to push scenes to conflicts and to not let the players dawdle in dialogue and exposition.  Again, think about a television show--a conflict happens every few minutes.  This being a 2-3 hour game instead of an hour television show, the conflicts should happen every 10-15 minutes (or more frequently in my case).  Push to have shorter scenes which really focus on the conflicts.  Dialogue is all well and good, but it is most exciting when it is building up to or winding down from a conflict.

On the 4 Act structure, perhaps discuss it as a group to make everyone aware of it, but don't make it a hard and fast rule to be followed.  Generally, I found that an act occurred each time we went around the table, but not always.  If each player requests a scene that focuses on his Issue or on the parallels behind his character and the spotlight character (essentially a character scene with some light amounts of plot), then, when the Producer gets his scene, he can introduce a new plot twist that starts the new act.  That doesn't have to be a rule, though, just something that is likely to happen.  Think of it this way, the Producer is playing the plot and the show's premise as a character and is bringing it up when he frames scenes.

What is the ideal amount of Budget to Scene ratio?  I mean, I know Budget needs to go up and down with respect to the Screen Presence of the Protagonists, but given a combined SP of 6, for example, how much Budget is right for a 5 scene episode?  10 scenes?  15?

Hmm.  Perhaps with 10 scenes, the formula gives the right Budget, combined SP of 6 equals 15 Budget?  With five scenes (what we had) we had been thinking more like 9 Budget.  Maybe a better formula would be:

[(combined SP) x (expected scenes/5)] + 3

Or something?  So maybe determine what our actual scenes/episode ratio is, and use that to influence the multiplier applied to the combined screen presence?

Well, if the current formula works for 10-15 scenes, that is your number.  The differences in Budget that come from SP differences serve to make the mechanical power of the Producer more in line with the players'.

Just taking out the doubling would probably be easiest.  You probably don't want to try to guess what how many scenes you are going to have.  You could always try out the formula without doubling SP with the knowledge that the Producer can have a few extra points at the end if you find that he had too little--playtesting, so to speak.

>Supporting another character's stakes. First of all, it is interesting to note what the book does and does not say about this.  As Welkerfan points out:

On page 63, it says, "Once the producer has set the difficulty, the players whose protagonists are involved [in the conflict] must then decide how many cards they'll get for their protagonists."

All I can do is apply the rules of English to understand this sentence.  "Protagonists" is plural, therefor "their" must *also* be plural.  In other words, what this sentence is actually saying, in black and white,
Is that the groups of involved players decide how many cards we get for our protagonists.  This is not only consistent with one of the players getting cards for his *own* protagonist, it is just as consistent with one of the players getting cards for the protagonist of another player.  Perhaps if Matt re-releases the game, he can clarify this point, possibly writing instead "Once the producer has set the difficulty, **each player** whose protagonists are involved [in the conflict] must then decide how many cards they'll get for **their individual stakes**."  As one can see this rewrite focuses on individual action, as opposed to the concerted action implied by the existing line.

Keep in mind that this game was revised last in 2006.  This was before the theory terms to properly describe how it works were developed.  You are, as far as I can tell, the first person to ever consider letting players put their cards onto other characters.  No one else in the six years that this game has been out has discussed that on these forums (I might be wrong, but, if so, that was extremely rare).  I think you are reading too hard into the language of the rules to find support for your interpretation.  Matt is just using readable, somewhat conversational English; it is not a legalese document like a D&D rulebook might be.  It doesn't ever talk about players acting as a group--ever.  It only ever talks about players acting individually in conflicts.  The only time that that is different is when a protagonist is not in the conflict.  Then, that player can spend Fan Mail to help or to get into the scene.  No where else is helping ever mentioned.  That says something about the intent of the rules.

So it would appear that spending one's cards on the stakes of another is as far as I can see not forbidden, and is even slightly encouraged by the rules as written – both by the plurality of the quoted sentence above, as well as by the quote on page 10 that "Fan Mail is a pool players can draw from to help protagonists (theirs or other players' protagonists) succeed or fail in other situations."

While this sentence does not explicitly permit the playing of *other* card resources such as Screen Presence or Traits to help another player's protagonists, it does explicitly demonstrate at least one area (Fan Mail) in which one can choose to help oneself or someone else (even the GM as we later find out.)  Furthermore, if Fan Mail was the *sole* way one could assist another player, one would expect to see that noted somewhere, with a sentence like "Fan Mail is the only method by which a player can spend resources to gain cards for a player other than himself" or words to that explicit effect.

