Personal sets for itinerant series

[MarcoBrucale]

I was considering how to introduce personal sets in mainly itinerant series, like the example on page 36 of PtA.
I eventually came up with only two ideas:

1) Flashbacks as personal sets.  When a player initiates a scene which focuses on an important event in her past, it's considered a scene occurring in a personal set for rules purposes.

2) Significant habits as personal sets. When a player initiates a scene which occurs while the character is doing something she very often does, it's considered a scene in a personal set. Appropriate habits could be praying for a priest, or feeding on victims for a vampire, etc.

Any ideas/comments?
Thanks!

[Yokiboy]

We faced a similar situation in our series, but decided to give the protagonists an airplane, and the cockpit is one guys personal set, while the other protagonist has a travelling lab that he sets up in camp - they're sort of explorers.

TTFN,

Yokiboy

[Emily Care]

One of our characters' personal set is his hardbitten female reporter's "office", which I believe consists of her portable typewriter and an ashtray, set up where ever she happens to be.  Is that right, Josh?

A personal set could be a familiar situation too--didn't Bill Bixby always begin and end the series The Hulk walking down a road, into and out of another place he surely couldn't stay?   Quantum leap used a similar convention--every show would begin with the main character looking in the mirror to see who he'd jumped into this time.  Anyone remember the early eighties time travel show called Voyagers? It was a lot like Time Bandits and the two main characters had a funky pocket-watch type object that they'd use to move from one era of history to another.  Seems like objects could be a subset of personal sets.

Then there's Carnivale, that has the whole traveling road show as the, literally, itinerant set. They return to certain people and places over time.  Also, the whole preacher plot is stable spatially, despite the movement of the other story lines, which is another possibility.

Best of luck with it!

--Emily Care

[pete_darby]

Well, PtA is designed to emulate the creation processes of modern serials, and the Fugitive model is out of fashion at the moment (John Doe being the only recent example I can bring to mind), so most of these series only fit in with the PtA standard roughly.

ON the other hand, modern "mobile" series tend to have a defined transport as base of operations (Starship, carnival caravan), or have a base team with home sets (Quantum Leap's Hologram Room).

I guess you could get tricksy (personal set defined as "local bar" in a roaming Western, frex), but the vital part seems to me to define a space, whether physical or mental, that each character "owns", so that other characters appear in that space specifically to interact with character either directly or indirectly.

That the space should provide pointers to the character issues, edges and contacts should, I think, go without saying.

[azrianni]

Matt, or someone who knows, maybe you could clarify the personal sets concept.  I understand that characters in some shows obviously have them, so they make sense in the game.  But why does a player get a game benefit from using a personal set?  Presumably, that implies that there's some benefit to the story or to the producer, right?

[Matt Wilson]

My thought on personal sets - in terms of actual TV shows - is that they're typically a place where character growth happens. The personal set, as Pete says above, is a character's personal space, and as such, is a reflection or even extension of the character. Since character growth is a very internal thing, it's kind of pleasant for the audience to have those visible cues.

We understand more about, say, Kaylee on Firefly, from the way her quarters are decorated. Or there's the con artist guy on Lost, Sawyer, with his stockpile of scavenged stuff around him.

If there's no consistent set, what you can do instead is define certain qualities, like bright lighting, or spartan decorations, or a certain color scheme, and have a scene in a location with those qualities count as the personal set.

Hope that helps.

[Chris Goodwin]

I'd been thinking about M*A*S*H, and how three characters (Hawkeye and his two bunkies) could conceivably claim the Swamp as a personal set.  I thought of a variant, where instead of a personal set each character chooses a personal "bit":  Hawkeye in the Swamp pouring himself a glass of underwear-strained gin; BJ talking about his family while in the Swamp; Charles listening to classical music while in the Swamp.  Just having a scene there doesn't count, but taking part in one of those actions does.

[Ian O'Rourke]

The personal set could be imaginary or a memory? Who is to say a protagonist doesn't have a connection to his dead wife and a person set of the home they used to live in? He regular goes there to talk to her in his head.

Purely imaginary? Just a narrative construct? An actual ghost or evil spirit? That would depend on the show.

I believe the only benefit of a person set is the show begins with some established places that are important to the character, which means the above applies.

[Matt Wilson]

Purely imaginary? Just a narrative construct? An actual ghost or evil spirit?

Yes! Good call. Consider Baltar and the cylon in his head on the new BSG.

You are the man, Ian.

And thanks for buying a copy.  :)

[Emily Care]

Purely imaginary? Just a narrative construct? An actual ghost or evil spirit? That would depend on the show.

Just so! David's tendency to talk to the dead bodies he's embalming on 6 Feet Under is another example. Fulfills the goal of shedding light on the character in spades. David doesn't have that kind of conversation with any living person on the show.

yrs,
Em

[pete_darby]

Purely imaginary? Just a narrative construct? An actual ghost or evil spirit?

Yes! Good call. Consider Baltar and the cylon in his head on the new BSG.

You are the man, Ian.

And thanks for buying a copy.  :)

Gah! Of course! Crichton and his "crazy go nuts" headspace with Scorpius in Farscape!

That and the Flashback space for Lost... There's an article in here somewhere.

[Ian O'Rourke]

There is an article, it's the fourth sale to Signs and Portents of all places (bringing people back from the dead - including not doing it via dreams and 'visions'). Not the same, but covers similar ground (characters in the head, etc).

I tend to think in these terms because (a) they are used in TV shows a lot and (b) I wrote an article for Arcane magazine a while back about dreams, visions, etc, as story ideas in role-playing games.

In our aborted PTA Playtest (links below), I had a character who had a connection to his dead wife. I envisioned working in the same way as the guy from Six Feet Under talking to his Dad (of course, considering our series it may well have been something more sinister).

http://www.fandomlife.net/fln/blog.cfm?ID=129