This is really just a case of your interpretation being a situation neither the author, nor the editors, nor the playtesters ever imagined coming up.  Matt didn't explicitly forbid it because he never thought of it, I'm guesssing.  That plurality is simply conversational English; it doesn't imply a pooled player resource.  Also, remember that, according to the rules in the text, if one's character is in a conflict, one can only spend Fan Mail on his own protagonist.  The only time the text says you can spend cards on someone else is when you are not in a conflict and you spend Fan Mail for someone else.

The cooperation amongst players that you keep talking is a cooperation for the betterment of the story and for equality in generating ideas.  It is not a cooperation on all aspects of the game.  If that were the case, you wouldn't have each player in control of a single protagonist.  That would a direct story-telling game, not the combination of story-telling and roleplaying that PTA encourages.

In your other thread, Eero talked about advocation.  Each player in this game, while respecting the other players and the needs of the story as a whole, is advocating for the interests of his own character.  He is the real-world representation of the character's drives, motives, and emotions.  When calling for scenes, he may do what is best for the episode and focus on the spotlight character, and he may set up difficult situations for his character to endure, but, in conflicts, the player's job becomes to further the goal of the protagonist, to advocate for his interests.  Eero, can you help to clarify what I'm saying?

So while I cannot find an explicit reference to being able to spend one's SP cards or Trait cards to help another player, neither can I find an explicit reference to that not being permitted.  Instead, the implication that seems persuasive to me, given what could have been written compared to what *was*, is that players are permitted to help each other.  However, I think that the next idea may counterbalance this quite nicely, to such an extent that I want to credit Matt Wilson for intending this on purpose:

Again, I think you are reading the rules with too much of a lawyer's eye.  PTA wasn't really written with an eye towards hard mechanical clarity; much more effort was put into explaining how the game as a whole should be played (Matt frequently says that the most important part is the "Jobs" section near the end).  The actual conflict resolution system is, according to Matt, the least important part.  He thought he was clear, and he was, if people have the same assumptions as him.  You don't, so his less-than-concrete writing style is muddy.

Something that might be convincing to you are all of the example conflicts.  In none of them are the trait or SP cards given to anyone but the protagonist to which they belong.  Don't you think that, had Matt intended them to be shared, he would have made an example conflict in which that happened, in order to make that sharing apparent?

[Welkerfan]

>Stakes must be written based on the wants of the protagonist, and must be written from his perspective. This was one I got exactly backward, having encouraged my players to do the opposite – frame the stakes that the *player* had, without regard to the hopes of the protagonist.  However, page 61 "What are the Stakes" clearly and explicitly says the opposite: that stakes are protagonist-based, not player-based.

On the one hand, we had so much fun playing the game last time using player-based stakes that I am leery of changing that.  But I do feel honor bound to at least try PTA core-concepts as written, so we will probably invert that for the next episode.  It is *very* intriguing, though, to note that using protagonist-based stakes is going to have (I think) three very interesting effects.

The reason that protagonist stakes are so exciting is that it opens up both success and failure as enjoyable outcomes.  If the stakes are player-centric, you really only want one thing to happen (the stake you set).  When you set them from the character's point of view, you can make the stakes such that both success and failure are appealing to you as a player.

First of all, if the stake I write *has to* have my protagonist as the Subject of the stakes sentence, then even though the PTA ruleset may imply that players can play their cards on each other's stakes, there may be a significant emotional disincentive.  For example, if I write the stakes "Fred (my protagonist) rescues the lady", the other players will have much less incentive to add cards to my stakes then if my stakes had been "We rescue the lady."  *Now* the next player has to choose between using *his* resources to my *my* character look good, or using them on his own guy.  This may be *all* the checks and balances you need to protect the Producer from all the players ganging up on him (the real reason to be worried about letting players unite resources behind a single stake), right?

Remember, players are advocating for the success of their individual protagonists.  Also, you can have something not the protagonist as the subject of the stakes; it just has the be something that the protagonist can be working for.  For example, you can have a stake set for Ryan of "Jack and Katie stay together," it just has to be that Ryan is doing something to try to keep them together.  Make the protagonist the subject of the sentence just makes it easier to show what the protagonist is trying to do (ala "I get Jack and Katie to stay toghether.") and to focus on the character's Issue.  Really, the Issue is the thing that should always be in the player's mind when setting stakes during a conflict.

• A) they have very little resources, maybe just an SP of 1, and rather than go for a stakes they numerically have almost no chance of winning, would rather see their "oomph" go to seeing another player succeed, and
• B) that in this specific conflict they *really* really want the other player's protagonist to get his stakes, even more than they care about their own.

I think that possibility A is awesome – it gives a way for a character without a lot of oomph in this episode to have a significant way to numerically contribute – which can only lead the focus of the episode back to the characters with a high SP – which is *good*, right?

I don't think that that is good.  Doing that means no one is advocating for the SP 1 character, and he becomes a prop to the scene instead of a character.  The SP 3 characters already have a high chance of winning stakes (4-5 cards plus any Fan Mail, usually).  They really don't need help.  Generally, I've found that SP 1 characters don't get into a lot of conflicts.  They either are in scenes which talk about the spotlight or which are in contrast to the spotlight (the lazy character goes to play pool instead of working, in contrast to the spotlight character whose Issue to putting her career in front of her family) or they make stakes and conflicts which set up a later episode with a higher SP (they make stakes that they expect to lose in order to get the ball rolling on their upcoming spotlight episode).

I also think possibility B is awesome – if a player is so motivated by the plight of *another* character's protagonist that he selflessly wants to make *their* stakes more likely, then I strongly support that – isn't that what collaborative storytelling is all about?

But PTA isn't really collaborative storytelling.  It has elements of that, but the individual players' protagonists are being roleplayed and advocated for, something that doesn't happen in a game like Universalis (as far as I know), which is truly a collaborative storytelling game.  In this situation, everyone should be pumping for the stakes and giving Fan Mail to the player who set such awesome stakes (so that you can spend it for cards to win), and they should collectively share the "Yes!" or "No!" moment that the audience feels when they see a character they love succeed or fail at an important task.  The cards introduce a level of randomness into the system which is intended to make outcomes less than certain, so that that audience surprise is present.  You don't want to stack the chips too heavily in one person's favor.

>What about the bored GM?  I think that protagonist-based stakes means that the GM actually has more to do since the amount of control the player's have gets more limited (to a degree) than when we used player-based stakes.  For example, instead of me saying that my stakes are "11 civilians die during this scene" which I had before, I could have made it more personal and less in the "domain" as it were of the GM's world by making it "Alex is able to prevent a lot of bloodshed and loss of life" and simply spend very little on it.  Losing this stakes doesn't mean that the bloodshed happens, it just means that Alex realizes that *if* it was prevented, it wasn't prevented by *him* - and if the GM/narrator chooses, it perhaps was even prevented, eh?

Precisely.  Also, encourage the Producer to drive the scenes toward conflict and call for conflict when he sees one and everyone else is just talking through it.

>Perhaps what we have been using as the conflict should be the Agenda. For example, we had a scene where the Agenda was the bad guy gets us to show him the Crystal, after which he would try to take it.  This naturally lead the conflict to be about whether or not we were able to stop him.  Try this idea out instead:  Agenda's should include the outcome of any events that are not intended to be in question and/or not intended to be fodder for conflicts.

In the above example, perhaps the Agenda should have been, "The protagonists having been tricked bring the crystal into the bad guys presence and show him, but the bad guy is unable to take possession of the crystal through either the protagonists efforts of simple turns of luck."  *This* Agenda flat out removes the outcome of the scene from being an unknown to a known, freeing the player's to focus on stakes that address other things, such as the how of it or such as side-issues, such as does the protagonist feel good about themselves after.

Is including major outcomes in the Agenda a step in the right direction, as it seems?

It depends.  I'm fond of just saying what in general is happening with the Agenda ("This is the scene where we unknowingly take the crystal to the bad guys.") and leave the outcome in the air.  This does three things.  First, it leaves that anticipation and uncertainty of what is going to happen (the audience tension).  Second, it lets the way the individual stakes fall have an influence on the scene.  If it is more appropriate, given the way that the stakes worked, for a given outcome of the overall scene to happen, it can happen.  For example, if the characters were too distracted by their bravado, hangover, or pocketing of cash to stop the bank robber, the robber can get away.  Third, it lets the narrator and the group have fun at the end of the scene by describing what happens.  It can be agreed that a certain outcome will happen, but you should let that be decided after the cards have been drawn, so you can do what is most exciting at that point in time and inject creative ideas that have come to you as a result of the conflict outcomes.

That being said, sometimes deciding what's going to happen is helpful.  Think of a police procedural drama.  The Agenda could be "This is the scene where we find out whose fingerprints were on the candlestick."  or "This is where we learn in an interrogation that our friend, Johnny, was at the crime scene."  In those scenes, you just need a minor thing to happen to push the plot, so it can be okay to pre-narrate what will happen, I think.

>The lopsided Fan Mail of our first session was based on lopsided Merit, and as far as I can see, not on lopsided awards. Just wanted to be clear on that – from my perspective, people *were* getting more or less the Fan Mail they deserved.  However, I am hoping that by encouraging the players that receive less to ask for it more, that will encourage them to find ways to deserve it more as well – after all, you can't say "How about a Fan Mail" if you don't fist says something you believe is worth it, right?  It may be that the lopsidedness will continue, if certain players continue to contribute better quips and more intriguing ideas than others – and if that occurs, I am OK with that.  The only thing I *don't* want to have happen is someone coming up with good ideas that is not rewarded simply because he is overlooked.  So far, that does not seem to be happening as far as I can see.

That's good.  If someone consistently can't get good ideas which demand Fan Mail, try to help them to come up with an idea and then give them Fan Mail for it, even if you did most of the creative work.  That way, they might get into some habit on coming up with better ideas.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I think Welkerfan's doing a fine job of explaining the game - I pretty much play the same way he does, it seems. A very clear explanation, overall.

[Matt Wilson]

Grr, I tried to post a couple times this weekend and got a server timeout. Glad Eero and Welkerfan are covering it all.

The only-five-scenes thing was what concerned me the most. Eero's recommendation of at least 4 scenes per act is spot on. I will put that in any future rev I do.

Giving your cards away to other players is not technically allowed by the rules, and I wouldn't include this as an option in a future rev.

Back to the five scenes, what I wanted to ask in my previous attempted posts is what your scenes look like. What happened in them that they went on for so long?

[Sindyr]

Grr, I tried to post a couple times this weekend and got a server timeout. Glad Eero and Welkerfan are covering it all.

The only-five-scenes thing was what concerned me the most. Eero's recommendation of at least 4 scenes per act is spot on. I will put that in any future rev I do.

Giving your cards away to other players is not technically allowed by the rules, and I wouldn't include this as an option in a future rev.

Back to the five scenes, what I wanted to ask in my previous attempted posts is what your scenes look like. What happened in them that they went on for so long?

OK, back with more info.  To start with, I am not sure why our scenes took longer, perhaps partly because we were new to this and feeling our way along, and partly perhaps because we may have lingered in the scenes awhile because we wanted to - if it is more the latter, then we have two choices - stop lingering or reduce the budget. (or play much longer.)

When you write a future rev, It wouldn't hurt to include a single sentence making it explicit that you intend people to be able to play cards outside their own stakes ONLY when using Fan Mail and they are not in the scene.  Of course, for the reasons previously stated, especially with the new understanding that stakes are personal to the PC, and not player-based, I am wholly on board with the idea of still permitting all cards to be played on any stakes - because there are really only two instances where that can now be expected to happen - when playing your one card on your own stakes is the statistical equivalent of doing nothing at all, and when you really feel compelled to support another character's stakes above your own.

Unfortunately, this whole effort has become moot, on account of an unreliable player in our group becoming even more so.  Our group of 4 people have dwindled to 3, and as far as I can see, PTA works best with at least 3 players and 1 GM.  So for now, we are going to hang it up. 

Thanks very much for the support and assistance, I am extremely eager to come back to this game in the future.  One thing that would assist in coming back to it, by the way, is if some kind of variant was possible that eliminated the need for a GM.  Is this possible?

In any case, thanks everybody, will be back when the opportunity arises again.

In the meanwhile, I will just continue working on my *own* secret narative RPG project...